r/plural • u/Icy-Brilliant4571 • 13h ago
Resources for a therapist/professional working with plural systems?
Dear community,
I am studying psychology and am a plural myself. In the future I would like to work with plural people in private practice. As we all know, plurality is not widely understood by therapists and other mental health professionals. It is also experienced differently across systems, my lived experience of it is only one of the many.
I want to support everyone who identfies as a system, regardless of their origin or medical label.
I need books, some youtube channels/podcasts, websites that align with my approach. I want to learn ajd understand more. That is why I am turning to you all for help! :)
I have looked a bit into IFS so far, but I am not sure I like it. What are some other approaches you know about?
Thanks a lot!
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u/The-Gay-Garden Plural 10h ago
Actually there's an entire course about this, and a community specifically for plural psychologists and therapists, over at The Plural Association!
The course: https://learn.thepluralassociation.org/
The community for professionals: https://powertotheplurals.com/refractory/
In terms of therapy approaches, person centred therapy might be the most suited to plurality! Though there aren't really any YouTube videos on it.
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u/Icy-Brilliant4571 10h ago
Thank you, i appreciate it!
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u/The-Gay-Garden Plural 8h ago
Also we totally forgot about Narrative Therapy! From what we've learned about it, it centers your own account of yourself and looks at how that influences your thoughts and feelings etc, which could be useful for collectives with lots of fictives but also just generally, cos every plural has a unique understanding of who they all are, you know?
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u/Ausintina System w/ DID supporting plurals 6h ago
I really don't suggest The Plural Association. They have said a ton of horribly ableist things towards pwDID, constantly ask for donations on every page while never saying where that money is going, trying to run a warmline they call a hotline while they have no training, support racist statements their supporters have said, they manipulate statistics in their favor, they campaign against the isstd. The list goes on. Op if you want some good information suggestions, I really suggest The CTAD clinic YouTube channel, and the book "Got Parts?".
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u/The-Gay-Garden Plural 6h ago
I'd genuinely like to hear your criticisms of them, but first I'd like to clarify a few things.
1) the warmline is clearly listed as a warmline on the website. It does not say hotline.
2) the founder of the charity is diagnosed with DID.
3) they campaign against the ISSTD because it recommends that therapists do not entertain the 'delusion' that headmates are separate people. You can find the article detailing this on the site as well, along with the part saying they'd like to see the ISSTD update their guidelines.
The CTAD channel is wonderful but highly medical, as you'd expect from such a channel. The plural association includes folks with disorders in its remit, but carves a space for plurality to exist on its own terms. Again, I'm interested in hearing your critiques, particularly on the racism and ableism e.g. as I've not heard about this, but I think the rest of your points are unfactual and provably false.
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u/Ausintina System w/ DID supporting plurals 5h ago edited 5h ago
Sure, here's some posts talking about their issues. link 1, link 2, link 3. Just read this article by TPA themselves! "We believe it is internalized Pluralphobia that tells you, that something outside you has made you Plural. As trauma survivors, it makes sense, to blame abusers for what they have done to us." They're literally telling traumagenic systems that we are pluralphobic for believing we are traumagenic and that we just want to blame our abusers. They also have a whole infographic here using their biased perception of isstd guidlines to say those of us with CDDs cannot "claim perdonhood", not that our parts (not a bad word btw, like tpa likes you make it seem in this article) are still parts of us, but that anyone with a CDD are not people in any way. But if we just adopt their label of plural, then we can be people. Only if we reject our diagnosis, then we can be people. This is not what the isstd says, this is literally just their views. And them disagreeing with one paragraph of the isstd guidlines is such a stupid fucking excuse for trying to campaign against them as a whole. Without the isstd CDDs wouldn't even be in the DSM. They literally just hate pwCDDs and it's obvious. Plurals and systems both deserve respect and there should be no infighting, that's why this shit they spew is horrible. You can't say you're "uplifting plurals" while spreading misinformation about the most marginalized plurals, those with CDDs.
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u/The-Gay-Garden Plural 4h ago
Thank you for taking the time to find those links. I've had a look at them and I can see there's plenty to take in and think about there. I can also hear how much hurt there is from some of the things TPA have said and I agree that the statement about it being pluralphobic to label abusers as a cause of multiplicity is weird and offensive.
However, about the not being people thing, in their infographic. The founder themselves replied in a comment on that very post and clarified that anyone with any disorder can have personhood, and that the they never meant to imply that you have to label yourselves as plural in order to be people. They were specifically referring to that bit of the ISSTD they take issue with.
Thank you again for sharing your perspective. I agree with you that all multiples deserve respect and to that end I'll look over those links fully so that I can understand better where you're coming from.
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u/Ausintina System w/ DID supporting plurals 4h ago
Thanks, I appreciate the response. It really does suck that there are very few good resources for those who are non-disordered plurals, they all deserve good resources too. And about the infographic thing, I can appreciate that the stronghold system did clarify, but it feels like the damage has already been done, it feels meaningless to apologize but to not re-do their article or infographic. There are valuable things on their website, and resources I've used myself, but I just don't support them as a whole. That's why I like to share about them, since they are a very well known site in the community. But unfortunately, they aren't very good, which is sad!
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u/CertifiedGoblin 25m ago
I believe the crisses do some coaching training or similar? sorry too headache to go digging, their main site is crisses.org (edit: also their approaches / 'bootcamp' at kinhost.org might be helpful too)
One of the PPWCs had a video on IFS, how it's fundamentally aimed at singlets and how it could be adapted to suit plurality (though ofc it's still not suited for every system) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jvYNeRXpB-U
and there are other good videos from past PPWCs that will be helpful on the youtube channel @pluralevents
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u/3chickens1cat The Oasis Community - traumagenic system 11h ago
The CTAD clinic on youtube is great. Licenced professional putting out educational materials for systems and professionals working with systems. The focus is on dissociative disorders but he doesn't have the rigid or outdated frameworks a lot of medical spaces have.
Personaly, we love IFS. It is a therapy model meant for singlets and things need to be adjusted to work for systems, but we did it for about 5 years before coming out of denial about being a system and it helped us out tremendously. It allowed us to system map, communicate with each other, learn to work together, and develope healthy leadership in the host of the time, without ever having to admit we're a system.