Well, I am confident and comfortable because, in my experience, it was much harder being alone and walled off from the others than being connected to them.
When I was cut off, I had depression, anxiety, 'ghosting', and had wierd reactions to anything that reminded me of the others...like the reverse of the classic splitting model, almost.
Now I'm plagued by anxiety and uncertainty, but am much healthier than I was a few months ago. The fears will pass, and we are learning to work together. We are lucky in that none of us have any complications - no one here is really depressive, or has any serious issues beyond the normal life stuff, and we support each other as much as we can. All members will keep up to date on each other, and we sort out any fights/disagreements before they get out of hand. We resolved to do this from the get-go, pretty much.
I would say that communication is the first piece of learning to live together and cooperate. I think the reason we were able to get off to a good start is because we immediately started talking, writing, drawing and expressing ourselves to each other. If you are too frightened to talk to them, then in my experience, you get anxious and depressed. Writing to someone who you keep feeling and not understanding for the first time is exhilerating, imo. I remember writing to Tahl the first time, and finding that he was left-handed...he wrote pages with the off hand when I couldn't write my own name left-handed. Since then, we have conciously built connections and bridges to each other so that we can talk easily and clearly, but it has taken a lot of effort.
If you want to know how we do it, I can go into a bit. I'm a horrible analyst/academic writer, so I've kept very detailed notes on the mechanics of us building our system into what it is now. I think every person's experience is unique, but asking and talking to others about how they got working is probably a useful way to go, no matter what your goal is in the long run.
I'm on msn if you need to chat ^_^ Hopefully I'm not being too happyhappy and misuderstanding what you mean...
no subject
When I was cut off, I had depression, anxiety, 'ghosting', and had wierd reactions to anything that reminded me of the others...like the reverse of the classic splitting model, almost.
Now I'm plagued by anxiety and uncertainty, but am much healthier than I was a few months ago. The fears will pass, and we are learning to work together. We are lucky in that none of us have any complications - no one here is really depressive, or has any serious issues beyond the normal life stuff, and we support each other as much as we can. All members will keep up to date on each other, and we sort out any fights/disagreements before they get out of hand. We resolved to do this from the get-go, pretty much.
I would say that communication is the first piece of learning to live together and cooperate. I think the reason we were able to get off to a good start is because we immediately started talking, writing, drawing and expressing ourselves to each other. If you are too frightened to talk to them, then in my experience, you get anxious and depressed. Writing to someone who you keep feeling and not understanding for the first time is exhilerating, imo. I remember writing to Tahl the first time, and finding that he was left-handed...he wrote pages with the off hand when I couldn't write my own name left-handed. Since then, we have conciously built connections and bridges to each other so that we can talk easily and clearly, but it has taken a lot of effort.
If you want to know how we do it, I can go into a bit. I'm a horrible analyst/academic writer, so I've kept very detailed notes on the mechanics of us building our system into what it is now. I think every person's experience is unique, but asking and talking to others about how they got working is probably a useful way to go, no matter what your goal is in the long run.
I'm on msn if you need to chat ^_^ Hopefully I'm not being too happyhappy and misuderstanding what you mean...