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dismallyoriented) wrote2025-06-16 08:34 pm
dismallyoriented) wrote2025-06-16 08:34 pm
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How to Handle System Kids - A singlet/plural etiquette guide
When "I'm literally 12" becomes abruptly and immediately true
For Alice, who asked me to write this.
—
One of the unique features of plurality is how people within the system don't have to be like the body. Just because they live in it doesn't mean they all must resemble it, or have their personal proprioception match up with the body’s external shape. This means that system members can vary in all kinds of ways - height/weight, ethnicity, species or body plan, and the topic of today’s essay: age.
It can be tricky sometimes for people to wrap their heads around what it means for a system member to look and be different from the body. After all, you’re not in their head with them, so all you have to go on perception-wise is the body, and it’s gonna look however old it is. What does it mean for someone to be 7 years old when their external body is 38? How should you interact with a system member who's much younger than the members you know? In what ways are internal children similar or different from external children? I'll be talking through the ways I’ve learned how to treat them well and care for them.
—
An Intro to Children
Children headmates can come from all sorts of places. Sometimes a particular headmate just formed that way, and stayed that age for however long they’ve been around. Sometimes you introject a kid from a piece of media, or have a walk-in from elsewhere who happens to be a kid.[1] Certain systems, per the rules of their particular headspace, can also create a kid the old fashioned way - members who love each other coming together and producing a child. I’m not gonna be diving into the origins of child headmates, because that’s not my domain of knowledge and also isn’t within the scope of this essay. Most of the relevant things you need to know in order to interact with them will be learnable in the here-and-now.
Internal children are not the same as external children. Some of them may have been around for decades or more, and even those who arrived more recently still come with an adult body and whatever cumulative years of memory and life experience are accessible to them via the system. Some of them will be perfectly capable of doing adult tasks like driving, or grocery shopping, or job-related things. They will, however, embody child-ness in other ways. This can come out in body language, speech patterns, interests, and internal sense of self. The younger members of my primary partnersys will mention being surprised or disoriented by the size of the body, or will act in ways that are typical to their age. I'll elaborate on the latter in a little bit.
To generalize to the point of comedy, there are three kinds of kids. Those who can function similarly as adult members, those who are more child-like in skill and ability, and those who are often stuck in some persistent awful emotion and may hold trauma. The first kind of kid is pretty straightforward - you can talk to them more or less like an adult. The second and third kind take some more adapting to. Trauma-kids can be the "scariest" to deal with, in the sense that they can be really volatile and suddenly disrupt your day by being triggered and surfacing into a meltdown. This doesn't make them bad, or a nuisance, but it does mean they're gonna need a lot of help from you. It is in your collective interests to learn how best to help them.
—
General Kid Rules
A lot of what I know about how to talk to system kids mostly comes from an intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to external children. But my personal foundation lies in these four ground rules I hold for myself.
A lot of the ways that society treats children in real life are pretty shitty, and extend from a perspective of children being “not real people”. They’re assumed to be too unintelligent to understand themselves or the world, they’re allowed to have their personal boundaries violated by family members, doctors, and other adults with authority over them, and a lot of the time they get treated as nuisances simply for acting in ways that come naturally and lacking the skills and self-restraint that adults have. You don’t have to be interested in Cocomelon or Five Nights at Freddy’s, or pretend to be happy when they scream a Youtuber’s catchphrase repeatedly despite being asked to stop. But fundamentally you have to remember that this is a person. A person who may have a very different level of understanding or way of being than you, but always and essentially a *person*. They have an interior life and deserve to be treated with respect and care, especially because as a kid they need a greater level of care from the people around them.
So, to elaborate on these rules -
Kids deserve respect and patience:
- Treat them as a person. They matter, their thoughts and opinions matter, and their needs matter.
- When they talk to you or ask you questions, take them seriously and answer to the best of your ability. Don’t talk down to them just because they don’t understand things entirely. Simplify language and concepts when you need to, but don’t condescend them with baby talk. You can work out through trial and error what level of detail and complexity works between you, and very often they will surprise you.
- Remember that as kids they may lack the emotional regulation or self-restraint skills that adults have. If they react childishly, don’t judge them harshly. That’s not to say that they have no obligation to control their behavior, or that you should just let it slide if they do something that hurts you. However, you do have to keep a reasonable perspective on their abilities and behavior.
Kids deserve sincere and undivided attention:
- All people in a social species need attention from the people in their lives, but kids need it especially. Attention is a form of care and respect, and providing this need toward kids is important.
- Providing this level of attention is part of how you establish a solid and trusting relationship with a kid. When you pay attention to them and care about what they think, what they need, and what they’re interested in, you prove yourself as someone who will show up for them. Especially when they are scared or hurt or in need of help.
Kids have legitimate needs, even if you don’t quite understand them in the moment:
- One of the things that leads adults toward disregarding children is that because they are children, they won’t always understand things, or be able to express themselves coherently. A kid doesn’t understand why you all have to wait ninety minutes at the DMV, and they may not be able to understand that the reason they feel like the world is ending is simply because they haven’t eaten in a couple hours and are getting overwhelmed. But something is still Fundamentally Wrong in the moment and they know it needs addressing, and they are going to let you know as emphatically as they can
- As the adult in the room, to whatever degree of relationship you have with this kid, it is your responsibility to understand and help meet their needs. You don’t have to be a mind reader, and sometimes you will just get it wrong, but it’s important to understand that they’re not kicking up a fuss just to be a pain.
- Besides, being able to meet whatever underlying need is behind the freakout will resolve the freakout much better than punishing them into silence. A kid who knows they will be listened to is less likely to resort to Explosive communication methods, and feel more equipped to endure minor stressors.
Kids need you to maintain age appropriate boundaries in your relationship:
- This is one of those precepts that feels very common sense, because of how often society emphasizes kids being a Different Class of Being than adults. And yet, even in real life you have kids who get parentified or who have social interactions where the adult treats them like a peer in ways they aren’t yet equipped for. You have to be cognizant of the power dynamic between you and the kid, as the person who has the broader understanding and greater social context.
- A kid is not someone you can seek emotional support from in the way you would from a fellow adult. Even if this is a topic they have some degree of experience in, you cannot lean on them fully because they should not be feeling responsible for your wellbeing. The kids from my partner systems know when I am having a bad time, and some of them have offered comfort in the form of cuddles and well-wishes. But I do not vent to them in the way that I vent to my actual partners, in the same way that I do not vent in spaces where I’m a prominent adult in a group of teenagers and college students.
