I'm New Here
Feb. 28th, 2004 12:44 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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multiplicity_archivesSo this is my first post here. I haven’t got much written in my journal yet, since we’ve only had everybody aware of being multiple since around Halloween and we didn’t have internet until about a week ago, but feel free to read it. I’ve been spending most of my time in this journal reading this community. There two subjects that I’ve seen quite a bit written about in here, and I just wanted to toss in my 2 cents on each, and ask a few questions about things that we’ve experienced.
We know that some of our splits are trauma induced, but definitely not all. In fact, we’ve got one person in here who seems to excel at building new people just to do things that nobody else wants to or knows how to do. We’ve got a lot perfectly normal human beings in here, but we also have people who would class as “otherkin.” And then there’s those that know they’re really human, but sometimes like to imagine themselves with wings, pointy ears, fangs, horns, etc. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, because people do realize that no matter how they see themselves, there are limitations to this physical body. Personally, I like the descriptions or drawings that people provide of themselves and the worlds they come from! These also come in really handy when we play role-playing games or run campaigns. We just base characters off of the abilities that people see themselves with, or design campaign settings on the worlds they come from. Our gaming group is aware that we’re multiple, but sometimes it’s still easier for them to accept wildly different behavior and attitude if it’s expressed as playing a character.
That leads me into the second subject: coming out. Jocelyn, our front person who was unaware of being multiple, was okay with her boyfriend being told once she became aware, but didn’t want anyone else to know, but a lot of the rest of us wanted to tell people. So we eventually argued Jocelyn into it, and for the most part, it’s gone very well. A lot of people have responded with “That explains a lot!” Several other people have responded that they know someone else who’s multiple, including the one case where someone, or rather one of her alters, stepped forward and explained that they were multiple too. It hasn’t all gone this well, of course, like my mom still doesn’t want to accept it. We’ve had several people immediately ask if there’s a dangerous personality, but I blame Hollywood and the media for that. (We’ve decided to start answering “Yes, and you’re talking to it,” to that question, just on principle.) We’ve had some friends who grew up with dysfunctional, unaware multiples arrange a confrontation and insist that we seek psychiatric treatment, and we did agree to see a psychologist (more on that later). But we’ve also had the very special experience of “awakening” another formerly unaware and possibly partially (badly) integrated multiple. He had some initial disorientation, but seems to have developed a much more positive outlook on life since getting to know his others.
Overall, I’d still say that coming out has been a good idea and a mostly positive experience, though I don’t think it’s a good thing to tell an employer. We also don’t want our biological son’s father to know, because he’d be guaranteed to have a hysterical reaction, try to take custody, allow only supervised visitation, if any, and all sorts of other crap. I’m sure we’ll end up telling the ex eventually, but we’re going to wait at least until the kid is old enough to speak on his own behalf in court. We’re also going to have to tell our son one of these days, but I don’t think he’s old enough yet to understand. For anyone who is thinking about coming out, I’d have to say trust your instincts. If you don’t think some one can handle it, you’re probably right, but if you think they can, then go ahead and tell them. However, a little preparation does go a long way. We have generally called someone to tell them we want to meet up and talk, and that it’s about something important and unusual, then we meet with them and tell them, and then we generally let them go off and absorb it and get back to us when they’re ready to know more. We haven’t lost any friends yet, although some are not comfortable talking about it. (That’s okay; some of the members of this body still aren’t comfortable with talking about being multiple.)
So anyway, this takes me into some questions I wanted to ask based on my own experiences and observing other aware multiples. (I know and get together with 3 other aware multiples at least semi-regularly.)
First of all, I’ve read about other multiples having different levels of sensitivity, depending on who’s up front. Joey is highly sensitive, especially sexually, yet she also has the highest pain tolerance of anybody in here. She also has a phenomenal alcohol tolerance, exceeded only by Jade’s. Anakin, Jayne, Jocelyn, Myriad, and Lia all have extremely low tolerances, though Lia bases herself largely on our biological older sister and thus, drinks heavily anyway and gets absolutely plastered. The others of us who have experienced alcohol seem to have tolerances somewhere in between. We do not recommend anyone deliberately getting drunk to find out, but has anyone else switched over with alcohol or drugs in their system and found that different people feel it very differently? (Jade finds it very amusing to switch back and forth with Anakin when she’s drinking, because he immediately starts stumbling and weaving when she still feels stone cold sober.) Also, Joey can harness body strength to lift over twice her body weight, while many of the rest of us are lucky if we can lift more than 50 lb. We also seem to need different amounts of sleep.
