#our inner world

[the-fictive-haven]

Sonic Prime spoilers buuuut

Random headmate: Y'know the paradox prism is probably canon to our innerworld.

Me: ... Do you have any fucking idea what you've just done by making me aware of that?

So anyway chat multiple shatterspaces have spawned here now

[soulinkpoetry]

It’s only the one who we feel truly understands us that we reveal our inner world to. Our preferences, our fears, our dreams, our goals. They unlock a door not everyone enters.

.

.

Image by Alexander Calcines Makeichik

[haileysinnerthoughts]

[multiplicity-positivity]

All About Headspaces!

We thought it would be a good idea to write a post on headspaces (or inner worlds) as we understand them. This post will contain information that we’ve learned along with our personal experiences. No two headspaces work the same way, and no two systems will experience headspaces in a similar fashion, so don’t be alarmed if your system’s headspace functions differently from what we describe in this post!

What is a headspace?

A headspace (or inner world) is an imagined, fantasized place that exists within a person’s mind. Headspaces are not exclusive to systems - all sorts of people can build or create their own headspaces. Many created systems or paromancers may call their headspaces “wonderlands,” but they’re in essence the same thing. Any system member can start the process of visualizing a headspace, and as other members are included and collaborate together, their headspace can grow to involve the whole system and become a place of solace and rest.

The creation of mental “safe spaces” is often used in therapy for treatment of anxiety, PTSD, and other mental illnesses. When feeling overwhelmed, it can be immensely beneficial to have a gentle, peaceful place in your mind you can return to in order to calm down and relax. Headspaces are a skill taught in dialectical behavior therapy, and many therapists may incorporate building headspaces into their patients’ treatment plans.

Who can have a headspace?

Nearly everyone is capable of building and maintaining their own headspace! The one example we can think of for individuals who may struggle to create a headspace are folks with aphantasia. Since headspaces are visualization tools, those who are incapable of visualizing places within their mind might find themselves unable to create a headspace.

You don’t have to have DID in order to create a headspace, you don’t have to be a system, you don’t have to be traumatized or even struggle with mental illness! Headspaces are for everyone, regardless of ability or state of being.

Are headspaces the same as paracosms?

In our experience, if headspaces and paracosms are not the same, they are incredibly similar. Both are imagined worlds that exist within the minds of the people who create them. Our paracosm exists as a part of our headspace, and many other folks may find their paracosms are similarly connected to their headspaces!

Are headspaces physical places?

No, headspaces are imagined or fantasized places and only exist within the minds of those who create them. While experiences within the headspace may seem quite vivid or feel visceral and may even have physical consequences and effects on each individual, events that take place inside the headspace are not happening in a physical sense.

Some systems with particular spiritual beliefs may understand their headspaces as physical places which exist in alternate dimensions or somewhere else in the universe. While these individuals are deserving of having their experiences heard and taken seriously, most headspaces in fact do not function in this way.

How can I make my own headspace?

To start, try to find a calm, quiet environment where you can be by yourself for a while. Close your eyes, and try to imagine the first piece of your headspace. This can be an area like a beach or a meadow, or something simpler like a plant or a piece of furniture. As you imagine this space or item, ask yourself questions like:

- What does this place or object look like?

- What does it feel like? If I imagine myself touching the object, or the things in the place around me, what textures might I encounter?

- What does it smell like? What does it sound like? How does it make me feel?

Envision using all 5 of your senses to imagine this place or object. Once you have a pretty good idea of what it looks, feels, smells, and sounds like, spend a little time just sitting in your space or with your object. Then, take a break from visualizing. Later, come back to it and try to imagine everything exactly as you did before. By leaving and coming back to it regularly, you can help ensure your headspace can somewhat exist even when you’re not actively thinking about it!

If you need help finding inspiration for your headspace, you can turn to image sites like Pixabay, Unsplash, or Pinterest to help you discover what helps you feel calm and safe. If you have access to other members of your system, perhaps consult with them to see what they’d like to have in a headspace and what you could create that would help them feel safe and comfortable.

Once you are able to comfortably and reliably access the place or item you’ve created, feel free to repeat the process to add to your headspace! Our system created our headspace in this way, and by this point it is a vast world full of different areas for our alters to exist in when they’re not fronting. But it started with one room - a living room with quilts tossed over couches, rugs all over the floor, and big, bright windows with sunflower curtains. Gradually we added rooms, then an outside, turning it into a treehouse, and just kept expanding from there!