Keeping these guidelines in mind will get you pretty far in all sorts of kid interactions.
—
Ways that kids can act
There’s no easy way to summarize how system kids will behave, because they’re just as varied as any other group of children can be. But here’s a rough summary of ways that I’ve seen the system kids in my life behave.
What’s important to remember is that these aren’t affectations. These are all just the natural consequence of how these kids are. You have to acknowledge and respect these different needs and behaviors, as stated in rule 1 and rule 3. So much of being good to kids comes from taking them seriously in how they act and describe themselves.
Overt and Covert Kid Behavior
Contrary to popular belief, not all system kids will be acting obviously like kids. This is true with external children too. Sometimes kids will act like adults - they’re precocious, they’re smart, they’ll speak and act in ways where they’re basically on even footing with adults - to a point. That doesn't change the fact that they're still young, and will have certain limitations.
System kids are particularly incentivized to act like adults. They’re in an adult body, so everyone around them expects them to be an adult, and if they front often they’ll have to play the part well enough for survival and safety reasons. If a kid wakes up in front on a Monday morning and nobody else is around to switch in, they may have to be the one that gets the system to work on time and does their job that day, or whatever other daily obligations the system has. Not every kid is capable of doing that. But even a kid who has gotten good at it by necessity is ultimately still a kid. They’ll run into gaps in their problem solving and emotional processing skills. They’ll have areas where their assembled expertise runs out and they’re back to being a kid who’s out of their depth. And that's not the kind of situation they should be forced to handle alone.
Not all systems have kids, and those that do might not feel close enough or safe enough to let their kids be openly out around you. Especially because kids tend to be the most vulnerable members of a system, and they’re a manifestation of plurality that not a lot of people understand. But if you are in a position where you get to be around a kid, you have an obligation to treat them well and maintain a safe space for them. Give them the space to be the kids that they are, give them the kindness and support they need to get things done when they're struggling. It’s good for the kid, and it's good for the system as a whole.
—
Trauma-holder kids
This is the type 3 kid - the ones who are wrapped around some intense hurt and have trouble existing outside of it. This is the kind of kid you're least likely to encounter as an outsider, unless you're particularly close with the system or the system is having a spectacularly bad day. As a partner who's married and cohabiting with one system, and fairly close with a few others, I’ve had to help out with a handful of these kids. If you've found yourself in the role of a Safe External Person, here's some best practices I've used to help.
The trauma kids I’ve encountered broadly fall under four main emotions - scared, sad, angry, or ashamed. This is, again, a major simplification, because anyone who’s experienced trauma knows it can manifest as a wildly tangled knot of all four at once, with some bonus emotions to boot. However, it helps me to walk through the different ways these kids may be reacting when they take front. Different reactions require different approaches.
Often these kids show up when some trigger related to the hurt they're carrying gets hit. They surface into some manner of breakdown, they may not be aware of where or when they are, and they will need help calming down and getting back to more solid ground. If you're familiar with helping someone through a flashback, the broad strokes are the same - providing reassurance, helping them calm down, and situating them in the present moment instead of whatever past maelstrom they’re caught up in. The difference is that this isn't just your friend/loved one losing their grip on the here-and-now, this is someone else showing up who may not recognize or know you. This is a kid who may not have an adult understanding or grasp on their emotions. You might have to adjust how you talk to them when you try to help.
On the plus side, if the entire system isn't overwhelmed by the breakdown that this kid is having, there may be some adult members inside who are also trying to help the kid. Your role as an external person is to provide another source of safety and assistance, and help back up whoever might be inside having the same conversation.
—
General script
There’s a general script I employ whenever a trauma kid shows up. It goes roughly as follows
I say roughly because as with any situation where someone is having a breakdown, you won’t always be able to defuse it completely. Sometimes they’re too embroiled and won’t be able to listen, sometimes there’s some deep-seated stuff that’s getting in the way of them accepting help and support, and sometimes you will say or do something that worsens the spiral. But to borrow a line from my favorite suicide prevention zine: “do something”[2]. It doesn’t matter if you’re not entirely sure what to say, or feel out of your depth. It doesn’t matter if you need time to think or to get your words in order. Trying is how you figure out what works and what doesn’t. And, importantly, even if you fail, it matters that you tried. I would be lying through my teeth if I said I succeeded every time I ran through this script. But the people I was trying to help remembered that I tried, and that even when I had to leave to take a break, I still wanted to help and was willing to fight through the fuckshit for them.
So. Let’s work through each step of the script with more examples
1.) Figure out what the kid is feeling
Usually when a trauma kid shows up, it will be pretty immediately obvious what their main feeling is. A scared kid might be all scrunched up in body language, physically shaking/cowering, shutting down and going passive, or repeatedly apologizing in an attempt to appease you. A sad kid might also curl up and make themselves small, start crying uncontrollably, or otherwise act listless and depressed. Mad kids will get loud, stubborn, and potentially lash out physically. Kids in a shame pit can be especially reluctant to accept help - they're tangled up in some gnarly beliefs that they're fundamentally bad and undeserving of care, and may spiral out further because they're ashamed to be having the breakdown at all. Use your best judgment to adapt your response to how the kid is immediately reacting when they show up.
A note about mad kids. Mad is sometimes "scared" with a loud distracting costume on. Sometimes it's such a good costume that you don't realize they're a kid at all, and they mostly just come across as a rude asshole until you learn otherwise. The rule of thumb for angry, oppositional, and destructive system members remains the same. Treat them with dignity and respect. They are never going to be angry for No Reason, even if the size of the reaction feels wildly overblown for whatever instigated it. It is still not okay for an angry kid to get violent with you, and the system as a whole will need to figure out how to manage outbursts of violence if they occur. But like. If you know in your heart that a 13 year old saying they want to kill their parents is not actually at any risk of committing homicide, you can trust that your local mad kid isn’t going to do serious lasting harm to you just because they’re shouting.
2.) Establish yourself as a non-threatening person
If you have memories of your own childhood, you may remember the various ways that adults treated you that hurt you or showed that they could not be trusted. A kid does not get that scared of being in trouble without someone punishing them badly in a way that took root. You need to prove to this kid, especially if they’re a scared or ashamed kid, that you are not going to hurt them or stomp all over their boundaries.
