(no subject)

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

Dear Fellow Multiples,
Never before have I posted to a community and you simply cannot imagine my terror, as I am very shy. I am writing for another member of my Household- who has been miserable about being part of a system for months and months now. I know full well that if she could push a magic button to make all of us go away so that she could have the body to herself, she'd most likely do it.
I know that Hannie is very afraid of what happens to her when she is not fronting. We know the concept of there being an inner world, and indeed we do have a visionary world where we go when we are not fronting, but we have no sense that it is continuous. She fears annihilation- that when she is not fronting she could essentially be asleep or dead. It is very similar to another in our group- Morpho- and her childhood fear of going to sleep. She knew that she had some sort of inner dream life, but she couldn't remember what it was. It was that gray curtain of forgetting, that lack of continuity, that terrified her.
No one else in our system troubles themselves about where they are when they are not fronting or actively awake in the mind. We don't have the same fears of annihilation. If we are not able to front, we know we will front later- and after all, what's so special about fronting anyway? The truth is we can take or leave it, and because we are less afraid we have more control over our coming and going.
Few of us have tremendous control over wether we front or not, or exactly when. I find that it's like trying to steer a sailboat in a windstorm. The lack of control is fine if you want to flit in and out of corporeality with no purpose in mind, but Hannie likes to make plans, and that's where we fail. Hannie says that if she makes plans to have a date with the boyfriend, someone else will arrive. If she tries to read a book, it will gather dust and someone else will put it back on the shelf. It's not that we're intentionally tryng to bump her off, but we do seem to pop up out of nowhere.
Here is the reason for this rambling post. I know that there are people in this community who are what they call functional systems. I suppose they have house meetings, control over who comes out when, perhaps a schedule, and they must be having full lives even when they are not fronting. Would you mind telling me HOW your Household attained these skills? And were you functional systems always that way, or did you learn anything that you could share with us?

Laurelin for Tir Nan Og

Comments

[nematoddity.livejournal.com]

Well, I think as the only singlet on the board, I can't help you with functional systems--the rest of mine are asleep--but I do understand Hannie's fear. I'm slowly chipping away at it, but I had this huge fear for the longest time, after I realized I was a multiple, that some day, someone else was going to wake up and that would be it for me, I'd be gone. Since I was pretty much created as a social mask, and I've been left holding the reins for...gods, five, six years now, it's a BIG fear.

It's growing less, over time, but yeah--the feeling that suddenly, everything I know could be snatched away--it's terrifying. What if I don't come back? What if I'm no longer a part of 'my' life? Part of it comes from insecurity--the idea that it was never 'my' life to begin with...also, part of comes from the fact that I was never conscious of having other folks inside, being other people...I just had blackouts and people looking at me funny. Never connected it until I got married. :)

I'm sure Hannie would understand. Tell Hannie acceptance makes it easier, time makes the fear smaller, and just hang in there.

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

I think that fear of vanishing is not so dissimilar to the fear of bodily death- that it could all be taken away in an instant. It seems that impermenance is just a fact of life wether one is singlet and multiple, and perhaps those of us who must take turns sharing a body are more aware of it?
I'm sure acceptance does make it easier. I know Hannie was always haunted by the idea that it was never her life to begin with, or at any rate she doesn't seem to have been the first. Some of us are jealous on one level or another of the two who were firstborn, who had years and years to front uninterrupted. Oddly, those two firstborn seem not to care very much wether they front or not. I suppose it's because their fronting is so compulsive or manditory that they need not worry about it- they are bound by negative conditioning and limited ideas of themselves from the past, and every time familiar patterns repeat themselves (family gatherings, for instance) they must be there. Now that I think of it, we who came later are lucky.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

I think as the only singlet on the board
I'm afraid that's me at the moment too, since for the second time on record my others have faded.

I never knew where they went when they weren't up front with me. I couldn't step away from the front, and I was effectively blind to what was going on unless they were close or talking to me.

To begin with, it was hard to ration time effectively...Amariyah was out a lot and she was quite demanding. I felt guilty denying her time if she wanted to do something.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

i thought i was the only one who's others fade...

sorry for the side comment...

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

After we were put in the hospital and lost our virginity to our psychiatrist, for eight years or so one of us was completely on her own. The others were dead as far as she knew. Those were eight lost, wasted years. That was a loss of communication in our household based on trauma, but we have also had the fading out variety, where someone doesn't seem to be interested in contact and just goes out of reach, or into hibernation.

