Life Will Change

written by: Zahi, Brick, and Arini
Posted on: February 8, 2026
Content notes: The section "Zahi: what I thought was true," alludes to gaslighting and other forms of relational abuse.

I see a lot about how to tell people who you want to know, system etiquette, figuring out communication, and other related things, but I do not see the overarching reason for all of this when you zoom out.

Realizing you're a system changes your life. System discovery changed our/my life dramatically, more than I could have anticipated or thought possible.

Plurality/systemhood is not an internal experience happening in my mind or confined to my body. It is not a private experience. To me, it is like all of my other lived experiences. My heritage, size, disabilities, gender, queerness, trans-ness, none of these are private experiences. They affect how I move through the world and relate with others. Plurality is the same. Further, it would seem that many experience their system discovery and adaptation to be private or secret journeys. We did not experience this, for a few reasons:

We are fortunate enough to have anchor partners and community around whom we are mostly unmasked.
I was severely (emotionally/psychologically) unwell when system discovery began, and the resulting stress and how I handled it made things much worse.
I cannot hide from my loved when I am unwell. First, because of how debilitating it is. Second, because of how much I rely on them for support.
I was already in two anchor partnerships with a lot of life sharing in them. Therefore, syscovery also impacted them, significantly.

Examples

We could write a multi-volume encyclopedia about how our life -- but honestly, my life, Zahi's life -- was absolutely upended and thrown into chaos by syscovery. Instead, I am going to give you a list of things, a brief one, to consider for yourself/yourselves. Then we will elaborate where we feel called to do so.

Here is Zahi's list of what may chage:

your values.
your capacity/energy levels.
The way you spend your time.
The way you organize your living space.
Your gender presentation.
Your relationships -- all of them. Yes, including your boss. Yes, including the cashier at the gas station where you're a regular. Yes, your longtime childhood friend you see every other year. All. Of. Them.
How you interpret your past and history.
The plan or trajectory you had for your life.
What you thought was true.
Finally, you may start unpacking old trauma, beliefs, stories.

Here is Brick's list of what may change:

difficult behaviors, trauma, habits, thought patterns may resurface, ones that you all may not have confronted for some time, because folded or hidden selves with holding or managing them.
you may have conflicts with each other with no clear path to accountability or no clear answer to "who is responsible." Having to do with issues of whose values and needs were prioritized in decision making until now, whose relational style shaped your life, who has been buried or folded and suffering as a result? Because none of these things are any one self's fault, they just happened. As of now, we've yet to find many models or resources about working through conflicts like this.
Your priorities may change.
the way you interface with religion and spirituality may change.
your sexual and kink practices may change, if you are an adult who has them.

Here is Arini's list of what may change:

The pace at which you live your life. You may need to take on more commitments, or let go of some.
Emotion processing procedures..
Your relationship to your prescription medications: for example, new perspective on why you must take it, less desire to take it, more desire or need to take it, different ways to manage taking it consistently, and so on.
Your approach to negotiating with other bodies -- new procedures, conflicts, shared living spaces, schedules, and so on.
The tools you use to manage life.
Your politics.
Your profession, or professional specialty.
Your tolerance for the unknown, uncertainty, experimenting.

Elaborations

Zahi: what I thought was true

I thought I loved and liked myself, before syscovery. I made decisions based on my values. I took time to figure out what my needs were. I was honest about them, because I wanted my relationships to be based on honesty. I wanted to have relationships where I could have ease, openness, and genuine connection, which meant being honest about my needs. I did my best to take care of myself this way, as well as with decisions more about prevention.

"I'll do this so that my family of origin doesn't have the opportunity to say I didn't."

"I'll do it because I want to show my family of origin I appreciate them." (Follow up that I learned later: "And I want to protect myself from the guilt they taught me to feel about not performing love and appreciation correctly.")

And so on, and so on.

I internalized the “if people do x then I do y” to protect me. From their hurt and guilt. But also beyond my parents, from other people’s perceptions of me that did not feel correct. From the cognitive dissonance of that. It has taken me… almost a decade to learn how to hold cognitive dissonance. Live with that. Before syscovery, loving and taking care of myself was about managing cognitive dissonance. Taking care of myself and getting my needs met was about living in alignment with my values. And this was what loving myself looked like.

Until it didn't anymore.

Suddenly, my two other selves were unfolded and realized. They were embodying the desires, values, feelings, urges, coping mechanisms, and habits of Chameleons that I was holding inside. Keeping at hidden with "that's not right" to protect me/us.

I realized that up until this point, loving myself was loving them. Watching out for them. Protecting them. Unfortunately, a lot of the life adjustments we needed to make after syscovery happened at my expense as a result. "These are the parts of Chameleons I protect. These are the parts of Chameleons I am keeping safe from harm by performing correctly." My own needs and wants felt like too much to accept, with how much life turmoil was happening with our syscovery. Plus, I already had old stories about being someone who was too selfish or needy, so of course I wanted to prioritize my others.

What I saw flourishing in them was what I thought was me -- not me-Chameleons, but just me. The aspects of me I really liked and made space for by doing all the performing and appeasing and prevention in one sphere of my life, so I could cut loose and unmask in another. I did things I didn't like to do some of the time so that I could live authentically, safely, the rest of the time. I considered this to be fairly typical of anybody, and still do. Though in this context, there was information I didn't have until later, namely, being a system.

As Arini and Brick became more and more themselves, I started to realize that I did not like myself. Me, Zahi. I did not like the performing, the clinging to skill and competence as my worth, the prevention and the planning to be five steps ahead. It made me tired. It made me wonder if that's all I was, if I was just a hollow thing, if there was anything to me at all. Was I just the boring and responsible one? Was I just the one who did hard stuff so the others could do less hard stuff? Or different hard stuff? What did I actually want for me? What was about me?

I was so used to “love yourself” being something we each live as “love each other," because loving me was too difficult. Eventually, I hit the limit of what is possible with that. I had to relearn. I am relearning, now.

For those of you who thought you were everybody, or that everybody was you, or thought that you were the singletsona, or any of those things, I say this to you. Loving and caring for the others does not have to be everything you are, if you don't want it to be.

Brick: Trajectory of Life

Patting the roof of our life like it's a car: "This bad boy can fit so many... uh, I mean so few... um, maybe half a kid in it."

No, I don't want to be a father. I want to be an uncle. The way our life is set up right now makes this challenging, and likely not possible in a practical way. In the time I was locked up/distant/rolled up/otherwise occupied by internal duties to be a person, our life went in this direction. We were in our early 20s; a lot of life setup happened then. It's a very child-free kind of setup. Chosen family that has children are fairly far away; we see them maybe twice a year. We're physically far from our family of origin. Even if we weren't, actually being involved as myself would involve coming out to them. Nope. Not ready for that. So for now I keep my little pipe dream. Maybe someday we'll get friend-closer to the people in our circles who have kids.

Arini: Politics

No, Arini does not refer to how you engage with or view the actions and decisions of government. It means the way you approach peoples lived experiences within society, based on your own values.

In the United States, carceral politics are common. When "the bad guy" is locked away, then, "justice is served." If you (one or more) have not much questioned carceral politics, and you discover someone in system doing harm, what then? Carceral politics are likely not to serve you anymore. You may need to change your politics.

Do you engage with disability using the charity model? If you discover a system member with a disability who rejects this, then these politics will no longer serve you.