Reparenting some of our youngers has been very important towards our recovery. A few are beyond reach, not co-aware enough and in states of mind too damaged and wrapped up in their own cocoon to do much of anything with, but the ones who are co-aware enough to interact in our internal landscape or to front are the ones we're able to work with.

It's much like play therapy, in some cases. We've even given the swaddled babies time to front in a safe space, with plenty of crayons and paper to express themselves and internal supervision. For some multiples, this may not be possible -- but if you've worked on internal collaboration for some time you may have healed your awareness and internal trust enough that you may be able to allow folk to front in low-stress situations without losing time or awareness.

It's good to pick a safe "mothering" or "fathering" figure or even a group of internal mothers or fathers to care for the children. In the case of having 70+ residents, we choose to have a group of safe people with whom our children interact inside. We take on different roles -- comforter, healer, guardian, playmate -- and share responsibilities for keeping tabs on them.

A few of our youngers have had co-awareness for a very long time, and are full participants in our meetings and house rule processes, so while they present themselves as young they're afforded privileges as if they are adults. Hart is one example, she has a saying "I may be 4 but I've been 4 for a very very long time." She is not really 4 in experience, skills, or self-control, but she feels safe at 4 and can stay there as long as she'd like. She can take advantage of our internal parenting at any time, if she chooses to. Frankly, anyone inside can take advantage of being comforted, healed, guarded or having fun with others inside -- it's not a privilege we only extend to the young.

Reparenting is sometimes necessary. We have done rehabilitation of our residents by way of being a better parent to them than the parents we were born to. We started spontaneously when we were very young.

Reparenting is like that. You give what is needed -- positive discipline or rules, hugs and kisses for boo boo knees, chase away the nightmares with love and nurturing kisses, provide the foundation on which your inner children can grow. And these kids can grow. Hart's twin brother Hed grew up from 4 years old to 15 and changed his name to Rane. We reparented him, even though he's a little rebel spitfire. His role was always to protect Hart and the others from emotional and psychic abuse from our father. His voice would always surface in our mind, talking back in our head, getting angry in the face of our father's anger. He's like a filter -- having caught all the anger so that it didn't filter deeper into our system, so he's full of that anger. When we first consciously met him he was young and not co-aware, and now he's a teen rebel and co-aware. A little more constructive with his actions and anger, but still very much himself. He's not done with his own internal journey, but we've helped bring him farther than he went on his own.

I suppose reparenting from inside is simply providing what children need and sometimes what they want without spoiling them. Children need safety, structure, nurturing, play, tools, fun, creativity, learning, etc. We may not have had those, or had them consistently enough, to allow our inner children to flourish and grow -- so through a process of reparenting we can give them what they need in order to flourish and "age" inside if they so choose to.

Other Posts in June 2013

Other Posts in November 2024 New

Related Podcast (listen before video): Welcome to DID: We Are Not Your Enemy (009) New

Related Video Presentation (listen after podcast): Recruits, Rebels & adventurers: pitch in to have a better life together

Scenario A

You're already one of the people who is up front, coconscious, part of a fronting team, working on improving your system relationships. We strongly suggest you read through this article anyway just for the knowledge you might get from it, but there's not much for you to do here.

Scenario B

Most of the advice here is in case your system is out of your hands. What if you want change, but the people up front are not listening, not approachable, and you aren't sure whether you can work with these materials because you don't have power and control. Read on, this is for you.

Scenario C

There's a middle ground too. It's possible that folk up front are reading through this fully wanting change, and there's some folk in the back also fed up ready for something different. This is the best case scenario. You might even think you're enemies or different warring factions, only to find that meanwhile everyone wants change, and the challenge is how to meet in the middle. That's why Scenario A says keep reading. Because there may be folk back there you don't have great communication with who are drinking this in and nodding along.

Try to read with an open mind, allowing others to read along with you, over your shoulder, or broadcast what you're seeing or reading to the rest of your system.

Maybe you know you're not one of the people "in charge." You're a Johnny come lately to the system in some way, and there's a lot of people who are part of the "in" crowd. You aren't welcomed, or you aren't treated well, or maybe you're never given any say or invited to participate in making decisions. At worst, there are blatantly problematic things going on and you need to take action to have a better life.

How this program is intended and how it might work out in your body could be two different things. Perhaps this particular group skipped the idea of having a welcoming committee, or isn't holding meetings regularly. In some cases you might feel like you're an outsider -- because you technically are. It's not the way I intend this program to work, but now that I'm putting it out there into the universe piecemeal, it's going to be subject to people's fancy and group politics.

So let's say you find this program attractive, but you're not the person in-charge and things aren't being run in any vaguely democratic fashion.

There's no reason to get angry, and only one way to get even. You can read my post about "What are you letting in?" and examine your own boundaries -- make sure you are as healthy as you personally can be. Because once you are, you're like Gandhi -- untouchable stillness in a sea of turmoil. You can be the example of a well-behaved citizen. You can demonstrate. You can speak out, you can effect change within yourself and set an example of what this program really stands for.

