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The Egg Carton Study Guide
We’ve been meaning to make a resource for folks who are new to their own plurality for a while now (especially because we have a tendency to crack egg cartons), so here it is—all the stuff we tend to wish we had in one place when a friend is questioning or has a syscovery! We tried to order the sections by importance/urgency—plurality primers are at the very bottom because this guide assumes you know what plurality is already.
Note that because of the type of collective we are, resources will skew towards multiples and non-disordered systems, but we tried to include broad topics. We’ll also be using the terms “system" and “headmate" here for ease of communication.
(If you want good compilation of general resources, we are big fans of Healthy Multiplicity as a starting point. Also, suggestions welcome, but this is meant for newbies—hence the title—so we’re trying not to add too much! We plan to update this a few more times.)
"How Do I Know If I’m Plural?" (Dragonheart Collective, essay) - A very comprehensive questioning checklist with links to many other questioning guides
Common Terms Used In Plural Spaces (Dragonheart Collective, glossary) - A glossary of common plural terms, made to be brief and to-the-point (Note: the glossary incorrectly refers to final fusion as the only recognized treatment for DID, which it is not)
System Governments and Other Order-Keepers (LB Lee, essay) - Making rules that work for you&, and making a plan to deal with conflicts before you& need to
New System Member Guide (Dragonheart Collective, essay) - How to make your& own guide for new system members (which we highly recommend doing)
Finding Your Own Methods (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - Figuring out what works for you&, and letting go of the methods that don’t
To Everyone Who’s Not A System Host (Claudia^Alexandrite System, video) - Not really a guide, but definitely belongs in the starter pack—for any headmate who is not the host to watch
Putting all the handy tools in their own section for convenience, though they serve different purposes.
SimplyPlural (Apparyllis, phone/computer/web app) - An app for tracking headmates, logging front/switches, and optionally sharing that information with friends, in addition to a number of other functionalities like in-system chats, polls, and more (though we do not recommend the "Useful Links" section at all)
Write Lighthouse (Lighthouse System, website) - A private journaling platform for plurals, including individual journals for headmates and shared journals for the collective
PluralKit (Unknown, Discord app) - A bot for use on Discord that allows you to send messages under multiple profiles from one account, as well as some functionality for logging members and switches
Flowcharty (Unknown, website) - A website where you can input the names of headmates as well as some of their traits, and then answer yes/no questions to determine who’s fronting (a bit like Akinator)—great for unblurring
Get to really know your alters with this easy list! (Stronghold System, questionnaire) - A form for each headmate to fill out on their own with their information, wants, needs, etc. and save privately
Crisis Planning: How To Make A Pocket Crisis Guide (LB Lee, essay) - A guide on making your own pocket guide for psychological crisis—for a pocket zine template, see The Bad Day Book, also by LB Lee
First: Make your life stable (papierfliegerfalter, essay) - It's tempting to dig for trauma memories and answers, but it's a lot more important to get safer first (Unavailable)
Handling the “Silent Periods" (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - How to deal when everyone goes quiet
Recognizing and managing doubt spirals (The doubt-o-meter) (papierfliegerfalter, essay) - Dealing with self/ves-doubt, and recognizing where it comes from and how to reduce it (Unavailable)
Don’t Overthink It (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - Dealing with overthinking whether you’re just changing, actually a different person, or fusing with a headmate (hint: It’s in the title)
"Help! I'm Stuck at Front!" (Amorpha, essay) - An overview of being fronstuck, how it works, why it happens, and how to deal
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (Rogan^LB Lee, essay) - Race and plurality, and especially the harm that comes from assuming plurality is a white USAmerican phenomenon and that headmate parethnicity must be suppressed—less of a guaranteed freak-out, but still very likely if you're not white, or if you end up with a headmate whose ethnicity doesn't match your body
(As a note—we really want to make a resource on the concept of privacy, but we haven’t gotten around for it, so in lieu of that: please be mindful of your safety and privacy. Sharing headmate roles, front triggers, system origins, or headmate vulnerabilities with people you don’t know well and trust is a very bad idea when you’re still adjusting to the experience of being/identifying as plural.)
Safety in Alterhuman Spaces (Dragonheart Collective) - A safety guide for identifying red flags in alterhuman (including plural) spaces
Your Princess is in Another Headspace (LB Lee, essay) - Bookend headmates and the potential perils of seeking them
Multi-Specific Abuse (Rogan^LB Lee, Essay) - Examples of ways plurality can be linked with abuse and some warning signs
So You Want To Date A Headmate (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - Considerations to make before dating a headmate, primarily aimed at hosts dating non-hosts but still broadly applicable
Sex-Y’all-Ity (LB Lee, essay) - A really solid overview of headmate sex, including things like consent, privacy, STIs/birth control, and more!