[kuponutmalt.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, I'm the same way! ;p I thought I was the only one on here like that. I, too, started out as a "social mask," but have since developed my own sentience. Unfortunately, as I was designed as a singlet, the insiders tend to fade away and have no interest in fronting quite often--especially when we're just starting to get along and get things done. I've been alone for a couple months now. ;( I want to go inside like they do, but I can't leave the front and figure out what's going on when they're not near me.

replying to your post with a rambling comment ;-)

[qilora.livejournal.com]

"I know that there are people in this community who are what they call functional systems. I suppose they have house meetings, control over who comes out when, perhaps a schedule, and they must be having full lives even when they are not fronting. Would you mind telling me HOW your Household attained these skills? And were you functional systems always that way, or did you learn anything that you could share with us? "


hello Laurelin of Tir Nan Og.

well, we would consider our system (Qílóra) to be a functional-household... but we do not control or schedule who is going to front the body... we have been plural most of our lives (as far as we can remember, that is), and i really don't know *what* it was that made us work together like we do...

i think it might have been the neglect that we were experiencing when the body was a child, and we learned then that we *would* die, if we did not work together and provide a united "group" of sorts (note: not "integrated", more like a company/family)..

we don't schedule meetings, and when they *do* happen, it is more like a split-second or two that we will suddenly hear an announcement in-house, like "Eve wants us to keep a kosher kitchen, any objections?" and we just listen and "feel" if anyone has problems with the query, and take it from there....

we *did* have times in our life, when we were *not* working well together, but much of that was due to our miscommunication and horrible short-term memory (from the seizures/tumor), and once we were able to find diet, supplaments, and pharmaceuticals that controlled our seizures and hypoglycemia, we started to work (again) together as a if we had a shared goal in life, that being keeping this body as healthy and safe as possible, so that all within it have the ability to live their lives through it...

we have found *much* help in the journal keeping, either printed or online, but honestly the online journals (like LJ) are much more helpful to us because they allow us to upload the memory posts, organize the LJs according to system-member and scroll through the writing (the type on the screen being much more easy to read than our own longhand scribblings)... a lot of our fear of "death" (like the "ceasing of existance" that our system-members might feel) seems to have eased some, along with our personal feelings of conflict and feelings of being possibly "ignored"... the LJs make us all feel like we have rooms of our own..

we also have several subjective-worlds (OtherWorlds, Soulscapes, ad infinitum!), but just because one of us is not fronting, does not mean that the next time they front, they will have any "memory" of life-experiences in our OtherWorlds... sometimes, they just have a vague sensation of co-existing and being somewhat in a dream... not interacting with the 3D to a degree that one would call fronting... maybe even blurring with the fronting individuals...

there are also times when we will make contact with an individual who is coming to the front, and suddenly realise that they had experienced a great *deal* while in-house, and we have no recollection of the situation passing, it is then sometimes that the other person will pass days, weeks, or more(!) of their life, into our co-conscious space... and it takes us a minute or so to make sense of what we are feeling/seeing ... it can be disorienting, but it is not a sign (to us at least) that there is anything wrong with our system of communication... this is just how we happen to function together...

but i am sure it is like anything else... what works for one person or system, won't necessarily work for *everyone* else out there...

hugs to you and yours,
Ulla & Co.

Re: replying to your post with a rambling comment ;-)

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

It is good to know that spending time in Otherworlds does not mean that you will remember the experience the next time you front. We tend to have the disconcerting sensation as we come to the front of not only forgetting what happened on the inside, but needing to be updated on where we are in the outerworld and what has recently happened! A sort of total jamais-vu as apposed to deja-vu!
I get the feeling that being there for eachother and loving eachother as a family is THE crucial ingredient to be as functional a system as you can. We have come somewhat closer to that, but I think at least half of Hannie's problem is her terrible trust issues, even with others in the system! Recently our boyfriend gave Hannie the assignment of talking to one other Tirnanogian a day, even if it was about something trivial. She balked to a suprising degree. I hope there will be improvements on this front, as it must be terrible not to trust the others in your own head.

