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A short article on Plurality VS Plural experience:
Many (singlet) people have a Plural experience(s.)
Those experiences are just as valid as those with a permanent, solid and/or long-term experience of Plurality!
If anything it’s a spectrum! Everyone on earth, (and probably outside of Earth,) is somewhere on the spectrum, and it isn’t stagnant. Singlets report all the time they have days when they ‘don’t feel like themselves.’ Are we saying everyone is Plural? Well no, but all can, some have, a Plural experience(s.)
For some people, these experiences have a long – term negative influence and effect in their live.
There are people who, most of the time, have a Plural experience. For some, this experience, long-lasting, negatively effects their quality of life.There are people who most often have a singlet experience, but sometimes a Plural experience.*
Braun 1986
Theory of Structural Dissociation 2012
DMS4 (on culture and normal and accepted dissociative experiences)
The ISSTD guidelines for adults
All mention the possibility of a trauma-related spectrum. Psychology doesn’t (often) study non pathological experiences, but this study did:
Voices in people’s heads are far more varied and complex than previously thought. One of the largest and most detailed studies to date (2015) on the experience of auditory hallucinations, commonly referred to as voice hearing, found that The majority of voice-hearers hear multiple voices with distinct character-like qualities, with many also experiencing physical effects on their bodies. The study also confirmed that both people with & without psychiatric diagnoses hear voices.
I’m not claiming that hearing voices and Plurality is always the same thing, but people can only use the language they are familiar with, and I have a strong suspicion that many Singlets, including those in the clinical community, are more familiar with hearing voices concepts and theories, rather than Plurality related ones.
For example, in the Netherlands a whole inpatient clinic was re-diagnosed. It turned out over 50% was misdiagnosed! Many of those patients hear voices. Most of them, who were first diagnosed with schizophrenia, got re-diagnosed to Autistic.
It seems none of the patients in this facility, during this research, was tested for dissociative disorders, including DID/OSDD. It was just not on their radar I guess, even tho DID has been in the DSM for 25 years.
I think the paper shows my point, that hearing voices makes singlets lead to the conclusion of schizophrenia, or Autism and DID/OSDD, let alone Plurality, seems to be the last thing on their minds. Which isn’t correct or okay. Especially not with a 3.7% prevalence for DID and 4.5% for OSDD.
Resources:
What does your Plurality and/or Plural experience look like?
Fill in the free The Plural Spectrum Tool:
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Free article:
As always, we encourage you and your System to follow your own truth, to soul search, to find words, labels, visions, theories and communities that aren’t only within your values but also match your lived experience and/or long term goals, so that you might find belonging and don’t have to try to fit in.
Thank you for investing the time to read this article. Please, feel free to leave comments or feedback in the comment section.
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Disclaimer: Thank you for reading our peer article; we hope it was empowering, informative and helpful for you and your System. There are as many Plural experiences, as there are Plurals. So not all information on this website might apply to your situation or be helpful to you; please, use caution. We’re not doctors or clinicians and our nonprofit, our work, and this website in no way provide medical advice, nor does it replace therapy or medication in other ways.
About the authors
The Stronghold System are the proud volunteer founders & CEO of The Plural Association Nonprofit. They are from the Netherlands and reside in a 30-something-year-old body, are nonbinary, parents of an amazing child & 3 cats. They got diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder over 10 years ago & also self ID as Plural.