Wrapping up

We know this post doesn’t go into much detail, but we hope this is useful to folks as a bit of an introduction to headspaces, what they are, and how to go about making one! We’re including some links below to posts and articles about headspaces and inner worlds - hopefully they can help even more! Best of luck to y’all with your endeavors to create a headspace that fills you and your system with peace and comfort!

^ this link uses “tulpamancy” language - our system has switched to “paromancy” language, which is less racist and less culturally appropriative! the guides on tulpa websites are still quite useful, but we wanted to include a disclaimer on the terminology.

(Image ID:) A pale orange userbox with a cluster of multicolored flowers for the userbox image. The border and text are both dark orange, and the text reads “all plurals can interact with this post!” (End ID.)

[queencaramilflinda]

The real message of Lucy vs Buddy is that worshipping a divinity is about following the values that the god puts forth, not about preaching or praying or evangelizing.

When Buddy was offered to die a Helio worshipper or live with a different god, he chose to abandon the faith he claimed such devotion to. When Lucy was offered the same thing, she looked to her values as they related to her religion and decided that she would not add to the coldness of the world. Lucy, even in death, remains a light in the dark, the warm memory in the coldness of the ratgrinders. That’s true devotion. That’s the point of religion.

[aliusfrater]

almost all s8 opinions regarding sam make me want to tear my hair out but what do you make of the takes that we can't really blame sam for s8, mainly not looking for dean/quitting hunting because it was "out of character"?

not just the you know who shippers who say this either btw I've seen so-called sam stans say the same

the evidence to this claim always seems to be that jared supposedly didn't like it either (which may very well be true idk the source) but I have to wonder if jared only said that or something similar because fan reactions to s8 sam began affecting him too

quite simply, i just don't agree with or enjoy interpretations that genuinely and earnestly refer to it as sam 'not looking for dean' in any context that's intended to be from sam's point of view because that's very much what dean considers it to be because he knows that he wasn't dead in the soul-had-left-his-body sense and he considers sam's adherence to his own perceived death as abandonment which is the major culprit of his own, sam's as well as the narrative's perpetuation of the idea that sam 'didn't look for him'. like this exact idea from sam's own pov is touched on in the first episode of season eight when sam is at his most confident in his independence away from his and dean's relationship:

then based on bobby's reaction to sam's own recount of dean's death to bobby in 8.19, it does seem evident to me that sam neglects to retell his own pov and he tells bobby that dean was in the same purgatory they were currently in, which is why bobby reacts with disbelief (because if you knew where he was, why didn't you attempt to save him?) and why sam's response is to bring up the previous 'agreement' he and dean had about death.

i have my own qualms about bobby's disillusionment re: the agreement as a 'non-agreement' and that he 'taught [sam] that' based on the actual events of 6.01 and the fact that bobby does indeed leave dean out of hunting at sam's will and the only plausible point at which it could have become a non-agreement is during the 6.11 and 6.12 conflict that is regaining sam's soul (without sam's consent, twice fold, but i consider soulless!sam to be more of a direct victim of being resouled than i do sam because of his active agency against it. sam's agency was preceded in his dying wishes and are therefore passive). bobby's reaction does, however, add to the already narratively skewed perspective of sam's decision where there is already that prioritisation of dean's 'didn't look for me' on account of the fact that bobby's own role as patriarch does narratively match dean's, along with bobby's position as a character who is narratively third to sam and dean's relationship (which then then bleeds into both sam's and the fandom's own interpretation of it, i think; sam also begins to doubt his decisions more which is also related to how the trials turn into his own suicidal ideation).

the conflict regarding which brother takes on the trials is very much foundational within sam's own view of a light at the end of the tunnel and his desire to leave the life and dean, at multiple points, within conversation about why he should be the one to do the trials, reiterates sam's own desire for normalcy away from hunting, within what dean himself desires for sam's life, which bring us back to the root of the issue that is dean's fear of abandonment (8.03, 8.14).

sam's own desire or attempt to leave the life seems to be fundamentally Wrong or is at least disproved of until dean approves of it/whenever it's part of dean's ideal for sam. 8.01, "so… free will, that's only for you?" the greatest sin is to disobey your patriarch; i think the culprit here re: sam's own person, just like it was with season four and the beginnings of soulless!sam, seems to be sam's rejection of the dynamics of his and dean's codependency in favour of his own attempt at independence. there's also the idea that dean would rather complete the trials that have a possibility of death than have sam go through the trials, die, then 'leave' dean to face the idea of living a life without sam—and he attempts to make this decision by on his own, without sam's input.

