• 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

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

Other Posts in June 2022 New

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

This is not about being bold or flashy. It's not about wanting to compete with the indelible icons of Eve or Sybil. We don't want or need anyone's sympathy for whatever we may have gone through, nor people's anxiety or fear for what may or may not be going through our mind on the 8-track player.

This is about identity. It's about confidence. It's about setting a precedent, setting an example for others. It's about what is possible. Can we even do it? Or will we be vilified and shunned? We decided that we're willing to take a fall for the possibility of blazing a trail for the next guy. We don't need (or want!) our name up in neon lights, perhaps just a quiet thank you every now and then, just so we have some evidence of an impact.

We wrote our first book, and came out of the closet (i.e. the storage facility) as a multiple. It wasn't a splash. It was more like a teardrop. We didn't get calls to come onto talk shows, and we didn't publish through some major publisher who would demand that we make our message more sensational. We self-published, sold about 100 copies of our book so far, maybe more, and we're ecstatic we have changed some lives and removed the hood from our collective head.

And that's how it should be. Oh, it would be nice to sell thousands of books to myriad multiples & their families across the world...but not for fame. Nor really for the money although we could definitely use some of that too. It's for the change. For the new ideas and thoughts that would spring out of it. It's to be a catalyst.

Ah, to be a catalyst.

Collectively, we decided we are, and are OK with being, a catalyst. Not the big-bang type of catalyst. More like a little cell structure that went ignored until someone realized that it was the key to cellular metabolism and energy; I want to be a mitochondria when I grow up. I want to chew up inert molecules and spit out bursts of energy and a force for powerful change. But I want to operate quietly, out of the scrutiny of the microscope.

But if coming out of the storage facility were to cast us into the spotlight, well so be it. There's so much work to be done -- so much ground to recover after over a century of people with mental health issues being vilified, shunned, locked away, turned out, turned in, scapegoated and hated.

The thought police are watching, and they're judging us. They want to tell us how to think, that there's a range of "acceptable thoughts" and everything and anything outside of that is not acceptable. They want us to think, feel, believe, express, imagine inside certain prescribed boundaries and to never step into other, less understandable and more chaotic, dimensions of thinking.

But they're wrong. And if you can come out of the storage facility and join us, we're going to show them a thing or two, aren't we? It's all about freedom and choices. It's also about proving that we can be responsible and do no harm in spite of being different. We do have something to prove, because they've been telling us for a whole century that we're sick and disordered, that we are wrong and that we need to change, to conform, to go through a long protracted period of dis-ability and mental illness and come out of the other side someONE -- and that's something the WE in each of our individual bodies are definitely NOT.

But let's take it slowly, because we know everyone listens to the thought police. Everyone believes what psychiatry, the youngest science and sometimes regarded as a pseudo-science, tells them. Remember, always, that psychiatry and the definitions of mental health and illness are guardians of a status-quo of what is considered normal thought and behavior versus what is considered unacceptable, sick, debilitating, or abnormal thought and behavior.

The reality is, a therapist is a tool in YOUR toolkit, not an instrument for imposing change on you. If you happen to have one, use them as an instrument you can choose whether or not to employ to suit your personal goals and desires for your own future. If you are not the one making the choices, fully informed and with total consent, then you may need to read this manifesto. It may apply to you no matter what so-called mental illness you may be told you have -- but I am most specifically writing to those with DID -- dissociative identity disorder, or DDNOS or MPD, whatever you want to call the range of thought-patterns that involve having more than one mind, psyche, id, ego, spirit, soul, residing in one body.

Come out of the storage facility, or come "out of the box" if you will. It's always hard to come out with something deeply personal and emotional, but there are people like us out here waiting to help you.

For tips on coming out see Crisses' Coming Out Tips New

Other Posts in March 2014

Like most things in life, there's no "one right way" to be multiple. Most multiples I've met have an internal landscape of some type, although it's certainly not a prerequisite, just a common feature. I consider internal landscapes to be the (subjective, metaphor) environment we picture in our mind's eye when we interact with one another inside our respective heads.