Make sure you're impeccably honest and have the best integrity you can muster. Be transparent. And then act on behalf of the changes you want to see.

You can become the welcoming committee that should have greeted you, and start reaching out to others. Once you have a few other responsible citizens helping you to reach out to those in need, you can hold committee meetings.

I'm not asking you to challenge whatever authority is in power. But if they are acting out of integrity, are dishonest, authoritarian, then acting in a democratic, integral, honest manner is going to make a big change and things will get better.

If there's a faulty democratic structure in place, you might try working with the system. If it's dysfunctional, you might work gently counter to it. I'm definitely not advocating for confrontational behavior, but for doing what is right in spite of whatever else is going on.

Work with what is in place whenever possible, because you never want to have two governing bodies/groups. If your governing body is dysfunctional, then you may be working counter to it and cause a period of chaos when the balance of power between the two subsystems pulls you in two directions. It's definitely NOT what I want for you. If whatever is in place works in even the slightest way, try to work with it to effect change.

Let's say that your system is out of control and those in power are being irresponsible. Everything is a total mess. Those in power do not allow any type of democratic resolutions. You are shut out because you are the one who wants to be more responsible. This would be a perfect situation to try the methods I'm talking about in this post. First you try to work with the system. You know the system isn't functional, and the people acting out are running the show. That's when you stand firmly in your own integrity. You fix up your boundaries -- not the system boundaries (that may be out of your control) but your own personal boundaries within the system as a whole -- so that they have little to no chance of mentally or emotionally damaging you -- and you make your stand. You might greet some lost children, or find someone who has run away from the out-of-control system and who needs comfort. You'd act as your own one-person-peace-corps, and make friends.

Your little group works on fixing their individual boundaries, protecting one another from those who are out-of-control in the system. You eventually develop your own codes or rules by which to behave, even if you're a subset of the system-at-large. You clean up your own parts of the internal landscape. You make your group approachable, you constantly recruit, and eventually you may start converting some of those with bigger issues. You forgive them when they slip up but you deal out consequences according to your code. But you are always welcoming, always acting on the side of love and integrity. Eventually you will, perhaps after some turf wars and infights, have more power than the people invested in divisive behavior do and you can have a revolution.

I'm not saying at all that this is an easy path to take, but it may be the ONLY path to take to ensure your total shared health. This is something best done with the support of friends, family, therapists, lovers. If people in your support system are part of the problem, it's doubly important to set up a core group of outside people who can support you through this.

Therapists can also offer this as a potential strategy or solution to multiple systems with severe control issues. However, to offer this is to risk the rapport of those who are in power. It's one thing if the person(s) inside figure this out on their own, or read this post -- that doesn't wreck your rapport or trust with those in power in the multiple's system. But essentially telling people in the system to start a quiet rebellion may not go over very well.

Another possibility is that the people in charge WANT a change of governance, but to do so they can't be the ones in power anymore. Someone else has to be the head honcho or the catalyst member of the system because the current head honcho has way too much work to do to repair their integrity and their boundary system. It is possible to rebuild the internal governance using this idea, and then the old regime voluntarily steps down and the new one takes over. This is a peaceful and voluntary revolution for the sake of the system. Some systems do this unconsciously when the fronting group is burning out and needs to go deep while another group takes over. Even though this is a voluntary coup (on a subconscious level often) it's still a big change and can in itself be disruptive and more conscious gradual shifts of governance are probably less chaotic.

I hope this helps. Please use this information only for good.

Other Posts in July 2011

First, what is a boundary? In everyday life we use boundaries constantly. We use glasses, plates, bowls, boxes, drawers, shelves, rooms, homes, cars, and we have an invisible boundary we take everywhere we go called "personal space" the size of which is determined by both cultural rules and personal preference.

So let's take an example of using a normal everyday boundary. You are having a meal with a friend, and you each have separate glasses. The glass is a clear and solid boundary, open on one side, and it delineates the liquid that is mine from the liquid that is yours. Using my own glass protects me from your germs, and from you taking my liquid from me. It's a semi-permeable boundary in that there's a hole at the top from which I may pour my liquid past the boundary of my lips.

Other boundaries keep items orderly or organized, keep our food from messing the tablecloth, or allow us to store items for long periods of time in unfavorable conditions such as boxes in our attic or basement, or allow us to ship our items from one destination to another with some assurance that they'll stay together and be delivered to the correct place within a reasonable amount of time without being damaged.

Boundaries are very useful everyday tools. They're just as useful inside our head, around and inside our body, throughout our layers of emotions, and to safeguard our spirit. Creatures with less well-defined boundaries include ameba and jellyfish. Boundaries may be permeable or impermeable, solid or broken, flexible or inflexible. Increasing one's ability to recognize and create or break down boundaries is an important facet of becoming healthier.