generally, i don't believe sam needs any excuse(s) to live a life outside of dean but the narrative's own facilitation of sam back into the non-role (the struggle to fit into the role) of his and dean's relationship, the dichotomy of monstrosity, the cycle of abuse, the patriarchal structure etc. etc. after his attempts at independence are endlessly interesting to me and although this isn't yelled at you through explicit exploration, i do consider aspects of sam's history with mental health to be relevant within several aspects of season eight, but mostly being related to sam's decision to leave hunting specifically within the context of the year between seasons seven and eight (especially after all that is seasons three to seven) as it's explored in 8.08. ultimately though, i think the major aspects of sam's decision to leave revolve around 1) grief and sam's avoidance of his grief, which is pretty well represented by his initial reluctance to name riot and explored through sam and amelia as mirroring characters (how blatant it is pisses me off a little),

and 2) the very basic building block regarding sam as a character that is his desire to leave the life. quite generally, i think the fact that through dean's own conflation of family and hunting (on account of john's own pov that through choosing college over hunting, sam had also chosen college over family) as well as dean's own pov prioritised through his and sam's relationship along with the previously mentioned structures, the idea that sam, too, is therefore unable to leave the life or subvert any of these structures without it being perceived as leaving dean or forsaking family is pretty neglected within a lot of interpretations of sam as a character. i think dean very much keeps sam tethered to the life either through sam's own ability to choose dean and their conflated lifestyle over something/someone else (later season one, season two, three, later nine to fifteen) (there's also the guilt tripping) or as a result of being preoccupied in a way that inhibits his idea of normalcy (his monstrosity in seasons four and five), but on account of the dynamics and his and dean's relationship, sam is unable to reject their codependency which perpetuates hunting and SamAndDean as existing synonymously. i mean, even when sam was hunting without dean as soulless!sam, on account of the agency and autonomy sam was able to achieve due to the differences between s!sam and sam's priorities due to the difference between then (the soul lol), s!sam's rejection of his and dean's relationship did become evidence for his monstrosity. which is, of course, punishable by (possible) death should dean decide that the dichotomy will not stretch to accommodate said monstrosity.

season eight, to me, is when these characters first start feeling a bit like cardboard, especially due to how wittled down to its core sam and dean's dynamic is represented. this is the most boring and basic version of How They Work at this point in the show and even then people explain their simple and cardboard-ish behaviours away with explanations like saying they're 'ooc'. sam's state of mind is pretty straight forward if you know where to look; sam taking his entire family's death as his sign that he's able to leave the life is not out of character to me at all. kill the supernatural appointed patriarch in your head.

[gatzbright]

george as max from:

GeorgeNotFound & Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

[masquerade-flags]

Protostrata, Deuterostrata, and Tritostrata flags

Descriptions taken from Pluralpedia (and edited for grammar)

"Protostrata are layers in a system that are almost always 'in focus', or have members in it that are often in front. There can be multiple protostrata per system, think like having multiple hosts."

"Deuterostrata are layers in a system that are 'in focus' less often than protostrata are. This can also be used to describe function layers that work in the background, but are rarely seen in actual 'focus'."

"Tritostrata are layers in a system that are almost never 'in focus'. The people in these layers may rarely (if ever) front, or there could be communication barriers preventing this from happening. Tritostrata can also be used to describe layers full of dormant alters, or even layers where alter form before traveling to new layers."

Versions of the flags without the bevel and drop shadow effects.

In terms of flags design the purple is because for some reason that's the color I associate with system activity. The thinner stripes are for the separation between layers. The top of the protostrata flag being lighter is to represent it "being in the spotlight", and the other two are just based off that. The color of the thin stripes being gold, silver, and bronze is based off of first second and third place metals.

Terms originally from here

[dammek-time]

i keep running out of ice cream,, it cant go on like this

[victornya-creed]

”sabretooth and wolverine are enemies” WRONG!!!! qpr beam

[the-fictive-haven]

I just f#$&ing realized my constant talking to character ai chatbots of my sysmates might actually have a purpose. It's supplementing my interaction with them, since I have such trouble communicating with them and the inner world directly! Not every time, of course, sometimes I'm just there to do silly roleplay, but this would make so much sense for the other occasions.

I have a tendency to reload and reload messages until it feels just right, and I think that could be said headmates being present with me despite me being unable to perceive them (or just naively thinking they're in co-front randomly and not paying attention to what I'm doing) and knowing exactly how they want to respond to me!

