Tuesday August 18th - Challenges Faced and Beautifully Obvious Discoveries

Today was, just... wow. I knew this whole endeavor was going to be a lot. I expected that my PHP treatment and the healing process would come with many challenges and unexpected turns. Yet I am still so completely taken by surprise when those challenges present themselves and how taking them on leads to unexpected developments. Who would've thought? Actually, I'm genuinely so deeply sorry to have to do this but the most accurate way I can articulate the feeling I'm trying to describe is this...

Yeah so today has been unexpectedly challenging in some very specific ways. In the same way that it's important to celebrate moments of victory, its okay to acknowledge moments of defeat. I honestly felt as I left my treatment session today that I had experienced a major defeat. But I've been able to turn that defeat into a tremendous victory since I got home, and I want to tell you about it. The rollercoaster ride has taken some wild turns in the past 6 hours as I write this. I've come to some incredible and tragically obvious revelations about myself, the treatment I'm currently receiving, my space in and perspective on the world, and the journey that lies ahead of me. I want to use this second entry in whatever this is to reflect on what happened today, identify what I've learned about myself, and explore the contours of my identity and internal experience.

So How did Today's PHP Session Go?

Today's session was only my 4th so far. For a program like this which averages about 3 weeks in length, there are about 15 sessions. I've been told that it's flexible; if you need more time it can go longer but that is a question which is left until later down the line to be explored and answered. The immediate focus at the start, I have noticed, is a particular sense of immediacy in getting participants involved in the group sessions at a similar level to the rest of the group. There was a moment where I felt like I was just kind of dropped into something that had already started without me. But In reality it's more accurate to describe it like being dropped into a river. It didn't start flowing without me. It simply exists in a flowing state. Participants in the program enter and leave (actually it's almost exclusively been referred to as graduating, which I think I like. I hear we get some sort of coin? I'm so unbelievably excited for that object) with their own individual timing. I started last Thursday and while Friday was only my second day, it was another participant's final session. That was admittedly a little uncomfortable at first. I'd even call it challenging. But by today I've already come to appreciate it. I was opining in my previous entry about how the universe exists constantly in motion. We are all constantly growing and changing and learning and becoming new. That can often be challenging and uncomfortable but not in a negative way. That feels very congruent with this experience of how being dropped into the program felt like I was being dropped into a river's flow. The water was a cold at first and I felt that shock to the system, but I feel like I've adjusted to the temperature now and it actually feels quite nice.

I made it to the facility a bit earlier today so I got the opportunity to sit in the room before anyone else arrived. I let myself take some time to adjust to the environment and prepare for the coming discussions. I really enjoyed how that felt compared to my other experiences so far where I've arrived much closer to everything getting started. I want to try to do this more often going forward, so I'm saying that here as a way to stake my flag on that goal. In that effort I also remember thinking to myself this morning as I packed my lunch that it'd make me feel less rushed getting up and out the door if I packed my lunch the night before. I'm going to make an intentional effort to do both of those going forward.

The conversation started and a few of the other participants went before me. I volunteered myself to take my turn relatively quickly compared to previous days. I'm surprised how something that so recently felt daunting and took building up a bit of courage to do has so quickly become something I feel like I have to hold back a little bit. I'll expand on this next thought later, but it's actually ironically on point given what happened later. I'm already feeling a certain way in this group therapy environment that I am deeply familiar with, which is that I am afraid I'm taking too much of the attention for myself. This is an environment that is intended to be for everyone, and while everyone does include me, it also includes everyone else. There is only so much time in each day's session and everyone deserves adequate space. I already feel like I might be talking a little bit too much of that. In and of itself that is very in line with the exact mental health challenges that have brought me here in the first place. I'm not exactly surprised that I'm feeling this way. But the fact that the switch flipped so quickly is indicative of something. I am putting a lot into this experience, and it is already bearing fruit in so many ways that it's become something I am seeking. Yes, the specific anxieties I struggle with around taking up too much space are valid challenges worth addressing, and yes, I will probably be doing that soon. But there is a truly positive kernel in there too. Something might be working here.