Ok, so instead of metaphors of physical objects, let's use a real example. Personal space is usually a flexible, permeable boundary. It is flexible because it changes in different circumstances. When one is on a crowded subway car, it pulls itself in closer and closer to your body in accordance to the space available for everyone's personal boundaries. It might nearly disappear for a time if it gets particularly crowded. You can tell that the size and shape of your personal space boundary has changed because of the amount and degree of discomfort you feel when people are close to you. Some people become so used to this shrinking and growing boundary that riding literally in physical contact with other passengers does not bother them.

Personal space is a permeable boundary because you can allow certain people to enter and exit this boundary easily. You might not exert it for babies and small children, pets, or loved ones. While the choice to allow these beings to enter and exit the boundary may not be conscious, it is deliberate.

A broken personal space boundary would be one where someone is allowed to enter or able to enter when they shouldn't be able to. Either the coverage of the boundary is incomplete, or there are gaps and holes in the boundary. It's also possible for people to force their way past this boundary, and this creates a boundary violation that can result in a broken boundary.

With our personal space boundary as one example, we can examine our other levels of boundaries.

We have filters. We all have a reality filter. Filters are a type of permeable boundary that are very picky about what they allow through. Our reality filter makes sifts through information and allows it in, or rejects it. We can adjust our filters, and we can change them, and we can allow more or less information through depending on our trust level towards a particular information source. Our reality filter is the filter specifically designed to prove or disprove our theories on what reality is or is not. We allow through more information that reinforces our view of reality, and reject more information that disputes our view of reality.

A broken reality filter can be the result of toxins, gaslighting New, brainwashing, hypnosis, drugs, certain brain chemical abnormalities, dementia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and more. An unhealthy reality filter can be the result of simply having and reinforcing an unhealthy view of reality. For example, (content notice: gaslighting) say X has been gaslit, X may believe they are going crazy, even though they are being manipulated. X's memory may be fine — but they reject things that they remember in favor of what their abuser says happened. X's friend compliments their memory, saying "Wow, I'm surprised you remember that." but X takes it to mean that their friend is shocked that X's memory is so inaccurate — and X starts apologizing and muttering about how awful their memory is. (end of example)

The nice thing is that much of the time we have the choice to change our reality filter. Once you get the hang of it, this is usually one of the easiest filters or boundaries to change. The human brain is meant to constantly filter information, and to adjust its own filter on an as-needed basis. This is a survival mechanism. If you're looking for an apartment, you start to notice rental signs more often. Information about rental opportunities enters your reality filter more easily. If you're cold, you'll start to notice things related to heat and comforting temperatures. In the modern age, we are assaulted by more and more information every day, and many brains are able to adapt and filter this overwhelming information. (This is called "reticular activation".)

Armor is an invisible but solid impermeable boundary we can erect around ourselves (cf the Fortify panic reaction New). Armor keeps things out, and it's not very discriminating like our filters. It might take the place of our personal space, it can be any distance from our body, but usually it remains fixed at a certain distance from us. Victims of abuse sometimes erect armor around themselves, so I'd like to give a word of caution about armor. Just as it's not healthy to have broken boundaries that allow bad things in that are better off kept out, it's also not healthy to have impenetrable and non-discriminating boundaries that keep good things out. Unfortunately most of us who use armor instead of other methods don't realize whether our armor is broken -- the faults in our armor are usually big blind spots we cannot see. It's solid and fixed in place, but what if it has gaps, holes that leave us vulnerable while keeping the people who can help us at a distance. If you study history, the head-to-toe solid suit of armor was not in service for long and had very limited uses. It made the wearer quite vulnerable, and eventually it was relegated to being mostly ceremonial. It so limited the mobility and vision of the wearer that it rendered them nearly helpless to attack. It's similar with armor-like boundaries. They should be used with caution.

There's other types of boundaries -- sheilds which are easy to manipulate and move around or use only when needed, and so on. But I think by now I've painted the analogy of types of armor to boundaries and you might get the point and purpose, and understand that there are different types, and different qualities of boundaries that are useful in different situations, and that like most things going too far is as bad as not going far enough. Everything in moderation, including moderation.

When you're in an unfortunate situation whether internal or external, you need to limit undesirable interactions by having good boundaries that can filter the interactions and the extent to which those interactions can affect you. Including verbal boundaries, flexible filters and more sturdy and permanent structures, our boundaries can help us keep out things that are undesirable. When you notice something undesirable getting in, you know you have a problem with a broken boundary. You might picture yourself repairing your filters, fixing your permeable boundaries, or even putting up a white picket fence around some portions of your internal landscape.

Just as these boundaries and filters keep things from coming in, they can be used to keep things from going out. We have something we call our "language filter" which makes sure our verbal communications are within a certain range of language, and helps us interpret external communications. Your internal landscape fences and filters can help keep your outward behavior within a certain range. We have a mask or filter we call the Criss-mask that we wear when we are fronting. It helps homogenize our outward appearance.

Check your boundaries and filters to ensure that external relationships and incidents don't affect your internal life and attitudes. And vice-versa.

Other Posts in July 2011

I’d like to welcome you as guests in my head, briefly. However, before you come in please be polite and wipe your feet so you don’t track ice and mud into my house.