Re: replying to your post with a rambling comment ;-)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Your boyfriend gives assignments to people in your group? Are you doing therapy for each other? (There's a word for it that I can't remember -- it's the kind of therapy Freud's student Ferenczi found most useful) We used to hear about the occasional multiple who would have his/her spouse do all the therapy ... all the listening and suggestions and so on. I know it can work. It sounds like Hannie doesn't trust your boyfriend any more than she trusts you other guys in there.

When we've been on Laura we don't remember detail at all well when we come front again; getting things like the language into earthworld awareness has taken us thirty years.

As far as how we have meetings and decide things, that depends on what kind of decision it is, and what guilds or councils are involved. High Council meets at least three times a year, Guardian Council whenever they need or want to, Common Council is town meetings that goes on pretty much all the time everywhere. Then there's all the discussions in the coffeeshops and the bars ... Politics on Laura is both transparently simple and godawfully complicated. But I can tell you that communication is the key to everything. I can repost our description of our communication system here. We also talk about this on worldswithin so you might check over there.

Re: replying to your post with a rambling comment ;-)

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

The assignments are reciprocal. There was a time when Chris was such a mess that he was considering going on medication, which as far as we are concerned would be a real shame, and unnecessary. So Hannie made this list of things she thought would be a good idea for him to do, at his request. A lot of these tasks were things like eating two meals a day as apposed to one- Chris is quite the workaholic. So it was understandable that when Hannie realized that she wasn't able to get over her feelings about us as a group, it was natural for her to ask for tasks just to see what he'd come up with.
We do rather do therapy on eachother. In our case, it is our only way to get feedback, because going to a therapist is out of the question. Especially to Hannie and John it is absolutely out of the question. A multiple in therapy- they'd have a field day. They'd slobber over the chance to work on us like barracudas with fresh meat!
Does Hannie trust Chris? I think she trusts him more than those in her system, which perhaps isn't saying much. She trusts him to be Chris, which means that he will promote an asking for help from the outside world (with regard to autism, which we both have- but quick veering away as it is off topic) that makes her uncomfortable.
I will certainly check out your link. Many thanks!
Morpho/Roman

Re: replying to your post with a rambling comment ;-)

[jinxtigr.livejournal.com]

Tir_nan_og, and probably especially Hannie Marten, has been more helpful to me than years of 'therapy', because they and Hannie see aspects of me that I am all too willing to ignore. They're so familiar with depersonalization that they will not take that from me. It's not actually good for me to bury myself in work-to-justify-my-existence. It's much harder to tolerate being a Real Person, but also important for me to accept.
Hannie trusts me more than the other Tirnanogians- she said so. That doesn't mean it's a whole lot, but more. I was really pretty shocked to hear it.
I also thought it was a very pleasingly anti-psychiatric-nonsense counsel to give. Where some of the 'helping professions' would say, work to control or suppress your others, it seemed the most sensible thing in the world to suggest to Hannie that she should make friends with them. Who on this or any earth can be more there for you? They can't NOT be there. And they are people- last week I shocked Tir by recognizing Laurelin coming front BEFORE she said a word. I'm quietly horrified that Hannie (who is the only one who can both front and block everybody from knowing what she's thinking) can't trust anyone else in Tir_nan_og.
But that's not what I'm asking- I asked her to TALK to someone else every day. Even if she can't, I bet it would be as enlightening as when she asked me to rest for an hour every day.
...which is something I've got to do more of, it's been too many weeks since truly doing that. I am reading and resting from time to time but it doesn't seem as powerful as the full-on, lie for an hour trying not to run my mind experience.

Re: replying to your post with a rambling comment ;-)

[qilora.livejournal.com]

"I get the feeling that being there for eachother and loving eachother as a family is THE crucial ingredient to be as functional a system as you can."

that is *definitely* an ideal that we would like to keep to, but honestly, it sometimes just has to come down to mutual respect (if not love)...

knowing, damn well, that if one of us were to treat another in-house *intentionally* poorly (i.e. intentionally do or say things (esp. in the 3D) that would hurt that person or complicate his/her life) then *we* would be risking the loss of our 3D rights, or even jeopardize our rights to remain in Qílóra itself...