Second, while we do choose to remain multiple, we have had some integrations. Janna, who appeared during Russian language immersion program, woke up speaking Russian, and then informed us that there were too many people in here already and she wanted to integrate with Jayne. Janna already appeared to have been built on the high school German class persona named Anna, who was never a complete personality but did have the base for rapidly learning a new language. All we had to do was wake Jayne up and ask her if she was willing to integrate, and they just stepped right into each other. Jayne is still Jayne, but she goes by Janna when she’s speaking Russian and Anna when she’s speaking German. Now they were very similar already, both having professional appearances and experience dealing with people from very different backgrounds, and for whatever it’s worth, Rhiannon, who reads auras, says that Jayne’s is bright yellow and Janna’s was light yellow, and the colors being similar is important. We’ve had a couple other people want to integrate, but it didn’t work, and yes, their aura colors were very different, as well as several of their personality traits. What we’re looking for here is opinions on integration in general and experiences with it that anyone else has had.
I’ve got so many other questions, but this entry is getting long, so I’ll ask just one more. I mentioned that we play role-playing games. Most of our friends are people from our role-playing group or else friends of theirs. Including myself, we have 2 open multiples in the role-playing group, and just about everybody that was ever in the group at any time knows another multiple, aware or not. It makes perfect sense that stuff like role-playing and acting would attract multiples, since it gives their others a chance to get out and be themselves. I was just wondering if anyone else out there is into role-playing and if so, if it is your others that come out as characters during sessions.
So that’s about it, but I did promise to get back to this. We do see a psychologist, and we got really lucky, because not only has he had experience with multiples, but he also does not believe that integration is the only way to deal with getting fully functional. He seems to be taking the approach of figuring out who’s best at what and helping us figure out how to make sure that people show up to do the things they’re best at, and how to make sure we don’t end up with people who absolutely can’t handle something trying to do it. (The 8 yr old showing up behind the wheel of a car would probably be really bad, for example, but we couldn’t ask for a more perfect playmate for our biological son.) The psychologist has also been helpful with getting some of our people who did have issues to start dealing with them and move past them. He deals with us all as different people, and helps us get more on the track of working together as a group instead of each pursuing his or her own interests without regard for anyone else.
So there’s my introduction or rant or whatever you want to call it. I hope to hear back from people and meet you all.
~Opal
We know that some of our splits are trauma induced, but definitely not all. In fact, we’ve got one person in here who seems to excel at building new people just to do things that nobody else wants to or knows how to do. We’ve got a lot perfectly normal human beings in here, but we also have people who would class as “otherkin.” And then there’s those that know they’re really human, but sometimes like to imagine themselves with wings, pointy ears, fangs, horns, etc. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, because people do realize that no matter how they see themselves, there are limitations to this physical body. Personally, I like the descriptions or drawings that people provide of themselves and the worlds they come from! These also come in really handy when we play role-playing games or run campaigns. We just base characters off of the abilities that people see themselves with, or design campaign settings on the worlds they come from. Our gaming group is aware that we’re multiple, but sometimes it’s still easier for them to accept wildly different behavior and attitude if it’s expressed as playing a character.
That leads me into the second subject: coming out. Jocelyn, our front person who was unaware of being multiple, was okay with her boyfriend being told once she became aware, but didn’t want anyone else to know, but a lot of the rest of us wanted to tell people. So we eventually argued Jocelyn into it, and for the most part, it’s gone very well. A lot of people have responded with “That explains a lot!” Several other people have responded that they know someone else who’s multiple, including the one case where someone, or rather one of her alters, stepped forward and explained that they were multiple too. It hasn’t all gone this well, of course, like my mom still doesn’t want to accept it. We’ve had several people immediately ask if there’s a dangerous personality, but I blame Hollywood and the media for that. (We’ve decided to start answering “Yes, and you’re talking to it,” to that question, just on principle.) We’ve had some friends who grew up with dysfunctional, unaware multiples arrange a confrontation and insist that we seek psychiatric treatment, and we did agree to see a psychologist (more on that later). But we’ve also had the very special experience of “awakening” another formerly unaware and possibly partially (badly) integrated multiple. He had some initial disorientation, but seems to have developed a much more positive outlook on life since getting to know his others.