The Crisses, Internal Landscape, Front Room

The first feature in our internal landscape was a file cabinet, when we were around age 8 or 9. We thought we were just joking around when we'd imagine rifling through it and pull out little paper scraps of information (aka memories). About 8 years later, in my early days of being aware of my multiplicity, I could close my eyes and I would clearly be in the Front Room, able to see and interact with my headmates. I even drew a primitive version -- my first "headmap" -- there was just a bench, and a pile of pillows, the Front Room, and the mysterious Back Room behind a door. At the time, our headcount peaked for a bit at just 8 people -- the furnishings were sufficient for us to hold meetings and have one-on-one conversations and get to know each other. And there was the door we kept shut separating off the Back Room. We knew what was behind the door: a massive number of other people, and we weren't ready to deal with them yet... Since then, we've added rooms and furnishings, items of spiritual significance, and much more. Some of these things we've added consciously, others just "showed up" when the need was there. Eventually we used 3D software to render "maps" of the inside of my head in full-color (one is pictured). The file cabinet is still in the far back of our landscape, still there and still functioning about 35 years later.

One day I had the mind-blowing realization that every significant item in my landscape is at least a single-purpose consciousness fragment. Even the door, the walls, are fragments or constructs with the purpose of separating or cordoning off certain people from the conscious portions of our consciousness. This realization for me was very significant. It changed how we treated items and constructs in our internal landscape for the better. Whether it's our Logbook, Language Filter (affectionately nicknamed "Garbage In, Garbage Out"), or Aliessa's Tree, it's a part of US, and should be treated that way.

It was the dawn of a discovery that there's another way to look at internal landscapes: a full-sensory interpretation of our system entities and their relationships to each other, their purpose, and the skills they offer the system as a whole. In other words, the internal landscape in its entirety is our multiple system. It's a living breathing metaphor of everything going on in our considerably complicated minds -- and it can be very similar to the the "house" I've been using as a United Front metaphor if you counted all the residents, goings on, and the environment in and around the house.

"As inside, so outside -- & vice versa." - The Crisses' Law of the Internal Landscape

If we consider for a moment how powerful our minds are: whether one believes that we have multiple people using the same brain power, or that we have split a single personality into alters and fragments, there is a lot going on inside of each of us. It's all thanks to the power of our mind.

So how do we tap into that power? I have found that visualization and exploration are cornerstones of my self-help care. We have subconsciously facilitated our own self-help by making subtle changes to our internal landscape. What started with just a simple file cabinet became a living room with furnishings, walls, a door.

Starting out with a comfortable and welcoming internal space was very conducive to being friendly towards one another from the start. In retrospect, it may have made all the difference in how we've developed as a multiple. Hopefully you have a similar experience, even though some might find it predictable or boring. Consider some other multis we know with more interesting internal landscapes: an entire planet, a medieval fortification, or the Tardis from Dr. Who (a time-traveling machine bigger on the inside than the outside that looks like an oldschool red British phone booth). While more intriguing, these don't foster the same intimacy and trust as our living room model. Our head is our home, and how we developed it reflects a desire to be family from the get-go. [Ed — funnily we changed it over to a more Star Trek themed spaceship around 2018, for many reasons. Amongst other things it allowed us to become more adventurous, but it also gave more structure as our population outstripped even a living room with annex rooms as our metaphor.]

With the idea of facilitating communication by performing some internal landscaping, perhaps you see some ways that you might improve your own internal landscape. I have some suggestions for you.

