Quora - July 21, 2023: Who am I?
Sometimes I don’t know who l am. Has anybody experienced this?
Hum, for us it’s the opposite. Sometimes we know who we are, but most often we don’t.
It is curious, because we only have just over a dozen systems who have names. We do have some systems without names. We also have (potentially) many more other systems that we don’t recognise individually yet. LIke now …
We (the system that is writing this) are aware of everything that we are writing, and of the other systems (we are co-con) but we don’t communicate with them. And we don’t know which system we are.
We know what we know, but we don’t know what we don’t know.
You will find that a lot of us identity as “me”. Many littles do, but some of us grown ups too.
Who is writing this? It is “me”, this “me” here that is typing this… to us it makes sense, and it is actually easier to refer to one another this way. If you ask me who told me something, I know exactly who that “me” is, I can spot them in a crowd of however many there are … but if I had to think a name, I’d probably have to go through a list a couple of times before I get it right …
So, this way it is more efficient.
The ones with clear identities are the ones who need to front and be known. Let’s be honest, nobody wants that job.
Everybody wants to watch what is happening, but nobody wants to be in charge. So, here is where systems who are willing to do so, get names and take that responsibility head-on.
For others, like the littles, it is important that they get their own sense of identity. We believe that is an essential part of their healing journey. Self-affirmation should go a long way to repair the extensive damage done to them.
But for everybody else, we are a crowd. We are like the backstage people that keep the show going. You don’t need to know our names. We don’t need names.
I know some of us think we need names so that then as a whole system we are going to know who we are.
But I don’t think so. A name doesn’t make a person. A name expresses a person. So, until we know who we are, we cannot express that with a name.
Like the littles. It took them years before they were ready to take on names. They chose who they wanted to be first. Then coming up with a name was easy.
So, I know our identity as a human being was destroyed by our caregivers. So, maybe that’s really what needs to happen before we can know who we are. We need to heal first.
Dunno, just a theory … 💜