"Hannie the assignment of talking to one other Tirnanogian a day, even if it was about something trivial. She balked to a suprising degree. I hope there will be improvements on this front, as it must be terrible not to trust the others in your own head."

oh definitely... when we are talking about such public arenas as working together in the 3D, at the same company, it even sucks if we do not trust those people, and following that thread into greater and greater levels of intimacy, like one's 3D birth-family, one's circle of friends, one's lover/partner, and then into one's own system... i think that feeling mistrust in these areas probably increases the amount of unhappiness that all parties experience...

to feel distrust for those of your own system, is literally *crippling* (speaking for ourselves, and past issues with it)...

so i very much wish Hannie success.. we also send her our support and want her to know she can call on us if she needs to...

hugs,
Ulla & Co.

[chrisau8r.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I had something to say and I can't remember it...

*listens to chirpy one with better memory*

Right. We're mostly functional here, but short term memory can be a problem for a couple of us (eg me, as you've just seen :)), and I also have problems with age sliding, but for the most part the ones who are big enough to be out and especially Jessiah who's big, in charge, and can pretend to be me for the most part (since I'm the one who has most interaction even though I'm only like 12 most of the time *pout* I hate work), um yeah what was I saying? Them big folk can keep an eye on what's going on and come in if they have to.

System wide messages, yeah, we get that. We have meetings for bigger stuff, like when Dat decided he absolutely didn't want to be boss anymore, but mostly we just feel/know/hear what the general question is and answer it.

We have a system inside-place. It's a little country by the same name of the system - Eridanus. Mostly forest, a beach, mountains, and "the in-between places" past the borders. We've had a couple of people wandering over the borders in both directions, but they can't tell us much about them. Rain is mostly resident here now. All we can gather is that the in-between places aren't actually in a system. And I'm getting off-track. Yeah, the ones who front most are me, Dat, Becca, Jessiah, and sometimes Rain, Tian... Mareku's been out a couple of times but he doesn't speak English so that's harder. But yeah, none of us major out people don't have fears like that. If anything, there are those (like Miranda and Merlin) who are worried that if they come out they won't get back in.

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

We have a great deal of age sliding in our world...Hannie does not share in that..and it occurs to me that we have no system of adults or gaurdians who will look after those who have the potential to be children even while fronting. It's anarchy! This is also something that could be negotiated and improved.

[ex-kiota.livejournal.com]

She could try making a schedule for herself - for example, if she has plans for a date, she could write it down somewhere prominent where hopefully whoever's fronting will see it and clear off during that time. Maybe get a big calendar where everyone could write down their plans?

About her fear of not fronting... I don't know if it's possible with your system, but with us I often front with someone kind of hanging around in the background, not actively doing anything, but sort of co-fronting, if that makes sense...

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

We do have co-fronting sometimes, although I seem to be aware of less of it since we quit coffee! We have thought of the schedule and it seems sensible, and it only remains to be seen wether it can be worked out in practice. The problem is getting the person who's out instead to clear off. Once Laurelin did clear off for Hannie, and it was a fairly big sacrifice to make as Laurelin herself was only out for the third time in twenty years! The question of who has the greater need to be out..that's confusing. I've often wondered how systems with lots of people schedule who is out when. It seems that if we divided up the time among ten or more, we'd just have little increments where each person can't do much in terms of their own interests. It would be like taking a very full courseload in college and skimming each subject!

[pengke.livejournal.com]

You are taking the idea of scheduling time too literally. It doesn't have to be in equal even increments. If someone wants to read a book you can simply schedule some time for them to sit down to read it. If someone wants to spend time with someone else that they haven't seen a lot of, you can just agree that that one set day is going to be just for them.

Scheduling can also be more about having a heirarchy of who gets to use the body and when. For example, with us someone that rarely asks to do something will get what they want the most frequently. With people that frequently do things involving the body, the people fulfilling day-to-day responsibilities usually get first choice on what to do with the free time. Of course, if someone's been asking for a while and getting set aside then they'll take priority.

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

Okay. That's extremely helpful. We do tend to take things extremely literally, so I appreciate this clarification.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I gotta go with pengke on this... we have known only one household to rigorously schedule body time for each and every person. It ended up really fascist. Like you said, each person wasn't really able to do much in terms of their own interests; they were getting like ten minutes a day each. Or less. One girl had a record she liked and we were told that nobody else in their group liked this kind of music so the rule was something like "Joyce gets to listen to one song off her record every week".