• I have a theory 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. This is all part of the same thumb, even if the thumbprints are different. When you change the holodeck or the internal landscape, it changes for everyone.
• You are part of your system, so you're part of your internal landscape. Your fellow residents are too.
• You may or may not have a visual representation of your system inside your head, but it's a good idea to document where you're at before you go making changes. It makes things interesting to pull out old maps and see where you've been. Just keep in mind, these maps have a tendency to be obsoleted the moment they've been drawn up.
• Mind the internal landscape paradigms. You can shift them, but try not to create tremendous cognitive dissonance. Any time you can work new features into the current paradigm, the less resistance you may get. Your internal landscape may actually be some of your residents' only reality and you can try to reach them through environmental changes without disturbing them greatly. Any time you can work new features into the current paradigm, the less resistance you'll get.
• Consider whether or not the landscape you've been using is still working for you. Is there a way to re-construct? The more changes you're going to make to the internal landscape, the longer it may take to complete them. Remember, every item may represent fragments, and you're asking them to change their perception of themselves, or the perceptions others have of them. Extensive changes to the internal landscape are ill-advised. While you have complete control over your personal holodeck, it's better to get a candy bar from the vending machine in the corner than materialize it from thin air, for one example.
• Make your paradigm extensible. When there were few of us, we met in our "front room" and held our meetings there. Eventually the meetings got very crowded, so we built an extension to the side as a dedicated meeting room. We added a big "round table" and made it much larger (on the inside than the outside, like the Tardis) to accommodate future needs just in case. This was a conscious and unanimous decision between our co-conscious consortium to alter our internal landscape.

Let me know your thoughts about your internal landscape and whether your experience matches my own. Thank you!

Other Posts in February 2014

You know you're multiple. You're used to having a gaggle of voices in your head at all times, to the sometimes-comforting presences and multitude of opinions on everything from which toothpaste to use today to whether to reach out for a doorknob with the right or left hand. When you've been living with the voices since childhood, it can be nerve-wracking when they disappear suddenly, leaving you uncertain of anything, even who you are.

Depersonalization is actually written down in the psych literature. That's what you've got at these times. We're used to having many identities, a sometimes chaotic, sometimes harmonious chorus in our minds. On paper it might look like losing this chorus is a blessing, but it's not. Depersonalization is not alter integration or unification New. It's not being a singleton. It's not being a multiple. It's this haunting sense of being nobody at all.

It's alarming. It can induce panic. "Where did everyone go!?" and "Who am I right now?" are the signs that depersonalization has taken hold.

Multiples who don't know what's going on try to describe it. I've called it "Criss-ing out" -- which means that rather than us all blending behind the Criss-mask just to the people outside, we can't even tell who we are on the inside anymore. I've also called it "Mashed Potatoes". Someone called it greying-out, another calls it "purpling". The idea is that everyone is still there, but rather than being one distinct identity (the goal of unification), you're very indistinct, there's no way to tell who is who, where one person ends and another begins, or even to hear each other over the blandness of fog going on inside.

You don't have to be a multiple to depersonalize -- this happens to singletons, too, because there are people who are singletons who also are dissociative. It's a dissociation issue, you lose yourself, your identity gets grayed out, you feel like you don't belong here, or anywhere, like you don't know who you are anymore. Similar to most other mental crises, it's a product of anxiety and/or depression, both of which are at their root products of fear.

So suffice to say, all the usual fear-controlling suspects can help. Grounding, mindfulness meditation, presence New, etc. But I have one particular cure that you can work on at any time, and keep pretty easily on-hand for those times when you "lose yourselves."

Content notice: Music (as a positive trigger - see also Switching)

Music is a powerful mood-altering agent. Nowadays almost everyone carries a hand-picked cadre of songs called a "playlist" and it's easy to tweak, change, etc. No more mix tapes and cd compilations -- our music can be shuffled, carried everywhere, etc.

So make a playlist. It's your system's playlist. The order doesn't matter much, but you can customize it at your whim. We have a playlist that starts with a system song (we like "Are We Ourselves" by the Fixx), and then 1-2 songs per major-front in our head. This could be a privilege you extend only to people who actively participate in your system's governance, your choice. The main point is to have some power-songs that people in your head associate strongly with. What makes this person dance? What makes that person sing? What power song motivates them so strongly that they want to front?

Songs are powerful mood-changers. In terms of "state-dependent-memory", they can act as a wonderful purposeful trigger. I'll have to rant on state-dependent-memory some time (note to self :) ).

Once you put this new playlist on your device-of-choice -- iPod, phone, android tablet, whatever -- you're now carrying around a tool to use at any time to encourage differentiation (the polar opposite of depersonalization). You know yourselves best, and who should or shouldn't be on your playlist. You can have a full playlist, a "trigger a safe front" playlist, a driving playlist (triggering responsible adult drivers), etc.