I’m really glad to meet you all. Every single one of you. Here, let me shake your hand. Let me take your coat. The bathroom is the first left down the hall. Does anyone need something to eat or drink? I’m so happy you took the time to come to visit me. It can get lonely in here, with only about 70 of us, so it’s refreshing to have you all come by. Would you please have a seat? I’ve been so excited to have this precious time for some conversation with you.

You know how everyone’s on their best behavior when they have guests? Well, it’s not really any different when you come to visit. Guests are well-behaved, you show them hospitality, offer them a snack or something to drink. Even if you got a new housemate or roommate, you’d be on your best behavior for quite some time after they move in. You don’t start misbehaving as soon as they moved in, sitting around in just your underwear, farting and burping, unshaved and unshowered, right?

But of course, my headmates are not new roommates. I mean, they started “moving in” when I was a very young child, between ages 3 and 7 years old. However, back then they kinda snuck in. They played various roles in my life, hiding in my mental closets, wearing masks to look like me when someone rang the doorbell, saving my ass several times without me even being aware of it. Perhaps like the elves and the shoemaker, they sometimes mended my shoes or gave me nice clothes to wear — perhaps the house was suddenly cleaned when I wasn’t looking. Sometimes they were so good at pulling off “being me” that they even had me fooled. There were plenty of hints, some overt, some covert, but it was easier to overlook the hints than to question myself and my comfortable take on reality.

But when I turned 15 everything changed! I started to notice these sneaky denizens, asking for their names, seeing their faces, and listening to their voices. I thought I was channeling them from somewhere else. LIke their voices in my head were the results of a spiritual antenna picking up on distant radio voices. It took about a year for it to sink in that these people, these internal voices and faces, were entrenched — they were housemates (or “headmates”) in my mental home — and they weren’t going anywhere. I, some value of “I” anyway, made a decision to get along with them. It’s like we decided to start all over again, starting at the “Hi, my name is ___. Won’t you please wipe your feet on the way in.” What started with just 2 or 3 people in my head who were in agreement turned into a full-fledged welcome wagon that invited more and more internal entities to show themselves and get welcomed into the fold. By age 17 we had identified 16 entities, nearly all of these early-emergers agreed to take part in the welcome wagon. Then the number became 24. And it kept growing over time. Our mental apartment became a commune. Some of our rules were explicit, and we carried out a variety of disciplinary measures, round-table meetings, elections and votes, etc. and created a modified democracy in our own head. We invited everyone who could to participate in our governance, to become part of our volunteer-run welcome committee, and those in the shadows saw that we were safe, and when they felt ready they came to join us.

After all of that, we did eventually decide to dig around in the mud in our head, and came up with subsystems and more entities until our headcount reached about 73, fragments included. We did all this work with very little help from a psychologist. Most of our work was with self-help and abuse recovery books, and coming up with our own tools, maps, paradigms, rules, systems, and governance, without any external aid whatsoever. There’s still a few holdouts, those so buried and so hurt and damaged that we decided it would do more harm than good to challenge them to become co-aware. They don’t insert their opinions and actions on us, so we simply nurture them where they are and are ready in case they ever change their mind and decide to participate in life. We know they hold the worst of the things we’ve experienced and “forgotten.” And it’s our deliberate decision to live as a functional entity and go on without requiring them to participate and without 100% recall of our early childhood. [Edit: note this has changed in the last 10 years — more about that in Rescue Missions New.]

The journey to becoming functional wasn’t all roses and happiness; we made plenty mistakes along the way, took many paths that wasted time and resources, and discovered many challenging things while "working on our head." In the United Front paradigm, we want to bring you the cream of the crop of our experience, so that you can put it into use as quickly as possible.

Many of us multiples have allowed ourselves the self-image of being broken, of being abused, of being trigger-happy, of being helpless, of being childish, of being in desperate need of being saved.

I am not saying that all of these are untrue. However, our picture of ourselves contributes a great deal to how true these things are. We put ourselves in harms way. We allow ourselves to remain broken. We do have every right to claim the title of abused, or of being victims, or being broken, but how much does that claim really serve us? You are probably a physical adult. You will never be able to do anything to wipe away what happened to you in the past. Your choice is whether you want to live with those experiences as a huge and overwhelming burden or if you want to dump the burden and get on with life.

I asked you to wipe your feet upon entering. I don’t need you to bring your outside mud of the dirty and nasty things you’ve been through when you enter my home. And you don’t need it in your home either. Did you walk through the mud and ice? Yes. Do you need to bring it into the present, into your mind, into your mental home, to muck things up and make a bigger job of cleaning house? No. Absolutely not. Do yourself a favor, and request everyone to wipe their feet before they come into your home too. Our past experiences should not be an excuse to be abusive to others, including the others in our own head.