Overall, I’d still say that coming out has been a good idea and a mostly positive experience, though I don’t think it’s a good thing to tell an employer. We also don’t want our biological son’s father to know, because he’d be guaranteed to have a hysterical reaction, try to take custody, allow only supervised visitation, if any, and all sorts of other crap. I’m sure we’ll end up telling the ex eventually, but we’re going to wait at least until the kid is old enough to speak on his own behalf in court. We’re also going to have to tell our son one of these days, but I don’t think he’s old enough yet to understand. For anyone who is thinking about coming out, I’d have to say trust your instincts. If you don’t think some one can handle it, you’re probably right, but if you think they can, then go ahead and tell them. However, a little preparation does go a long way. We have generally called someone to tell them we want to meet up and talk, and that it’s about something important and unusual, then we meet with them and tell them, and then we generally let them go off and absorb it and get back to us when they’re ready to know more. We haven’t lost any friends yet, although some are not comfortable talking about it. (That’s okay; some of the members of this body still aren’t comfortable with talking about being multiple.)
So anyway, this takes me into some questions I wanted to ask based on my own experiences and observing other aware multiples. (I know and get together with 3 other aware multiples at least semi-regularly.)
First of all, I’ve read about other multiples having different levels of sensitivity, depending on who’s up front. Joey is highly sensitive, especially sexually, yet she also has the highest pain tolerance of anybody in here. She also has a phenomenal alcohol tolerance, exceeded only by Jade’s. Anakin, Jayne, Jocelyn, Myriad, and Lia all have extremely low tolerances, though Lia bases herself largely on our biological older sister and thus, drinks heavily anyway and gets absolutely plastered. The others of us who have experienced alcohol seem to have tolerances somewhere in between. We do not recommend anyone deliberately getting drunk to find out, but has anyone else switched over with alcohol or drugs in their system and found that different people feel it very differently? (Jade finds it very amusing to switch back and forth with Anakin when she’s drinking, because he immediately starts stumbling and weaving when she still feels stone cold sober.) Also, Joey can harness body strength to lift over twice her body weight, while many of the rest of us are lucky if we can lift more than 50 lb. We also seem to need different amounts of sleep.
Second, while we do choose to remain multiple, we have had some integrations. Janna, who appeared during Russian language immersion program, woke up speaking Russian, and then informed us that there were too many people in here already and she wanted to integrate with Jayne. Janna already appeared to have been built on the high school German class persona named Anna, who was never a complete personality but did have the base for rapidly learning a new language. All we had to do was wake Jayne up and ask her if she was willing to integrate, and they just stepped right into each other. Jayne is still Jayne, but she goes by Janna when she’s speaking Russian and Anna when she’s speaking German. Now they were very similar already, both having professional appearances and experience dealing with people from very different backgrounds, and for whatever it’s worth, Rhiannon, who reads auras, says that Jayne’s is bright yellow and Janna’s was light yellow, and the colors being similar is important. We’ve had a couple other people want to integrate, but it didn’t work, and yes, their aura colors were very different, as well as several of their personality traits. What we’re looking for here is opinions on integration in general and experiences with it that anyone else has had.
I’ve got so many other questions, but this entry is getting long, so I’ll ask just one more. I mentioned that we play role-playing games. Most of our friends are people from our role-playing group or else friends of theirs. Including myself, we have 2 open multiples in the role-playing group, and just about everybody that was ever in the group at any time knows another multiple, aware or not. It makes perfect sense that stuff like role-playing and acting would attract multiples, since it gives their others a chance to get out and be themselves. I was just wondering if anyone else out there is into role-playing and if so, if it is your others that come out as characters during sessions.
