Scary headspace

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

For those who don't know, I'm a mid-continuum, which I liken to being a mental shapeshifter. When I "put on" different "masks," I become other people. I call being that person or thing to be "in [such-and-such] headspace."

Most of these headspaces are places I regularly go, whether they are becoming one of the main ones I become (multiples would call these "system mates"), or others I don't become very often. I also like to experiment, try to get into the headspace of other people or other creatures, even into fictional people and creatures (especially ones I have created).

A month or so ago, I decided to experiment at getting myself into the headspace of a shape-shifting race I made up for a series of stories. They call themselves "Nothingness"es, for a variety of reasons. Anyway, I knew their headspace would be vastly different from my own, being that they are extremely intelligent, control their emotions uncannilly well, and think of humans as "clever animals," who have the goal of manipulating human breeding to uplift humans to their level of intelligence.

So anyway, I went through with it, got into the headspace of a Nothingness... IT. SCARED. ME. WITLESS. While in this headspace, I was not scared. Far from it, I felt like a Nothingness. Cool, calm, calculating, with an arrogance so powerful that it would make the Romulans of Star Trek look humble; an arrogance so powerful that it transcended arrogance altogether. I wrote an email to my girlfriend Lilla, replying to an email she'd sent me, while in this headspace. I wish I hadn't. We eventually got past the incident, since it had scared both of us. As a Nothingness, I was quite civil and polite with her, but reading it over again later, it seethed a form of malevolence that was quiet and bereft of passion, and was directed at her as though it were pity directed at a bug that was fascinating but you would squish it as soon as you grew bored of it. In the letter, I clearly laid out the point of view of the Nothingness race.
It was little wonder the incident scared her. Reading the letter later, I was terrified. I've decided never to go into that headspace again. The view of the Nothingnesses are much like those of utilitarian bioethicists, and those SOB's terrify me.

Anyone else ever gone into headspace that scared them witless?

Chaotic Blessings;
---Fayanora

Comments

[pthalo]

some of my headspaces scare me. the emo suicidal despair that I sometimes get into for absolutely no reason scares me quite a bit. (I = me, pthalo, talking about different phases of my own personality not about the others). I try to avoid being out much when I'm in a funk. So far I've been very good at not hurting the body in...I don't know how many years.

There are a few of the others that scare me and I do try to avoid them or in certain situations keep them from being in the front (I try not to keep an iron hand on things and I'm more than happy when the others want to be in the body, but I have some creepy half memories of bad things that we might've done where I remember the beginning but not the end when someone else (don't know who) took over and might have hurt someone and I very fastidiously avoid the possibility of anything like that happening again. I don't want to go into details, just trust me on this one.) I think what creeps me out the most is I don't know who it was or even what happened and you get the picture. It was a long long time ago.

And there are others in the system who creep me out. Chicken Little, who doesn't front, just hangs out in the background and talks to you when you're fronting and she only seems interested in doing this when we're outside after dark and then she tells us in gory detail how we're about to be raped. That really freaks me out but for about a year--since I know that these are people, not voices that freak me out for no reason--I've been better about not hissing "shut up" and actually addressing them like people "I know you're scared. It's okay. We're safe. I won't let anything happen. We'll be home in two minutes." and that's helped matters a great deal.

And someone who doesn't seem capable of fronting but just sits around in her room wallowing in shit (literally) and screams when you go near here (so I don't go near her because she doesn't seem to want company), screams you can hear even if you're in the body.. that freaks me out too. But I try not to think about it.

I've experienced a bit of "nothingness" too, never in present, usually in flashbacks where the body just seems completely empty and the only feeling is physical pain. no emotions, no reaction, no thought, no consciousness, just pain. it feels like i've slipped into the memory of an empty body and that really freaks me out.

Pthalo

[pthalo]

your emo suicidal despair scares the rest of us too kthx. at least you co-operate with taking breaks from the body when you're in it. :p

anonymous.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your words.

