How we went from blending constantly to fullish separation
This write up is the detailed version of the Mindforce Collectiveās documentation of how they restructured their plurality to be less host centric and more rebalanced between all members. This process doesnāt have a hard start date, as the process evolved drastically starting from around 9/2023. Weāll describe what our basic day looked like before and after. This guide takes elements from self-hypnosis, meditation, reality shifting, and intense visualization, and combines it into one.
First and foremost, about ourselves. My name is Zenith, Iām the former host of the system. My plurality began almost 9 years ago with just tulpae, but has since evolved by adding walk ins, servitors that became full headmates, and former imaginary friends. Our headcount is at 11. The body is a male and 25 years old, and is diagnosed with ADHD and autism, as well as depression thatās lasted since 2016. I stopped identifying as the body around 2020, and realized I was trans in 2024.Ā
We wanted to shift our lifestyle for a variety of reasons, like:
Depression killing me slowly but surely
Headmates wanting to build hobbies and make friends in the external world
Myself wanting to leave front to experience the mindscape fully, and have a break from dealing with external reality
The lifestyle we had went as follows. A typical day involved myself waking up in front, and headmates becoming active shortly after awakening. My lover Scout slept with me, and everyone else slept in the mindscape. Iād take care of pretty much everything that came up in day to day life while my headmates watched while immersed in the mindscape. My access to the mindscape was fleeting; I was able to see out of the eyes of any headmate inside, and our communication was very good. In fact, too good, and we blend sometimes because we canāt tell whose thoughts and emotions were whose. This didnāt happen too much at first, but after our system doubled in size during Spring 2024 it became really bad. It was getting to the point where weāre going to start having identity crises if things didnāt change. I was the main decision maker for everything, as well as the only one who worked. Consequently, I was the main recipient of our depression. Other headmates showed signs of it, but generally I received the most of it. Another factor that made it worse was that some headmates werenāt fully independent, requiring me to focus on them to give them enough energy to function. Depression, dependency, and blending brought us to the decision to more fully separate, but we didnāt know what to do. We started off by purchasing a smart watch to practice independence. We came up with a game to play that would boost independence between us. The game went like this:
Start a 5 minute timer on your watchĀ
While ticking down, your goal is to make sure the headmate is active while youāre focused on something else.
After the timer goes off, check in with the headmate and ask them if they felt grounded and separated. If so, add a tally to the count.
Repeat the process, aiming to get as high a score as possible
We would do this over and over continuously during working hours. Modifications to the game kept it fun and challenged the abilities. We would modify the game by:
Giving ourselves a score multiplier if the environment around us was more hectic and distracting, or if a streak is started. For example, we worked as a pizza delivery driver. If Iām walking down the street to deliver a pizza, Iād have a basic score of 1 point per 5 minutes. However, if weāre at the store and itās incredibly busy, weād give a multiplier somewhere between 2 and 5 depending on how distracting the environment is. As for streaks, weād increase the multiplier if we did enough trials without failing.
Give out bonus points for choke points. A choke point is a point where failure is most common. For us, myself entering a conversation with another external person caused some of us to focus intently on the person, bringing about blending because we stopped maintaining separation. If we stayed separate during a choke point, weād add to the tally.Ā
Decreasing timer duration. After 5 minutes became easy, weād lower the time by a minute and start the process again.
After a few months of doing this, we were a lot more independent and had much more energy amongst ourselves. This process is also the culprit around some servitors transitioning to full headmates. As they saw everyone else becoming much happier and content, I guess enough of that energy spilled over to them, and they wanted to be more than a tool. We welcomed them with open arms, but since our headspace became even more complicated we had to make more changes. We were also beginning to switch more frequently, with Scout taking shifts and introducing himself for the first time to our coworkers. It was the second time weād ever mentioned plurality, and they accepted us! It was pretty exciting. We had switched more often earlier in life, but as we had started a new job we wanted to keep things as stable as possible. We have little experience with switching, so it was tough as hell. I kept jumping back to front, unable to separate myself from the body for very long. This worsened blending, but we pursued the goal. I would switch out for an average of 4.5 hours, totaling 120 hours over the course of 3 months. I was unable to keep myself out of the body for the majority of time, but it got easier. Fast forward to Fall 2024, weāve left pizza delivery to work at our old university. Because people remembered ME at the time, and because I was generally a pretty decent worker, we decided to out ourselves as plural to certain managers and coworkers we felt safe with. We were even more excited at the fact that we had a plural coworker! They recognized our plural enamel pin and introduced themselves. We also introduced, and that gave us lots of motivation to continue switching. We had started wearing colored wristbands as a subtle way to communicate whoās fronting, so that made it easier as well to ease into being ourselves publicly. Before the semester started, we had a goal to continue separation practices. Our basic desires for our new lifestyle was:
Everyone needed to switch in at least once per month or so. Not for very long, just to have experience.
Headmates who wanted to regularly front would be put onto a list, and every time we decided to switch a random name would be chosen. Theyād switch in for a few hours (eventually working up to a day or two), then I would take back control. Blending was still a big issue. The goal was eventually to have Zenith stay out of front for up to days at a time. Headmates can trade shifts.
We wanted our memories to stay the same, but maybe make it different to recall memories that you didn't record. Maybe a vibe of āthis isnāt mineā tagged to it. That would be enough to stave off stresses surrounding this. We started a memory palace that we would contribute to regularly to ensure a smooth transition.
Use SimplyPlural for logging fronting times
Have the ability to choose when youāre completely shut off from external reality. Sometimes we just want to be alone and completely isolated from others, but we didnāt want to make it something problematic to executive functioning.
