I know some people experience their innerworld more as connecting them to places than containing places, like they are traveling via the mind rather than traveling within the mind. For systems that experience that, do you consider anyone you encounter to be a headmate?
Like, we can travel to hell from our headspace, and I semi-frequently do so and interact with the demons there. But I don't consider any of them a headmate. But I do have a demon headmate who did end up in the headspace from hell, but she's only a headmate because he stayed. They can front, they can enter parts of headspace that are just ours, and mostly just she's someone I interact with regularly in my own house, so to speak.
Complicating this, there are parts of headspace that other people pass through, rather than me traveling to their territory. Like, we have a room in the headspace that's an endless forest, and sometimes there are people in there. I'll chat with them, and then they'll move on. Some of them even return occasionally, but they're also not headmates to us. They wander through our mind, but they don't live in it.
I guess the way I'd put it is, I can visit other places but those places aren't my house, and people can visit my house but they don't live there. Only people who live here get counted as headmates. Also, only the six of us who live here feel like we split off from each other. Everyone else I encounter in the innerworld feels like a totally separate being with no shared origin.
The reason I ask how other systems do it is because I understand that not all plurality feels like splitting off from each other, and I also know that there are plenty of systems that are so big that not everyone knows each other or even knows of each other. I'm quite content to count us as six, but I'm curious if there are other systems who would count the visitors or the people we visit.
Reblogs for more interactions are especially appreciated here !
Given you all are looking for opinions (I believe), I'll put in my thoughts here: I think this depends on a few variables.
My first question would be, "well, what do others like the demons and visitors to your home consider themselves?".
My second is a bit more complicated. We're a larger system of 100+ alters, so we will more often than not encounter others that we aren't familiar with, or have a pre-established relationship with; so for us, disqualifying them as headmates solely based on that wouldn't make sense for us. Alongside that, NPCs tend to have a distinct feeling for us compared to headmates, though I know other systems can have others who may alternate between being a headmate or NPC, somewhere in-between, or something else entirely, I'm sure. For us, we do have people who feel like they've split off of each other similar to you all, but the sheer amount of headmates and how we function means that not everyone is going to have the same "origin", if that makes sense, so not feeling connected to others who are also headmates is also a very common experience for us. It gets even more complicated from there, because there are things like "descendants" of someone, or "alternative" versions of someone, vs clones who all can feel distinctly separate in terms of how they're categorised for us. There's just an innate feeling that comes with how exactly someone feels like they've split, or existed, and it doesn't stop at someone directly splitting off of someone else either. We also have things like "collective splits" where it'll feel like someone has split off from some nebulous source, or from our collective issues or experiences collectively rather than one person. For others, I know it can feel a lot more external too, like they just walked into the system one day. So, that all might be good food for thought for you in terms of how you categorise them, perhaps?
Furthermore, our innerworld is very large and incredibly fragmented, so people having a different point of "base" or "origin" that they return to or live in (like you in your house) is pretty much the default for us.
I'd personally consider others like the visitors you mentioned and others in the forest as headmates if they feel like headmates to us, and not NPCs, though I know that abstract feeling isn't always a thing for others. The reasons you stated like not being in a specific area, or not feeling like they split off of someone else isn't personally a disqualifier for us. I know a way of differentiating between an NPC and headmate for some can be methods like seeing if they're able to front or interact with others around them, though this can fall apart a bit quickly if there are fragments (in this case, I'm using the definition of a headmate who is not very developed, or "one-dimensional) involved.
What we are considered is a lot less "doing" for us, and a lot more innate in regard to who is or isn't considered a headmate though, so you all may benefit from hearing from others who have needed to figure things out a bit more manually. I'd still go a bit back to my first question and maybe place some importance on asking and seeing how they view themselves in all of this, as I don't think you can go wrong with getting it directly from the source, so to speak.
At the end of the day, headmate counts can be pretty complex and vary from one system to another, so you may end up getting even a wildly different perspective from our own !
Thank you for the submission !