Working with the Protectors (Sara Lambert, essay) - On working with protectors who may not believe the world is safe and may be using harmful coping/protective skills like self-injury
How to Deal With Persecutor Alters (TW^a Body et al., video) - Handling persecutor/hostile/harmful headmates (and TW's qualms with how they're generally discussed)
(As a note, we don’t actually have a functional headspace—at best we have a void we can imagine ourselves in—so we have no experience with applying most of these resources.)
On Building Headspace (LB Lee, essay) - Tips on constructing a headspace
Headspace Discovery and Defense (LB Lee, essay) - Tips on dealing with a living, volatile, or aggressive headspace
DIY Headspace Guide (catsglade, infographic) - A guide on designing/creating a headspace (and the only one we ever used to some effect)
For a guide related to coming out at your place of work, see The Plurality Playbook under Plurality Primers!
The Handy-Dandy Loony-Brain Guide to Uncloseting (Rogan^LB Lee, essay) - A step-by-step guide on uncloseting as plural, as well as evaluating whether you should
Being Openly Plural IRL (Crow&^a Body et al., video) - Pointers and our personal experience with coming out as plural IRL, including to strangers
Being Yourselves While Sharing a Body (Riley^a Body et al., video) - Ways to be yourselves and exist as separate people while sharing a body, including while closeted
Fronting Indicators | Ideas and Explanations! (Silver^Rings System) - Ways to indicate who’s fronting, and why/how they’re used!
How to Survive in a Strange World (S.M.^Outlaws System, handbook) - Coping with existing in a different reality than the one you're used to (ie as a fictive), with a ton of practical skills
What To Do When Your Source Upsets You (Dragonheart Collective, essay) - What it says at the tin, aimed at fictives/fictionkin and other introjects
How to choose a therapist (Dr. Anne Pratt and Matryoshka, webpage) - A dialogue between a therapist and a multiple on how to choose a therapist, and what a good therapist should look like
How can I tell if I have the wrong therapist? (Dr. Anne Pratt and Matryoshka, webpage) - A dialogue between a therapist and a multiple on assessing whether your therapist is right for you
A technique to defer body memories (Vickis, essay) - What it says on the tin, ways to temporarily defer body memories/flashbacks until you can deal with them
Memory Work Essays (LB Lee, essay collection) - Memory work—what it is, how to decide whether to do it (hint: probably not right now!), and how to get it done
Ideas for Coping with Flashbacks (Bristol Crisis Service for Women, fact sheet) - Coping skills for dealing with flashbacks
We seriously recommend avoiding discourse, microlabels, and Twitter/Tumblr as much as possible, but there's a lot and you're likely to bump into it, so we'd be remiss to ignore it completely.
Quick'n'Dirty Plural History, part 4 (LJ, the Genic Slapfight, and THE END!) (LB Lee, essay) - Part of the Quick'n'Dirty Plural History series, delving into the slapfight over origin labels ("traumagenic"/"endogenic"/etc.)
Trauma in Multi Identity (LB Lee, essay) - Traumagenic identity in plurals, and why Lee thinks it's misguided
Bundled together because of overlap in resources/discussions—we do not believe integration, fusion, dormancy and [ego] death are inherently equivalent experiences; whether they are fully depends on the system.
Integration (Abigail Collins, essay) - An account of the experience of integration/fusion from the perspective of someone who's undergone it, as well as tips for those experiencing or pursuing integration
Death and Multiplicity (Revised) (Rogan^LB Lee, essay) - Brief discussion of headmate death and LB Lee's experience with it
Soul Composting (LB Lee, essay) - LB Lee discusses their memory work, their ghosts, and their role in their life
Pluralstories (LB Lee, catalogue) - Catalogue of stories (and other media) relating to plurality, with a lot of tags to look through
On Dating My Partners (dismallyOriented, essay) - A singlet's perspective on having a plural partner
Quick'n'Dirty Plural History (LB Lee, essay series/video) - As it says on the twin, a quick'n'dirty history of plurality and its communities (which also exists as a video)
These all serve roughly the same purpose—each is an introduction to the concept of plurality—but preferences vary, so here they all are. (More Than One is extremely popular as a tool to come out with.)