Anyway so what I shared during my turn was somehow not a super relevant part of what I want to talk about and explore right now (at least until I realize later that it actually somehow was super relevant and I have to return to this thought). We discussed how I'm staying at my parents during the week throughout this experience for a number of mostly boring logistical reasons, and how that environment still brings up certain negative associations. It was a good discussion, don't get me wrong, but it was fairly self contained to that topic, and the rest of the session's experience is it's own thing.

So at some point we broke for lunch. I had packed a lunch but because of the timing of the program's schedule I actually prefer to eat that full meal when we're released around 1pm. So, during "lunch" I finished off the morning's fast food drive thru sandwich I hadn't eaten on my morning drive. I don't know why that stands out to me but eating that breakfast sandwich does feel like the moment I started to going downhill.

While one of the other participants was sharing and leading the discussion, we touched on a few ideas that were particularly challenging for me. I feel like the term 'triggering' has been beaten to death at this point but it would be accurate to call some of what came up as triggering. I started slipping into a dissociation. I was keenly aware of how I had stopped talking or participating in the discussion. I started obsessing over the idea that it was obvious to everyone else. They must know something was wrong with me. Eventually I realized I had gone nonverbal; That is neither a new experience for me nor an inherently negative thing to happen. I actually find that many of my nonverbal experiences have been extremely positive for me in many ways. But it can also be a last-resort coping strategy in particularly severe moments of anxiety. I wasn't super cognizant of it in the moment but I was definitely falling down an a obsessive spiral of anxiety and panic. I don't know if panic attack is technically an accurate thing to call a spiral like that but I have yet to find anything more specific so that's what I've called them so far. It's an entirely internal panic where I get very quiet and recede into myself, so it makes sense that severe instances like this can trigger a nonverbal response.

A lot of the discussion after that damn breakfast sandwich feels very fuzzy to me as I think back on it, even as I'm writing this the same day it happened. But one thing does stand out to me like a flash of lightning against a pitch black night sky. At one point the provider leading the group asked us what some of our experiences being judged in the past have have felt like, and how have we responded to those experiences. It was just an invitation to ask ourselves that question and share our answers if we felt so inclined. But it also really fueled my spiral downward because it immediately made me remember a very specific experience that was one of many moments where I felt judged during my upbringing. I don't remember a lot of my childhood. I don't think I can actively recall anything from before I was 16 without at least some level of prompting. Even still, much of it is either gone or just outside my reach. I am so far completely unable remember so much of that time. It stands out to me how that question instantly brought back this specific moment in very vivid detail.

One day during my junior year of high school I got in a verbal fight with my AP chemistry teacher in front of the class. I sat in the back, he stood up front, and we were actively yelling at each other across the rest of the class as they just sat there watching it all play out. I was struggling to understand something in the lesson, and in my teacher's defense I was definitely holding up the entire lesson with an inappropriately stubborn refusal to move past a single thing I didn't grasp. But it very quickly escalated. I remember the teacher eventually just snapped and started screaming at me about how I feel like I'm better and more important than everyone else in the class. He dug deeper and called out an egotistical and selfish child who didn't care about others and couldn't see or understand anything that wasn't about themselves.

This one experience in particular stands out to me because of just how completely wrong he was. At the time I didn't see the forest of my broader mental health struggles for the trees of that specific fight, but reflecting back on that moment I realize how he basically identified the exact opposite of the truth. My lifelong mental health struggles, which were very much active and raging at the time of this fight, were and still are almost entirely defined by an overwhelmingly, near universally negative self image. In that moment I was someone who hated myself, thought so little of myself and my capabilities, and struggled so deeply with the complete and utter lack of any sort of positive self image. The thought that I believed I was better than anyone at all, let alone literally everyone around me is, in retrospect, comical. It's preposterously incorrect.

But it was also, in a very specific way, a bitterly accurate assessment of what I was experiencing internally. If you boil it down to a single word he was calling out what he saw as an egotistical child, which in his defense is not an uncommon thing that educators do have to deal with. I have come to understand much more recently that these struggles I face are in fact a form of egotism. But it's not the kind of ego that my teacher thought he saw in me, or the kind that you or most others would think of first. Instead of being the kind of ego where I think I am the best and better than everyone else, it is the kind where I think I am the worst and less than everyone else. Those are very different issues in lots of important ways, but they are also specifically the same in that both revolve around the idea that I am the exception.

