#Inner Worlds

[plural-affirmations]

Here's to systems who have different views of their headspace/innerworld between different people!

Sometimes, innerworlds can be perceived differently from headmate to headmate. So here's to:

Headmates who see their headspace more vividly than others

System members who have access to areas the others don't

People who can't access their innerworld for whatever reason

Those who don't have a headspace to begin with

Sysmates that live exclusively or primarily in their headspace

Those who have their personal areas, such as their own room, or somewhere they can do their hobbies

The ones who have fluctuating, inconsistent, or nonexistent internal appearances

Systems who have a paracosm as their headspace, or in addition to a different innerworld

Those who can only be interacted with by certain people (we have someone like that in our system!)

And anyone else I missed!

We think it's super cool that every system has their own experiences with their innerworlds, and we love hearing about them! Please drop us an ask if you're in the mood to share something about your headspace or related exomemories!

Have a great day, everyone!

🖤💜💙💚💛

[sophieinwonderland]

Systemscringe on Inner Worlds...

So, yes, it's true that singlets can have inner worlds too... but with that in mind, it should be immediately obvious that you can have complex inner worlds because singlets can also have maladaptive daydreaming which is exactly that.

And MADD has a high comorbidity with DID, and has actually been proposed by experts as a type of dissociative disorder.

Complex inner worlds in many DID cases is extremely well-documented in academic papers

Studies show 80%-90% of cases of DID present with alters being heard through "auditory hallucinations."

Communication between alters is incredibly common. Having an inner world to speak through makes it easier to focus on and interact with members of your system. Alters can talk through inner worlds. They can also talk without using inner worlds.

Estimates for DID by experts range from 1%-3% of the population. The problem is that you're attributing a reverse causation.

Getting a correct diagnosis of DID often takes years, while systems are instead often misdiagnosed with mood disorders, personality disorders or psychotic disorders.

The stigma doesn't exist because DID is a rare disorder. Rather, DID is rarely diagnosed because of the stigma. Because few psychiatrists are trained to treat it, many don't believe it exists at all, and for-profit pharmaceutical companies would rather people be diagnosed with a disorder that can be treated with pills, giving a financial incentive to oppose DID as a diagnosis.

Amnesia also doesn't need to be constant. It just needs to be beyond "ordinary forgetting." Many DID systems frequently remember some of their switches, and a goal of treatment is to tear down dissociative barriers to be able to increase this memory.

This is a common misconception I see. The problem with DID is that it's often misdiagnosed.

An alter you talk to in your head can be interpreted as an imaginary friend if you're a child, or a psychotic hallucination if you're an adult. And in both of these cases, a psychiatrist who isn't educated on dissociative disorders, which is most of them, may try to convince the patient that the voices aren't real which worsens dissociative symptoms.

Being able to communicate with alters isn't nearly as helpful for diagnosis when that communication is attributed to something entirely different.

Communication also isn't always consistent in systems that do have communication. Sometimes alters go dormant or just can't be reached for period, and it's not clear why this happens. Sometimes certain alters can only communicate with certain other alters. This makes the whole memory gap thing way more difficult to navigate.

And the alters may not even want to tell what's happened if you can reach them. That's especially common for trauma holders.

And sometimes, dissociative amnesia isn't just inter-identity amnesia, and the alter who experiences something can ALSO forget it.

Basically, there are a ton of factors that make communication and memory incredibly complicated with DID that varies vastly from one system to the next, and I realize I've only scratched the surface here, describing what I've heard from systems I know and what I've read in case studies in academic literature.

[pathofregeneration]

Jonathan Wiltshire, An Astral City

* * *

“Death is the name we give to the cessation of physical processes as perceived by our physical senses. Higher processes ... simply continue, free of the encumbrance of the outer body. Furthermore, we are more truly alive in this new awakening than ever we were on earth, since we no longer suffer the illusion that only the physical world exists. All of our inner senses are activated and, like arousing from a long sleep, you suddenly become aware of a most familiar and cherished reality—the inner world which is our original, authentic and eternal homeland.”

— Flower A. Newhouse, Christian Mystic

[syscultureis]

plural culture is where the hell are you getting detailed headspaces from guys I don’t see shit up here. Can I come over to visit one of your expansive worlds please /j

Ngl sometimes I wish system hoping was a real thing just for this reason. I'd love to visit my friends in their homes ya know?

On a more serious note tho, our inner world was mostly created by gatekeepers and shit. And for me the host, it's not actually super detailed. It feels more like how I see when I'm dreaming. Most of it is vibes rather than real seeing. It's very hard to explain

[multiplicity-positivity]

Heya! Relatively newly discovered system here. We share memories, but struggle with communication, and can’t access headspace yet. Any advice…?

Hey, rather than make a really long post that repeats information we’ve already shared, we’ll just go ahead and link our directory. Y’all can peruse it to read posts on establishing contact, bonding as a system, building a headspace, and more:

I will say, though, if no one in your system has consciously spent time creating a headspace, chances are, you all don’t have one yet. Headspaces are visualization tools built with one’s imagination, so if no one in your system can access a headspace, y’all may need to devote some time to creating one.

And with regards to building communication, it all comes down to patience and practice. The more y’all make attempts to communicate, the easier it will become to communicate in the future.