This is the same group that told us we were "mean" for "not letting the kids out..." hell, our kids don't want to come out because they don't like the body. This group used to make a big show of "see, Donny gets to come out and practice juggling for ten minutes every day" while we were coming and going organically like we always, which drove them nutters. To them, the body and earth world life were the only thing that mattered, even though they had a place elsewhere (a big house with a yard and a nearby golf course).

This is turning into kind of a rant. Oh well.

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

I never did understand how literally scheduling could be anything but fascist, but at the same time had the erroneous idea that this was what multiple systems who had control just did!

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Nah. There are many different kinds of operating systems. Most of our people never front at all, and don't want to. What we're talking about here is more like making sure the people who want to do things up front get to... Gabe attending Temple services on Friday, or Andy and jade rented an avant-garde film and they want to make Irish coffee and watch it.

However, the way we're set up, just because Andy and jade are front doesn't mean someone else can't wander up front and join them. People might be back a bit from the front, hanging out in the studio (other households call this "the porch" or "the sunroom" -- a bit back from the front, watching and commenting on the action without participating).

Also, when there's something a lot of people want to see, it'll be ethercast back to Laura and picked up on Newsnet (CNN) or one of the public entertainment channels.

So that's one possible setup.

[kuponutmalt.livejournal.com]

We do the same thing. Since there are only a few people here, it's much easier to manage--and especially since most of the insiders are, well, insiders and they don't like to be out much. Often, though, they'll wander up and sit nearby (like your studio) and see what's going on and talk to me (since I'm always here). And, because they're not around often, I'll let them make suggestions as to what to do (i.e. Iria wants to go over there and look at that flower while we're walking home). I suppose it's much more difficult when you have lots of people who always want to do stuff. For me, we've always had a system like pengke: whoever makes the least requests gets highest priority.

Ugh.

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

We've run into that issue ourselves. Problem is, trying to let things go completely as they come can result in one of us not getting enough time to do much of anything. Just enough time to put something on the to-do list, not enough time to check it off. (Which makes the arrangement you desccribed seem extremely frustrating.) Also, depending on the environment, it can result in one of us sitting in the background, with little to do to engage our minds. Periods of restlessness that last over a week are not good.

Developing better time management skills has been a high-priority system goal as of late. Procrastinating really is something we shouldn't be fronting to do. *laughs*

Then again, we have also been known to run the body at a pace that leaves everyone around us gasping for air. Eventually, we need a break.

--Me

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

For the record, Chris Costner-Sizemore (Eve) never did know where she went when other people came out and since she had no co-consciousness or communication she always feared that she might be disappearing or dying at that time. I think she might talk about this somewhat in her book (I'm Eve). It takes a lot of faith and trust to step back under these circumstances.

Although we have little or no control over who fronts and it seems to happen in a kind of organic or biochemical way, we can still tell that the people who are not fronting are still around and will come back, and usually we can talk to them.

We've always felt that this had something to do with the other places being in other dimensions and things just don't translate very well.

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

"It takes a lot of faith and trust to step back under those circumstances."
Damn straight! It is not an enviable circumstance to be in, and seems to push you dramatically towards constant fear, dullness as you try to blind yourself to your own transience, or a sort of holy-fool-leaping-into-the-abyss enlightenment.

[jinxtigr.livejournal.com]

Holy-fool-leaping-into-the-abyss is exactly how I feel most of the time, and I'm not even multiple.
When it works, you find you can somehow fly.
Otherwise, you go AAAAAAaaaaaaaaa! and the next thing you know, you're in the next situation, standing there on solid ground waiting to leap again.
Actually it kinda sucks, but I like it better than constant fear- that's really debilitating.

[nynomi.livejournal.com]

We're mostly co-conscious and mostly all either out or just beneath the surface a lot - but there are some of us who sleep. We just think of it as sleeping, and know we'll wake up.

We've worked on visualizing and trying to create an inner space for one of the kids, Luna Beth, that will comfort her because she binge eats when she comes out due to her fear of being unloved/abandoned by her mother, and her resentment of the fact we don't eat the foods she loves very often. So far it hasn't quite worked in terms of getting her a place inside where she can go eat, but she at least has a bedroom she is willing to go to sometimes when we ask her. (She tends to yank the front away from all the rest of us though, so there isn't a lot of dialogue possible.)