(cw for fusion talk) hey, i dunno if this is the place for this sort of question, but we have an issue with one of our headmates. they're a previous host who wasn't suited to the role, kinda shoved into it during a bad period of time, and during that time they lost connection to the rest of the system and essentially became a singlet for a little bit before rediscovering the system; that was a long time ago at this point, but one issue that they kept having was feeling like they were taking fronting time away from everyone else, since it was just them alone most of the time while we were still trying to repair our switching and communication functions. after a while we got more people into our fronting rotation and eventually they stepped down as host and stopped fronting super frequently. but they still, even as recent as yesterday, feel guilty for fronting literally ever because they feel like they're taking time away from everyone else. they didn't realise that they haven't fronted in over a month and yet still left front very quickly because of the guilt.
this has led to,, we think they're starting to fuse into the rest of the system? which is absolutely terrifying to us- the feeling of fully losing a headmate in the system, where they're gone and cannot be reached again, freaks us the hell out. other headmates, some who have been around unchanged for a while, are suddenly and randomly picking up traits that they didn't have before, ones that were very distinct to this headmate. when they front they're much less distinct, they're losing a lot of the grip they had over a lot of the system functions that are typically easy for us. one way we differentiate between people in-sys is their relationships and emotions about other people in the sys, and any relationship "threads" that might still be connected on one end are just blank on theirs. as if the information that was there is just Gone- there is just zero emotion on their end and it's very disorientating. which is further contributing to their guilt as it leads to them just not having any motivation to interact with anyone else in the sys, even people they were very deeply in love with, and they feel like they've ruined all their relationships with this self-destructive spiral.
usually we try to solve this stuff internally as we're pretty good at solving things like this, but it's been months and we don't really know what to do. we noticed this process happening back in may, and thought if we focused enough on it we'd be able to fix it, but it hasn't stopped. it's been a very gradual process- that feels normal for this headmate, it took over six months for them to form initially- but the gaps between them showing up in front are getting longer and the space they occupy in headspace is feeling emptier by the day.
we don't want to lose this headmate, as a huge amount of us care about them very deeply. but also losing this headmate might damage our functions a lot. they were one of the absolute best at managing and navigating the system, taking on the role of archivist after host. we have other archivists, but this headmate's connections to so many others made it a lot easier for them to have access to almost the whole system, which is something we struggle with as a very large system with a ton of barriers between sidesystems. we're already sort of struggling to keep our current fronting group together, as they were sort of the "glue" that kept all our mostly-disconnected groups together.
sorry if this is a lot. we're just very worried, and we don't know why this is happening or what we can do about it.
Hey there anon, I totally get your worry and concern. My best advice? Take a deep breath, and try to hold on to them best you can. Find ways to ground them in the inner and outerworld. Sometimes, there’s not much you can do against the brain, so plan contingencies, okay? But best of luck to you.