The term "Nothingness" is their species name. It's a name given to them by other species on their planet (like humans), given because of a common myth about them: "they can hide anywhere, so beware! They can even hide in the nothingness betwixt the air itself."
They liked the name for another reason... in their opinion, they are trying to "make something" of humans and other "lesser" mortals. They are cellular carbon based lifeforms like us, just very highly evolved physically. Emotionally, they have much work.

Bear in mind, also, it's a fictional race living on an impossible world.

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

can you define your meaning of "headspace"? do you mean another realm or an "inner world"? I'm not really sure what you mean when you say "headspace".. thanks.. :)

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

mindset

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

so.. jumping into other people's minds?

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

No. More like trying to "become" the other person. I'm not any good at it where real people are concerned, though... not enough information about people's minds to take an accurate form.

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

a bit like what an actor will do when they take on a performing role? or when someone is role playing a character? they also try to become another person in those instances..

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Re: Headspace

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

"Headspace" is the morphing of my own shape-shifting mind into the form of another's mind. It is, in relation to the mind, what shape-shifters like Odo on Star Trek: DS9 are when they assume the physical form of someone. They are still themselves, but they are "being" another.

Headspace, then, is the mental equivalent of an assumed form. With enough information, I could take the mental form of any person. Though I am not very good at it where real people are concerned. Most of my mental forms are amalgamations of different people.

Re: Headspace

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

if you do this too often, how can you be sure you are still you?

Re: Headspace

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

How can a changeling like Odo know when he is still himself?

I have to concentrate to take most forms. The only forms that come easily to me are those that represent aspects of myself, like Alexander, Molly, Lo, and so on. When I am relaxed, I am me. I am the whole. I contain the potential to become any "form," but when I relax, I am noone but myself. There is a basic underlying nature to who I am (which is, for the most part: kind, understanding, patient, and loving). I am defined by this nature, and I can't make it more clear than that. I just know.

Granted, at least one of these forms I take (Alexander) is contrary to my basic nature. But he was born to help me cope with being bullied and outcaste as a child. Hopefully in time he will return to the Whole, or learn to make his nature more like the nature of the Whole... that is, keeping the strong and positive parts of his nature, but exchanging his negativity for peace and patience.

Re: Headspace

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

"How can a changeling like Odo know when he is still himself?"

I think that shape shifting a body is different than shape shifting a mind..

but I do understand what you're explaining here..

Re: Headspace

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I think that shape shifting a body is different than shape shifting a mind

Not by much. Especially since Odo has to get into the headspace of whatever form he takes. The other changelings had to also get into the headspace of the people they replaced. In order to fool people into thinking s/he was Dr. Bashir, that changeling that replaced Bashir had to think like him in order to act like him. But always in the background hiir own consciousness was waiting behind the mask.

Re: Headspace

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

I suppose it would depend on the shape shifter.. I doubt they are all like the Star Trek character..

Re: Headspace

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I just use that character as a frame of reference, of course.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Oooh, another aspecter.

Nope, nothing's ever scared me (except my own personality, but only when I was an emo teen!). I'm only verrry faintly aspecty, though, and tend to keep tight control of it. I "use" different "masks", though not as often as I ought to.

Nothingnesses sound interesting. Unless you've known yourself to slip into mask without intending to, I'd say you don't have anything to worry about.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Yes, aspecting, that's right. I remember that term, now. My girlfriend Lilla and her ex-boyfriend can both aspect, though he does it better than either of us.

Well, truth be told, aspecting is what it is sometimes. But not always. When I am Alexander, or Molly, or Lo, or one of the Others, I am not aspecting, because they are me. They may have started, once upon a time, as mere mental forms, but now they are part of my soul.

I have to concentrate when I aspect, I don't even have to think about it when I become one of the Others, like Lo or Alexander. Even Shao'Kehn, who is beginning to share a soul with me, I have to concentrate to aspect Her.