So, speak to them kindly and patiently. Ask them for permission and consent before offering physical touch, or asking them to do something (i.e. if you want them to step away from a stressful situation and get space, say, “Do you want to come outside with me?”[3]). I make a point of telling scared kids that even though I am an adult, they can always say no to me and I will not get mad at them or punish them. Sometimes, eventually, they start to believe me. If appropriate, you and the adult system members can discuss what de-escalation strategies work best, so you don’t have to do as much guesswork.
Defusing shame spirals is its own beast, and often is a necessary step to be able to address whatever other emotion is driving the breakdown. Shame paralyzes people and keeps them from accepting help or taking actions to fix things, even when they're adults with loads of life experience that would theoretically help them “know better”. Kids are especially vulnerable to it because they haven't built up the defenses or skills that help them recognize and defuse the harmful beliefs. You may have to explain to this kid over the course of multiple breakdowns that they’re not bad or irredeemable, that you want to help regardless of whether they Deserve It or not, that they don’t have to believe you when you tell them they’re still good people.[4] Those beliefs are hammered in hard, and it’s up to the kid to be brave enough to start letting go of them and learn how to exist outside of that pit. You just have to stay a calm, stable, and caring presence, and be there to receive them once they’re ready to go there.
3.) Get them to somewhere safer
This is an extension of step 2, in that once you’ve established yourself as a safe person, you can also take steps that help the kid feel more safe. If you were at a social outing, or a noisy, overwhelming store, try to get them to somewhere that feels safer, away from prying eyes or whatever might have instigated the freakout. Sometimes, this will be inconvenient or awkward. Trust that a minor disruption to help out this kid will be better than leaving them in the stressful situation and letting them escalate into a fullblown meltdown. You can always go back and finish your errands run later, when the kid is no longer freaking out and the system as a whole is better able to function.
Sometimes, you are not in a situation where you can immediately bring the kid to somewhere that feels familiar or safe. You may be traveling out of town, at a work event, or stuck at some familial obligation with no easy exit strategy. It can still be worth it to find whatever modicum of additional safety you can to help anchor the kid a little better. You can even prepare for these difficult situations in advance, by bringing a comfort object of some kind. My partnersys brings stuffed animals to work sometimes, when they wake up feeling rough around the edges or have been going through a hard time.
4.) Talk to them about what they need, and meet it as best you can
I listed a lot of other things in the initial outline, but this is really what this bullet point condenses into. This kid is hurting because they need something, and if you can provide part of what they need, they'll be more able to calm down. Sometimes it’s as simple as needing someone to listen to them and hold them. Sometimes they need to be reminded that they're no longer in range of the people who hurt them, and the danger they're scared of isn't happening anymore. If you can talk to them, they may be able to tell you what it is they're looking for.
Sometimes kids will ask for things they cannot have. They're time traveled - what feels most immediate to them might be the house of a relative who’s moved or passed away, or friends they've long since lost contact with. This can sometimes be a good thing, in the way that returning to one's past can bring old connections back into your life and foster greater continuity between different eras of yourself. Unfortunately this also often creates an unsolvable problem, in that the thing they want most is no longer possible (or perhaps did not truly exist to begin with).
In times like this, you can turn to a technique from the dementia playbook. Don’t lie to them and say you’ll be able to take them home tomorrow - that’s cruel and will undermine their trust in you. What you can do, however, is identify the need beneath what they’re asking for. If a kid tells you that they want to go home, are they looking for safety? Comfort? Something stable and familiar that they can anchor themselves to? Get creative if you have to, but be honest about what you can and can't do. It sucks to tell a kid they can’t have the thing they’re asking for, but sometimes that’s the nature of the beast.
Not every kid will be able to articulate what they need, or they also may be scared of you because you’re an Important Adult to the rest of the system and fucking things up with you feels like it’ll jeopardize that collective relationship. Or the nature of whatever breakdown they’re having has rendered you a dangerous person (emotional flashbacks are a rough one). In that case, what they might need is space from you. My go-to strategy in those situations is to leave a comfort plushie in grabbing distance and then leave the room. That way they have something they can use for comfort, and then approach me at their own pace - I'll be off doing something else, perhaps with my own plushies or distracting tasks, but be keeping an eye on my messages so I can be available again when needed.
Redirecting is also a helpful tool. Watching a movie or a favorite show is often a low pressure way to safely interact and draw their attention into something else long enough to calm down. My primary partnersys has a very simple dice game they’re very fond of, and being able to fiddle with the dice or engage in some mischief to specifically beat me has also helped folks climb out of a pit. I’ve also managed to draw out sad kids by just stacking stuffed animals on top of them until they giggled at how silly I was being. It’s a very throwing-spaghetti process sometimes, and not everything will work in the moment. But the more I've tried, the more rapport I've been able to build, and the more workable solutions I've been able to find.
5.) The secret 5th step - taking care of yourself and recuperating
I’ve spilled a lot of ink on how to help these particular kinds of kid. And it's all important stuff. But you cannot forget to take care of yourself when you're in the thick of it with your loved ones. It takes a lot of energy and self control to stay calm and level-headed when a kid is multiple hours into a breakdown or has gone and done something reckless in the course of their breakdown. Especially for protracted episodes, you need to also be doing things to take care of yourself. If you feel like you’re gonna head into a meltdown yourself, take the time to get your frustration and exhaustion down in words. If you have your own safe people who are aware of your loved one’s plurality or can be trusted with details of thorny mental health stuff, talk to them too. It is important to find ways to share the load, to avoid breaking yourself in the process.
For partners in particular, once the kid has calmed down and can switch out for someone else, get some time to reconnect and decompress afterward. I'm relatively well-practiced at working through breakdowns, but the thing that’s helped my relationship remain stable is that my partners do the necessary reparative work once they’ve got their heads together again. They apologize maturely for what happened without spiraling into self-hatred, they give me the chance to voice my frustrations or anger over what happened, and together we do things that help get us collectively back to baseline and be partners again. They are also working on trying to help their kids and resolve their issues, and troubleshoot with me on crisis plans and what does or doesn’t work.
This kind of support work isn't for everyone, and it's important to know what your own boundaries and dealbreakers are. You can love someone very much and still realize a relationship is beyond your capacity - nobody’s recovery will be dependent on dating you. But this kind of repair work is what gets people through some really tumultuous shit. It’s the stuff that helps get a type 3 kid to a type 2 or type 1 kid, and reduces the severity and frequency of triggered breakdowns. Knowing my partners are also doing their part is what helps me return to the ring whenever I'm needed - the core relationship is good, they are carrying this burden with me, and the load will get easier with time. Even if the only thing that changes is how good we are at managing it.