Other Posts in June 2011

Check out the Many Minds on the Issue podcast episode on this topic: Can't We All Get Along? (episode 006)

Imagine a house where everyone comes & goes as they please. No one does the chores. No one contributes to the rent. The denizens don’t follow any particular rules or guidelines, nor do they even communicate. They steal from each other, lie, break things, use each other’s supplies and items without consent or apology. If you were to stop someone and ask them who lives there, they probably have no idea, or perhaps they have a couple names but don’t really know each other really well. Some people sneak about and hide from the others, living in closets, boxes, the attic, the basement, the garage — anywhere but where others can spot them clearly. It’s like a den of animals, without law and order, without a sense of decorum or being polite, with the stereo or TV blasting at all hours.

It sounds crazy, but this chaos is a multiple’s head on the brink of crisis. After enough nights of lost sleep, lost items, lost memories, inadvertently lying to their friends or family, meeting people they have never met who claim to know them, and basically living a crazy life in their head, often the multiple will plunge into a full crisis and a big fight over rights, respect, trust, identity, property & idea ownership, friendships or relationships, power and control erupts, sometimes overnight. For those of us who are lucky, we head the crisis off before it fully erupts. For those who have no idea that they are multiple, the chaos can be devastating leading to loss of employment and emotional disability until they can get back to a place of peace and balance.

Being good citizens

Most functional adults have good role models who have taught them how to do chores, who cared whether they were coming or going, who contributed to the household, who set and followed certain rules and guidelines and passed them along. But since society is chock full of singletons, most of us don’t have good role models for being good citizens in our own head. Multiples may comprise as much as 6-10% of society, but there are no good role models in books, on TV, in our homes, or in the media for how citizens in our head should behave. Instead of teaching multiples a similar method for sharing and caring that exists in any good community, we label them "Disabled," excuse them from society and sanity, and allow them to be a complete chaos, run by whomever happens to have control at any given moment.

And I would know, because I -- we, more accurately, are multiple. And I'm here to say "Enough!" and give you a refreshing breeze of what sanity has in store for you.

It’s time to re-create your internal relationships. We’re not going to play the blame game, we’re just going to have a revolution and change the rules, and do everything in our power to make it fun, adventurous, exciting -- and challenging. Don't we all love a good challenge?

Other Posts in June 2011

In my article on home renovations, I started talking about how malleable and plastic our internal landscape is, and how we can mold it to specific purposes.

Internal systems communication has come up many times lately, so I wanted to touch base on the importance of internal landscape with regards to internal communication, and give a few tips on how one can purposefully adjust the internal landscape to foster better internal communication.

Sometimes a resident has a communication issue. They may be apparently mute, speak another language, or appear to barely have the capability to form coherent language at all such as animals. Some of us are able to get around these limitations directly, via a form of telepathy. Others don't have that ability to communicate either.

If you're having trouble understanding someone, always ask around to make sure that everyone else also has the same issue. Maybe someone would volunteer to translate if they can understand the resident in question. This means you already have a translation service available inside and don't necessarily need another. That said, the easy answer doesn't always work.

So how can we leverage the things we know about what's going on in our head and make it work?

Our internal landscape is a co-creation of all the entities in our head. I said in the home renovations article that "you can't really 'tamper' with the internal landscape because you created it in the first place. There's no reason NOT to try to tweak or alter it." Indeed, where we can all agree that communication is absolutely vital to being functional rather than just surviving, altering your internal landscape to foster better communication becomes vital, not just permissible.

We build our own walls...

At the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall the protagonist Pink holds an internal trial (The Trial) and finds himself guilty of having walled himself off from everyone with whom he was supposed to be in a vulnerable relationship. He then sentences himself "to be exposed before [his] peers." and thus commences the tearing down of his internal wall.

For those of us who have walls hampering internal communication, this could be a topic of discussion at an internal meeting. The existence of the walls can be discussed, and their meaning to the group. I caution against tearing them down immediately once they're discovered, although transforming them might be a long-term goal. You want to know whether they are serving you or hampering you, whether you ought to be trying to change something about them. And you need everyone who is accessible to give their input, explore the unknown, and discuss the issues.

How might one modify the walls? Would it hurt to have doors or windows? Could you install an intercom, an inter-office air-tube system, add some places where a note can be slipped between the rooms? Any modification can help improve the internal communication system.

For those of us without "visible walls" we may have other barriers to communication, as mentioned above: language, speech or lack thereof, intellect or perception of the world. As mentioned in our former article, we have our language filter, a translation device that can "translate any communication" however poorly it does so. Miscommunications still take place, leading to someone having to tweak the device, but it is a good sight better than no device at all.

How do we create a communication device?

It's all about belief and believability. If someone in you "is an animal" it's because you as a group believe it to be so. If someone in you is mute, it's because you believe it to be so. If someone in you speaks another language, it's because you believe it. So if an object is going to translate between people, you have to believe it too.

My recommendation is to have a meeting in which you pool your resources with everyone with whom you are allowed to communicate, and anyone who is attempting to communicate regardless of the barriers involved. They may be mute, but still can nod, or they may be an animal but can use other body language or noises when they are pleased with something. Include them in on the meeting if they're willing and able to be there.