We wanted to get into hobbies we enjoyed that would also encourage us to separate more. We chose to start meditating regularly to help with this, as meditation would make it easier to analyze thought patterns and adjust our behaviors. We started out with 5 minutes a day. Some of us got hyperfixated on meditation, and eventually we turned 5 minutes into a maximum of 3 hours a day. In addition, we started reading more on the subject and adjusting our life to make room for more. Over the course of August ā24 to May ā25 we:
Meditated seriously, doing different types of meditation like walking meditation, kasina meditation; practiced mindfulness during the day like Vipassana-Samatha
Some stretches of intense mindfulness had us keeping track of things during work like breathing, footsteps, thought patterns, and so on. We would try to keep the mind quiet while we focused, labelling thoughts to keep from mind wandering. This skill became pretty useful later on during anchoring.
Started training thought separation and thought concealment, a process that helps with privacy among sysmembers. I talk more about itĀ here.
Started training imposition as a tool to increase quality of life. We wanted to use it to
Let go of front / immerseĀ much easier
Use symbolism to create anchors
Help with our art prospects
Tried to learn lucid dreaming
Started weightlifting to gain muscle mass and learn self defense, as well as help catalyze change
Started brain training to help our goals
Started n back to hopefully increase our mental energy, plus it helped with visualizationĀ
Started learning chess to aid our pattern recognition in addition to unseen benefits
Started taking supplements relating to change like Lionās Mane. We minidosed on psilocybin every few days.
BeganĀ autogogia training
Began reading books more often. We have the ability to listen to audiobooks while we work due to our smart glasses, so we absolutely took advantage and put many books into us. If anyone wants to read some good books relating to this:
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming
Figure out ways to cure my depression before it was too late
We called all of these hobbies and activities the Web of Skills, as it was designed to build certain skills that reinforced each other when one was worked on. It was also designed to boost neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Nutrition relates to everything, as does sleep and meditation. Imposition directly benefitted our art and immersion goals. So we worked on refining our process and sharpening our skills until summer came. Since we worked at a university dining hall, and because we were overworked, we had the option to take off from late May to mid August. We absolutely took that opportunity; having absolutely no obligations for 12 weeks straight would give us so much time to practice our abilities and plan for fall. Over the summer, we came up with Intentions, Anchors, Conditioned Responses, etc. We also had a bit of a crisis as we figured out a reason why we act the way we do, and why thatās aiding depression.Ā
Intentions are things we set that HAVE to be taken seriously and must be completed promptly. Itās basically a way to force yourself to break procrastination. An example would be āIntention: clean room before leavingā. Youāre now bound to clean up before leaving. It takes a lot of discipline to follow through, but if you do you can create something wonderful: a Conditioned Response. These use intentions and the habit making process to give you a clear and distinct response to a stimulus. Say you want to feel confident, but donāt have a way to do so. Every time you feel very confident, you could think of a symbol associated with it, and whenever you think of the symbol you get a wave of confidence. Itās part of how triggered switches function. Weāve used this concept to:
Enter certain brain states quickly
Get motivated about a task fast
Itās talked about moreĀ hereĀ andĀ here
I also wanted to build habits centered around immersion. Since I was the only externally active member in the system, also because of ADHD, I had lots of conflicting mental habits built to keep me stuck in the body. Hereās only a handful of them:
Focus on anything new in the visual space
As soon as a new thought emerges from ANY source, forget whatever youāre doing and pay full attention to it. Also assume the thought is yours
Donāt daydream for too long at once
These habits and others made it hard as hell for me to drop awareness of the body, so we came up with habits designed to reinforce separation and immersion. These habits activated while I was switched out:
Feel texture of whatever youāre walking on
Feel YOUR body and not the physical body
This step is really the combination of experiencing all the senses in your body as well as other niche ones like proprioceptive senses.Ā
When pondering something, do not slip back into the physical body.
Other habits not listed here
Training some of these habits is easier than I thought it would be. The mindscape, at the end of the day, is just a complex visualization skill. I just needed to learn to stay in that state rather than slip back. Since visualization can be easily trained by us, I would just exercise certain areas that are lacking while I was in control. For example, in order to feel the ground beneath me, I would imagine myself barefoot while doing everyday life for a while, then when I switch out that area of visualization is now easier because weāve put effort into that specific skill, freeing up brainpower to sharpen other areas. Itās also easy because you can set a reward if you succeed at a mental task, such as āIf I stay focused on my body and donāt slip for the next 10 minutes, Iāll eat out todayā. The more enticing the reward, the better the motivation. We want to learn to make lucid dreaming a habit, so a highly motivating reward could be āIf we have an average of 3 lucid dreams a week until the semester ends, Iāll reward myself by buying a 5090. I guarantee youāll focus on the goal a lot more if you have a very enticing reward.
Other ways to motivate yourself to do something include:Ā
Frame it as sharpening your skills
So far, the results of our work:
Thoughts are now tagged so their owner is obvious, if someone wants a private thought theyāre able to keep it private. Headspace is overall quieter.
Iām now able to leave front for increasingly longer periods of time. Mindscape is becoming more and more immersive and vivid. Still working on slip ups.
Stable attention using anchors
Our plan for the fall semester is to keep sharpening our skills in all of this, with the main goals being to learn to make lucid dreaming a habit since itās such a powerful skill and to decrease my time in front drastically. We plan to use lucid dreaming as not only a leisure tool, but a way to practice our goals, since (depending on the skill) practicing a skill in a lucid dream is the same as in real life. That would supercharge our learning process. Now that I have much better anchors keeping me in the mindscape, Iām going to start switching out for longer and longer stretches, adding 1% of switched out time a day until we go from 2 hours to 72 hours. Everyoneās contributing to this by switching in periodically. So far, thatās our process for shifting our lifestyle. Maybe Iāll update in a few months. Thanks for reading!
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