Empty system

(Namespace: plural glossary)

An empty system is a type of system who is also a singlet, in the sense that they feel they do not have headmates, but nonetheless identify with the plural and system labels in some way. They are, in effect, a system consisting of one singular headmate, themself, who, by process of elimination, is also the core, host, and/or original, and is frontstuck.

There could be a variety of reasons someone might identify this way:

• They may be DID/OSDD-diagnosed but not plural; that is, they have a DID/OSDD symptom profile and are a system in the medical sense, but their subjective lived experience of these symptoms is not framed in terms of headmates.
• They may feel somewhere between singlet and median, but closer to a singlet.
• They may want to show that they personally relate to and support the plural community, to such an extent as feeling they belong there and are among friends and like-minded people there, even though their own lived experience is not exactly comparable.
• They may be a member of a highly partitionary system, and have never actually met their headmates, knowing of them only due to evidence of actions they took while blacked out. For this reason, they might not consider them headmates at all, so much as simply a form of amnesia. More-or-less equivalently, they may be the only headmate occupying their subsystem, side system, or layer.
• They may in fact have and even be peripherally aware of headmates, but simply be deep in denial. (Even if you suspect this may be the case, they, not you, are the authoritative expert on the functioning of their own mind, and it is essential to respect and conform to the way they account for their own experience. If their framing of their perhaps-denial is that they do not have headmates, you should consider them for all intents and purposes not to have headmates and talk to and about them accordingly, until and unless they say otherwise.)
• They may experience a lot of dissociation or other quintessentially plural-like experiences but not in a manner organized into headmates per se.
• They may have headmates but feel that all of them are fragments.
• They may have headmates, but desire final fusion, and feel that taking personal accountability for their headmates is in alignment with that goal, whereas acknowledging their individuality is antithetical to it.

This list is not exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. Someone might identify as an empty system for more than one of these reasons and/or other reasons entirely.