In our system, trying to start over actually caused a lot of problems. But that's probably a result of the exact way we tried to approach it, how our system functions, and the alters leading the charge.
For us, our system discovery process was lead by an alter called Connie. Connie is a protector/gatekeeper who normally comes out in times of crisis to control emotions and internal communication. And due to major events about a year ago, nearly every co-host had gone dormant, and Connie (who had been a rare fronter) moved into the fronting room in the inner world and was permanently around.
A big way Connie works is by effectively starting over. This is useful a lot, because it lets us re-approach problems, or figure out solutions we may have been ignoring. But, it also results in throwing out all the progress that existed already. And that's the problem.
Connie was analysing each alter that appeared, for their skills, their personalities, their traits and tendencies. Connie was concerned with trying to rebuild functionality, and focused on finding "useful" alters and highlighting "problematic" alters. Which actually caused a lot of problems.
These alters, the whole system, has been around forever! Every alter has always been playing their part and helping in some way. And by starting over, Connie focused on their flaws in the present, and so couldn't see their contributions from the past.
We have since discovered that Connie has a lot of trust issues with other people. Which as you say, "as inside, so outside (and vice versa)". And working on this has helped a lot. (And we probably still have a long way to go too, so gonna look at your series on building trust.)
Anyway, yeah. So maybe, to make this vent/rant into some feedback for this... We think it might be good to highlight here, in the starting over process, a need to work on trust. To practice gratitude and appreciation for the things our headmates have already done, and are still doing, to keep the body and system going. That they care for the body as much as we do, and we can trust them because of that (body age is 31, so there's a lot of positive history to draw from). I think if we had been doing that from the beginning, it may have helped jump start a lot of our process.
(Wanna say as well, therapist has always praised our functioning as a system, so we must be doing something right. And it feels so validating reading so much of this site and realising how many strategies and techniques we'd already been using, that we had discovered ourselves or picked up from other systems.)
Comment by on November 28, 2021
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In our system, trying to start over actually caused a lot of problems. But that's probably a result of the exact way we tried to approach it, how our system functions, and the alters leading the charge.
For us, our system discovery process was lead by an alter called Connie. Connie is a protector/gatekeeper who normally comes out in times of crisis to control emotions and internal communication. And due to major events about a year ago, nearly every co-host had gone dormant, and Connie (who had been a rare fronter) moved into the fronting room in the inner world and was permanently around.
A big way Connie works is by effectively starting over. This is useful a lot, because it lets us re-approach problems, or figure out solutions we may have been ignoring. But, it also results in throwing out all the progress that existed already. And that's the problem.
Connie was analysing each alter that appeared, for their skills, their personalities, their traits and tendencies. Connie was concerned with trying to rebuild functionality, and focused on finding "useful" alters and highlighting "problematic" alters. Which actually caused a lot of problems.
These alters, the whole system, has been around forever! Every alter has always been playing their part and helping in some way. And by starting over, Connie focused on their flaws in the present, and so couldn't see their contributions from the past.
We have since discovered that Connie has a lot of trust issues with other people. Which as you say, "as inside, so outside (and vice versa)". And working on this has helped a lot. (And we probably still have a long way to go too, so gonna look at your series on building trust.)
Anyway, yeah. So maybe, to make this vent/rant into some feedback for this... We think it might be good to highlight here, in the starting over process, a need to work on trust. To practice gratitude and appreciation for the things our headmates have already done, and are still doing, to keep the body and system going. That they care for the body as much as we do, and we can trust them because of that (body age is 31, so there's a lot of positive history to draw from). I think if we had been doing that from the beginning, it may have helped jump start a lot of our process.
(Wanna say as well, therapist has always praised our functioning as a system, so we must be doing something right. And it feels so validating reading so much of this site and realising how many strategies and techniques we'd already been using, that we had discovered ourselves or picked up from other systems.)