Shared Core Selfhood

posted on March 1, 2025

audience: Anyfolk wanting to learn about a way we experience plurality.

Context: "I," "we," and "I/we" are used interchangeably in this essay.

One of the reasons I did not understand that I was plural is that I had really literally internalized the 101 explanation of "separate people sharing a body or brain." For a lot of really valid and functional reasons, there's an emphasis on the separate people who are different. A lot of emphasis on how alters not only have different names but genders, sexual orientations, values, political views, cultural backgrounds, memories of different lives, and all kinds of other things. This is something I/we grasped pretty easily in our plurality round 1 because we had so many fictives, and they were really obviously not me for this reason.

Unfortunately, if you just leave it at that, then systems like us don't tend to get each other.

"Wait, are you saying you're all the same person?" Yeah, kinda.

"But you just said you're plural." Yeah, I did.

The three of us are separate individuals. We’re also the same person, when you get down to the base of it.

Wait, how does that work, exactly?

All of us claim our body as ours, and as us. My family of origin, my hobbies, my educational background, my cultural heritage, my life history-- the bones of those answers are going to be very similar if not exactly the same. It doesn't matter if you're hearing about it from Arini, enyo, or Brick; while each of us may experience and interpret things differently, we all claim ownership of our life and experiences.

Imagine one of those multi-headed creatures. Let’s go with a hydra. In this case, three heads. They’re each going to have their own brain, their own faces, their own necks maybe. They’ll each be able to talk to you and also to each other. They’re always together even if one or more of those three heads might be tuned out or paying attention to something else. Here you have a creature that is three separate entities.

They’re also the same entity. They share a life history, even with different perspectives and created meaning from said life history. Those perspectives and experiences are neurologically and chemically encoded in the same flesh — that is, everything from the neck down. They each know themselves and each other because of how they experience the world and their relationships through their shared body. In this specific example, this creature also has a core identity and value set that is shared by all three heads.

They are all distinct, they are all the same, they are all each other, and did I mention they are all complex individuals? They are also parts of each other, parts of a whole, and more than the sum of their parts.

So what does this matter, anyway?

Beyond the, "hey, can you relate?" reason for posting this, it matters to us specifically because of how we relate to each other and people outside of us.

Sometimes plurality is described with analogies to relationships other bodies have with one another. "We're like..." Family, siblings, roommates, friends, and so on. In many systems, relationships like these do occur between members very literally and in ways that are not metaphorical or analogous or symbolic or any of that. We don't experience that. We are a collection of selves that shares a core selfhood. Sometimes we are each more individualized and distinct. Sometimes we are all acting and identifying in a more collective or "blended" way.

This means that the way we relate to each other is challenging to describe. Using words that describe relationships with other bodies, and only using those words, would not be correct. In the same conversation, you could hear any of us three banter like siblings do, refer to each other with highly charged adult language, speak of each other romantically, and speak of one of our others in a parental fashion. Witnessing this type of relating between many bodies would appear contradictory and often alarming, depending on the power dynamics involved. But for us, it makes perfect sense, and we are not able to neatly categorize the ways we relate in mutually exclusive ways.

It also means "firsts" -- as in, first experiences -- can get wordy to explain. Of course Chameleons has felt a cold night. When we all thought we were enyo, we interpreted this sensory experience the way enyo would. Then when Brick was out very late as himself for the first time, he found himself mentioning how he had never felt this cold before. This is to say: Chameleons knows what a cold night feels like. Chameleons knows how enyo experiences a cold night. That night, Chameleons first discovered how Brick experiences a cold night.

Being a collection of selves with a core selfhood also impacts the language we use. Sometimes, we'll refer to each other as "we" or "us." Sometimes we'll specifically name which of us did a certain thing. Sometimes, one of us may have done that thing, and later another one of us may say, "I" did that thing. Whatever language feels accurate in the moment is going to depend on whoever is communicating and what the situation is. None of it is in contradiction.

Finally, referring to any of us three by our individual names is correct. Referring to us collectively as Chameleons is correct. Referring to any of us individually as Chameleons, in a singular manner, is also correct. The last of those is just not as specific as naming Arini, Brick, or enyo, but it is not wrong. We're/I'm not "the Chameleons collective," or "a system whose body is named Chameleons." We're just Chameleons. I'm Chameleons.