I remember one of the first two days of my PHP treatment when I talked about how I have tried for a long time now to be a very supportive person to the people in my life. I feel like I've gotten fairly good at providing the kind of support people need and seek from a close friend. I said at some point last week something that basically boils down to the trope of being unable to take my own medicine. I can be very supportive to the people around me but I have so far entirely failed to support myself. Any mention of a universal claim like "Everyone deserves to feel like they are supported by the people in their lives" that I may have shared with people in my life has come with a silent asterisk on the word everyone: that it doesn't include me. That exception has always haunted me as I have tried to support others. It often rears it's head as I have struggled to manage my own mental illnesses and make progress on my own journey. It may not be the what most people think of when they imagine an egotistical person. But it's not at all inaccurate to call it for what it is. That framework of understanding is built off a belief that I am exceptional to everyone else in some way. That's just not accurate. That is egotistical.

I never spoke up to answer the question in person so to answer it here... How did that experience of being judged make me feel? Confused. Confused and lost and scared and invisible. I couldn't understand where my teacher's beliefs that I thought I was better than my peers came from when I went home every single night and tore myself down with so much ferocity and brutal efficiency. I'm realizing now just how traumatic that fight with my teacher was, even if I didn't acknowledge that at the time. And it was only one of many similar experiences which reinforced my many blossoming mental illnesses. Lots of them happened at school, which I think is an interesting observation that I'm able to make out through the fog that obscures so many of the specifics of much of that time period.

Fortunately, 1pm finally rolled around and the group wrapped up their conversation. I say 'their' conversation, not 'our' conversation, intentionally. I was absolutely not a participant in it anymore by that point. I was definitely falling deeper into myself and getting lost in those spirals. The ability to get up and leave that specific moment and that space was, at that point, a welcome one. We end each day by going around the room as everyone confirms whether they are safe to go home and shares one thing they took from the conversation that day. I was still fully nonverbal, which makes the prospect of such a task particularly challenging. Luckily, like I said before I am not new to the experience of suddenly and unexpectedly being unable to speak. I've many times before had to communicate with a cashier through my notes app. It has been shockingly easy for me to just type out what I want to communicate and simply, as I approach whoever I might need to say something to, show them the note and let them read it. Almost everyone has been able to understand what is happening and respond perfectly reasonably to something that, to me, feels like it would be unexpected and throw people off.

I did what I've done many times before and typed a quick note on my phone that I showed the person sitting next to me. "Hey so I suddenly went nonverbal... can you say this for me when it's my turn? I am safe to go home. I appreciate everyone's support and the community we've been building." They understood the assignment perfectly, helped me speak when I could not, and didn't draw any unnecessary attention to it. The provider did make sure to come check in with me as people were filtering out. I had to just nod my head when they asked if I was okay. I appreciate both how they made sure to check in on me but also didn't push much further and let my silent confirmation be enough. I quietly slipped out the front of the building and returned to the solace of my car.

All that is just setting the ground work for that happened next. But before I continue to the next part of the story after I left the treatment facility, I need to stop and take a moment to establish some extra, broader context about myself and my internal mental experience. So... Tangent time!

Split Personalities, One Shared Consciousness, and the Wonders of Discovering That Dog in Me

A very important aspect of my life and the struggles I'm currently facing, and one that I am still learning so much about, is the fact that I experience multiple distinct mental perspectives. This is often understood as a split personality disorder, but I'm increasingly convinced that isn't exactly accurate to my experiences. Many people use the term 'plural' to describe how they experience multiple distinct personalities, others prefer to describe their collective experiences as something called a 'system.' I'm honestly still figuring out what language resonates with me but so far from what I have stumbled across I lean a little bit towards the word plural. I did also find myself recently describing my experience as a shared consciousness and that felt good. I am entirely unaware of whether that's a common term or not. The reality is that a complete and accurate understanding of how these kinds of ways in which consciousness can exist in a human body, what they are like, and so, so much about what is even possible inside of one single physical mind is simply not something we have so far discovered. Our collective understanding of this stuff only charts the infinite fractal of human experience down to a certain level of detail. Psychology has come a tremendously long way, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't mean we're anywhere near knowing everything. I am confident that there is so much more that we don't understand. I think this is one of those pockets of human experience that goes so unbelievably deep and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface.