More Than One (Unknown author, website)
Understanding Multiplicity (Manchester Metropolitan University, article)
The Plurality Playbook (FreyasSpirit and Irenes, document) - Aimed at employers/coworkers and plurals in the workforce
The Dragonheart Collective's Primer To Plurality (Dragonheart Collective, essay)
What is Plurality? | Plural 101 (Crow&^a Body et al., video)
Note that because of the type of collective we are, resources will skew towards multiples and non-disordered systems, but we tried to include broad topics. We’ll also be using the terms “system" and “headmate" here for ease of communication.
(If you want good compilation of general resources, we are big fans of Healthy Multiplicity as a starting point. Also, suggestions welcome, but this is meant for newbies—hence the title—so we’re trying not to add too much! We plan to update this a few more times.)
Getting Started
"How Do I Know If I’m Plural?" (Dragonheart Collective, essay) - A very comprehensive questioning checklist with links to many other questioning guides
Common Terms Used In Plural Spaces (Dragonheart Collective, glossary) - A glossary of common plural terms, made to be brief and to-the-point (Note: the glossary incorrectly refers to final fusion as the only recognized treatment for DID, which it is not)
System Governments and Other Order-Keepers (LB Lee, essay) - Making rules that work for you&, and making a plan to deal with conflicts before you& need to
New System Member Guide (Dragonheart Collective, essay) - How to make your& own guide for new system members (which we highly recommend doing)
Finding Your Own Methods (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - Figuring out what works for you&, and letting go of the methods that don’t
To Everyone Who’s Not A System Host (Claudia^Alexandrite System, video) - Not really a guide, but definitely belongs in the starter pack—for any headmate who is not the host to watch
Tools
Putting all the handy tools in their own section for convenience, though they serve different purposes.
SimplyPlural (Apparyllis, phone/computer/web app) - An app for tracking headmates, logging front/switches, and optionally sharing that information with friends, in addition to a number of other functionalities like in-system chats, polls, and more (though we do not recommend the "Useful Links" section at all)
Write Lighthouse (Lighthouse System, website) - A private journaling platform for plurals, including individual journals for headmates and shared journals for the collective
PluralKit (Unknown, Discord app) - A bot for use on Discord that allows you to send messages under multiple profiles from one account, as well as some functionality for logging members and switches
Flowcharty (Unknown, website) - A website where you can input the names of headmates as well as some of their traits, and then answer yes/no questions to determine who’s fronting (a bit like Akinator)—great for unblurring
Get to really know your alters with this easy list! (Stronghold System, questionnaire) - A form for each headmate to fill out on their own with their information, wants, needs, etc. and save privately
Crisis Planning: How To Make A Pocket Crisis Guide (LB Lee, essay) - A guide on making your own pocket guide for psychological crisis—for a pocket zine template, see The Bad Day Book, also by LB Lee
The Stuff You’ll Invariably Freak Out Over
Handling the “Silent Periods" (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - How to deal when everyone goes quiet
Don’t Overthink It (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - Dealing with overthinking whether you’re just changing, actually a different person, or fusing with a headmate (hint: It’s in the title)
"Help! I'm Stuck at Front!" (Amorpha, essay) - An overview of being fronstuck, how it works, why it happens, and how to deal
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (Rogan^LB Lee, essay) - Race and plurality, and especially the harm that comes from assuming plurality is a white USAmerican phenomenon and that headmate parethnicity must be suppressed—less of a guaranteed freak-out, but still very likely if you're not white, or if you end up with a headmate whose ethnicity doesn't match your body
External Safety, Relationships, and Abuse
(As a note—we really want to make a resource on the concept of privacy, but we haven’t gotten around for it, so in lieu of that: please be mindful of your safety and privacy. Sharing headmate roles, front triggers, system origins, or headmate vulnerabilities with people you don’t know well and trust is a very bad idea when you’re still adjusting to the experience of being/identifying as plural.)
Safety in Alterhuman Spaces (Dragonheart Collective) - A safety guide for identifying red flags in alterhuman (including plural) spaces
Your Princess is in Another Headspace (LB Lee, essay) - Bookend headmates and the potential perils of seeking them
Multi-Specific Abuse (Rogan^LB Lee, Essay) - Examples of ways plurality can be linked with abuse and some warning signs
In-System Relationships, Dynamics, and Abuse
So You Want To Date A Headmate (Phosphor^Hungry Ghosts, essay) - Considerations to make before dating a headmate, primarily aimed at hosts dating non-hosts but still broadly applicable
Sex-Y’all-Ity (LB Lee, essay) - A really solid overview of headmate sex, including things like consent, privacy, STIs/birth control, and more!
Working with the Protectors (Sara Lambert, essay) - On working with protectors who may not believe the world is safe and may be using harmful coping/protective skills like self-injury
How to Deal With Persecutor Alters (TW^a Body et al., video) - Handling persecutor/hostile/harmful headmates (and TW's qualms with how they're generally discussed)
Headspaces
(As a note, we don’t actually have a functional headspace—at best we have a void we can imagine ourselves in—so we have no experience with applying most of these resources.)