One thing we like is to sing while driving. It's really neat when a song with a deep voice comes on and one of the guys fronts and takes our voice as low as it can go, which is pretty impressive. We like to mimic the voices in the songs on our playlists or on the radio. We play with switchery when we're alone by using the power of music to trigger switches on-purpose, playing male-female duets, songs with many layers of harmony (so whomever's got the voice can pick the harmonic line that appeals to them).

When we remember the power of music and use it purposefully to create inner harmony and differentiation, we're far far happier with our multiplicity. When you're happy, you aren't stressed and anxious, so you depersonalize even less.

Share some ideas for your own playlist here, and start making yours today! Try it out, and let us know if you find it helpful, or share a tale of woeful depersonalization with us -- what did you do to get out of it, if you can remember? Did you just wait it out?

Other Posts in February 2014

Many years ago, we made our own film of ourselves. We force-switched a few times. Mostly the video was for ourselves, not really for the public.

You can see 4 different people in the videos: Hart, Taelee, Aliessa and Dreal. It starts with Aliessa doing a test take, then goes through footage of others. We sliced out the bits of us meditating (to force-switch) because they could run as much as a couple minutes and were boring to watch.

What we like is to scrub the playhead across the footage and watch the different mannerisms, facial features & expressions, posture, etc. changing as we switched. It's a real eye-opener for us, because we don't (of course) see ourselves doing it in everyday life.

Part I

My Multiplicity Video: Crisses part 1 of 2.
See our Privacy Policy New
for why we won't embed videos.

We're very camera-shy, partly because some of our abuse was involving cameras (when we film ourselves we can "perform" just fine — the aftermath is not so good :( ). But we did manage to make this one film with the Criss-mask off. Hope you enjoy it!

Aliessa tests the camera, gives a super-brief explanation of the project and mentions that we're going to the store for more equipment. We went to sleep with everything set-up, and recorded early the next day (hence the clothes change).

Part II

My Multiplicity Video: Crisses part 2 of 2.
See our Privacy Policy New
for why we won't embed videos.

Somewhere in this video, Hart (now Faun New) fronts and talks directly to the Crisses about the point of the video, overall.

Please let us know what you think, and don't forget a thumbs-up if you like it!!

Other Posts in July 2013

Our society still has a lot of prejudice and fear around mental health issues. While there are laws protecting people with differences from being excluded, harassed or bullied, it still happens. Here's some things to try to help yourself cope with your diagnosis in the short and long term.

Realize you're not alone

As immediate proof, consider that you're reading an article written by a multiple. I'm not a mental health professional who learned about what you're going through in books and articles: I have gone through the process of not knowing what was going on to discovering other people in my head.

It can be tough knowing whether you know anyone with a particular mental health diagnosis. Mental health issues are generally invisible, so no one really knows how many people around them have issues. One person's quirk is a psychologist's playground for tampering and tinkering and cubby-holing. We've all been dealing with people with mental differences all our lives, and we might not know it. DID (once known as multiple personality disorder) is one of those mental differences that could be hidden from plain view, along with obsessive compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder and depression.

DID is considered to be rare, but consider that it is statistically mis-diagnosed for about 8 years when in therapy before someone has the "I have multiple personalities" V-8. This is further complicated by the decision by some in the psychiatric community to keep people's diagnosis from them -- a hold-over from the days of Freud and worse mental-health stigma than we have now. Other times, a professional tells us, and we don't believe them because we don't have proof.

I'm in some online groups with thousands of people with the same diagnosis, and I probably know over 100 people with a DID diagnosis. I know for a fact that you and I are not alone out there, but you need to meet some people before it will sink in.

Reach Out

There are ways to meet people on the web, on mailing lists, and in-person. Consider your privacy, safety, and reputation before you rush into joining a community; you may want to use an alias. Many multiples use a "system name" so they do not inadvertently out themselves on the Internet. Our "system name" is The Crisses, but we've also decided to come out of the "storage facility," so you can find us mentioning multiple issues as (Rev.) Criss Ittermann, too. People take on a second Facebook profile as their multiple self, and so on. If you choose to do that, look me up and let me know you found me through the Boot Camp. I can introduce you to a few dozen multiples.