—
Concluding thoughts
System children are a lot of work sometimes, but they’re also the source of a lot of joy in my life. Like any other children, they can be fun and clever and rewarding to spend time with and care for. Getting to know them has deepened my relationships with the systems in my life who have trusted me enough to share their kids with me, and these children are more than worth knowing in their own right.
There's a somewhat sentimental aspect I carry with the kids from my partners, especially the body native kids. Y’know when a loved one shares a story of something awful that happened in their past, and you’re sitting there like Jesus Christ, you deserved better and I wish it happened differently. When a kid shows up carrying a fragment of buried collective pain, it’s a chance for me to Do Something about whatever created that pain in the first place. Yeah, you still can't undo what happened, but you can do things differently this time. It's no different than any other kind of love or care that can reach retroactively into the past and repair a little of whatever shitty things our people went through before they met us.
Aside from that, loving and caring for the kids in my partner systems is part of collective care for the system as a whole. They are part of the same collective that my partners are in, so the care I provide the kids filters back to my partners through shared memory - even when they’re not around, even when they were someone else, I came through for them. But also in the way that a friend caring for someone dear to you is indirect care of you - by making sure the people that you care about are also looked after. It’s just a different sort of intimacy when these are people you share a brain and body with.
I hope this essay was helpful, or gave you food for thought to bring back to your own relationships. As always feel free to comment or share questions and stories from your own situations. I'm just one guy writing from my slice of experiences, and sharing stuff my partners and the systems in my life have taught me.
—
[1]: Introjects are system members modeled from people or characters from outside the body. Walk-ins are what it says on the tin, people/beings from outside the body who now reside in it (whether from possession, death & reincarnation, or other esoteric means). These are opposed to “body natives”, who formed from people who were in the brain to begin with, and identify themselves with the body's life experiences. [return]
[2]: The other important piece of advice from that zine is “don’t panic, do nothing”. Which is to say, don’t freak out too much yourself about your loved one being in crisis mode. You don’t have to fix everything right now, and sometimes there is nothing that can be done to immediately fix the root of the problem. But what you can do is be calm, be present, and be supportive to these people you love, so that you’re there when they can pull themselves back together. Highly recommend reading this zine for anyone who wants to get better at peer support for mental health. It's good for building skills and keeping yourself from imploding due to blasting through all your reserves and boundaries. [return]
[3]: Sometimes, when the nature of a kid’s breakdown means they’ll be unable to step away from a situation when necessary, it is better to physically lead them away. But that’ll depend heavily on the system and the specific headmate in question. Discuss those strategies with the rest of the system when people are not in the middle of a breakdown. [return]
[4]: Note that I don’t say you have to convince them that they’re not shameful or that they Do deserve care. Fundamentally that is not a fight that can be won in a single day - if they could just be talked into letting go of these beliefs, they wouldn’t still be holding them decades later. Insisting on doing that before they’re ready sets both of you up for failure, and you may end up alienating the kid instead. After all, telling someone they deserve care when they fundamentally think they’re irredeemable is like trying to convince them the sky is green. Your starting premise is Fundamentally False to them, and will make everything else you say feel untrustworthy. Sidestepping the question of Deserving entirely makes it easier to reach them. It’s easier to accept “I don’t deserve it, but they keep showing up and caring for me anyway” than something that demands a fundamental shift in self-concept. [return]
For Alice, who asked me to write this.
—
One of the unique features of plurality is how people within the system don't have to be like the body. Just because they live in it doesn't mean they all must resemble it, or have their personal proprioception match up with the body’s external shape. This means that system members can vary in all kinds of ways - height/weight, ethnicity, species or body plan, and the topic of today’s essay: age.
It can be tricky sometimes for people to wrap their heads around what it means for a system member to look and be different from the body. After all, you’re not in their head with them, so all you have to go on perception-wise is the body, and it’s gonna look however old it is. What does it mean for someone to be 7 years old when their external body is 38? How should you interact with a system member who's much younger than the members you know? In what ways are internal children similar or different from external children? I'll be talking through the ways I’ve learned how to treat them well and care for them.
—
An Intro to Children
Children headmates can come from all sorts of places. Sometimes a particular headmate just formed that way, and stayed that age for however long they’ve been around. Sometimes you introject a kid from a piece of media, or have a walk-in from elsewhere who happens to be a kid.[1] Certain systems, per the rules of their particular headspace, can also create a kid the old fashioned way - members who love each other coming together and producing a child. I’m not gonna be diving into the origins of child headmates, because that’s not my domain of knowledge and also isn’t within the scope of this essay. Most of the relevant things you need to know in order to interact with them will be learnable in the here-and-now.
Internal children are not the same as external children. Some of them may have been around for decades or more, and even those who arrived more recently still come with an adult body and whatever cumulative years of memory and life experience are accessible to them via the system. Some of them will be perfectly capable of doing adult tasks like driving, or grocery shopping, or job-related things. They will, however, embody child-ness in other ways. This can come out in body language, speech patterns, interests, and internal sense of self. The younger members of my primary partnersys will mention being surprised or disoriented by the size of the body, or will act in ways that are typical to their age. I'll elaborate on the latter in a little bit.
To generalize to the point of comedy, there are three kinds of kids. Those who can function similarly as adult members, those who are more child-like in skill and ability, and those who are often stuck in some persistent awful emotion and may hold trauma. The first kind of kid is pretty straightforward - you can talk to them more or less like an adult. The second and third kind take some more adapting to. Trauma-kids can be the "scariest" to deal with, in the sense that they can be really volatile and suddenly disrupt your day by being triggered and surfacing into a meltdown. This doesn't make them bad, or a nuisance, but it does mean they're gonna need a lot of help from you. It is in your collective interests to learn how best to help them.
—
General Kid Rules
A lot of what I know about how to talk to system kids mostly comes from an intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t when it comes to external children. But my personal foundation lies in these four ground rules I hold for myself.
- Kids deserve respect and patience
- Kids deserve sincere and undivided attention
- Kids have legitimate needs, even if you don’t quite understand them in the moment
- Kids need you to maintain age appropriate boundaries in your relationship
A lot of the ways that society treats children in real life are pretty shitty, and extend from a perspective of children being “not real people”. They’re assumed to be too unintelligent to understand themselves or the world, they’re allowed to have their personal boundaries violated by family members, doctors, and other adults with authority over them, and a lot of the time they get treated as nuisances simply for acting in ways that come naturally and lacking the skills and self-restraint that adults have. You don’t have to be interested in Cocomelon or Five Nights at Freddy’s, or pretend to be happy when they scream a Youtuber’s catchphrase repeatedly despite being asked to stop. But fundamentally you have to remember that this is a person. A person who may have a very different level of understanding or way of being than you, but always and essentially a *person*. They have an interior life and deserve to be treated with respect and care, especially because as a kid they need a greater level of care from the people around them.