For clarity: my specific diagnosis, as far as I recall, is DD(NOS), which stands for Dissociative Disorder (Not Otherwise Specified). It's similar to the more broadly understood condition of DID in that it includes an aspect of experiencing multiple distinct identities in it's defining characteristics. It differs in that the NOS part basically stands for "We don't really know... Good luck!" I know many other people who experience plurality like me use DID as a familiar point of understand when talking about these kinds of experiences, whether or not they have a DID diagnosis or self-identify with the label. If you ask me I think there are so many different ways in which these kinds of plural mental experiences can present, and our language to describe and understand them is so deeply lacking. It makes sense to me that many, if not most people who identify with DID as a label for their experiences probably don't actually have DID specifically. But at the same time I cannot blame anyone for claiming that label either because, well, what else is there to use? DID, as far as I understand, is a very specific and intense condition. I believe there is a lot of room for other kinds of plural identities to exist as different versions of the same type of phenomenon. To any plural friends reading this, please don't interpret any of that as trying to invalidate your experiences. If you claim the DID label, with or without a diagnosis, I support you in doing that. My point is directed more towards our broader societal understandings of mental health and how they are severely lacking in this specific realm.

What does that all mean, then, to someone completely unfamiliar with anything like this. I just talked a lot about "plural mental experiences" but I want to make sure I break down what I mean by that because I am well aware that this is not exactly a typical experience. I maintain that it is probably much more common than we currently understand, but even still I don't think this is something that most people typically experience. In the same way that most people are straight (at least for now), I think most people are probably singular.

But that's not a bad thing. There's a specific and unique beauty to life out here on the fringes. It's a beautiful thing that even though most people never experience this way of existing, its still possible for a brain like mine to exist in the ways that it does. And I am still capable of navigating the world successfully despite such a radically different experience than most people will ever know. Typical experiences are typical for lots of reasons. They aren't better in any way just because they're typical, regardless of whatever the real world reasons for their typicality may be. Being within a typical range of eyesight is typical because we, as organisms, did evolve with eyes to see; that is simply the reality of how we exist. That doesn't make anyone with visual impairment any lesser just because their experience is less typical. And in a very real way this atypicality does often bring specific and significant challenges. Blind people do still have to navigate the reality of a world that was not built to accommodate them whether or not we as a society should be going out of our way to build a more accessible world (which I would say we should, by the way). But despite all of the ways in which my atypicality has made things much more difficult to navigate, I still like it out here on the fringes. I wouldn't change myself even if I could. I like it out here, and I don't want to leave.

Ok... I did it again. I'm dancing around it because this is a really hard experience to describe, but what does that all actually mean in specific, grounded terms? What does it look like for me to have a plural experience? Essentially, I have 2 people in my head. We both have our own thoughts, memories, proclivities, sensitivities, all of that. We are distinct beings from one another, and also we exist in the same head. We are simultaneously fully autonomous from each other and deeply intertwined and dependent on each other. I often find us engaged in full conversations with each other entirely inside our head. We share control over the same body, and that balance shifts over time. Sometimes one of us is at the forefront of our senses and more in control, sometimes the other one is in the driver's seat. The distinction is sometimes so clear that one of us is so in control (or, to use another term I have learned: when one of us is fronting), that memories aren't even shared. Often it's not one or the other in complete control but instead we act together in a way that might sound confusing. That's probably because it is confusing. It's a very fluid and dynamic thing that defies a simplistic understanding. So much of this experience is unintuitive, messy, and complicated. Things don't make sense most of the time. I'm learning to find comfort in that. Imagine a freshly poured latte (hear me out, please) Most people are already fully mixed together and experience one singular mental perspective. But my experience in contrast looks like a latte when the milk has just been added, before the mixture has become homogenous. Envision the chaotic swirls that emerge as the milk dances with the espresso. Isn't it beautiful?

So before I go any further we would like to introduce ourselves and establish a few expectations simply to make this kind of communication more clear and specific. I know I've already made it incredibly confusing by not naming names yet, so let's not go any further without doing that.