Then commence with a brainstorming session to address the issue. I do this with someone fronting taking notes on paper in the physical world while everyone inside is coming up with ideas. You can close your eyes and do it all internally. The idea is to create something that you know will work for you and your headmates, because to change our internal landscape only requires the power of belief. The item must be believable.

Then there's the actual creation of the internal landscape object. Here's some ideas for the actual creation process that me and my headmates can think of off the top of our collective head: Mail order it. If there's a magical resident, ask them if they could cast a spell on an object or summon it. Ask the robot or computer techie to make a device. Have the littles craft it out of clay and pipe cleaners. Imagine or visualize it into being. Dig through a box or closet until you find it. Have someone do a magic trick to produce it out of thin air. Go on a shamanic journey and ask one of your guides or power animals to help you find it. Create it symbolically in the real world and then internalize it. Use Minecraft bricks, legos, Arduino system objects, to build it. Insert a babelfish in someone's ear (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Install a telephone or order up a smartphone. Install an intercom system. Use a beanie hat with propellers that grants telepathy to the user. Enchant a special "talking stick" that magically translates for the holder. A whiteboard or smartboard and markers. Everyone inside learns a system-wide brand of sign language. Everyone steps into a holodeck area and not only can you change the scenery, you can suddenly completely understand each other -- like an internal landscape inside the internal landscape where you can change the rules easily.

Really, anything goes if it gets the job done. Leverage your own internal abilities to make and foster the changes that you need to make it happen.

Don't be surprised if it takes a somewhat different form than you pictured. It's a collaborative creation process, and you don't have full communication with everyone in residence: that's part of the point, right?

Keep in mind that communication is a two-way street -- there's what is said versus what is heard. All communication is subject to flaws and imperfections. However, improved communication is always better than little to no communication. You can take control of this situation and help improve communication in your system if you all put your minds to it.

Other Posts in July 2014

• Keep meetings short, trim down the agenda to a few related items and keep the meeting focused. Meetings can be less burdensome.
• End the meeting with something special or enjoyable or fun — a specific song, something random (if that's what y'all enjoy), a trip to the inner world playground, etc. This can help with attendance, focus, and a sense of accomplishment for having had the meeting.
• If you have trouble focusing during meetings here's some ideas:
  • Co-regulate with others. Y'all can have a buddy in the room or in videochat who is also "doing work" or holding their own system meeting at the same time. This helps by setting up a "work vibe" and some expectations and accountability with you. Just being in a space where folk are concentrating & working can be helpful for building focus. If you don't have a plural buddy, you can hook up with singular folk doing this type of co-regulation through a service like https://workbuddiesonline.com (video on while working optional, muted while working) or https://Focusmate.com (video on while working mandatory, audio while working preferred). It's like being in a virtual cubicle with (or near) other folks who are also working.
  • Also helpful might be ambiance videos (such as T E R A V I B E on YouTube like check out this writer's room Victorian Era vibe) for their background sounds, or environmental sounds like babbling brooks, forest sounds, thunderstorms, ocean waves, breezes through trees — whatever floats your system's boat.
  • Keep a playlist for meeting times. We like electronica & instrumental music whenever we're doing projects where we need to think in words, so the words of the music don't interfere (and we're not tempted to sing).
  • Use with caution — this might not work for everyone: we like hemi-sync types of recordings or other binaural audio as well (use with headphones). The Ooooo iOS app is a free app to use with headphones for binural (both sides of the brain) stimulation, with or without white or brown noise. Green noise is also interesting.
• Hold meetings in the same place, or have a specific "starting meeting" signal — like taking out a specific journal for minutes, or having a same/similar meeting-start statement — so that y'all eventually get used to the "this is meeting time" vibe. If it works for you, hold meetings outdoors or in a safe place.

Hopefully these ideas will help you& concentrate better and enjoy your meetings more.

Other Posts in October 2022 New

Related Article: Communication Techniques

First, a message to everyone who isn't fronting right now: I know you may have tried to communicate with others before, that you might be tired of trying, and that you might not even know where or how to begin from the inside. You're probably not the only one who is frustrated. Please continue to look for ways to communicate and don't feel boxed in by only certain methods of communication. I give some ideas below to help you open up to what is possible, not to limit you to the ideas I list. Do what comes naturally for you, because that's what is most likely to work.

Now back to the main body of the post:

How can you beef up internal communication New? First, set your expectations lower (see the post The Problem with Extremes). If you're expecting crystal clear verbal-type communication at all times, you might need to lower your expectations just so you don't create extra anxiety that hampers communication. Communication can be "a feeling," or a "sense" of what someone wants to communicate, too. It can be very subtle. Some of us have had luck on working up to the easy communication of internal explicit and crystal-clear telepathy, but others have to play Pictionary visual games, or use sign language, write things down, sing, draw, etc.

