Full Promises

[Luminesce]

Well it doesn't seem like anything major is about to change after all, so I should probably just make a post now. 

We've been working on our motivation issues again for a while now, but most intently for about 5-6 weeks. At first we were trying to have a totally positive mindset of not worrying about anything at all, and while there was temporary success, it seemed more realistic to work on (in the same manner, though) just the parts that really bother us for now. Mainly that'd be, the feeling of not wanting to do something when thinking about doing it, I suppose. Basically our goal is to choose/decide to do things we should/want to do, and then not deliberate with our mind any more past that. So when it's a good time to shower, for example, we've been pretty good about just doing it and not thinking about how we "don't want to".

 

No assurance any improvements are permanent yet since, on this subject of motivation specifically, they never have been - but technically this is the longest we've gone without ~falling back down into how we were before again. If we can keep up this ability to do short-term things we feel the de-motivation feeling for, we'll try and figure out how to move on to the even more crippling aspect of our motivation problems, long-term motivation. The short-term ones make it hard to shower, go on a walk, or to a lesser extent do just about anything at all, while the long-term ones make it literally impossible to stay in school or hold a job for more than what appears to be a limit of 3 weeks. This also applies to our lucid dreaming attempts - the short term is not usually a problem because of bursts of motivation, but the biggest thing holding us back is our inability to keep up any practice for more than a week or two.

 

Right, I forgot to mention we're doing this and taking a break from directly attempting to lucid dream because Tewi identified our motivation issues and inability to commit to consistent practice for weeks at a time as our biggest roadblock to success in lucid dreaming. It's easiest to see just with our inability to develop and maintain good dream recall - there's not much "randomness" there, you're either making solid and consistent efforts to improve and maintain it or you're not. And we generally aren't, or at least not good enough ones. I'm still remembering to remember dreams sometimes, to the point where it's very possible I'll have a random lucid dream again soon (it was very close to happening the other day), but technically that's not our focus quite yet. We're full-steam-ahead on fixing the underlying problem affecting our whole life, for now.

 

Well, that's it, I won't make this too big of a textwall.

Edited March 12, 2020 by Luminesce

[Lucilyn]

It's my birthday!! (the 17th) I'm FIVE years old !! ?? That's how old Reisen, Tewi and Flandre were when I first existed! That's crazy!

 

okay I didn't have anything else to say actually, just wanted to say how weird it is to be five years old, and I guess the others are around ten now which is crazy too

[Flandre]

Dang, it's been so long since we last posted here that Lucilyn's 6th birthday has already come and gone. And we didn't even really commit to learning 3D modeling & animation until like, last Christmas, so I guess that's not noted here either? I didn't mean to make some catch-up post, but I guess I'll mention with lack of lucid dreaming success (Lumi's above post still relevant) and lack of success in fixing our motivation issues, we started simply making learning 3D modeling/animation in Blender our main priority. Hopefully, eventually leading to a career, because it's the only productive skill we were able to think of that still sounded appealing when imagining doing it 5+ years down the line. I don't know where that puts lucid dreaming efforts - unless we run into some money and can reasonably afford more Claridream pills (the old ones expired with quite a few left), there's unlikely to be any success without a marked improvement in our ability to stay motivated for things. We still see a therapist every so often to work on things, but it's a pretty innate problem for us likely tied to our reduced emotional affect and whatever else, so how to make progress is unclear.

 

So, yeah, that's why we're focusing our (still disorganized and lazy, but hopefully less so than normal) efforts on 3D modeling. If our life starts to feel like we've got a better handle on it we will immediately continue pursuing lucid dreaming, as well as if we run into a couple hundred dollars or something to feel comfortable with the $40 Claridream purchase again. But of course, those are only a supplement, so even if success with them is a lot more likely than trying on our own, we aren't exactly rushing to them the moment we can afford them, hopefully you guys understand. We'd like to be lifelong lucid dreamers, it's not just to do it once and say we did.

---

 

Anyways? I came here to say?

I was just switched in for by far a personal record of 45 days straight. The previous longest I've fronted (and many times) was probably about two weeks. This is because, compared to my systemmates (excluding Reisen, who's in the same boat as me), I generally run out of reason to be fronting pretty fast. I just don't have as much interest in things as they do, so rather than sit here bored and low-energy, I switch with one of them. However, at the start of last month a group gamemode came out in a game our close friends are fond of (OSRS), and so we actually got to spend a lot of time playing with them for a full month until interest waned, which is the longest we've all done something together in a few years. And I was honestly having a good time that whole time, so I never felt that sense of "boredom, time to switch". I knew I'd been fronting a super long time, but it was really a one-off occurrence so it didn't seem like a problem (and it wasn't).

