| It's interesting to me that you mention the "not one person" viewpoint. I am forced through traumatic past experiences to live my life consciously aware of these other "me"s and them of "me", as a result of dissociation. We have to actively communicate with each other internally and work together. Things don't happen if we don't agree on them, or other "me"s will go off and do their own thing and we have to get on the same page to keep that from happening. Lots and lots of therapy. Want to lose weight? I have to have every part of me on board, if one of me doesn't want to and instead wants to eat crap, they can and will and we lose our progress. I can't count the number of times the dev-minded parts of myself resolve to work on X project or leetcode/day only to wake up the next day switched to a different personality that doesn't remember making that resolution, or even know how to work on code. There are parts of me that cannot even comprehend code another part of me has written, but when the part that wrote it comes back it's crystal clear. It has to be communicated among everyone inside that we have the goal to work on X and time has to be given to the parts that want to and can, consciously (if we're even able at the time). There are still other parts with the internal authority to say that X thing will happen and they will show up every day to enforce their expectations. This doesn't happen often, usually in very stressful periods. Any time a part of me wants to make a long term change in my habits, appearance, or behavior it must be put to a quorum majority vote. If there is not a quorum or majority we cannot make the change, or the formation of the habit or new behavior will fail. If we have a quorum but a conflict in what we want to do any given moment, we end up procrastinating. Parts of me can try to make their own routines and habits, or do their own activities if they have time alone, but inevitably if it's against collective will it gets put to an end quickly. We have to have a contract with ourselves to be functional in day to day life. There is no reneging on the contract when we are forced to share a single life in this way. When we agree? It's powerful. Lost 100lbs in 2018, saved up and moved across country in the middle of the pandemic last year, got a new job, a new car, and started moving forward in our career. Also we get to use We/They/Them pronouns which is fun (I like to joke that technically any pronoun could be used for us.) |