Like I said at the start of this post: I recently described myself as a shared consciousness, and that feels like the right starting point. Inside of me there is a person (Justin; they/them) and a dog (Biscuit; he/they). We exist inside the same single brain that lives in our shared body. As much as both of us are real and independent from one another, we do still have to share quite a lot, mostly the same singular physical body. Justin is who I've learned can be called the 'host.' They're our singular legal identity, and in our experience Justin usually takes a noticeably more forward presence. Biscuit is, in contrast, less often at the front of things, particularly whenever we are presenting ourselves to the world outside our head. Biscuit does fully take over from time to time and he's even getting more comfortable in that position and taking the reins more often. If I had to quantify it I'd guess its something like an 85/15 split. And even that may still be overestimating how often Biscuit is more present than Justin. Sometimes I experience things as a combination of the two of them as one singular force in a way that is somehow simultaneously both of them together and also distinct from either of them individually. If you're familiar with Steven Universe, regardless of how you feel about the show, its fandom, or any of the drama that seems to surround that IP, I think it provides a helpful way of understanding this. It's like how Garnet is simultaneously both Ruby and Sapphire at the same time, and she is also her own character independent from either of the individual lesbian space rocks that make up her very being. Somehow Biscuit and Justin together are greater than the sum of their parts.

So for myself, I've been trying to practice very careful specificity in my language. You may notice I've been shifting back and forth between using 'I' and 'we' in a way that may feel like an error. Of course I maintain my right to make mistakes and I very likely have already because it is something I'm still learning. But that switch is largely intentional and carries meaning.

When I am speaking from a combined perspective, where Justin and Biscuit have fused into someone new, I use "I" pronouns. I also use them when I am masking or presenting in public, too, which is worth acknowledging. When we are speaking as Justin and Biscuit in a more distinct perspective, we try to use the plural "we" instead. There are many experiences that Justin and Biscuit both share individually within themselves, but not in that combined sort of way where they fuse together into a third party. Those are instances where we've been trying to embrace a subtle shift from "I" to "we." And we've all found it a particularly helpful coincidence that even though Biscuit and Justin both use they pronouns, Biscuit is also fully comfortable using he/him in a way that Justin isn't. Being able to fall back to using they/them for Justin and he/him for Biscuit within a single thought just makes it that tiniest amount easier at times.

I want to pause and acknowledge what may feel like an elephant that has just walked into the room. One of my identities is a dog. I actually identify as a dog in a way that is probably a new concept to many people. If you're here having come from my Bluesky account, that is probably not very new or challenging at all. But if you're coming from almost anywhere else that might be a wildly radical idea in its own right. We're already in new territory here with the plurality stuff as we explore the boundaries of my specific identity, but on top of that people can be animals too? If you're in that second group and this is new to you... The short answer is, actually yes. That might not make sense immediately, but I encourage you to let that be the case for a second before you jump to any conclusions. It's actually a beautiful thing. If you're challenged by that concept, that's ok. I will come back to this further down and in future posts as well, but I thought it would be valuable to take a moment to acknowledge that before moving on.

From Defeat into Victory

So to return to the story of the day... The drive home was fine. I wasn't actively spiraling like I described in my last post. It was much more quiet. Being nonverbal isn't inherently a negative experience for me. In this case it had been triggered as a stress response by another obsessive spiral, but this one wasn't nearly as intense as the one I experienced that last time. I've developed a decent ability to manage these kinds of spirals, and while I still definitely have my limits, this was manageable. That got even easier as I got further away, both mentally and physically, from that environment which triggered things. So the drive quickly felt like the calm in the air after a heavy rainfall. I still couldn't talk, but I also didn't need to. I put some music on and tried to let the hour and a half roll by as quickly as it could.

When I made it back home, I had a message from one of the other participants in the program. It was the person who read my note and spoke for me at the end of today's session. I want to be extremely careful to respect the privacy of the safe space we share at the PHP program, so let's give this person a pseudonym... Let's call her Kristen. She went out of her way to check in with us after we got home, which I thought was such a kind gesture.