So that’s about it, but I did promise to get back to this. We do see a psychologist, and we got really lucky, because not only has he had experience with multiples, but he also does not believe that integration is the only way to deal with getting fully functional. He seems to be taking the approach of figuring out who’s best at what and helping us figure out how to make sure that people show up to do the things they’re best at, and how to make sure we don’t end up with people who absolutely can’t handle something trying to do it. (The 8 yr old showing up behind the wheel of a car would probably be really bad, for example, but we couldn’t ask for a more perfect playmate for our biological son.) The psychologist has also been helpful with getting some of our people who did have issues to start dealing with them and move past them. He deals with us all as different people, and helps us get more on the track of working together as a group instead of each pursuing his or her own interests without regard for anyone else.
So there’s my introduction or rant or whatever you want to call it. I hope to hear back from people and meet you all.
~Opal
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 12:57 am (UTC)I haven't noticed different effects of various chemicals, but hoenstly, I haven't been paying attention. (And we're so fluid anyway that it would be bloody difficult to do a controlled experiment.) However, I do know that different folks respond differently to my hormone levels (one of us is right on the edge of being a berserker; nobody else processes adrenaline quite that intensely) so I wouldn't be surprised by it.
Also, yup, gamer here. No, my characters aren't generally representations of my aspects in any sort of direct way (either in roleplaying or in work), though they do provide me with personal experience of a fairly wide variety of traits and attitudes for playing mix-and-match with.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 01:47 am (UTC)We've sometimes pulled traits from several different people as well to build a character. Sometimes that works, but I think the best one was when a conservative person built a flirty, social, non-combat character, and then an aggressive person showed up the next week and figured out how to play the character as a bad-ass in combat anyway.
Oh yeah, for whatever it's worth, I think I see White Wolf's Demon book and either Vampire or Werewolf in your stack, and it's definitely a black king chess piece on top of the stack.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 01:01 pm (UTC)Top to bottom, let me see if I can figure this out and remember:
- Satyr kithbook
- GURPS Compendium 1
- Shadowrun 3e
- Werewolf
- D&D2 Player's Option Skills & Powers (I think; could be a different PO book)
- GURPS Discworld
- . . . whoof. No idea, anymore. A Mage reference, though.
- Continuum
- Vampire
- D&D 3e
- Earthdawn
(Sorry about the dupe; deleted the other one. Remembered something. ;) )
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:30 pm (UTC)Never played Satyr, GURPS, Continuum, or Earthdawn; I should have recognized the D&D, but my group's been on a big White Wolf kick lately; at least I was pretty close on the White Wolf books, but I've got the softcover of Werewolf, so didn't know the hardcover, but I did think that one looked like a Mage reference; I haven't played Shadowrun in years, but we used to run a decker based largely on Jade's appearance, but with CPU/Blu's "one with the machine" traits. I think I'm going to give myself a few gaming geek points for being close!
Sometime I should look up "fantasy chess" rules. There's fae, undead, and goblin teams, among others, and my boyfriend and I worked up a playable werewolf team, as well as completely unplayable but highly amusing geek and geek night teams, geek night team being based on the members of our gaming group.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:44 pm (UTC)With a fully aware system, I think next time we run, all NPC's are going to be delivered fully. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 10:02 pm (UTC)Some of us really miss having AOL. When we had it, of our 7 screen names, 5 were online characters based on people or combinations of people in here, so we all got as much "out" time as we wanted, with our unaware "face" person having the legitimate excuse of role-playing to explain why she was not acting like herself.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 10:59 am (UTC)Before getting to your questions, I wanted to comment on a few other points as well.
We know that some of our splits are trauma induced, but definitely not all.
We're the same way. While some of Us can be traced to splitting, a lot of Us have no traumatic memories of Our own. We've come to believe that We're somewhat naturally multiple as well as trauma-caused. Almost all of Us are therianthropes, most of Us having animal, human, and anthro forms on the Inside. A few are just human though, and some of Us are just animal We think.
