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Dormancy 101


BearBaeBeau

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[Bear] I want to try to describe how we figured we handle dormancy of other headmates to allow someone to front without distractions.

 

A lot of talk in the community occured regarding "front-stuck" hosts and other interruptions by headmates and my opinion of that is that if you think your other headmate is still there, then the new fronter may interpret reactions and other stray thoughts as theirs when in fact they may very well be a mixture of conditioned responses and intrusive thoughts.

 

This topic isn't about that in particular, that's just an example connection. This topic is meant to share how someone can think to eliminate the stray thouhts and reactions and disconnect them from other potential fronters.

 

If this doesn't work for you, that's unfortunate, but it works fine for us and it's based completely on a mindset and simple rules which I'll get into. There's no magic here, just a mode of thinking that has worked for us.

 

If you have your own process, procedures or insights, please feel free to discuss them.

 


 

[Bear] We just had a discussion, Ashley, Joy and I and this is how we think it works:

 

[Joy] I just don't think of them.

 

[Bear] Simple. Just do that. In reality it's not enough to go by and I understand that, but it actually is another one of those practice and it will just click sort of things. Here's an example of what we're trying to avoid by putting a headmate in dormancy.

 

[Ashley] trust me, if Bear is there in tulpa position, he's a meddler. I like it except when we played games where we're actively trying to not let him do that. Putting him in watcher position or dormancy are our only two options but dormancy is preferred because we would know he's not dormant and then blame everything on him because the body feels like him as we discovered. When he's dormant, sometimes it's even hard to get him back, he's gone. So we can't blame anything on him. The dang BodyOS will sometimes do or say things, but there's no actual thought there, it's all reaction.

 

 

Here we discovered that the BodyOS feels like me. As the main fronter and associated to it most of my life, you can imagine there is good reason to associate it with me. Our point is, the BodyOS is conditioned by me so of course it feels and acts like me even when I'm not there.

 

[Joy] Bear is a notorious blender and I don't like it. Ashley is too talkative and it's distracting. Misha looks at me like I'm a piece of cake, so I disallow their thoughts.

 

[Bear] The first key insight here is that the headmate must actively ignore and block others' thoughts. This will act similarly to how the original would let their headmates slip into dormancy when they're busy or not otherwise thinking of them before they were engrained in everything, in other words, before they were mature.

We separate fronter from BodyOS and accept that some reactions from BodyOS aren't them. If you associate everything not you as any other headmates, you're likely going to keep them awake. Even if it's not them.

 

[Joy] if they're dormant. All thoughts that aren't mine are then rejected as spam.

 

[Bear] This is a trick I also use to dismiss egoic or intrusive thoughts. Like yesterday when intrusive thoughts said mean things out of the blue, I simply ignored them. In fact, in our system, it's required to confirm anything negative or derogatory so we don't get extra drama from intrusive thoughts.

 

So what's the difference between that and "I'm there blending with my headmates"? 

The answer is in how you accept the thoughts and whether you let them affect you.

 

[Joy] Other than I can tell by what's said and done that he's blending, I can feel him break through and take over temporarily. So that's when I make him go night-night.

 

Joy has this down and we learned a lot from her. It helps that she was always a very strong headmate and distinctly different in how she thinks.

 

Good luck and hopefully, good night.
 

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We struggled with "frontstuckness" in the past, but we never gave up on figuring out switching despite multiple people being concerned we were internalizing it too hard. While I believe fearing being front stuck can be an unhealthy problem, for us I think it was more getting caught up in mindsets that didn't apply to us and not focusing on mindsets we needed to switch. I believe our first successful switch was back in June of 2019, almost 6 months prior to our first successful on-command switch in Decmeber of 2019. There were certain steps we needed to do we were not doing, we needed to focus on the sensory part of switching, our affirmation, and realize our ghost theory before we were ready to switch on command. I think this post describes best what it looks like to have Gray still switched-in despite the fact I was trying my hardest with possession and explains our idea of what a ghost is.

 

However, that's not to say all of Gray's stray thoughts were symptoms of him being switched-in. Our ghost theory still applied to us after we started switching. Instead of overpowering me, it was just there to annoy and confuse me. Our ghost theory concept taught us that we can have unconscious thoughts, but regardless of being switched-in or out, those were a symptom of dormancy.

