When the topic of syscovery comes up in our community, it turns out that a significant amount of people discovered their multiplicity during 2020-2022. We asked around our team of authors, and these are some of our stories:
(Click here to read content warnings.)
I first became a part of the system community after meeting my now ex, in late 2020. I figured out I was a system in late 2021, but kept it to myself and continued to research, officially coming out as a system in early 2022 upon seeking a dissociative specialist. I was diagnosed early-mid 2022, several months after my initial self-diagnosis.
Lockdown was coming to an end by the time I got my official diagnosis but the time with internet friends who were also systems and all the time inside gave me lots of research opportunities and definitely helped me figure things out.
— Julian Patchwork
After we had our twins in 2019, our OG host suffered some of the worst PPD (post partum depression) our therapist at the time had seen. They thought it was bordering on psychosis, but lo and behold it was DID lol.
So when COVID happened, we went from being able to get out of the house with them (we were staying at home with them) to being inherently stuck inside and unable to do anything. It triggered an attempt and we ended up inpatient.After the stay, we got into a trauma-focused DBT IOP group, where the psych asked a lot of questions regarding our symptoms (“do you lose time a lot, dissociate a lot, childhood trauma”. Etc etc). After an extensive EXTENSIVE discussion, she diagnosed us with DID. Initially she gave us a few resources and we used a lot from the group. And from there we’ve been trying to figure this whole stuff out.
Lockdown DEFINITELY exacerbated our symptoms/made things a lot harder. We couldn’t find a therapist, our support was very very limited, and I think we shut down a lot of system stuff originally because of that. It took us really until late 2021 to really figure stuff out and seek proper help.
— Noetic
We had several phases of syscovery. Even before lockdown, we had times where we spent a lot of time home alone and did “inner child/family work” by ourselves. But it was always something that we kept to ourselves. (We knew about DID, but didn’t think we counted.)
In early 2021, we stumbled into an online space for all kinds of plural experiences, and finally got to share what we’d been thinking about and be accepted. Because we were still isolating, we weren’t interacting with a lot of people IRL, and this online space quickly became a safe space where we could openly be ourselves. So the percentage of time where we didn’t have to worry about masking was fairly high, which was great. Having to mask makes it harder to be in contact with our system, and getting to unmask in that space helped us to get to know ourselves.
The entire pandemic was also just such a weird liminal space, where it felt okay to take a step back, avoid talking to people and spend time by ourselves, focused on ourselves. Not to romanticize it – we took real damage from the isolation we experienced during that time. But it gave us the timeout we needed to actually listen to ourselves and accept our plurality without having to defend ourselves against people’s stereotypes, assumptions about our trauma status, or invasive questions. When we came out of this liminal space, we were more confident and could handle these situations without falling into doubt spirals and reverting all our acceptance progress.
— papierfliegerfalter
We had our second syscovery (the one that “stuck”, though that’s a story for another time) during the beginning of the lockdown. For us, this was Sophomore year of high school and really the first time in a long time we were able to dedicate time to ourselves. I can remember spending a lot of time trying to think about what I actually want, and why it felt like my identity had always been unstable and shifting- Consistently Inconsistent.
With extra time on our hands we ended up on DID youtube, watching other systems discuss their experiences and talk about healing with DID. However, at the time we did not think we had DID at all, and although we could relate to some of their experiences of Multiplicity we didn’t believe at this point in time that we had trauma or dissociated “enough” to be considered a system. Through no one’s fault but our own, we felt like we could relate but could not belong because our experiences didn’t quite match what others seemed to be going through.
For us, we made the mistake of digging for trauma we were not ready to find, and while it did allow us to be more sure of ourselves as a system we would have been far better off leaving the past unbothered. Slowly but surely we began to build a better understanding of the system now that we had some understanding of what was going on and were able to find some support, though we continue to discover new things about the system all the time, and I’m sure we’ve only begun to scratch the surface.
— Squids
For us, as far as we can tell, we didn’t so much discover our system during the start of the pandemic as much as became a system over the first half of 2020.
Getting sick before tests were readily available or Long COVID was widely known led to us (at the time, just the one of us) struggling through increasingly severe dissociation and fatigue to keep up with grad school, with no idea what was wrong or why; within a few months, vivid, persistent, and involuntary conversations with “an invisible friend who just showed up in my head one day” had become part of navigating everyday life, from reminders about assignments and commentary on IRL conversations to help with grounding during dissociative episodes.After maybe six months or more in this haze, it became clear that it didn’t take much for us to switch–in fact, it’d probably happened unintentionally before without us fully realizing it. With most of the rest of our life grinding to a halt during lockdown, plus finally going on medical leave, the silver lining was that it gave us time and space. That proved invaluable when we first tried to bring up the whole “so there’s two of us” thing in therapy, and a lot of thorny issues started up: obsessive denial spirals, internal conflict, and external dismissal and mistrust from our provider(s) at the time. Luckily, we had a lot of support and perspective from a system friend with OSDD who we’d known for years: they treated us with respect and common sense without having to fit us into any particular diagnosis first, and helped us get to a better therapist eventually.
— S + L (Indigo)
There’s a long history of judging people for figuring out their plurality through media, particularly online resources. If that’s how you figured yourselves out, you’re not alone! Many of us were stuck inside with lots of time to consume media, listen to ourselves, and reflect. It’s not wrong to notice that you relate to a piece of media or that you find a topic exciting – it’s a great way to start figuring out something that’s true about you. Without this opportunity for reflection, many of us would have gone through life without understanding ourselves as well as we do now.
If you’re also in the “lockdown cohort” and you would like to share your story, leave a comment or email us about submitting a guest post!
Footnote: Content warnings
Mention of a suicide attempt
Multiple Multitudes 