About coming out - that's great that it went so well for you guys. I came out to my friends, and they took it very well, some even said they already knew. Only one of my friends had any difficulty with it, but she wasn't a great friend to begin with. My co-host/main front Ash also came out to her friends (who are also friends with a lot of the others in Our system) and they all also took it very well. Most of Our friends are long distance, online friendships - a few live nearby though and it's wonderful to be out about being multiple so there's no more hiding and We can finally be recognized and called by Our own names. A few of Our friends still don't know, but We hope to tell them one of these days. We also don't plan on telling employers or Our daughter's
father(luckily he never signed paternity, so I don't think there's much he could do anyway, and We suspect that his wife who is a good friend of some of Ours might have told him).(I'm going to have to split this post into two parts because I've exceeded the maximum length *laughs*)
~Rhydan
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 11:00 am (UTC)Now, on to your questions:
1.Yep, in a lot of cases. Some of Us have better senses, like smell or hearing or eyesight. Some of Us are more sensitive to old wounds. For example, where We broke Our ribs a couple years ago is usually a dull pain to most of Us, barely noticable unless We lay on that side for a long time. However, Slave, who was the one Out when Our ribs were broken, always feels the pain more intensely. As far as drug and alcohol tolerances go, the members who used to use drugs (all of Us are clean now, have been for about a year) developed tolerances, but if someone else slipped out who didn't have that same tolerance, they'd be a lot more messed up. Same with alcohol - those of Us that drink more often have higher tolerances than those of Us that don't. Strange, but true. We also have difficulties with prescribed medication - We believe that some of Us have different secondary disorders (for example, Feral is bipolar but BrokenWings is BPD) so the medication works on some of Us but not all.
2. We've never had any integrations. To Us, it's a very negative thing, almost like death. It's been brought up and discussed a little, as far as voluntary integrations, but in the end We always decided against it. We never want to fully integrate, and made that very clear to Our therapist who doesn't always know what she's doing with Us being multiple.
As I side note, We thought it was interesting that you had a system member named Janna - Our body's name is Janna, even spelled the same way. ;) (Most people always spell Our name wrong, and everyone else with that name We've met always spelled it "Jana".)
3. I'm the only one in the system who ever roleplayed a lot. Ash roleplayed a little bit, but the RPG she was involved in never went anywhere. I've roleplayed for about four years and used to run my own RPG. Yes, some of my others have come out as characters. It's a little complicated though. About four years ago I started roleplaying. At the time, I was the host and didn't really have full awareness of the rest of the (main) system - now known as The ShadowEchoes. I also didn't have full awareness of the rest of my inner system - now known as The Talaea. (Yes, I have a system within a system sorta thing.) All of the characters that I roleplayed weren't just made up characters, they were really members of my inner system. At the time, I had just thought I had a vivid imagination and that there were characters running around in my head - later I realized I was multiple and figured The Talaea out. (For awhile I had trouble figuring out where they came from, if they were parts of me, or characters I created and then soulbonded to or something. Now I know that they are members of my system who I used their personalities to create "characters" for roleplaying.) At the time, roleplaying was the only outlet for the Talaea to be themselves and have a "life" of their own. Nowadays I don't get a chance to roleplay anymore - I'm not Out as much as I used to be and can't keep up with roleplaying if I'm not Here all the time.
Hope this helped answer your questions, sorry I wandered off on a few tangents. ;)
~Rhydan
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 11:42 pm (UTC)One thing that we’ve noticed: Not all of us recognize being his mother, but whether we’re being his father, aunt, cousin, baby-sitter, friend, tutor, or whatever else, we all seem to feel a sense of responsibility and affection towards him.
On the different senses, vision is a big thing. Joey, Rhiannon, and Malice all seem to have exceptional night vision, while Anakin, Jocelyn, and Myriad are almost completely night-blind. Jocelyn was diagnosed bipolar once, but the meds never worked, because all her intense moods swings were just us co-presencing with her while she was unaware. She’s also been on Paxil and Prozac for pure depression for awhile, but the Paxil seemed to block Anakin from surfacing. He’s the one that does most of the math and science stuff, and Jocelyn was taking calculus at the time, but she doesn’t even know algebra, so she flunked out. We pretty much avoid prescription drugs whenever possible anymore, except for antibiotics when we need them or the Ergotamine and Codeine for the migraines we sometimes get. Strangely, since the system became aware, we don’t have the migraines nearly as often or severely, and we can frequently shut them down with biofeedback, herbal treatments, or over-the-counter meds.