 

When Cat tries to go dormant while switched-in, she fails, and gets reduced to her ghost, or her unconscious thoughts. Since she's still switched in, her ghost can either wake up Cat or push me out of the front. Switched-out, her ghost will sometimes pop up to pester me or it may pop up when I'm thinking about her, but instead of pushing me out nothing happens. She is truly dormant in this state.

 

I believe dormancy is being absent on both a conscious and a shallow unconscious level. The brain simulates us on its own, pretty much regardless who's switched-in or not. I feel that when Gray is failing to go dormant, he is straddling an unconscious layer that's above his ghost but not enough to be conscious. He doesn't have awareness of his own thoughts until I point them out, and I notice them because they're not mine. When it's just his ghost around, I believe Gray is fully dormant.

 

20 hours ago, BearBaeBeau said:

[Bear] The first key insight here is that the headmate must actively ignore and block others' thoughts. This will act similarly to how the original would let their headmates slip into dormancy when they're busy or not otherwise thinking of them before they were engrained in everything, in other words, before they were mature.

 

I think it's interesting that the same approach can have two different results for us. For Gray while he's switched-in, blocking other people's thoughts is one way he kicks people out. For me while I possess, it can be useful to keep the front so I don't get kicked out. However, this approach was not enough to keep the front due to the fact I was possessing and not switched-in.

 

For some, I think this leads to switching, and for some it doesn't. For us, we needed to take different steps to switch.

 

We also use other tactics for kicking people out. I will sometimes eat up brain resources and focus on myself, we may use symbolism or a mindset to make whoever is trying to gate-keep in-system to feel bigger or stronger. I think our most common approach is to avoid thinking about our headmates and focus on symbolisim of their triggers being denied. In extreme circumstances, Gray may drown someone else out or limit their ability to think. This last one is for a last resort, usually to protect another headmate's privacy during a tense event or when we needed to communicate with our headmates one at a time to grieve and not be overwhelmed all at once.

 


 

I do think it's helpful to clarify your host is not the stream of consciousness nor the body's habits. The stream of consciousness is just the feeling of being awake/alive and the sensory input being fed to the body. The host originally may feel comfortable calling this them because their whole life prior to switching they observed this as part of their day-to-day experience. I believe one of our mistakes in the past was trying to understand what this unconscious layer Gray was in, and we wrongly associated it with the SOC at times. The body's habits fall under a similar vein, behaviors Gray would do like wave at people and smile can feel like something he is instead of something he does. I think it can be confusing because in a way this is true, Gray while switched-in did those things and set the standard. However, those habits are not really him, they are the shortcuts the body is taking to make it easier for Gray to be himself. When a tulpa switches in, they have to work with the body's habits so over time, they can change these habits and feel more represented on a habitual level. Ultimately, the body's habits are influenced by the fronter and the fronter influences the body's habits.

 


 

20 hours ago, BearBaeBeau said:

[Bear] This is a trick I also use to dismiss egoic or intrusive thoughts. Like yesterday when intrusive thoughts said mean things out of the blue, I simply ignored them. In fact, in our system, it's required to confirm anything negative or derogatory so we don't get extra drama from intrusive thoughts.

 

We have a slightly different approach but we do essentially the same thing. If Gray says something mean, we accept the fact it's just an intrusive thought and we move on. If it's persistent, we try to work with him to calm down or address his thoughts so they stop bothering him and others. We understand that not everything you think is particularly nice.

 

These intrusive thoughts can come from a ghost, but if they're persistent usually it causes the headmate to wake up.

 


 

On a strange note, when dormant for too long possibly or if pushed into dormancy when stressed and need to process something, I wonder if the brain retaliates with emotional bleed and has another hedamate do the processing. When I was dormant and taking a break from being really stressed from a school assignment, Gray talked to himself about what I was stressed about for an hour or so. Sometimes my ghost gets really loud and causes me to wake up even though I was previously inactive. I wouldn't say I'm secretly not dormant, but it's weird. Maybe a little outside the scope of "Dormancy 101".

Edited by Ranger

I'm Ranger, GrayTheCat's cobud (tulpa), and I love hippos! I also like cake and chatting about stuff. I go by Rosalin or Ronan sometimes. You can call me Roz but please don't call me Ron.

My other headmates have their own account now.

 

If I missed seeing your art, please PM/DM me!

Blog | Not So Temporary Log | Switching Log | Yay! | Bre Translator | Art Thread

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