Also, "aspecting," though a correct term, implies reaching out to an outside source and becoming that mental form. Which may be true some of the time, but not always. Lots of times, I reach inward. For example, the Others like Alexander and Lo and so on, the pieces of them already existed in me. I already behaved as they did, thought as they thought, believed as they believed, at one point in my life or another. When they are not fronting, they return to that state of union with me. They don't disperse, of course, but the drops become the ocean again, and can become drops again whenever they choose. They are a part of me, after all.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm using "aspecting" in a slightly wrong sense, then, when I apply it to myself. Get a different definition for it wherever you read, of course.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Get a different definition for it wherever you read, of course.

Indeed.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Utilitarian bioethicists believe in killing, destroying, and de-humanizing those who aren't fit (in their eyes) to live. For the betterment of humanity, those people decide these "non-persons" deserve destruction.

My own take is compassionate... don't destroy, fix. Fix what's wrong, or try to fix it. A utilitarian bioethicist would disagree with me, saying it would be a waste of resources to try to fix the problem.

He would say it's easier to destroy the problem than to fix it. But *I* would say, it should never be easy to kill. It should be impossible. I would say that the only people who could be considered inhuman is anyone who could destroy life with such ease, or promote its easy destruction. But that even - especially - such people should be dealt with compassionately, trying to heal the wounds that would cause such a devaluing of life. Because anyone who could kill another human being on purpose is mentally ill and needs help healing, so humanity can heal with them.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Then you are defining the entire human race as mentally ill, for under the right circumstances anyone can and will kill another human being, or many other human beings, on purpose.

Do you also define all other aggressive species as being of unsound mind? The deer, the bears, the mice, the gorillas, the seals - every species in which it is usual for individuals to attack one another in competition for food, mates or territory - all are to be accounted mentally ill, and thus in need of compassionate healing to cure them of their sickness?

Humans kill each other for the same reasons other animals kill members of their own species. It is foolish to label behavior essential to survival as 'illness'. If you would reduce human aggression, find a way to reduce the human population to a level where competition for resources is no longer necessary.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Then you are defining the entire human race as mentally ill

Yes.

Earth is the insane assylum of the universe. People think that just because everyone and everything is mad on this planet, that the whole universe - the whole omniverse - must be mad as well. Actually, this is where souls who have gone insane go to heal. Or to get worse. But hopefully to heal. Or to try to help heal the others, which requires a form of madness anyway.

Think about it... herbivores who attack their own kind, the existence in many creatures of murder, rape, violence against one's own kind. I saw a show on Discovery channel about a kind of deer that ate meat in addition to its usual diet of plants. I also read on About.com about a parasite with such instinctual knowledge of humans that it can actually cause violent murderous fits in otherwise sane-appearing human beings. Now all those stories on Unsolved Mysteries about people just losing their minds without warning and killing their whole family and themselves, those stories make sense now. Some of them, at least, were pronably caused by those parasites. Maybe not all or even most, but some.

The more I look around at the world, the more I become convinced that there isn't a sane species of life form on this planet.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

I will not argue against your faith, but I see no reason to subscribe to it myself.

There are many kinds of deer that eat meat, or more commonly fish. Sheep and goats will eat the young of ground-nesting birds. This has always been known; the fact that you did not know it until your television told you does not make it an aberration.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

This has always been known

They're not true herbivores, then. And the commonality of this only strengthens my position.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Among the mammals are few you would consider true herbivores, then, for most will eat flesh under certain circumstances if it is available to them.

I do not see how this could be considered to strengthen your position as you claim. You are asserting that souls which have presumably originated elsewhere are deliberately sent to this place by some overseeing agency or entity for the purpose of curing what you label "insanity". The fact that many animals classed as herbivores are not wholly herbivorous does not support such an assertion in any way.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

The fact that many animals classed as herbivores are not wholly herbivorous does not support such an assertion in any way.

If they eat meat on purpose, as well as plants, they are omnivores. Not herbivores.