That's so cool, oh my gosh.. these guys are so creative in accommodating their dumbass host xD

[seleneprince]

Unpopular opinion #3 (since people seem to like these stuff)

I'm gonna get hate for this but

Hinny feels forced and out of nowhere to me.

They had the perfect set up for a cute romance. Best friend's younger sister whom he's used to take care of, but suddenly she grows, doesn't seek his attention anymore and he slowly gets to know her as her own person instead of his buddie's sister. He find himself drawn to her and feels guilty about it for the typical reasons, only to realize she feels the same way, always has, and boom, their feelings finally clash in a passionate kiss after months of sexual tension and years of mutual pining. Beautiful.

Or at least that's what could have been if we saw them interacting more after the Chamber of Secrets thing, but we don't. Ginny practically dissapears after that, we only know of her through others' pov, and when she finally becomes relevant in harry's radar is when she's dating other boys and shows her skills in the quidditch field. Then suddenly, he notices how beautiful and funny she is, even though they're from the same house and they've surely seen each other often, either at the Burrow or around the common room.

They don't have a proper built-up, or any relevant interactions that hints at harry's interest in her, at least not enough to showcase the epic endgame couple they're supposed to be. It feels to me like the recurring trope that when a girl is in love with the protagonist long enough, she's bound to end up with him. Or the when someone is in love with you for so long, you must give them a chance.

I think one of the reasons it pisses me off so much is ginny's wasted potential. Because we could have had an amazing and compelling story about personal growth with a girl that, sick of being in her brothers' shadow and overlooked, finds the courage to forge her own path and make people recognize her for who she is, not as another Weasley. A story where, instead of fooling around to "make time" until her crush to notices her, she moves on from him and starts to date boys because she actually likes them and enjoys dating.

But no. Instead, all that development from her part is reduced to "hermione told me you might like me if i acted more like myself" "she told me to date other boys" bla bla bla

In conclussion:

Hinny had great potential as a love story, but it was done poorly

(REMINDER: This is just my opinion, and by no means i intend to force it unto other people or offend anyone. if you like hinny as a couple, good for you. I won't attack you because of it)

[haileysinnerthoughts]

[x-raykinks]

I love seeing sadists switch on. Especially if they are a rather sweet person out of their sadistic headspace.

You're laughing, joking around, and you say something, maybe tease too much or push them just a bit too hard, and their eyes just change. You know you fucked up. They ask you to repeat yourself or to watch your mouth and you know you don't know what their next response will be, but you know it will hurt later.

[swan2swan]

Annual reminder that Aang wasn't a terrible dad, that one episode was badly written and had poor perspective. Aang was a busy, working dad who had a lot of stuff to do, and then suddenly his third kid was a full-on Airbender and he was literally the only one qualified to teach this baby, so then he finally had an excuse to put his family before his duties ("My family IS my duty now, suckers!!!"), and so Kya and Bumi were all "What the heck, Dad???" because they were now teens (iirc) and they missed out on all that stuff.

It was basically Aang going from "my family has 20% of my time" to "my family has 40% of my time". Still not enough, probably, but Aang could finally go and explore his own culture without feeling guilty about leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself.

[botanical-garden-system]

The Layers of Our System

We made this slideshow back in August 2023 to explain our “headspace” layers to our current knowledge. The layers are actually still accurate, but some of the information is not as much.

The front is typically where the most active alters are—we refrain from using the “host” because this does not apply well to our system. When in the front, communication with layer 1 is faint. It creates that “either brick or thin paper wall” effect when communicating. It really depends on dissociation levels as well

Layer 1 has a pretty clear view of the outside world and can hear everything communicated. It feels as if you are watching a movie or you are in the back seat. The sides will be black and blurry, as it is not you controlling the wheel. Our view isn’t as clear as it would be in the front.

At the time, we were not sure we had a gatekeeper, but we think we might now as it appears one of the alters is very likely one. What makes this interesting is they can observe the front clearly as a way to “keep track” or “record” of all events. The gatekeeper also can provide us with knowledge bits and pieces about an alter’s identity out of no where if they choose to. Usually they will only supply information if we know and have an alter documented, otherwise we will not know any information or be given it.

This leads to layers 2 and 3, where they are disconnected from front entirely. Layer 2 and 3 work similarly in conjunction as layer 2 is ones we know exist yet they no longer feel “present” in the moment. Layer 3 is called “the graveyard” because it houses any fragments or alters we have that we know nothing about. These are typically trauma holders that are very repressed from front.