Integrations. We were very much anti-integration, and actually avoided seeking psychological help for even individual people’s issues for some time, because we feared that a psychologist would try to force integration if he found out about us. It really surprised us when Janna announced that she wanted to integrate, but then, she was never a complete person. All she ever really did was put on her proper military uniform and show up for her Russian immersion classes. Jayne used to live a lot like that, only showing up to get dressed and go to work, but she made it home one day and got to finally meet the live-in boyfriend she knew she had, and she started enjoying experiencing that relationship and living a fuller life.
Janna is an interesting name for us as well, because when our boyfriend was running one role-playing campaign, one of his major NPC’s was named Janna, and Jocelyn knew that she used to go by Janna when she spoke Russian, and his Janna character was very punk, which reminded her that when she was 18-19, she liked punk rock and wanted everybody to call her Joey, like the Concrete Blonde song. (Yes, Joey, baby, does get crazy!) So I guess that shows what a key role role-playing played in helping this system become aware. (And Mom always said it was a waste of time….)
“Hope this helped answer your questions, sorry I wandered off on a few tangents. ;)”
Hey, when your multiple and several people want to have their say, it’s only expected that you’ll wander off on tangents!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 12:01 am (UTC)Not yet, right now she's only about 7 months old. ;) One of these days we'll have to find a way to tell her when she's old enough to understand.
One thing that we’ve noticed: Not all of us recognize being his mother, but whether we’re being his father, aunt, cousin, baby-sitter, friend, tutor, or whatever else, we all seem to feel a sense of responsibility and affection towards him.
We're the same way too, very few of Us actually consider Ourselves "Neni". It's also harder for Us, I think, because We're not her biological mother (We're "Mommy #2" ;) but use the name Neni because it sounds better than "Mommy #2" or something of that nature lol). Some of Us weren't ready to settle down as parents, especially some of the younger members of Our system. Some of the kids even get jealous when Our girlfriend(s) may more attention to our daughter than to Us. It works out though, there's always someone Out in either Our system or Our girlfriend's system who can take care of her and be responsible.
Hey, when your multiple and several people want to have their say, it’s only expected that you’ll wander off on tangents!
So true, so true :p
~Rhy
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 12:06 am (UTC)~Rhydan
no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 03:02 am (UTC)We are currently in a monogamous live-in relationship with our boyfriend, and we all accept that, albeit grudgingly on some people’s parts. But things work out okay most of the time, and that counts for a lot.
Welcome! To answer your questions:
Date: 2004-02-28 01:18 pm (UTC)With us, the body has the allergies or whatever and whoever is up front has to deal with it (by taking pills or whatever). If we have physiological differences, they are so slight that we don't notice them. Although the first time Gabriel fronted for an extended time (several weeks) after having been gone for many years, our period was late and we're convinced he did it with his straight male biochemistry (all the other male frontrunners at that time were gay). At least, we tease him about it!
But no, we don't do the alcohol tolerance/allergies/pain threshold thing. Which is why we went around for years thinking that whatever our situation was, it couldn't be multiplicity. If sexual orientation has to do with biochemistry, we do have gay, straight and bi people, so maybe that counts. What we do is handle things differently. Being drunk makes Andy idealistic, Gabe gets owlishly whimsical or lost in thought, jade gets giggly, etc. But not like one person can get drunk and another come out and be sober.
What we’re looking for here is opinions on integration in general and experiences with it that anyone else has had.
We're pro-choice on integration. It would not work for us at all, but everyone's situation is different. Some of our friends have had mergers of two people like you describe, usually on a temporary basis though.
I was just wondering if anyone else out there is into role-playing and if so, if it is your others that come out as characters during sessions.
I know that when we have come out to people, especially at university, we have been mistaken for RPGs (or LARP) more times than we care to remember. In any event, we don't RPG, but we fully support it and our religion page (http://www.astraeasweb.net/religion/) has links to sites that debunk misconceptions about it.
