Mapping Your System

[nontrinity.livejournal.com]

Hey everyone. We found this article today, Mapping Your System, and were wondering if these kinds of things really help communication and stuff.

Most of us are leaning toward the scrapbook idea, but it'll be a HUGE undertaking since it's so hard to wrangle everyone up to participate in a group activity like that. And the littles are loving the idea of making a jigsaw puzzle where everyone designs their own piece.

So yeah, has anyone here tried to "map" their system?

Uvidi

Comments

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Yes, several times, and failed miserably. Too many independent and complex individuals (including myself), too many factors to consider. Perhaps this works better for trauma/split groups, or those who are not communicating; I could never get it to work at all, but then we were already communicating so perhaps there was no need.

I must say I felt rather inadequate at being unable to create such a map. I was doing it much more for a singlet friend to whom I attempted to explain us, than for ourselves. He was much better able to understand us as persons via Jason's drawings of us, and he likes our LiveJournal icons. @8)

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

have you tried a "family tree" of sorts, instead? Correct me if I'm wrong, but on your world you have multiples, also...a "Tree" would help map out those individuals, as well, because you can start another page for that individual, and their individuals.

Just a suggestion, I hope I'm not out of place.

Wolf
Pack Collective

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

A census would be more like it. Yes, there are plurals on Laura -- it's considered a normal fact of life there that some people are.

It would work in so far as there are groups who could provide the names of all their people. As always there are some who can do this and some who can't or won't.

[idianshire.livejournal.com]

Probably if we did something close to an anthropological study we coudl get a decent map of our community, but no one here has the inclination or time to do such an extensive study. We have minor maps, simple data collections, things like names, ages, tribes and professions.

The woman that wrote the article used to be a friend of ours, many years ago. We tried to follow her suggestion but the idea of mapping that she seems to produce are very associated with the idea of a whole that has been splintered. And I don't know if it really works with other types of multiplicty

Dictation

[violetkhirot.livejournal.com]

"We couldn't pull it off at all. The biggest consideration is that any kind of charting or mapping work is absolutely torturous for most of us; we can think in terms of document ordering and semantic tagging, but that's as far as it goes. There was also the problem of not everyone wanting, or being able, to play along -- a few actively resist categorization, from the looks of it."

Further to that: we generally find activities along those lines to be somewhat forced. If anyone inside feels like engaging in such things, they tend to want to do it on their own.

[gryphons.livejournal.com]

yeah we do it pretty regularly.. at least to get an idea of how things are going who's around..usually it's just a like a census sorta thing..

[shatterstorm.livejournal.com]

We don't map, several of us are very privacy sensitive.

It has been interesting to watch some of our less open people join in and make one of their own now and again. Lately we've been doing a bit of collage-type stuff and several people who rarely speak up have been participating. Doing activities where you give people a chance to speak up doesn't hurt communication any. ;)

[shatterstorm.livejournal.com]

ack! poor wording - "and make one of their own now and again" was referring to the scrapbook type idea.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Some of the frontrunners did, when we were in high school. The problem was that we were basing it off of various things that didn't apply to our system-- having everyone split off of an original person, having an "inner self-helper" type who knew who everyone was (we pegged someone as being it, but she really didn't fill the role), having people exist to handle certain emotions (I actually know where they got the idea that we did, but it wasn't exactly that), etc.

The best we've really managed to do is come up with lists of who might be likely to take the front at a given time (the rotation of frontrunners changes every so often).

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

we've mapped...i think. I'm too lazy just now to click the link, but Tara's made an actual map of our system with people's relations to each other, and then, of course, we've got our faq, which tells our story chronologically.

Wolf
Pack Collective

[little-heather.livejournal.com]

To quote ksol..."Yes, several times, and failed miserably."
The main fronters here tried to do it before i was born and they say it just never worked no matter what they tried. It was too complicated and something was always screwed up about it.

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

We've tried making some based on "connections", but it gets frustrating because of the numbers. Most of us don't have any family connection to one another. We do have families, though, but we'd end up with a bunch of separate pages of family trees with only 5 on a page or just one.

We stick with making bios and collecting images of ourselves. The images we find sometimes are exactly how we appear, though other times it's what we'd either wish we looked like, or the image gives off a mood or has some characteristics one of us may have. Or it may be what we'd like to look like if we were human (for the human pics).

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

There's only three of us, so it wouldn't be much of a 'map'.

[pthalo]

our therapist wanted us to, so Jo wrote her a letter and rambled about different people in our system, relationships between them. we aren't sure if that's exactly what she wanted but Jo was the best person for it and even she didn't list everyone (we have an unknown number of people who are happy to keep themselves shut up in their rooms and not interact with the rest of us). She wrote what kinds of things we like to do but we shied away from "Pthalo's job is shit duty. Jolie's job is to be cute. blahblah" because we don't really have jobs anyway. Shit duty is just Pthalo's short hand for what she feels like she's doing (freaking out about school, currently. previously dealing with abusive aunt we lived with for four years and freaking out about not having enough money to eat (another problem that's been solved)) Pthalo's also Jolie's mommy and Marissa's girlfriend and she likes to paint and write. Jolie likes playing with toys and coloring and she's very smart and asks all sorts of questions about everything. Jo's a mommy too and her baby's always with her. Jenny sort of kept things together for a while. We all did, really.

Who knows what my "job" is. I'm just me.