 

Anyways, with that very large distraction out of the way, we'll be returning to (attempting to be doing) 3D modeling full-time again. And while I'm just as interested in that as anyone else in our system, I think 45 days is definitely the point where any one of us should be considering switching just for the others' activities' sakes.

[TurboSimmie]

Woah, 45 days? That's awesome! I find it fascinating how you guys operate like a tag team, or relay runners handing off the baton to one another, all working to the same goals. Good luck with the 3D modelling! And if you ever succeed with lucid dreaming I'd love to hear about it!

[Flandre]

We definitely share the body's life and have the same overarching values for it, though our personal interests and all differ a little. Being switched for 45 straight days definitely fits a tag team/relay runner description, but we don't really intend to ever go that long without switching and would prefer not to. We just get kind of carried away, though in my case I was aware of how long it'd been but didn't worry about it since I'm never the one who takes too much time anyways. But yeah, preferably, we would switch every few days or so. It would even be nice to switch multiple times a day. But it's just effort/laziness, I guess? Well, we only switch when we have a reason to, though the reason is usually "X person is better suited to or would enjoy this more". (Or, "It's been way too long")

 

That's why Tewi didn't want to switch just now (if you read that in LOTPW) - she would rather wait until our temporary motivation to work hard at learning Blender wanes before switching, as she's very productive and good at doing what needs to be done when the rest of us can't. So I'll probably be switching with Reisen instead, simply because she needs fronting time for activity's sake. Lumi and Lucilyn enjoy fronting enough that we never need to worry about switching with them for that reason.

 

 

Oh, and since we never post here for huge stretches of time, I'll add a random note that whenever we say "Fronting" in reference to ourselves, we are using it to mean being switched. There's a lot of confusion around that term these days, to the point that some people are starting to think it has a unique meaning in between switching and possessing, but as far as we're concerned it's still just a catch-all term for any time a system member is in charge of the body in any way. Switching, possessing, or whatever new terms people have come up with in recent years.

Edited November 9, 2021 by Flandre

[Luminesce]

(From my personal friends Discord)

 

Quote

Tomorrow I'm going to start trying something, along the lines of applying mental effort to consciously focus on things manually and avoiding brain autopilot for decision making and stuff like that, hard to explain in detail

 

If it doesn't work/I can't keep it up and my motivation problems persist, then I'll give up on trying to fix this stuff myself and just spend all my money on (apparently only) 4-6 ketamine treatments for a month or two ($250 a session)

 

Since aside from just helping people out of depressive thoughts, it's also known to increase neuroplasticity for a while after, which helps you reshape neural connections when making good use of that time

 

(I'm still not negativity-depressed, but I'm not making any progress on dealing with not being able to do things I want to do)

[Guest]

Good luck as always

 

[TurboSimmie]

You have a plan and a lot of confidence in yourself. I think that's half the battle right there. 😊 You got this Lumi! 💪

[Luminesce]

Was writing a post in Last One To Post Wins, but given the content it makes a lot more sense to put here. Now I have to make up for missing context though -

It took forever to decide to do (because it seemed insurance wouldn't cover it), but I'm finally doing ketamine sessions for the neuroplasticity-enhancing effect it has (that lasts while probably diminishing for an unknown amount of time, probably primarily two days), the goal being to work on my anhedonia/not feeling "reward" from doing things. Of course, they said my insurance has always covered it for everyone at that clinic before but to check anyway, and then I got an unclear answer from my insurance that they would cover the consultation but not "extended stays longer than medically necessary", but I only found out afterwards (as they were talking in # codes..) they didn't even respond to covering the code for injections or not. I have exactly enough money to pay for all 6 recommended sessions (around $2000), and then I'd be broke, so I'm doing it either way, but it would be really great if they cover anything at all. It'll be a surprise..

 

Anyways, I did one session already, though it wasn't nearly as fantastical as people usually say so my dose was probably too low (which is normal, they don't want to give you too much and knock you out so you have to adjust the dosage subsequently). Basically equivalent to a really immersive meditative state (my visualization quality stayed as bad as it would be lol, no psychedelic visuals), though at the height of each (just a few min, and two shots 45 minutes apart per session) I did get a bit wavy-feeling and lost focus a bit. Of course, physically I was totally dissociated as that's the normal use of ketamine as an anesthetic, I could move my body fine but it was basically "I know it's moving, though I can't feel it". And I got nauseous if I tried to mentally focus on where I was at in 3D space, like specifically. I was fine hearing the nurse talk to me between shots, I was fine visualizing spaces, I was even fine with light filtering through my sleeping mask, but whenever I accidentally tried to place myself in real space it made me really dizzy, so I had to learn to avoid doing that. And then I felt sick in the same sort of way to a lower level for like 4 hours after the appointment lol. And that was with an anti-motion sickness and anti-nausea pill.