We've done it all. I don't think there has ever been a single communication style that we could count on 100% so we try everything and then some. First, I had no idea what all the voices (images, mumblings etc.) in my head were about when I was about 10 years old. Since they were commenting on what was going on around me, and creating ongoing news-like rants or soliloquies (sometimes John Stewart-like) on my life, I thought it was "just me." Why would I have thought anything else? I thought everyone had accidentally tuned in to 10 different thought-stations at the same time. So sometimes it's a matter of recognizing what IS another "voice" in your head. It might seem like you're the one "thinking" something, when it's not really coming from you (because it's not something you're conscious of creating).

My first two-way conscious communications happened during trance states and auto-writing. Actually, auto-writing is also a trance state. "I" would go deeply inside myself, and have a conversation with one or 2 entities I found there, and later I started "allowing" my pen to write for me (and eventually my typing became so automatic that I could use that too). I was able to have conversations, sometimes back-and-forth, sometimes they were answering the questions I was thinking.

It's a mild dissociative state, but I think it's very acceptable because it's fostering direct communication with others. Consider that a full switch is "letting" someone else use our body. Almost like switching pilots for an airplane. In this case, there's no full switch going on, I'm just "letting" them use our hand(s) -- it's like having a co-pilot help you fly the plane. So the words appear to be typing themselves or writing themselves. I find it much less disconcerting than when someone "takes over" but I'm still "Front" -- I consider that having my face crammed against the cockpit window while someone else has the flight controls behind me and I have no control over the airplane anymore. That's really spooky and I don't recommend it!

The calmer you are, the better communication will be, whatever the means. So I would use a grounding technique I created for my book SURRENDER™ to Passion: in short breathe very deeply so that your whole belly puffs out and fill your lungs from the bottom to the top with air. Continue breathing this deeply while paying attention to your body. Wiggle your feet or toes, wiggle your butt in your chair. Both of these actions activate your root chakra and your body system will shift from anxiety to calm. Keep doing it until you feel more calm and present in your body.

Once you're calm, try to allow communication. What I mean to say is don't try to communicate, just try to stay out of the way of communication. Perhaps you'll feel an urge to get a specific tool like pen and paper, drawing pad and crayons, whiteboard and markers, typewriter, journal, notebook, etc. Go with the feeling. Or perhaps you'll "see" something like a face or person in your mind.

If you're really lucky, you just get to "think at each other" like telepathy. However, you're also lucky to have any form of communication, no matter how rudimentary. Some people take years to get to having any direct communication with their others. So try getting calm, getting out of the way, and allowing communication in any form.

Other Posts in June 2011

Often we'll have sets of feelings and we don't realize they're coming from guests that are tucked away in the background of our minds, and they're equally unaware that we're a multiple, that their hardship situation is over, and that living in the now is waiting for them just a few mental feet or yards away.

If you have an internal atmosphere that is conducive to building trust, respect, responsibility, and welcomes guests as new residents, then you have built a situation that is ready to begin the rough but unusually rewarding work of assisting stuck guests to become co-aware.

It can take a lot of patience, time, hand-holding, persuasion, and reassurance to help a stuck guest to lower their guard and get beyond the events they are stuck replaying. Everything is filtered through the emotional filter that was created from where they are stuck. If they're reactive, they'll see the worst side of everything, the side where trust is threatened, the side where everything becomes an attack or a problem. So it's all the more important to approach them as compassionate, upholding good values, with good integrity, with tons and heaps of patience, and with plenty of time on your hands. By doing so, you make yourself trust-worthy.

In our internal landscape, this may become a visual art, or a spacial practice. Our welcoming committee would agree on which guest might be ready to become a full-fledged resident, and then we would send an emmissary to approach them. We would generally pick either someone closer to the stuck resident in some way -- someone more directly related to the stuck resident -- or send our most patient & trustworthy person on the welcoming committee to parley with the stuck guest.

In terms of our mental landscape, this might mean making progress by feet and inches into the guest's "personal space," spending time talking to them and attempting to bypass the warped filters into a glimmering of reality. We would employ all of our means of communication in the attempt to make headway (funny word), so it might involve artwork, writing, journaling, singing, dancing, etc. It might seem to be silly, but who sings, dances, plays when there's a threat to their life? Not many people. So these things are signs that things are OK in the here & now.

With few exceptions, eventually the guest gains more means to communicate. First they'd usually communicate their misery, or their memories, their flashbacks, or their filtered interpretations of events. This is a very very tough time, because without a sense of self-control, these emotion-filled outbursts can be difficult to manage for the others. Do your best to keep the stuck person from affecting the system's total atmosphere that you've been building. Some protective gear may be in order. At the same time, recognize how much better off you are than you could be if you didn't start with a good internal atmosphere.

We then bring this guest new ways to communicate their stuck emotions: art, poetry, singing, writing, journaling, etc. and hope that they pick a means to channel the emotions and control them better, while all the time reassuring them that the situation was over a long time ago, and start bringing them stories of our lives since becoming an empowered system -- the truthful trials and triumphs of becoming a real family.

Once they are able to accept that things have changed, but not necessarily waiting until they're fully in control of themselves, we'd present the opportunity to become a resident and sign the lease, take part in meetings, have a full voting share, etc. We'd acquaint them with our system agreements as they currently stand, explain that they're able to help and take responsibility for working on the agreements, tweaking, adding and removing agreements from the list with the rest of us.

