Communication Primer

Communication is an integral skill to learn to function smoothly as a system. It will help you keep your collective life on track, it will help everyone's needs get addressed, and it will cultivate clarity and understanding. It may take time to build a solid system, but it will pay off big time.

A lot of people think of their system as a roommate situation (hence the common term "headmate"). Sometimes, you may disagree or even dislike each other, other times you may get along great and be friends, and sometimes you will be somewhere in between. Regardless, you live together and need to make it work.

There are multiple methods of communication and we will explore various ones through out this section, as well as go over things that may be helpful to learn about and discuss as a system. Aside from these more serious topics, there are many things to talk about with your system! Hobbies, things you like or dislike, happy memories, advice or different perspectives, etc. are all things you can talk about your system with. Additionally, be on the look out for communication methods that work for your system specifically, even if they are not "standard" to the community. If it works for you and isn't hurting anyone, it's best to use what is most effective for your system rather than fixating on what works for other plurals.

A crucial part to any type of communication is validation — both yourself and the rest of your system. Practice validating your feelings and experiences and extend this to your system. You do not need to validate actions if they are invalid, e.g. sabotaging the system's life in some fashion, but if an action is valid, e.g. a system member does something to help you, do make sure to praise and validate the action then.

Validation may feel silly at first, but it will help you set up a foundation of "Yes, this is real", as well as a healthy environment to talk to one another. If you feel shame for trying to communicate with your system, or even for just having one, do the and keep working on your skills. We promise it does get easier. For a self-help explanation on Opposite Action, see here.

Make sure to be respectful, supportive, and to offer constructive feedback. Going back to the roommate example, you wouldn't expect your roommates to agree with you on every opinion or share every value. You also wouldn't want to criticize your roommates in a harsh manner or use verbal insults, instead you would want to give them respectful feedback.

As a note: many systems struggle to communicate internally, at least at first. It is not a sign of faking for a system to be incapable of communicating internally or vice versa.