On Building Headspace (LB Lee, essay) - Tips on constructing a headspace
Headspace Discovery and Defense (LB Lee, essay) - Tips on dealing with a living, volatile, or aggressive headspace
DIY Headspace Guide (catsglade, infographic) - A guide on designing/creating a headspace (and the only one we ever used to some effect)
Coming Out & Being Yourselves
For a guide related to coming out at your place of work, see The Plurality Playbook under Plurality Primers!
The Handy-Dandy Loony-Brain Guide to Uncloseting (Rogan^LB Lee, essay) - A step-by-step guide on uncloseting as plural, as well as evaluating whether you should
Being Openly Plural IRL (Crow&^a Body et al., video) - Pointers and our personal experience with coming out as plural IRL, including to strangers
Being Yourselves While Sharing a Body (Riley^a Body et al., video) - Ways to be yourselves and exist as separate people while sharing a body, including while closeted
Fronting Indicators | Ideas and Explanations! (Silver^Rings System) - Ways to indicate who’s fronting, and why/how they’re used!
Introjects, Otherkin, and Nonhumanity
How to Survive in a Strange World (S.M.^Outlaws System, handbook) - Coping with existing in a different reality than the one you're used to (ie as a fictive), with a ton of practical skills
What To Do When Your Source Upsets You (Dragonheart Collective, essay) - What it says at the tin, aimed at fictives/fictionkin and other introjects
Dissociation, Trauma, Therapy, and Memory Work
How to choose a therapist (Dr. Anne Pratt and Matryoshka, webpage) - A dialogue between a therapist and a multiple on how to choose a therapist, and what a good therapist should look like
How can I tell if I have the wrong therapist? (Dr. Anne Pratt and Matryoshka, webpage) - A dialogue between a therapist and a multiple on assessing whether your therapist is right for you
A technique to defer body memories (Vickis, essay) - What it says on the tin, ways to temporarily defer body memories/flashbacks until you can deal with them
Memory Work Essays (LB Lee, essay collection) - Memory work—what it is, how to decide whether to do it (hint: probably not right now!), and how to get it done
Ideas for Coping with Flashbacks (Bristol Crisis Service for Women, fact sheet) - Coping skills for dealing with flashbacks
The Discourse (Please, Save Yourself/ves)
We seriously recommend avoiding discourse, microlabels, and Twitter/Tumblr as much as possible, but there's a lot and you're likely to bump into it, so we'd be remiss to ignore it completely.
Quick'n'Dirty Plural History, part 4 (LJ, the Genic Slapfight, and THE END!) (LB Lee, essay) - Part of the Quick'n'Dirty Plural History series, delving into the slapfight over origin labels ("traumagenic"/"endogenic"/etc.)
Trauma in Multi Identity (LB Lee, essay) - Traumagenic identity in plurals, and why Lee thinks it's misguided
Integration, Dormancy, and Death
Bundled together because of overlap in resources/discussions—we do not believe integration, fusion, dormancy and [ego] death are inherently equivalent experiences; whether they are fully depends on the system.
Integration (Abigail Collins, essay) - An account of the experience of integration/fusion from the perspective of someone who's undergone it, as well as tips for those experiencing or pursuing integration
Death and Multiplicity (Revised) (Rogan^LB Lee, essay) - Brief discussion of headmate death and LB Lee's experience with it
Soul Composting (LB Lee, essay) - LB Lee discusses their memory work, their ghosts, and their role in their life
Miscellaneous
Pluralstories (LB Lee, catalogue) - Catalogue of stories (and other media) relating to plurality, with a lot of tags to look through
On Dating My Partners (dismallyOriented, essay) - A singlet's perspective on having a plural partner
Quick'n'Dirty Plural History (LB Lee, essay series/video) - As it says on the twin, a quick'n'dirty history of plurality and its communities (which also exists as a video)
Plurality Primers
These all serve roughly the same purpose—each is an introduction to the concept of plurality—but preferences vary, so here they all are. (More Than One is extremely popular as a tool to come out with.)
More Than One (Unknown author, website)
Understanding Multiplicity (Manchester Metropolitan University, article)
The Plurality Playbook (FreyasSpirit and Irenes, document) - Aimed at employers/coworkers and plurals in the workforce
The Dragonheart Collective's Primer To Plurality (Dragonheart Collective, essay)
What is Plurality? | Plural 101 (Crow&^a Body et al., video)