So, to elaborate on these rules -
Kids deserve respect and patience:
- Treat them as a person. They matter, their thoughts and opinions matter, and their needs matter.
- When they talk to you or ask you questions, take them seriously and answer to the best of your ability. Don’t talk down to them just because they don’t understand things entirely. Simplify language and concepts when you need to, but don’t condescend them with baby talk. You can work out through trial and error what level of detail and complexity works between you, and very often they will surprise you.
- Remember that as kids they may lack the emotional regulation or self-restraint skills that adults have. If they react childishly, don’t judge them harshly. That’s not to say that they have no obligation to control their behavior, or that you should just let it slide if they do something that hurts you. However, you do have to keep a reasonable perspective on their abilities and behavior.
Kids deserve sincere and undivided attention:
- All people in a social species need attention from the people in their lives, but kids need it especially. Attention is a form of care and respect, and providing this need toward kids is important.
- Providing this level of attention is part of how you establish a solid and trusting relationship with a kid. When you pay attention to them and care about what they think, what they need, and what they’re interested in, you prove yourself as someone who will show up for them. Especially when they are scared or hurt or in need of help.
Kids have legitimate needs, even if you don’t quite understand them in the moment:
- One of the things that leads adults toward disregarding children is that because they are children, they won’t always understand things, or be able to express themselves coherently. A kid doesn’t understand why you all have to wait ninety minutes at the DMV, and they may not be able to understand that the reason they feel like the world is ending is simply because they haven’t eaten in a couple hours and are getting overwhelmed. But something is still Fundamentally Wrong in the moment and they know it needs addressing, and they are going to let you know as emphatically as they can
- As the adult in the room, to whatever degree of relationship you have with this kid, it is your responsibility to understand and help meet their needs. You don’t have to be a mind reader, and sometimes you will just get it wrong, but it’s important to understand that they’re not kicking up a fuss just to be a pain.
- Besides, being able to meet whatever underlying need is behind the freakout will resolve the freakout much better than punishing them into silence. A kid who knows they will be listened to is less likely to resort to Explosive communication methods, and feel more equipped to endure minor stressors.
Kids need you to maintain age appropriate boundaries in your relationship:
- This is one of those precepts that feels very common sense, because of how often society emphasizes kids being a Different Class of Being than adults. And yet, even in real life you have kids who get parentified or who have social interactions where the adult treats them like a peer in ways they aren’t yet equipped for. You have to be cognizant of the power dynamic between you and the kid, as the person who has the broader understanding and greater social context.
- A kid is not someone you can seek emotional support from in the way you would from a fellow adult. Even if this is a topic they have some degree of experience in, you cannot lean on them fully because they should not be feeling responsible for your wellbeing. The kids from my partner systems know when I am having a bad time, and some of them have offered comfort in the form of cuddles and well-wishes. But I do not vent to them in the way that I vent to my actual partners, in the same way that I do not vent in spaces where I’m a prominent adult in a group of teenagers and college students.
Keeping these guidelines in mind will get you pretty far in all sorts of kid interactions.
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Ways that kids can act
There’s no easy way to summarize how system kids will behave, because they’re just as varied as any other group of children can be. But here’s a rough summary of ways that I’ve seen the system kids in my life behave.
- Speaking and acting in more childish ways - word choice, voice pitch, concepts and framing, etc. I’ve known autistic systems where a kid headmate exhibited autism-related language difficulties that the system had originally experienced in childhood. Kids also might walk or hold themselves differently - be more prone to spontaneously skipping, or beelining toward the toy section in a store, or keeping their distance from adults in a public space
- Having childlike interests - strong attachment to stuffed animals, kid shows, and kid activities and games. Maybe this kid still has a connection to the rest of the system’s interest in noise metal or French cinema, but it’s just as likely they’ll be more interested in tea parties, coloring books, and building dinosaur legos. They'll need time and space to pursue these interests
- Corollary point - Kids who are from elsewhere or who may be a nonhuman species will have whatever interests are appropriate to them. Fictives and fictional introjects may exhibit interests based on their character or fictional setting (i.e. a kid who’s also V1 from the video game Ultrakill may have an Immense interest in violence, both simulated and actual). A kid who’s also a kitty cat may enjoy playing with cat toys, scampering around on all fours, or being scritched behind their ears. It all depends on the kid and what they've expressed about themselves
- Strong attachment to previous eras of the system’s life - this is more common for body natives, as introjects or walk-ins may be totally disconnected from the system’s collective past, and have a different set of memories as their foundation. But kids who split or formed during the system’s childhood or adolescence can basically be like snapshots of that moment in time. They’ll remember the middle school best friend or that trip to grandma’s house like it was yesterday - because from their perspective, it was
- Shifted proprioception and self-concept from the body - in the same way that you have a sense of what you look like and where your body is in space, the kids will also have a sense of themselves. It just might not match up with the body in physical space. My proprioception is different now at 5’3” than it was when I was short enough to run under the kitchen table in my childhood home. Likewise some of the kids in my partnersys expect to be much smaller and shorter than they are in real life, or expect a younger face in the mirror. They might move a little more clumsily, or have difficulty calibrating the strength of their movements. Gender differences can make this complicated as well - if the kid expects the voice of a young girl, but the voice box has gone through testosterone-based puberty, they might not want to speak out loud much
- Loss of access to adult skills and knowledge - some kids will retain common knowledge and abilities that the rest of the system has, like cooking or driving a car. Some kids won't. For this reason, systems may opt to have an adult member co-fronting with the kids when possible, or have someone near front whom the kid can ask for help and advice when they get stuck. If my partnersys has a kid in front, I'm not gonna expect them to take the lead in dinner prep - I'll take on the management role and ask the kid to do simpler tasks they can handle, like washing veggies or handing me spices
What’s important to remember is that these aren’t affectations. These are all just the natural consequence of how these kids are. You have to acknowledge and respect these different needs and behaviors, as stated in rule 1 and rule 3. So much of being good to kids comes from taking them seriously in how they act and describe themselves.