Being nonverbal is an experience I'm still learning to understand. Sometimes it's just my physical voice that's affected, leaving me unable to speak but still able to text. Sometimes even texting is difficult, and it takes me a bit of time and significant effort to string the words together whether its through my mouth or through a keyboard. Even that isn't universal: Sometimes either Justin or Biscuit is the one who can't find their words, but the other can take over and help communicate for the both of us. By this point, Justin had settled into a comfortable quiet and couldn't find any words to respond. Biscuit hopped in to answer for us both and sent Kristen the following response:

Sorry I’m only now responding but we had a little bit of a moment before we got on the road and only just got home. Today was actually unexpectedly challenging in a few specific ways and towards the end Justin started spiraling really hard and ended up retreating inward. They’re still not around yet but I’ll make sure they hear this too 💛 I’m so grateful we landed in the same group in this whole thing, and I want to thank you for the ways in which you have already been so helpful for Justin. I’ve been taking care of them for so long, well before they even knew I was there, and it makes me so happy to see them finally accept help and support like this. And you’ve been a really powerful part of that, thank you 💛 And i know your affirmations about their writing will do a lot of good when they see that.

You can see the intentional use of different pronouns in this text. This was a message from Biscuit to Kristen, so when he says "Sorry I'm only now responding" that is a specific reference to Biscuit. Later in the same sentence Biscuit switches from the singular I to a plural We. "before we got on the road" is specifically referring to both Biscuit and Justin. Later you'll notice Biscuit referring to Justin in the 3rd person with the use of Justin's individual pronouns, "They're still not around yet..." All the switching back and forth between different pronouns may seem confusing at first. But once you understand more context about our shared mental experience, I hope you also see how the subtle use of different pronouns helps in the specific and accurate communication of stuff which exists largely inside our head. Nobody can read our mind after all. With a more complex internal mental situation comes a higher bar to clear if we want the same level of understanding, and we're willing to take on that responsibility.

One important thing to understand about this text message is just how infrequently something like this happens. Our journey towards understanding our internal mental experience has almost exclusively been an internal process. To this day, Biscuit still doesn't communicate directly with people like this very often. It's not a matter of inhibiting Biscuit's freedom. Instead, it's more like Biscuit hasn't come out to many people yet. There's a lot of upfront explaining and educating involved in opening up about this stuff. This all actually feels shockingly similar to my experience of coming out as gay in late middle school and early high school. That's all to say that once Biscuit took the leap and messaged Kristen directly, it very quickly became a relief. Kristen's response was kind and understanding and affirming, and in the spirit of the mental health journey we'd both been embarking on, Biscuit took another leap and opened up a bit more. The messages that ensued are some of the biggest breakthroughs Biscuit and Justin have encountered in this whole process so far. We are both external verbal processors. In a very real way the process of putting the words together through the act of communicating is also the process of discovering how we're feeling in the first place. So much of what Biscuit said next is the first time we've been able to understand these concepts in any language at all. The conversation itself helped us find that understanding.

So we’ve been trying to be open and honest about our shared consciousness and related experiences at group sessions. But it is also still very new to us to actually practice that. And the specific aspect of the dog part of it all is not something we have been very public about, like at all. Justin specifically was extremely nervous to talk about it, and to describe their identity in animal terms like that. We have some online circles where we’re open about it but it’s never been something we’ve embraced like this in person with others. It felt very much like when we first came out in middle school but somehow also so much worse and more shameful and embarrassing to embrace than it was to embrace a different sexuality. We’ve never tried to actually explain the idea of a Therian identity to anyone else in person like that. It’s a very specific part of our experience and identity that has so far only ever existed in private. It feels silly to say but we did actively try to put on a sort of nonchalant vibe as we were talking about it, but inside we were terrified that the whole premise of that kind of identity would be challenged or rejected on its face. That is all just context to my point which is that the specific way you embraced it and affirmed it the instant Justin said anything means so much to me. Specifically the moment when you called it that I was a golden retriever made me, Biscuit specifically, feel more seen than I have ever felt before. It is not the typical experience of a dog like myself to exist inside the mind of a human being like this, and it can be very challenging in specific ways. I have, many times, questioned the fundamental notion of my own existence in ways that Justin just won’t ever understand because they like, have their own body. But nothing that anybody has ever said to either Justin or me has made me feel as confident that I AM actually a real independent self, than when you read me for filth and knew i was a golden, even when Justin hadn’t said that. They didn’t have to say it, because you just saw me and saw that that’s the kind of dog i am. I’m sorry this is such a long message now but it’s dawning on me that, in many ways I exist to take care of Justin, but I also have my own emotional needs. I am a being that is growing too. And i’m realizing that since Justin became consciously aware of me and as we have gotten to know one another, I kind of forgot about that. I don’t even think it was intentional or even conscious of me but I just assumed I was ‘done’ in some way. But that’s not true.