 

Oh, but yeah, the post I was actually writing now - 

(context, listened to their playlist with their closed-back headphones I'm not comfortable wearing, and though their playlist was great, now that I know how handleable the experience was I think using my own music (and open-back headphones) could be a much more powerful experience) or, my actual posts after the first session in LOTPW: https://community.tulpa.info/topic/7356-game-last-one-to-post-wins/?do=findComment&comment=399515

---

 

 

Going through all the music we'd consider listening to, now I'm thinking maybe each of my tulpas should be switched for one session, after me doing the initial two. Not like we can switch mid-session, so it's kind of all or nothing if I want to switch for any of them. We don't have two hours' worth of music for any of them lol, though we can just loop a single playlist each once or twice I suppose. (The clinic's playlist just loops once to cover the whole time, and it was great)

 

Wonder what order we should do, in that case. Probably Reisen should be last since she's the most zen and positive-peaceful of us, as a last impression, vs say Flandre who has more "biased" feelings maybe. Lucilyn first maybe? She had a good enough time during my first session when we didn't even really know what we were doing. Then Flan then Tewi maybe. Yeah - won't be able to explain my reasoning lol, but I think Flandre should definitely be earlier and Tewi and Reisen should definitely be later, so this'd work. And if the sessions are on Fridays, I think we should switch on Monday nights. That seems like a good balance of being switched for days before and after each.

 

{I mentioned in LOTPW recently we don't share the songs we have the strongest emotional connections to because we can't stand people hearing them as random songs and going "oh cool"-} And hey, if we're putting a playlist together for each of them that has to be as big as we can make it (while still all fitting the experience of course), that's a lot more within shareable music territory for us. Here's an example of something that we'd have on Reisen's playlist:

I was unsure on this idea at first because I get the feeling it's usually more me that enjoys listening to a given song associated with them than them (depends on the song, each of us has songs that are far more meaningful to us than our systemmates). I thought Flandre that would be worst for, so I asked her and started going through our songs tagged "Flandre", and uhhh lol, there were actually so many dang "happy songs" for her that imagining the experience for her started to seem like potentially the strongest emotionally. Which should actually be the case for Tewi, and Lucilyn's going to have fun no matter what, and Reisen is already zen so she's just going to be happy regardless.

 

I was basically thinking "Two+ months of me being switched in straight, with six sessions of a neuroplasticity-boosting drug... Might that be bad for my tulpas' activity/strength in the brain?" before, and I planned to focus on them during each session, but I definitely think each of them doing a session themselves would be really good "forcing" in the exact opposite direction of my worry. Also means the sessions can be less mentally-active/focused and just chilling instead, which is more in line with what the clinic recommended, though I'm still 100% sure the dosage was just not high enough to fully affect me. I'm very, very resistant to medication/drugs of all kinds. The second shot I got was already +5mg, but it barely made a difference, so higher next time as well.

 

Well, that's all I can think to say right now. I think we'll post more in this thread as the treatments happen. Ketamine and psilocybin (mushrooms) are the only two drugs my friend and I were able to find studies on that seemed to help with anhedonia, and they both do roughly the same thing for it (despite ketamine being an anesthetic and mushrooms being a hallucinogen, their long-term effects are supposedly more or less the same). So this is kind of last-chance-y for us fixing our effort-problems.

 

 

Oh, should I have talked about if the first session helped at all? I think I might've mentioned it in LOTPW at some point but maybe not. The negative feeling that pops up when I consider doing something that takes effort was still there the same day as the first session, which makes sense I guess as we need to do the work to remove it, however there's a chance the actual doing of said things was easier/had less resistance than it would normally have, which is great if so. I can't say for sure after just the one session since technically that kind of thing could just vary with mood (though I was actually in a not-particularly-great mood that day because the ketamine made me feel lightly sick for hours lol, I plan to eat/drink a bit more before and after next time (tomorrow!) to hopefully ease those effects), so we'll see with subsequent sessions + a bit stronger doses.

Edited July 27 by Luminesce

[TB]

Why can't you switch mid session?
 

Though here's hoping it helps you in the way that you want