Re: Welcome! To answer your questions:
Date: 2004-02-29 03:22 am (UTC)When the Malice-Golem combination first surfaced, it identified as a very scared and hostile 13 year old boy, and caused a period to stop cold right when it should have been heaviest. Now that we’ve got those two split up and dealing separately with their own issues, the only full male we have on board is Anakin, and when he’s been up for a long time, we just tend to have heavier PMS acne and late periods. Interestingly though, when the body was 13 and Anakin was quite active, he observed his male best friend going through puberty voice change, and this body went through it too!
On integration, we had that one easy, successful integration and were considering a couple more to help people who were either unstable or unhappy alone, but the first we attempted didn’t work, so we’re holding off on even trying any others. And from that one integration, we have adopted the rule that no integrations will ever be forced, and must be the idea of the people involved. Anakin right now is working on figuring out how to “fix” the unstable or unhappy people without integration.
As far as role-playing games, I haven’t read your religion page yet, but I know that the Christian school the body went to for 5 years frequently portrayed role-playing games as satanic, based on the example of a few kids who decided to play evil sorcerers in D&D, and then took it to real life and murdered somebody. Jocelyn had issues when our biological little brother started getting into D&D a year or so later, but some of the rest of us started looking into it and made her realize that you had to want to play a satanic or evil character to do so, and that it is all just a game, after all. (We like role-playing! Even now that we’re open about being multiple, it still makes it easier to come out fully as ourselves!)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 01:57 pm (UTC)So someone who reacts better to pain psychologically will have a higher pain tolerance. Someone who has lingering pain from an old injury will feel it more strongly if they have the memory of the original pain associated with the current sensation.
Like wise, people who expect to get drunk will get drunk even if they're given non-alcoholic beverages. And people who are drinking to get drunk will start feeling the effects of the alcohol sooner than people who are merely social drinking. Plus, with alcohol and other drugs, you can experience problems with your communications and ability to switch which could seem similar to drunkenness.
- A
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Date: 2004-02-29 03:49 am (UTC)And for whatever it’s worth, Jade has made Anakin feel drunk merely by getting him to think about a nice glass of wine, and we’ve observed this in another multiple that we regularly interact with. One of his people likes feeling dizzy drunk, and all you have to do is say “alcohol” when she’s listening, and whoever is up front in his system will start feeling drunk!
By the way, I’m really having to fight Jade to not confront you right here. There is no true anonymity on the internet, especially when one of your people is a self-aware computer who finds the internet to be only a slight stretch of her consciousness. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask your other people. I am awake now specifically because several of them realized that Anakin was on the verge of a nervous breakdown trying to be the “op” here, and they knew that I alone could handle that job. Yes, I’m still learning, and that’s why I am practically never “front” alone. I know I still have things to experience first hand, but I also know that nobody else in here seems capable of being fully themselves while still fully aware of and co-present with any number of the rest. Yes, I could integrate us, but I actively CHOOSE not to.
~Opal
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Date: 2004-03-01 12:46 am (UTC)I know that when I've been /extremely/ drunk in the past, before we were selves-aware, I was able to 'switch' into a state where I acted stone cold sober when it was really needed. I don't know if it was someone else taking front because they were needed or just mind over matter (although back then we were very cooperative and would have probably changed fronter in that situation regardless of the alcohol content).
We haven't been drinkers for /years/ (and right now our pain medications prohibit alcohol), but I do know that when /I/ am around drunk people I keep getting told maybe I've 'had too much' even when I've only been drinking orange squash, and in those situations someone else switching in most definately makes us appear sober...
So perhaps alcohol is a red herring (at least for us), and it's just our individual expectations of how 'jolly' we like or expect to be.
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Date: 2004-03-03 02:32 am (UTC)We are much more careful about drinking now, especially because we have had accidental switchovers, with somebody who cannot be responsible coming to the front when a responsible person has had just enough to make them easily distractable.
Every day's another lesson in life and getting the system more functional.