As always, be cautious about meeting people in person. I used to hold public events and invite a bunch of friends and online friends to a public place like a restaurant. It didn't matter if some were new acquaintances because there were plenty people around.

Try to stay calm about it

Most people developed DID as a protection against trauma. Those who did are almost always also experiencing PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and the very last thing needed is more stress.

Worry, stress and anxiety come from imagining the worst possible scenarios, looking at things in the worst possible light, and generally being afraid of the future. And they're known to increase the dysfunctional symptoms of nearly every known disorder, whether physical or mental. No one has ever needed a mental or physical hospital from the side effects of staying calm and positive. If you can, adopt an attitude of curiosity rather than fear. Wonder. Consider. Ask questions (even here, in the comments below the article). Find ways to look at the positive side of the issues that come up.

• "I wonder why we did that."
• "I wonder why that person in my head acts that way."
• "I wonder how to make the best of this situation."
• "I wonder who else I'll meet."

Wondering has a much better feeling to it than worry, judgement, name-calling, assumptions, etc. It's far more productive than getting anxious.

There are physical things you can do that affect your mental stress levels, too:

• Deep breathing exercises
• Exercise
• Yoga

Practice presence

Studies are showing the benefits of mindfulness practices. For multiples, I recommend mindfulness meditations over meditative trances until you get a better handle on things going on in your system. Mindfulness is the opposite of dissociation. Think of it as building a muscle and practice practice practice. Try any one of these quick easy and portable suggestions:

• Pay close attention to your immediate physical environment with one of your senses.
• Pay very close attention to the words that someone is saying to you, without thinking about how to interpret what they're saying or what you're going to say next.
• Stay grounded by feeling your feet on the ground or your butt in a chair. Wiggle, move, anything so that there's a sensation to pay attention to.
• Staying in-the-now, stay in your body.

It may not be easy at first. But look at the amount of your success in a positive light. Thi s is probably something you've never done before, and it takes a lifetime to perfect. If you can only be in your skin for 5 seconds, then that is a whole 5 seconds that you stayed present. Again, adopt an air of wonder and curiosity: "I wonder if I can do it for 7 seconds next time!" Mindfulness is not easy, that's why it's called a "practice". One doesn't master it: one practices it. But the benefits of mindfulness are massive, so I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Seek help

There are different types of help you can get for the difficulties that can arise from the situation. I have the United Front Boot Camp in case you can't seek out a professional for some reason. Some people can't deal with therapists, in which case I'm available as a life coach and offer support and a very different approach to what multiplicity is and the options and outcomes. I might be able to help you get to a point where you can seek therapy, or I might be all the help you need. Whether you use my publicly available resources (this blog and http://kinhost.org, Facebook, my books, etc.), or you want to actually talk on the phone or in-person, or you want to seek out help from someone else or other resources on the web, please do seek out something. My goal is to help you become more functional (able to hold down a job, relax, enjoy life, take care of your responsibilities, get your bills paid, etc. by whatever legal and ethical means).

Help yourself: Check out the Boot Camp

I have written out steps to getting along better in your head, and you can see some of the topics covered in the Cloud Index on the right of this page. You can read the entire introduction and tackle the steps in the suggested order, or you can skip around to the topics that are relevant to you right now. Regardless, I think it's important that you mix getting help with helping yourself. Whether you choose to follow the Boot Camp or not, it might give you ideas, hope, strategies to consider, and examples of how someone else worked through the realization that they weren't alone in their head.

I'm not trying to promote the United Front Boot Camp as much as I'm trying to help you. Seriously. I want feedback to improve it so it can help others, and I want you to have the resources you need to help you out. Some multis work with a therapist: I had one on a regular basis for about 5 years. Unfortunately he was totally over his head with my disorder, and didn't do much that I could tell to educate himself about it. You can use the Boot Camp to educate a therapist on possible strategies to help you. You can use it while seeing a therapist. You can use it with a coach (I don't know how many other life coaches out there would work with a multiple, but I will!), or you can use it on your own.

