We keep telling ourselves dissociation is not real, even after years of living this way, even after the moments where it’s so obvious it makes our stomach drop. We tell ourselves it’s stress or imagination or being overly sensitive or wanting a reason for why things feel the way they do. Sometimes the denial is loud and deliberate, a full statement in headspace saying stop this right now, you’re embarrassing yourself. Other times it’s quieter, like a fog rolling in when the air pressure changes, just a feeling that creeps in when things go still, when the internal noise fades and we start thinking see, if it were real it would still be here. Silence scares us more than chaos because silence feels like we are crazy, like proof that we imagined everything and got carried away, like a door quietly closing between worlds.
There are mornings where we wake up and the body feels steady, the day feels possible, and that’s when the doubt hits hardest. We look around and think we’re fine, we’re moving, we’re functioning, we’re answering emails and remembering appointments, and suddenly headspace feels far away, like it slipped behind a theater curtain that we forgot existed or even noticed when it lowered. Even with the curtain though, there are things that just feel out of place. Like using the body’s name feels wrong in our mouth but we push past it. Someone uses she/her pronouns and we get an unsettled feeling like those pronouns don’t quite match. Our spouse making us the same breakfast as yesterday, which we loved, but today it is disgusting. Someone in headspace says these things are just anxiety, just being human, nothing deeper, and we listen because it sounds like the headmate who keeps us safe in a world.
There are moments where we catch our reflection and feel that sharp disconnect, like the body belongs to someone else or the one inside doesn’t match the name being spoken over us. We’ll stand there too long, staring at our own face, trying to feel like it’s ours, trying to summon the right posture or expression. I’m sure we look so silly doing this, but it happens all the time. The doubt rushes in fast, telling us that everyone feels like this sometimes, that we’re overthinking, that we should stop spiraling and just get back to what we were doing. Denial is easier to believe than the headmate in front who feels misnamed, is wearing clothes that they don't like, and is battling increasing dysphoria. That headmate isn’t cruel, they’re practical, and we’ve learned how much practicality matters when survival has always been negotiated with unseen forces.
Family visits are another place where denial hits us like a wave. Someone will start telling a story about us, laughing, reminiscing, describing something we supposedly did years ago, and whoever is in front will feel completely blank. No memory, no emotional connection, just a hollow space where the story should land, like a missing thread in a tapestry everyone else swears is complete. Inside, everything erupts at once, visceral reactions from headmates who remember it clearly, who remember it differently, who are furious or hurt or suddenly scared. Our stomach turns, our chest tightens, our hands go cold, while externally we smile and nod and say something safe, something that keeps the moment moving and the ritual of family intact. Number one rule, don’t rock the boat with our family.
We can feel the internal chaos as it happens, the way some headmates are yelling to correct the story and others are snatching memories as they are created, tucking them away in an underground cellar for safekeeping. We feel the weight of pretending to know what our family is talking about, and appearing to be one person. A person who doesn’t exist any longer, who has been dormant for decades, and who many of us know very little about. As the storytelling continues, we internally try to manage multiple reactions without letting any of them show, like balancing several deranged animals on a tightrope while praying none of them speak out of turn, demonstrate anxiety, show fear, express anger, or fall off the rope into the depths of hell. All while the little elves collect and snatch all the family exchanges, poof… gone. Afterward, my spouse and I get in the car, they inquire about how the visit went, to which the denial permeates like a delicious sedative pumping through our veins. Nothing happened, we handled it, we’re fine, all normal. But the body doesn’t settle, not for hours or days. Nightmares kick up, flashbacks get worse, meltdowns stronger, focus harder. The system stays rattled long after the visit ends, as if something sacred was disturbed; however, we forgot to note in our GPS where in headspace those memories are buried, no one is saying anything, it all just sits and builds with the next time. That disconnect between how composed we looked compared to how destabilizing it felt is a good chunk of where that doubt comes from, we must just be dramatic or crazy. When we can’t trace the event back in our memory and headspace falls quiet, it’s even harder to know if what happened was actually real. Was it a dream? Wouldn’t it be visible?
There’s a particular relief that comes with denial that we don’t like admitting. Deciding it’s not real means we don’t have to manage it for a while, don’t have to negotiate internally, don’t have to track who’s close to the front or whose needs are being ignored. We can tell ourselves we’re just tired in a way everyone understands, just overwhelmed, just burnt out, and stop monitoring ourselves so closely. For a brief stretch of time, that relief feels like rest, like stepping out of a liminal space and pretending the threshold doesn’t exist. If we decide things aren’t real, then it means we were the crazy ones who made it up. Perceived it wrong. The responsibility is on us to fix or change or love harder, or not be an asshole. We tell ourselves that we need to work harder to have better relationships and to forgive. This must be what being a singlet is like. No mind fuckery. Instead acknowledging a flaw in relating to others that can be solved and changed with a little bit of CBT.