A planet where you can't trust that herbivores only eat plants? How is that NOT insane?

[duathir.livejournal.com]

They are scientifically classed as herbivores, therefore they are herbivores. Taxonomy is not inviolable natural law; it is only an arbitrary filing-system made by men - useful but sometimes inaccurate, like all such systems, and subject to change. Do you also think it "insane" when you find a map to be less than perfectly accurate?

In my experience, this is a planet where it is folly to put one's trust in any premise that has not been proven by experience, or that cannot be so proven. Having never lived on any other planet (so far as I can determine), I am not qualified to make statements about how matters may stand elsewhere, but I see no reason to suppose they are any different.

If you claim that you have lived on some other planet where words and experience never conflict, I must consider the claim unprovable, and therefore untrustworthy. I think it unlikely that one whose knowledge of this planet's life is based on television programs and web-sites made for children would be a reliable source of information about life in other places. If by logic or demonstration you can support your premises, I am willing to consider them, but as I have stated, I will not argue about faith, for I find such arguments futile.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Well it has been my experience that the human race, at least, are all insane.

I think it unlikely that one whose knowledge of this planet's life is based on television programs and web-sites made for children would be a reliable source of information about life in other places.

EXCUSE ME? I have been reading from the adult section of the library since I was 10. I am an author and I do very serious and extensive research for my writings, since I have a deep desire to understand the world. So the point about herbivores was a little silly, I admit. But that doesn't change the fact that there is a lot of evidence to the theory that this planet is insane.

You don't know jack shit about me, nor I about you. But you don't see me making assumptions about you, judging you, based on a tiny bit of information, do you? Of course not. So I would appreciate it if you would do me the same courtesy, and keep your baseless opinions about me to yourself.

And one last thing: I call a truce. I have enough evidence to convince myself of my opinion, but admittedly I am still collecting information on the topic. It just seems to me that human behaviors are but one set of symptoms to a greater, worldwide, malease. This planet is tilted at a 23 degree angle, pulled on by a huge moon that used to be part of the planet; the planet wobbles on its axis; there are parasites that cause fits of homocidal and sociopathic rage in otherwise normal people; animals and people killing each other instead of cooperating; animals and people engaging in infanticide, rape, murder, torture, and purposeful environmental destruction (elephants come to mind... they purposefully uproot trees); dolphin pods waging war on other pods in areas of plenty.

Anyway, enough of that. Neither of us is going to convince the other. Let us not talk of this subject anymore.

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

But that doesn't change the fact that there is a lot of evidence to the theory that this planet is insane.

Provide it please. Also, please define insane for the purposes of this statement.

--Me

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Why is it so often considered horrible to learn that there are dark aspects in your mind? They exist in everyone, whether people want to admit it or not. The fact that they exist is the reason why 'ordinary people' can become complicit in atrocities.


Lilac

[catskillmarina.livejournal.com]

I remember an article, i think it was in National Geographic, about buddhist monks
meditating on that very fact, that all of us our capable of these acts that it is within
us.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I've seen my dark side before, and come to peace with it. Especially since I know that it is all talk and no action.

This was different, though. I'm fairly certain I'd snap out of that headspace before it could do anything violent, but... *shudders* My violent side is The Bitch, and I don't mind letting her front, since she is - as I said - all talk and no action. But the Nothingness... he would at least *try* to do something if he thought it was good for humanity's evolution. Don't want to risk it.

So

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

How, or why exactly do you define "The Bitch" as dark or violent? As you've stated, she's all talk. All talk and no action isn't violence, but talk about violence. There is a difference.

If she's not going to back up her words, she's just as "safe" as any white-lighter.

What you seem to be concerned about, is what you percieve as an actual potential danger or risk. What exactly do you fear he can or would try?


--Me

[ohnosir.livejournal.com]

There are some aspects of Jack's personality, and things I know he is capable of, that frighten me. Fortunately, I know he would not do anything unless I let him, so that eases my mind a little.

~DL