Overt and Covert Kid Behavior
Contrary to popular belief, not all system kids will be acting obviously like kids. This is true with external children too. Sometimes kids will act like adults - they’re precocious, they’re smart, they’ll speak and act in ways where they’re basically on even footing with adults - to a point. That doesn't change the fact that they're still young, and will have certain limitations.
System kids are particularly incentivized to act like adults. They’re in an adult body, so everyone around them expects them to be an adult, and if they front often they’ll have to play the part well enough for survival and safety reasons. If a kid wakes up in front on a Monday morning and nobody else is around to switch in, they may have to be the one that gets the system to work on time and does their job that day, or whatever other daily obligations the system has. Not every kid is capable of doing that. But even a kid who has gotten good at it by necessity is ultimately still a kid. They’ll run into gaps in their problem solving and emotional processing skills. They’ll have areas where their assembled expertise runs out and they’re back to being a kid who’s out of their depth. And that's not the kind of situation they should be forced to handle alone.
Not all systems have kids, and those that do might not feel close enough or safe enough to let their kids be openly out around you. Especially because kids tend to be the most vulnerable members of a system, and they’re a manifestation of plurality that not a lot of people understand. But if you are in a position where you get to be around a kid, you have an obligation to treat them well and maintain a safe space for them. Give them the space to be the kids that they are, give them the kindness and support they need to get things done when they're struggling. It’s good for the kid, and it's good for the system as a whole.
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Trauma-holder kids
This is the type 3 kid - the ones who are wrapped around some intense hurt and have trouble existing outside of it. This is the kind of kid you're least likely to encounter as an outsider, unless you're particularly close with the system or the system is having a spectacularly bad day. As a partner who's married and cohabiting with one system, and fairly close with a few others, I’ve had to help out with a handful of these kids. If you've found yourself in the role of a Safe External Person, here's some best practices I've used to help.
The trauma kids I’ve encountered broadly fall under four main emotions - scared, sad, angry, or ashamed. This is, again, a major simplification, because anyone who’s experienced trauma knows it can manifest as a wildly tangled knot of all four at once, with some bonus emotions to boot. However, it helps me to walk through the different ways these kids may be reacting when they take front. Different reactions require different approaches.
Often these kids show up when some trigger related to the hurt they're carrying gets hit. They surface into some manner of breakdown, they may not be aware of where or when they are, and they will need help calming down and getting back to more solid ground. If you're familiar with helping someone through a flashback, the broad strokes are the same - providing reassurance, helping them calm down, and situating them in the present moment instead of whatever past maelstrom they’re caught up in. The difference is that this isn't just your friend/loved one losing their grip on the here-and-now, this is someone else showing up who may not recognize or know you. This is a kid who may not have an adult understanding or grasp on their emotions. You might have to adjust how you talk to them when you try to help.
On the plus side, if the entire system isn't overwhelmed by the breakdown that this kid is having, there may be some adult members inside who are also trying to help the kid. Your role as an external person is to provide another source of safety and assistance, and help back up whoever might be inside having the same conversation.
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General script
There’s a general script I employ whenever a trauma kid shows up. It goes roughly as follows
- Figure out what the kid is feeling
- Establish myself as a non-threatening person
- If we are in public or somewhere that’s triggering them, get them to somewhere safer
- Talk to them about what they want/need, provide reassurance or try to redirect them, and take care of their immediate needs as best I can
I say roughly because as with any situation where someone is having a breakdown, you won’t always be able to defuse it completely. Sometimes they’re too embroiled and won’t be able to listen, sometimes there’s some deep-seated stuff that’s getting in the way of them accepting help and support, and sometimes you will say or do something that worsens the spiral. But to borrow a line from my favorite suicide prevention zine: “do something”[2]. It doesn’t matter if you’re not entirely sure what to say, or feel out of your depth. It doesn’t matter if you need time to think or to get your words in order. Trying is how you figure out what works and what doesn’t. And, importantly, even if you fail, it matters that you tried. I would be lying through my teeth if I said I succeeded every time I ran through this script. But the people I was trying to help remembered that I tried, and that even when I had to leave to take a break, I still wanted to help and was willing to fight through the fuckshit for them.
So. Let’s work through each step of the script with more examples
1.) Figure out what the kid is feeling
Usually when a trauma kid shows up, it will be pretty immediately obvious what their main feeling is. A scared kid might be all scrunched up in body language, physically shaking/cowering, shutting down and going passive, or repeatedly apologizing in an attempt to appease you. A sad kid might also curl up and make themselves small, start crying uncontrollably, or otherwise act listless and depressed. Mad kids will get loud, stubborn, and potentially lash out physically. Kids in a shame pit can be especially reluctant to accept help - they're tangled up in some gnarly beliefs that they're fundamentally bad and undeserving of care, and may spiral out further because they're ashamed to be having the breakdown at all. Use your best judgment to adapt your response to how the kid is immediately reacting when they show up.
A note about mad kids. Mad is sometimes "scared" with a loud distracting costume on. Sometimes it's such a good costume that you don't realize they're a kid at all, and they mostly just come across as a rude asshole until you learn otherwise. The rule of thumb for angry, oppositional, and destructive system members remains the same. Treat them with dignity and respect. They are never going to be angry for No Reason, even if the size of the reaction feels wildly overblown for whatever instigated it. It is still not okay for an angry kid to get violent with you, and the system as a whole will need to figure out how to manage outbursts of violence if they occur. But like. If you know in your heart that a 13 year old saying they want to kill their parents is not actually at any risk of committing homicide, you can trust that your local mad kid isn’t going to do serious lasting harm to you just because they’re shouting.
2.) Establish yourself as a non-threatening person
If you have memories of your own childhood, you may remember the various ways that adults treated you that hurt you or showed that they could not be trusted. A kid does not get that scared of being in trouble without someone punishing them badly in a way that took root. You need to prove to this kid, especially if they’re a scared or ashamed kid, that you are not going to hurt them or stomp all over their boundaries.
So, speak to them kindly and patiently. Ask them for permission and consent before offering physical touch, or asking them to do something (i.e. if you want them to step away from a stressful situation and get space, say, “Do you want to come outside with me?”[3]). I make a point of telling scared kids that even though I am an adult, they can always say no to me and I will not get mad at them or punish them. Sometimes, eventually, they start to believe me. If appropriate, you and the adult system members can discuss what de-escalation strategies work best, so you don’t have to do as much guesswork.