I really hope this is helpful. If you have more ideas on how to cope with being diagnosed with DID, please let us know below:

Other Posts in February 2014

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

This article does NOT refer to RA/SRA/MC programming. But family and cultural programming or messages we repeat to ourselves in our head, echoes of trauma or verbal abuse, etc.

When people hurt you over and over in the same way, you build up some automatic programs against that type of hurt.

These automatic programs are like those old 8-tracks &mdash: a continuous-loop that can play over and over. You just choose which track to play and it starts wherever the tape's at, and it plays over and over until you switch tracks.

I have a real problem with the idea of conditional friendship &mdash: and conditional love by extension. Those people who would place conditions on whether they could like me, or love me, from parents who told me what I had to do to earn their love to friends who were only my friends when no one else was around.

I was 13 &mdash: and my best friend of 5 years turned her back on us. "I still want to be your friend, but only when no one else is around," she said.

I stopped being her friend. I had a crush on her for years. I considered her my best friend and stuck around when she'd name anyone but me her best friend. We used to sleep over each others' houses and talk to each other in the manual alphabet at night. I just loved her. Unconditionally. Except for that. I couldn't love her after she played the "only when other people aren't around" card. She wouldn't stand up for me, she wouldn't stand by me. She would rather hang with the judgmental jerks even though she knew I was right and they were wrong.

But she wasn't the first, nor the last, to play that conditional acceptance card. She's not responsible, but the episode with her created the 8-track in my head with the passive-aggressive programming. I would rather cut my fingers off than pick up the phone to call her and talk to the girl I loved.

When I was in the middle of some of my toughest self-work, I had a lover who told me that he didn't want one of my subsystems around when he was there. He banished them from his presence. Yeah, they'd pissed him off because they were young, raw, disorderly, reactive &mdash: they were new-to-us and hadn't drunk the United Front prototype kool-aid yet. But his conditional acceptance drove the nails in the coffin of our relationship. We couldn't get over it. Those girls, wearing the mask of their subsystem veil, had been perfectly acceptable. But once they were distinct and clearly all their screwed-up splendor, reactive after being revealed, and didn't just fall into line with the usual Crisses behavior, they were second-class citizens.

Anything that happens that reminds us too much of that &mdash: it's ok when we do something sometimes, but not these other times, if we do it then we're not acceptable anymore &mdash: is a sure trigger to turn that 8-track tape to the stubborn pissed-off passive-aggressive channel.

It's like a certain type of cognitive dissonance changes the tracks in our brain. We don't LIKE that track. We don't like who we are, what we become, when that passive-aggressive fragment gets tacked onto our personality(s). It's an unthinking program, one that's been played less and less the better we've gotten, but that doesn't mean it can't get triggered. The stronger the cognitive dissonance in the right form, the more likely it is to get triggered. That plus our stubborn streak can lead to a world of pain for ourselves and others.

I don't want it to be triggered. But as I've said things that trigger it are in that conditional acceptance dissonance area.

My internal landscape is helpful because we actually found a representation of this 8-track in our head, that was plugged into our control panel. Someone tossed it in a bottom drawer. It might find its way back into our control panel. But we know better than to try destroying it in our internal landscape. It's a fragment, or perhaps 8 fragments. The same incident caused us to be quiet and observant in groups, to tend to like to be with very small groups of people or one person at a time, to be extremely leery of being part of any "in crowd" since they might choose to exclude me or cause people to feel that being my friend would exclude them from that crowd. [Edit 5/28/2017 &mdash: and there's more where that came from, which will be in our podcast episode on Conformity that airs tomorrow! ]

It's funny how looking at something in the internal landscape, remembering its functionality, considering its causes, can save you hours at the therapist's office — if only you know what to look for.

To the people who pulled that crap on me... I didn't deserve that. That's really cruel. It started in kindergarten or first grade. How dare you be such pricks. Why did you hurt me like that, so young? It makes me angry. There's an angry streak because of it...another track on the tape, perhaps?

Other Posts in July 2011