The internal resolution of being a singlet never lasts. It always breaks over something small and stupid, something that shouldn’t matter, like laundry left in the washer too long or a comment from our spouse that lands wrong. Suddenly there’s a meltdown that feels out of proportion, rapid switching, sharp words that don’t sound like us, emotions flooding in that don’t match the moment. The system forces itself into view in the messiest way possible, like a Jerry Springer episode, the lie collapses every time. We hate that it happens and always promise ourselves that it won’t happen again. It does though. And it’s the moment where denial becomes impossible, where pretending long term shows its cost, where we’re left standing in the aftermath thinking okay, something is going on here and we can’t keep ignoring it.
We see other systems talk about denial online in fragments, jokes, half-finished thoughts, and it hits us right in the chest every time. The memes about gaslighting yourself back into being “normal,” the posts about believing your dissociation at night and denying it by morning, the confessions about only feeling real when you’re alone and no one is watching. Other times we scroll past them fast because seeing our own thoughts reflected back feels like being caught, like someone saw something we weren’t ready to name.
There’s another layer to this that isn’t often talked about. Denial shows up over and over again in every system. Kinda like it’s part of the package. As a therapist who works with systems, we witness system after system describe the profound dysregulation surrounding the single question, “are we real.” A similar vibe with every system: describing switching, internal conversations, memory gaps, meltdowns, derealization, depersonalization, emotions that do not match the situation, and co-con. Followed by debilitating doubt and concern that it is all being made up. Fearful of being crazy or that they will get picked up by a crisis responder and court-ordered to treatment. Questioning their ability to perform their job. Haunted by feeling fake or accusing themselves of being a liar.
Denial also gets louder when the system feels trapped, especially during periods of being front stuck. There’s this fantasy floating around that being one would be easier, that singularity equals safety, but living it is something else entirely. Being forced to hold everything, all the emotions, all the tasks, all the relationships, with no internal relief or handoff nearly broke us when we were front stuck for six weeks recently. The external world praised the consistency while inside everything was fucking frantic, like a chorus locked behind closed doors being forced to sing until they dropped dead. When we told our therapist that we had been front stuck, they praised our positive growth, implying that being one was the direction to be moving toward. Um, no. Fired. Despite the denial, our body made it very clear that functioning was to include our system. The disabling exhaustion, irritability, disconnection from external experiences, profound derealization, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, inability to eat, internal pressure with no idea what the conversation was about, and the unrelenting panic attacks with chronic pain made it clear that for us, being one is harmful. We function because we are a system. To a point, the denial can be harmful.
No one is immune to the denial bug, and the grief that comes with accepting plurality is heavy, like mourning a life that was never singular and never will be. The overwhelm of sitting in ambiguity, of not having clean answers, not having many memories that flow start to finish, the painful reality that treatment has no finish line, and that in order to make movement toward a functional life, an acknowledgment regarding the unresolved trauma at the hands of other people has now become your responsibility to heal. As a young person, denial kept us in a position to endure beyond any single person could have endured. Despite disagreements and internal abuse at times, our headspace is home. Our system as a collective is there regardless of denial. In the thick of not believing, the relief that washes over us when someone externally sees who’s in front without asking, truly sees us, knows who is in front, remembers preferences and boundaries without being reminded. That relief can feel like being witnessed in a sacred way, even if the doubt never fully disappears.
There are very few people who know we’re a system, and that secrecy didn’t happen by accident. We worked with our therapist for twenty years before telling her, even though we knew internally for most of that time. Denial made that feel reasonable, even necessary, because we learned early what happens when internal truth meets disbelief. Growing up with a parent who gaslit all of our emotions taught us not to trust our own reactions, let alone our headspace. We were taught that our emotions, thoughts, and ideas were dangerous. We have done a lot of our own work to be able to trust ourselves, yet there will always be those parts of us that were dismissed, corrected, and told we were wrong. Not to mention our current mental health and medical systems and media portray plurality as a dangerous psychotic experience where institutional treatment is the only option. Watch us sustain a marriage, run three successful businesses, own a home, raise children, pay taxes, contribute to the careers of up-and-coming mental health providers, and tell Dr. Know-It-All to go to hell for thinking we can’t have those things in life because we have DID.
