Gaining Familiarity

Becoming familiar with plurality is a strange, intuitive, and counterintuitive process that rewires the brain.
Here's what some of those oft-alluded plural experiences tend to be, to a system or to an observer.

Switching

At this point we need to narrow our focus somewhat - switching fronts is not a universal plural experience, but it has unique impacts both internally and externally that warrant discussion. In this chapter, we'll primarily address switching systems, with some paragraphs that can be applied more generally.

At first, switches can be strange and unnatural. The sensations are unfamiliar, be it like "waking up", a new pair of glasses, or like something intangible is sliding into place in your head. This can make it look strange, too - daydreamy eye-glazing, sudden adjustments in posture, wincing, and so on. It's not all accidental - stretching, yawning, scrunching your nose, and clearing your throat, can all help deliberately settle in a new front. This works because different headmates tend to utilize the body differently: posture, gait, voice, facial expressions, or even just their "resting" face.

Over time, you become accustomed to the differences between fronts. As a system, this can help fronts settle better, foster acceptance for your own differences, and help you learn to switch fronts deliberately - which some systems can do. As an observer, recognizing fronts gets easier, beyond obvious clues like clothing or speech patterns. This is never completely reliable (and it can be rude to guess a front unprompted), but it can help you understand a system a bit more. Realistically, it's more practical for a system to deliberately signal a change of front. The obvious "hi, it's [name]" is functional, but often feels awkward and objectifying. Instead, you could swap a name tag or accessory, change up decorations in chat messages (e.g. an emoji or signature), or ask someone to guess your front.

In systems that switch, the word "front" can also provide a more intuitive model for system composition, rather than a permanent roster of "system members". In just one example of a way a system might conceptualize themselves - a front may not be purely the presence of a permanent resident, but rather a combination of aspects of the overall system. Through a changing self-conceptualization, systems are able to adjust to understand new experiences. Co-fronts, fronts "between" other fronts, a "nothing" or "blurry" feeling front, or a "variant" on a usual front are all experiences that can challenge our model of systemhood. Don't be afraid to adapt if something new feels right.

Discovery

New fronts and newly discovered systemhood present their own unique and at times challenging experiences. Being new to systemhood can make everything suddenly clumsy, messy, and distressing. Over time, you learn to navigate each experience, resolve early-system internal conflicts, and develop functional masking and unmasking skills to take on the outside world. Feeling new to a more settled system can be a bit scary too - on a rational level, you worry about existing expectations of the system, and its friends, and pushing the against normative quantity bounds. On a more instinctual level, the feeling of being new is texturally very strange - like tasting something you've never tasted anything like before. For some, that can feel good - freeing, a new experience that the system is capable of. But it's intimidating, and isolating, too. You rely on others, within and outside the system, to accept your place in it.

Settling in fresh systemhood or a system member is a unique process of connecting the old with the new. There's a period of exploration, where you can find - or as a friend, can provide - sufficient space to feel out what feels right: in identity, language, self-expression, tastes, and so on. In the process of discovering the new, you often begin to recognize the old - from outside and in, parts of the new taste start to seem familiar. You might remember points in your past that felt the same, or a friend might recall a mannerism or interest you once had that's come back. Through this process, we (and others) re-meet new parts of ourselves like old friends, and only occasionally encounter entirely new aspects to express and embrace.

Intimacy

Within a system, the ability to communicate between headmates varies wildly. Some systems can hold conversations in their own heads, others leave notes for eachother, others still talk in private chat rooms, and some can't do any of those things at all. Without a direct line of communication, one would assume that there's no way to foster positive intra-system relationships between system members. This is true under a singlet-normative understanding of interpersonal relationships, but we can do a bit better. By observing others interacting with the world and mutual friends outside the system, a system's members can slowly develop opinions of eachother. Without a way to directly communicate, these opinions form the bases of non-speaking intrasystem relationships. Without a word to one another, system members can still do things they know their other headmates struggle with, speak to friends about how they feel about eachother, make little comments right after getting into the front, and in many cases, bubble up their feelings and thoughts without being in the front - like your ears burning when someone says your name. It's often quite unlike a relationship between two bodies, but as you've likely realised, it simply does not need to be.

Of course, being plural adds layers to forming extra-system relationships, too. Extrasystem bonds always sit somewhere between the individual headmate time is spent with, and the system as a whole. Over time, friends can come to understand the workings of a system, and recognize some or all of its inhabitants fondly. Through this process, friends outside the system may be able to provide better support - helping shift unhappy fronts, perceiving subtle differences, and even helping mediate conflict or feelings between members of a system. The tolerance to the strangeness of plural existence of a friend can provide a system with a rare moment to relax and let their guard down - front less popular headmates, let the body language of a front get weirder than usual, or speak honestly to their own experiences and feelings. As systems, to be known is often a source of terror - but it can also a source of peace.