Defusing shame spirals is its own beast, and often is a necessary step to be able to address whatever other emotion is driving the breakdown. Shame paralyzes people and keeps them from accepting help or taking actions to fix things, even when they're adults with loads of life experience that would theoretically help them “know better”. Kids are especially vulnerable to it because they haven't built up the defenses or skills that help them recognize and defuse the harmful beliefs. You may have to explain to this kid over the course of multiple breakdowns that they’re not bad or irredeemable, that you want to help regardless of whether they Deserve It or not, that they don’t have to believe you when you tell them they’re still good people.[4] Those beliefs are hammered in hard, and it’s up to the kid to be brave enough to start letting go of them and learn how to exist outside of that pit. You just have to stay a calm, stable, and caring presence, and be there to receive them once they’re ready to go there.
3.) Get them to somewhere safer
This is an extension of step 2, in that once you’ve established yourself as a safe person, you can also take steps that help the kid feel more safe. If you were at a social outing, or a noisy, overwhelming store, try to get them to somewhere that feels safer, away from prying eyes or whatever might have instigated the freakout. Sometimes, this will be inconvenient or awkward. Trust that a minor disruption to help out this kid will be better than leaving them in the stressful situation and letting them escalate into a fullblown meltdown. You can always go back and finish your errands run later, when the kid is no longer freaking out and the system as a whole is better able to function.
Sometimes, you are not in a situation where you can immediately bring the kid to somewhere that feels familiar or safe. You may be traveling out of town, at a work event, or stuck at some familial obligation with no easy exit strategy. It can still be worth it to find whatever modicum of additional safety you can to help anchor the kid a little better. You can even prepare for these difficult situations in advance, by bringing a comfort object of some kind. My partnersys brings stuffed animals to work sometimes, when they wake up feeling rough around the edges or have been going through a hard time.
4.) Talk to them about what they need, and meet it as best you can
I listed a lot of other things in the initial outline, but this is really what this bullet point condenses into. This kid is hurting because they need something, and if you can provide part of what they need, they'll be more able to calm down. Sometimes it’s as simple as needing someone to listen to them and hold them. Sometimes they need to be reminded that they're no longer in range of the people who hurt them, and the danger they're scared of isn't happening anymore. If you can talk to them, they may be able to tell you what it is they're looking for.
Sometimes kids will ask for things they cannot have. They're time traveled - what feels most immediate to them might be the house of a relative who’s moved or passed away, or friends they've long since lost contact with. This can sometimes be a good thing, in the way that returning to one's past can bring old connections back into your life and foster greater continuity between different eras of yourself. Unfortunately this also often creates an unsolvable problem, in that the thing they want most is no longer possible (or perhaps did not truly exist to begin with).
In times like this, you can turn to a technique from the dementia playbook. Don’t lie to them and say you’ll be able to take them home tomorrow - that’s cruel and will undermine their trust in you. What you can do, however, is identify the need beneath what they’re asking for. If a kid tells you that they want to go home, are they looking for safety? Comfort? Something stable and familiar that they can anchor themselves to? Get creative if you have to, but be honest about what you can and can't do. It sucks to tell a kid they can’t have the thing they’re asking for, but sometimes that’s the nature of the beast.
Not every kid will be able to articulate what they need, or they also may be scared of you because you’re an Important Adult to the rest of the system and fucking things up with you feels like it’ll jeopardize that collective relationship. Or the nature of whatever breakdown they’re having has rendered you a dangerous person (emotional flashbacks are a rough one). In that case, what they might need is space from you. My go-to strategy in those situations is to leave a comfort plushie in grabbing distance and then leave the room. That way they have something they can use for comfort, and then approach me at their own pace - I'll be off doing something else, perhaps with my own plushies or distracting tasks, but be keeping an eye on my messages so I can be available again when needed.
Redirecting is also a helpful tool. Watching a movie or a favorite show is often a low pressure way to safely interact and draw their attention into something else long enough to calm down. My primary partnersys has a very simple dice game they’re very fond of, and being able to fiddle with the dice or engage in some mischief to specifically beat me has also helped folks climb out of a pit. I’ve also managed to draw out sad kids by just stacking stuffed animals on top of them until they giggled at how silly I was being. It’s a very throwing-spaghetti process sometimes, and not everything will work in the moment. But the more I've tried, the more rapport I've been able to build, and the more workable solutions I've been able to find.
5.) The secret 5th step - taking care of yourself and recuperating
I’ve spilled a lot of ink on how to help these particular kinds of kid. And it's all important stuff. But you cannot forget to take care of yourself when you're in the thick of it with your loved ones. It takes a lot of energy and self control to stay calm and level-headed when a kid is multiple hours into a breakdown or has gone and done something reckless in the course of their breakdown. Especially for protracted episodes, you need to also be doing things to take care of yourself. If you feel like you’re gonna head into a meltdown yourself, take the time to get your frustration and exhaustion down in words. If you have your own safe people who are aware of your loved one’s plurality or can be trusted with details of thorny mental health stuff, talk to them too. It is important to find ways to share the load, to avoid breaking yourself in the process.
For partners in particular, once the kid has calmed down and can switch out for someone else, get some time to reconnect and decompress afterward. I'm relatively well-practiced at working through breakdowns, but the thing that’s helped my relationship remain stable is that my partners do the necessary reparative work once they’ve got their heads together again. They apologize maturely for what happened without spiraling into self-hatred, they give me the chance to voice my frustrations or anger over what happened, and together we do things that help get us collectively back to baseline and be partners again. They are also working on trying to help their kids and resolve their issues, and troubleshoot with me on crisis plans and what does or doesn’t work.
This kind of support work isn't for everyone, and it's important to know what your own boundaries and dealbreakers are. You can love someone very much and still realize a relationship is beyond your capacity - nobody’s recovery will be dependent on dating you. But this kind of repair work is what gets people through some really tumultuous shit. It’s the stuff that helps get a type 3 kid to a type 2 or type 1 kid, and reduces the severity and frequency of triggered breakdowns. Knowing my partners are also doing their part is what helps me return to the ring whenever I'm needed - the core relationship is good, they are carrying this burden with me, and the load will get easier with time. Even if the only thing that changes is how good we are at managing it.
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Concluding thoughts
System children are a lot of work sometimes, but they’re also the source of a lot of joy in my life. Like any other children, they can be fun and clever and rewarding to spend time with and care for. Getting to know them has deepened my relationships with the systems in my life who have trusted me enough to share their kids with me, and these children are more than worth knowing in their own right.