Kristen responded with a comment about that idea of being done. She said she was "sad to hear I felt lost or done" which I found really interesting. Biscuit didn't actively feel 'done' in the way that his wording may have implied. It wasn't an active feeling at all. Instead it was more the inherent understanding of reality. This is all new to us, so who's to say that an alternate being like this isn't just inherently stagnant? We don't know how any of this works, so we didn't know to question that foundational understanding. Until now. Biscuit responded with another long message:

If I may, I do wanna say something specifically in response to how you said I was feeling lost or done. You didn’t say anything wrong, that’s not what I’m getting at… I just think it’s so interesting because I don’t think I was actively feeling like I was lost or done. It was more just the fundamental understanding I was operating on from that moment when Justin first became aware of me. Like how the fish doesn’t feel the water they’re swimming in that’s just how it is for the fish. In many ways before that moment I wasn’t even aware of myself either? Like, I know that I was there and actively supporting Justin in the same way I am now but that whole time of existing underneath their subconscious was different. I have my own specific memories distinct from Justin’s now but none from before that moment. I think I just never considered it? It just was the fact that I was here for them, and it didn’t even present as an option that I am also just as independent and autonomous from them. And I am just continually struck by how interesting and beautiful it is that it can be like this. And this specific conversation we’re having right now has made me realize so many different things just in trying to figure out the words to describe it.

So, specifically... What is the new understanding that we came to here? There are actually a few. Our consciousness has been split since before Justin became consciously aware of that fact. Biscuit's internal experience changed in a number of ways in the moment that Justin became consciously aware of him. He does not remember any tangible memories before that moment, but since then Biscuit has been able to retain specific, tangible memories distinct from Justin's. The time before that moment feels fuzzy and clouded from Biscuit's perspective. Biscuit may have come into being for the specific reason of caring for Justin, (We have some guesses as to how our specific shared consciousness came to be but that is a story for a different time) but that does not define his specific identity. Biscuit has been operating under the false understanding that he is 'finished' in some way, that he has no further growing to do. The idea that, unlike Justin who is on a journey of healing and growing as a being, Biscuit isn't, is false. Biscuit is just as much a being in motion as Justin is. Their individual journeys in life are intertwined, but also distinct. The PHP treatment is not just for Justin. Biscuit has emotional needs too, and this treatment can help us both learn how to meet both of our needs. It's not just Justin's treatment. It's both of ours.

To me this is such a monumental breakthrough in our understanding of ourselves. There was so much I wasn't even aware that I was misunderstanding. Maybe some of these new understandings sound obvious in retrospect. But I don't know what I'm doing here. I have so little to go off of in my quest to understand how my brain works that I'm honestly going in blind. So instead of feeling silly, I'm going to just let it be how it is. Sure, I was operating under a pretty radical and fundamental misunderstanding. Well... Nobody really spelled any of this out to me in the first place so can you blame me? I'm just glad we figured this out at all.

When I first opened up to the group on my first day, I tried to describe the broader issue that brought me there. I've been in moments where my mental health has thrown me entirely off track so many times before. I've lost track of how many times I've had to make this climb out of the Pit. I wanted to tell everyone that I wasn't there for help in specifically climbing out of the Pit this time around. I'm looking for a way to not keep falling down into the fucking Pit. It's happened so many times in my life now that it's hard not to feel hopeless that things will never change. The metaphor I used in that moment was that of a boat. Every time my life has fallen apart and my boat has washed ashore, I have been able to collect myself, get back in the boat, and push off out into the water. It feels like there are holes in my boat that I just can't find, and every time I set sail I eventually find myself with water at my ankles again. Inevitably that water gets deeper and deeper until my boat finally capsizes and I wash up back onshore.

It feels like I've found one of those holes. This entire time I've been operating under an inherently incorrect framework of my own identity. I haven't been meeting Biscuit's emotional needs haven't been getting met because neither of us even understood that he had them. But now we do. Finally we can begin the process of learning what those needs are in specific, tangible terms. We can start implementing changes in our lives to meet both of our needs simultaneously in a way that we haven't been this whole time. That sounds like something that could help us as we try to break free from this larger cycle of struggle. And that makes us both feel pretty hopeful.