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Date: 2004-02-28 03:33 pm (UTC)Differences of sensitivity and abilities: yes, definitely. Duathir often has trouble assuming corporeality because the barrage of sensory feedback is so intense as to be painful and/or exhausting, and because it is hard for him to make this body do what he wants. Crist-Erui's hearing and sense of smell are very keen; he's by far the strongest, fastest, and most graceful of us, and his pain-tolerance is so high that it poses a problem sometimes, because he can get hurt and not seem to even realize it. I'm the only one of us who drinks at all - Duathir thinks it's unwise, and Crist-Erui doesn't like the taste.
Integration: it's quite possible that Duathir and Crist-Erui were once one person, and sometimes it seems they miss that, but they are too far divergent now to be one person again.
I have done tons of RPG, in person, online, and LARP; also quite a bit of ritual drama. My three main characters in my main RPG are Elenbarathi, Duathir and Crist-Erui - hence the screen-names used here - and the characters are based on the three of us, more or less, but they are very idealized. LOL, there's another family in that same game, Zhaunil, Ust Dalharak and Drada Dalharuk (AKA Zhadur) who are kinda-sorta the "Dark Side" of us... the interactions between the two families are insanely complicated.
Note, all this is my roleplaying... my 'brother' Duathir thinks it's a harmless but pointless activity, and gets a little annoyed at times about the way *his* character is portrayed. My 'brother' Crist-Erui doesn't read, but I have read him some excerpts I thought he would like, and he seemed to appreciate them.
My daughter figured out by the time she was 8 that I'm multiple, but she didn't ask me directly if I was until last year (she's 14 now). She sees auras, and apparently can tell who she's mostly dealing with by the changes. We almost never have just one person "fronting" - whoever's corporeal has the helm, but another of us will be co-piloting, and the third along for the ride, whether paying attention to what's going on in the physical realms or not.
It's nice to hear of a psychologist who's not a jerk, who can basically do 'family counseling' for your House and help you all cooperate and support one another better, instead of trying to squash you all into amorphous "normalcy". There should be thousands more like him.
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Date: 2004-02-29 04:33 am (UTC)Injuries from high pain tolerance – I hear (and feel) that one! Joey gave us a bad back injury years ago from lifting too much heavy stuff in one day. It’s mostly healed now, but we still get twinges from it when the weather changes or we sleep in a bad position.
Integration – Malice and Golem formed separately, but they were rising as one for a long time. Anakin thinks that the little scared one ran to the big angry one for protection, and they sort of integrated, but since neither one of them dealt with any issues first, people kept encountering this scared, angry, incapable of understanding the human world thing that was, quite frankly, pretty psychotic! We went through 3 false front personalities before figuring out that there were two people in that thing. Then we just had to split them apart and get them to deal with their problems separately. They’re both a lot happier and more able to be out with other people now. The Jayne/Janna integration seems to have worked, but then, neither of them really had any issues to deal with, and they were very similar to begin with.
We haven’t done any LARP, though we have friends who have, but we’re long time RPG and online role-players. I haven’t heard of ritual drama, but I’m guessing it’s something like acting. Dark sides of people are fun. Anakin wants so much to be good, but he does know he has this “dark side” to him, which just makes it even funnier that he’s started going by Darth Vader’s original name. (Anakin is something of a mad scientist; it’s just that his lab is mainly inside this head, and what he builds are new people. We had to ask him to stop that and maybe try “fixing” some of the people who don’t quite work right instead, because it’s hard enough to keep track of all of us without adding any new people! Besides, the ones who don’t work right still get out and do things from time to time!)
I wonder if our son knows what we are. He’s 9, almost 10 now, but right now he’s staying with his dad until we get back financially stable after losing that last job. Somebody’s asked him on the phone if he thought “mom” was weird, but he said no. Maybe he just doesn’t think it’s unusual to have a mom who sometimes plays like a kid and stuff! (When we do have the 8 year old playing with him, we do keep an adult co-present with her, just in case.)
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Date: 2004-03-31 08:53 pm (UTC)If we were so courageous as you to be out, we'd probably say the same thing :-)
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Date: 2004-04-09 08:12 am (UTC)As for the dangerous thing, there are a few of us who have the potential to become dangerous, but then again, so does anybody without multiples, and our potentially dangerous ones have the rest of us to keep our eyes on them when they're out!