There's a somewhat sentimental aspect I carry with the kids from my partners, especially the body native kids. Y’know when a loved one shares a story of something awful that happened in their past, and you’re sitting there like Jesus Christ, you deserved better and I wish it happened differently. When a kid shows up carrying a fragment of buried collective pain, it’s a chance for me to Do Something about whatever created that pain in the first place. Yeah, you still can't undo what happened, but you can do things differently this time. It's no different than any other kind of love or care that can reach retroactively into the past and repair a little of whatever shitty things our people went through before they met us.
Aside from that, loving and caring for the kids in my partner systems is part of collective care for the system as a whole. They are part of the same collective that my partners are in, so the care I provide the kids filters back to my partners through shared memory - even when they’re not around, even when they were someone else, I came through for them. But also in the way that a friend caring for someone dear to you is indirect care of you - by making sure the people that you care about are also looked after. It’s just a different sort of intimacy when these are people you share a brain and body with.
I hope this essay was helpful, or gave you food for thought to bring back to your own relationships. As always feel free to comment or share questions and stories from your own situations. I'm just one guy writing from my slice of experiences, and sharing stuff my partners and the systems in my life have taught me.
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[1]: Introjects are system members modeled from people or characters from outside the body. Walk-ins are what it says on the tin, people/beings from outside the body who now reside in it (whether from possession, death & reincarnation, or other esoteric means). These are opposed to “body natives”, who formed from people who were in the brain to begin with, and identify themselves with the body's life experiences. [return]
[2]: The other important piece of advice from that zine is “don’t panic, do nothing”. Which is to say, don’t freak out too much yourself about your loved one being in crisis mode. You don’t have to fix everything right now, and sometimes there is nothing that can be done to immediately fix the root of the problem. But what you can do is be calm, be present, and be supportive to these people you love, so that you’re there when they can pull themselves back together. Highly recommend reading this zine for anyone who wants to get better at peer support for mental health. It's good for building skills and keeping yourself from imploding due to blasting through all your reserves and boundaries. [return]
[3]: Sometimes, when the nature of a kid’s breakdown means they’ll be unable to step away from a situation when necessary, it is better to physically lead them away. But that’ll depend heavily on the system and the specific headmate in question. Discuss those strategies with the rest of the system when people are not in the middle of a breakdown. [return]
[4]: Note that I don’t say you have to convince them that they’re not shameful or that they Do deserve care. Fundamentally that is not a fight that can be won in a single day - if they could just be talked into letting go of these beliefs, they wouldn’t still be holding them decades later. Insisting on doing that before they’re ready sets both of you up for failure, and you may end up alienating the kid instead. After all, telling someone they deserve care when they fundamentally think they’re irredeemable is like trying to convince them the sky is green. Your starting premise is Fundamentally False to them, and will make everything else you say feel untrustworthy. Sidestepping the question of Deserving entirely makes it easier to reach them. It’s easier to accept “I don’t deserve it, but they keep showing up and caring for me anyway” than something that demands a fundamental shift in self-concept. [return]
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Hi there, Mercury forwarded this essay to us! He says you're cool and I'm reading this and so far I agree very much
First off, hell yeah, essay on system kids! An etiquette guide for talking to kids is sorely needed in general, honestly, with what you've said about how kids are treated by society, but yeah - especially when it comes to systems! Age can be weird when you all live in one body together!
AGREED on the baseline "kids are people," which is shockingly common for a lot of adults to forget! It really helps with a lot of conversation, just treating kids with the same respect and courtesy as you would anyone else. I haven't had a lot of experience talking to external kids, but I'm enough into young adulthood that I still remember that it really sucked to be talked over and treated like I was dumb just because I was eight!
Wow this is a really helpful guide - and I'm going to check out that suicide prevention zine! You've boiled down a lot of good ways to talk to kids in general and how to help a kid in crisis, this is good stuff! We don't have any kids in our own system, but we do have an anxious very-young adult by way of Robot Who Was Made As An Adult, and a lot of this stuff is what we do to help them out! Being a steady presence who's there to gently talk and not push is really really helpful, cannot recommend that enough.
Thanks for writing and sharing, it's very cool!
--Max (he/they)
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I saw a lot of how I end up showing up when I'm ultra triggered reflected here. It was a bit wild, actually.
Can we link this as a resource on our website?
- Brick
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Thank you for linking that suicide prevention zine. I wish I'd had that zine when I was 13.
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Yeahhh, that zine is a helluva resource and one that's sorely needed for anyone who's ever had to sit with a friend through that level of crisis. In all honesty, rereading it after the fact, I saw a lot of the roots of the traumakids section in that zine. Suicide may be a specific kind of crisis, but the stuff it describes in there has made me overall better at knowing how to handle mental health stuff of many stripes. Immense kudos to the organizer who wrote it, and ran the initial workshops that built the zine in the first place.
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System responsibility - the other system members trying to help their kids, but also recognizing that they still need practice and won't always manage it - seems to be the most important factor.
Also, hearing "kids don't need to be able to do care work" was revolutionary for us. Maybe it shouldn't be, but as a system who's often co-conscious and covert, those boundaries got blurred a LOT. It's hard to admit when we can't do something.
We wanted to write that it's probably harder to give support between two systems, but that might not even be true. A singlet can also have a day where they just can't help, for whatever reason, just like we can have a day where a kid is frontstuck and can't help. It's not like we have to argue "I'm a kid therefore I can't help" - if we don't feel equipped to handle the situation, we can't help, and that needs to be respected.
So I guess that's the other important factor - being able to say no and have that no be respected (and allowing yourself/selves to say no).
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Reciprocity of care is important, as is being able to say no when you can't do it. Reciprocity fills your own tank back up, and shows you the other person is taking on some of their load (so you don't have to bear it all by yourself). Saying no means you're not drawing yourself down and you'll be better equipped to do the things that are in your capacity. Blendiness definitely sounds like it'd make it hard to tell if/when you're not able to do stuff, but I hope you can get better at taking a moment to check in with yourselves before diving into support mode. I've had my own learning moments of suddenly noticing that my face is pins-and-needles, or other tell-tale signs that I've pushed myself into an empty tank - it is as you say that singlets are not immune to having our own limits or being unavailable. My wife and I have a mutual partnersys, and all of us have taken turns on the "talking to a partner having a breakdown" train - the two of us not in crisis support and anchor each other, and we also each find ways to shore ourselves up to keep from getting caught in undertows. We have support options that are possible at different levels of capacity. And more importantly, we build ways to recover ourselves or have alternate avenues of support when the others are unavailable. You can definitely build a good connection with good people out there, and I hope you get there eventually!