We have found that accepting the lease helps our new resident already feel included and more stable and safe. Our agreements help us govern internal behavior including safety, so our residents are already under obligation to stay out of abusive situations and to govern group safety -- the formerly stuck guest is relieved that they don't have to be vigilant alone, that there are guardians and clearly written "This is unacceptable" guidelines for internal and external people. It becomes easier to gauge what is really "wrong" behavior from oneself and others.

Once they decide to onboard, the new resident may still be triggering, abreacting, etc. but we help them learn what their triggers are and to diffuse the triggers over time. We help them monitor their behavior, help them stick to the agreements, and coach them on how to improve their participation in life. You might decide to space out these forays into increasing co-awareness to allow some time for the system to balance helping this new resident with the problems they may still be facing emotionally or externally. If you have enough healthier residents, though, you might get good enough at rehabilitating guests that you choose to overlap some of this work and trade off which members of the welcoming committee work with which guest/new resident.

We've gone through this process dozens of times. We now only have 1 stuck guest that we're aware of. In April of 2018 we rescued 2 stuck traumaholder children in our system through a different process (called a "Rescue Mission New") that we will not outline here. Our 1 remaining stuck resident is almost ready for an attempt for rescue. But since they aren't fronting and stealing front, or having extreme outbursts of any type that we can detect, we're OK with waiting until we're all ready to work on this. We never force people to become co-aware or co-conscious.

We even used this method to deal with our suicidal thoughts by finding the suicidal guest, bringing them to co-awareness and then helping them pretty much the way you might help a friend with a problem: patience, hugs, lots of talking, recommending good books, etc. It worked extremely well, and now she's one of our residents and helps on the welcoming committee, too. She's now named "Hawthorn" and she's very sweet and extremely helpful and no longer has suicidal thoughts.

A word of caution: You should not work on suicidal guests on your own. Please seek professional assistance and advice when you're working with matters of internal security, health, personal or outside safety, etc. This is not a way to replace therapy, it's a method for looking at the headwork multiples need to do from a more life-coaching and holistic standpoint and should be used in conjunction with therapy, if you have any.

If you don't have and cannot get a professional team, but feel a need to work on this, please make sure you have a support team you feel safe with that can support you through whatever you decide to do about the situation. We rescued Hawthorn without a therapist and it went very well. Notably, she was not the first person we rescued, and we had had a lot of practice already, and we had a support team we could discuss this type of work with.

Other Posts in June 2011

Whether y'all need to have a challenging conversation with headmates, or with folk outside your& body — it's far too easy to flub, be awkward, shy away from the conversation altogether "just in case", to piss someone off, or accidentally hurt someone. Challenging conversations are a part of life.

In addition to the fact that authentic communication requires listening and understanding, it also helps when everyone participating in a conversation is both communicating (listening) and broadcasting (sending messages) effectively. With the tips below, y'all can better navigate difficult conversations.

We can't guarantee success of course, but these strategies and frameworks will help send messages that can be heard more accurately and improve the chance that y'all can broadcast a message that avoids miscommunication.

Using "I" Language

You-language can be unintentionally taken as assumptions, shaming, blaming, criticizing, accusations, and so on. We are not mind-readers, we don't know what is going on in someone else's mind or heart, etc. When we keep our statements entirely subjective, we're speaking from a position of our own power & control, within our own boundaries, and from a position of authority — without crossing boundaries, without giving away power & control, and without making assumptions.

If I say I think something or I feel something, the other person is in a position of listening &/or empathizing, rather than feeling attacked, criticized, or confronted.

Consider the difference between "You hurt me." and "I feel hurt." It may seem like semantics at first — but the you statement implies intent and action and invites the other person to be defensive or apologetic — where the I statement is a simple incontestable fact and invites listening and compassion.

More about I statements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4_bjLlBok

Some ground rules for engaging in difficult conversations

I-statements already can make a huge difference in how conversations go. It's even better if everyone in the conversation is engaging with the same basic rules in place. You can use these guidelines alone, but even better to share and maybe even discuss whether these work for y'all. These are 4 guidelines (and a tip) for engaging in difficult conversations with others — but if you share them and build in that it's new for both sides, that people are flawed & make mistakes, and add an additional guideline to be compassionate and gentle with each other, we bet everything will go much smoother.

Skills covered:

1. Acknowledge your own responsibility in the situation
2. Make sure there's a goal or desired outcome for the conversation and remind yourself of it to stay on track
3. Listen to & validate the other person's feelings
4. Restate the outcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeZU5JgomiE

Background skills for avoiding conflict & handling conflict better

This is a good video overall on attitudes to bring to difficult conversations, and how language can play into challenging conversations. These are skills in both listening & wording that are pretty easy to master. She's corny as heck, but it grew on us as we stuck with it. Maybe it will grow on you too. It's easy enough for schoolkids to understand, a little rushed perhaps, but important enough for every adult to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TkbHLD5Mnw

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