What actually softens denial isn’t someone explaining things to us or telling us what’s real. It’s being known. Someone recognizing who is in front, knowing who gets triggered by loud noises, or who loves holiday music, who shuts down, who struggles with suicidal thoughts, who is vegan, and who needs a hug when dysregulated. After nearly forty years, we are exhausted by pretending to be the host. It is such a breath of fresh air when not masking, not performing continuity, but someone else holding that continuity for us so we can just experience life. Those moments reduce loneliness in a way nothing else does and make our existence feel solid without demanding proof.
I often wonder for myself and clients what denial would look like if we stopped treating it like an enemy. What if it’s not about being fake or dramatic, or as a way to avoid punishment. We live in a world that disciplines difference and rewards sameness. Doubt isn’t neutral in that context, it’s learned, reinforced, political. Denial makes sense in families and institutions that punish deviation and demand coherence. Be small, be quiet, be a “good girl.” Turning toward the denial with curiosity instead of punishment feels risky. It would change the perspective from using denial for avoidance to witnessing denial as information about how our system is responding to the current internal and external factors. A great idea in theory, but damn that sounds challenging in practice.
Plurality feels like a strange kind of magic, an ability to adapt and survive and see from multiple angles at once. Denial and overwhelm pull us in opposite directions. Every day, tug-of-war. Believe too much and the system floods, fragments faster than we can manage, meltdown. Deny too much and parts go quiet until they force themselves into view through conflict and collapse. That tension is constant, negotiating how much truth we can hold without breaking and how much denial we can tolerate without disappearing. An experience that many plural folx, I’m sure, can resonate with.
The question is how long we can keep living at war with ourselves before we acknowledge that we are a system. How many situations and relationships can we destroy with the hot-and-cold back and forth. We can’t go back. We don’t believe in old-school psychoanalytic perspectives that promote integration into one as a treatment goal. Denial is familiar, and on the other hand, intersystem trust, collaboration, and trauma processing to be more grounded in our plurality sounds like a lot of work.
Warmly,
-N
About the author.
We are a plural, queer, neurodivergent person writing from inside survival, not after it. We share lived experiences as we move through profound joy, destabilizing depression, and the long, uneven work of healing complex trauma in our own way and in our own time. We are a parent, partner, psychopomp practitioner, licensed mental health counselor, clinical and spiritual consultant, clinical supervisor, and mental health educator on plurality from a plural perspective.
There is something spiritual at the core of how we move through the world. An embodied way of sensing, listening, and exchanging energy with people, places, and moments. We don’t experience connection as surface-level. We experience connection as presence, resonance, and responsibility. Those who have been made invisible, living or deceased, are witnessed here with the compassion and dignity everyone deserves.
This work is shaped by many layers of knowing. Our ancestral lineage. Our lived experiences in this lifetime. Navigating the mental health system as a plural person. Over fifteen years of clinical practice as a licensed mental health counselor. Five years of rigorous training and practice as a soul worker and psychopomp. Nearly a decade of marriage. Breaking generational trauma while raising children as a plural person. Living with complex grief that does not resolve. Growing up in the talons of a narcissistic parent. And surviving childhood sexual exploitation while learning how to repair what was broken without erasing what kept us alive.
We write at the intersection of survival, care work, spirituality, and refusal. Refusal to disappear quietly. Refusal to simplify complex lives for the comfort of others. Refusal to let political systems, institutions, or cultural amnesia decide whose pain counts and whose existence is negotiable. Access to mental health care is a basic human right. Silence is political.
It’s important to name that while we are a licensed mental health counselor and clinical supervisor, and that training inevitably informs our lens, this space is not a clinical offering. This writing is personal and rooted in lived experience. At times we may share educational information, but it should be received as knowledge offered by a stranger on the internet, not as treatment or professional guidance. This space does not establish a clinical relationship and does not replace your own mental health care.
Beyond The Opal Veil exists for those of us who stayed alive in ways that don’t photograph well. For those who carry intelligence, shame, tenderness, rage, and endurance in the same body. This space tells the truth without sanding it down to make it easier to swallow, and without demanding resolution as proof of healing.
This project is anonymous and separate by design, protecting safety, confidentiality, and creative autonomy. What’s offered here is meant for reflection and resonance, not replacement for care. We speak truthfully about trauma, survival, and plurality while holding firm boundaries around privacy and professional responsibility.
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