If y’all have any further or more specific questions in the future, feel free to reach out :)

[veinbox]

[a-contemplative-soul]

“Strong minded people tend to have rich inner worlds”

Author: Me

[angelo-the-doctor-of-feelings]

Hey Mikey! Sorry to bother you, but I need to get something off my chest. It may sound stupid, but I was genuinely crying about this. I made the decision to say bye to my imaginary friends. It was sad because they helped me throughout elementary school because I had no friends and they stuck with me throughout the 7 years. I made the decision because I wanted to start new since I’m starting high school. I miss them a lot, and I need some comfort. (Still crying a bit)

You are NEVER a bother @skullivan-the-dawg 🧡

I can imagine that saying goodbye to them was hard & it's okay to grieve. Mourn as long as you need to. Eventually, you'll feel better! 🧡

Do you know the movie Inside Out? That scene when Riley had to leave her imaginary friend to forget? I cry every time I see it.

There will be people who shake their heads in disbelief, but letting go of imaginary friends is hard.

Your pain is valid.

Do you know what's great? You made it through seven years of school! A new chapter begins! And while it may be scary, I am positive you can do it too!

Maybe your imaginary friends are off to help others in need?

Feel hugged! 🧡

[the-blood-system]

So we have multiple inner worlds but I can't access most of them at all and only small parts of others.

Kinda hate being the main host lmfao I wanna go In i wanna see the Inside

-Art

[onewiththelight]

[plural-affirmations]

Here's to those who consciously created their headspace/innerworld!

Sometimes, like in our system, the innerworld was just sort of... there to begin with. But, for others, they had to create theirs from scratch! We think that's amazing!

Shoutout to systems with innerworld(s) that:

Started as a paracosm, or other dream-based world

Began fairly simple, but were added onto/became larger later on

Are vast and complex, with intricate little nooks and crannies

Are on the smaller side, but feel homey and comfortable

Were built by a particular system member, such as a worldbuilder

Have been contributed to by several different people

Are any other kind of headspace you can think of! If you created your innerworld, with or without help, this post is for you!

Developing an entirely new area to live in is a lot of hard work! No matter how it came out, you did an awesome job! We think it's so cool that you got to personalize where your safe space is! :D

Keep on creating!

🖤💜💙💚💛

[sophieinwonderland]

I wonder... has anyone ever caused the body physical motion sickness by movement based entirely in the Wonderland/Inner World?

Or even sea sickness from being in an inner world boat?

We've never done it but it feels like it should be theoretically possible.

[pathofregeneration]

Jonathan Wiltshire, Inner Worlds (2022)

* * *

“I began to perceive a whole new realm! Enormous buildings stood in a beautiful sunny park and there was a relationship between the various structures, a pattern to the way they were arranged that reminded me somewhat of a well planned university. Except that to compare what I was now seeing with anything on earth was ridiculous. It was more as if all the schools and colleges in the world were only piecemeal reproductions of this reality.”

— Dr George Richie, Return From Tomorrow

[diverse-hearts-ocs]

@smol-sirens-garden

Did this scene break me? 100% no no no.. Love in the Air (2022) l ep 13

[syscultureis]

plural culture is (semi-specific, vent-y ish?)

having this one alter who's been splitting just randomly go dormant, and his kid roaming around and having been frontstuck for now over 15 days and having The Biggest Host Changes yet and Large System Changes and no one really knows what's gonna happen next :( oh and finals are this coming week and nobody is equipped with a bunch of knowledge (I don't know what to do)

-💄 from ⚡💜 (lol, the people who decided on this sign off are both dormant).

:(

[longlistshort]

Lubaina Himid’s solo exhibition Street Sellers at Greene Naftali is filled with gorgeous paintings, but there is so much more to the work. Through the experience of sounding out the phonetic signs and reading what’s written behind them, the viewer is given a chance to go beyond the surface for a glimpse of the inner worlds of her subjects. It’s like receiving a beautifully wrapped gift and realizing it was only a prelude to the wonders inside.

From the gallery-

Himid’s latest cycle of paintings affirms the dignity of work through depictions of vendors who ply their wares, elegantly dressed and equipped with the tools of their particular trade. The figures emerge from a rich blend of temporalities and points of reference: from the hawkers that remain street-level fixtures of urban life, to popular prints of merchants and peddlers dating back to 17th-century London as rare documents of the working class. The genre of the full-length portrait—linked to aristocrats and monarchs—is also recast with new protagonists, shown on a grand scale and fully at one with their respective métiers. Asserting the centrality of Black subjects to art historical arenas long denied them, Himid frees herself to invent what the archive lacks: “I paint it into existence.”

Each canvas is paired with a work on paper ingeniously printed to mimic a cardboard sign, embellished with painted motifs and phonetic letters that induce the viewer to read aloud—uttering the sales pitch to lend the exhibition an informal soundtrack. The prints are double-sided, with the backs revealing the sellers’ true thoughts that go unsaid. Often romantic or wistful, those inner monologues betray their attachment to the goods they carry, which Himid renders with lapidary attention to an egg’s speckled surface, the weave of chair caning, the ribbed interior of a cowrie shell. Objects here are charged like talismans—vectors of connection that are meant to change hands.

That intimacy extends to Himid’s paintings on domestic objects: from portrait heads on discarded dresser drawers to miniature vignettes on found crockery. Opening a drawer is an everyday revelation, an airing out of hidden depths, and Himid has described it as an ideal container for “lost or forgotten lives”—a compartment to hold the “memories of people whose names no one had bothered to write down.” China plates and platters are likewise tied to acts of routine encounter, which Himid overpaints with subtle disruptions to their polite decorum. One thrifted ceramic sports a tongue, another a single molar—the first pieces of a planned New York Dinner Service the artist will source locally over time, then emblazon with every part of the human body as seen from inside. Faintly troubling yet also convivial in their nods to communal space and shared endeavor, the works extend Himid’s career-long project of “interrogating narratives about the desire to belong.”

This exhibition closes 6/15/24.