#alter death

[non-dys-sys]

Headmate death shouldn’t be a controversial topic. We completely understand that some systems don’t experience that, they only experience dormancy and fusion. That’s great, we’re happy that you don’t have to suffer through one of your headmates being gone forever. However, your experience is not universal and it’s an asshole move to say it is. People who are grieving their headmates are already going through a lot, you don’t need to make it worse.

[eklesia-system]

I have enjoyed reading y’all’s posts and stuff. It’s been good.

I feel like there is some things I can relate to and that brings some comfort.

I was wondering, the author of the intro post mentioned one of the old hosts integrating most of the then system members or shaping them to their liking. Any tips on how NOT to do that and how to, like, walk that back?

See, the old host died randomly one day in January 2015 and I kinda replaced her. From then on I’ve been pretty much alone to my knowledge until like 2023, which makes sense because I did not really come together as my own person until 2022.

I think my original purpose was mainly just masking and filtering what came out into the world because I keep doing that. I keep accidentally finding my way into embellishing, filtering, curating and modifying what others want to actually say or who they actually are, which is bad, and I want to stop doing that because I think that might be the main reason there’s so few of us and why the others’ grasp on the front, their identity and their choices is so weak.

Could also be that the first permanent resident was born the day before Christmas eve.

But still.

I don’t know.

And I thought maybe one of you would know?

Sorry if this is inappropriate.

- Eddie

Hello, Tulip here. Firstly I'm gonna have to be completely straightforward and say that, since I'm not in your head, any advice I or my headmates give has a chance of not working at all. But, this does give us the opportunity to talk a bit more about the situation I mentioned in the intro post. I hope what we share is helpful to you in some way. :)

(Answer below the break. Contains discussion of forced fusion and willing fusion/unfusion, and references to bullying and forced dormancy)

All right. To our recollection, around 2013, an alter by the name of Susan began to take on a more executive role in headspace, much like the role Russet currently has. She called shots from behind, all with one purpose in mind: "Look as quiet and intelligent as possible around our classmates, and don't get bullied." She was definitely a filter/mask alter for high school. At this time she didn't really hide the system from the hosts, but the hosts seemed to think everybody had conversations with multiple voices in their head anyway. Why hide? (Amazing the things we used to think.)

She was decent at her job for a while, but around 2017, she became susceptible to cringe culture, and decided to start outright CONTROLLING things and hiding the system from the front. She began curating alters together into groups, and fusing them over the course of a couple years, until she got the host we call Beccs.

Susan forced other alters into dormancy if she didn't like them or didn't think they were necessary to form Beccs. She also tried fusing other alters together that she found too strange or cringe for her liking. This ended up creating an amalgam fusion (we called it the Formless) that we WERE able to disassemble upon discovery due to how unstable it was. She forced it into dormancy as well, after what I can only imagine was a pretty massive "oh crap" moment.

So, in dealing with the Formless. Firstly, it was obvious it didn't want to be fused and shouldn't have been fused in the first place. I believe how we let it unfuse was: We let it front and let it start talking itself out, all of its different feelings. Since it was composed of such different entities, with such distinct voices, it was relatively easy to distinguish the individuals within. From there it was like peeling back the layers of an onion. The most prominent speaker unfused first, and from there it was one after the other, alters popping out of each other like nesting dolls.

If alters wanna be fused, there's not anything we can do about that, no matter how much we might miss someone. I myself am composed of a bevvy of willing individuals who are at total peace with this form. But if they don't wanna be together and they're given the opportunity to be distinct, and are allowed to have that for themselves, the unfusing happens pretty naturally for us. We find that having an idea of an identity to grasp onto, like a faint memory of who one of the individuals in the fusion used to be, or a strong sense of one's own emotions and/or thoughts, can be enough to help a separation begin.

(I must reiterate, this is all just stuff that's worked for us personally.)

And how to allow alters to be distinct? Shit, it's tough to say. I've seen Justin curating others' thoughts enough times I can at least give some tangible advice on that front. If you're filtering and catching yourself doing it, start by apologizing and reining yourself back. Take ten seconds to close your eyes and take your mind off what you wanna "edit". Give the others the space to breathe and then see what happens.

Anything more subconscious going on (in regards to weak identity) might just have to work itself out in time, or it might just be the way your system is. Some systems just have less distinct alters and that's totally legit.

Well, I hope some of this is relevant or helpful to ya. Best wishes for you and the rest of your system! 🤘

-Tulip 🌷

[starfilled-galaxy]

Please. Please we've run out of options. Please help us

Tips on how to force an alter to shatter?

[pt: Tips on how to force an alter to shatter?]

I know this is seen as morally wrong. It is our last resort. Please trust me on this. This alter has done horrible, horrible things and we can't just sit back and let him keep doing this stuff. We have tried being nice, we have tried convincing him to not do this, we have TRIED. Nothing works. Shattering is the only option

If you have no advice please at least try tagging or redirecting us to a plural help/advice blog who we could ask instead, or someone you think might have advice

Please

[Context that we forget to give sometimes, since some people don't know what this means: When we refer to an alter shattering, we mean shattering them into fragments that can be merged or disappear on their own, effectively removing the alter or at least separating the bad part into a fragment]

[heartbeat-sys]

we're a system that loses a lot of alters. well, depends on how you define losing, exactly. its complicated and the specifics aren't important. but, i wanted to talk about, how difficult it can be to handle that situation. like with most things thay happen internally, you're expected to just move on and put your life back together. we went from 200+ to 30-40. how am i supposed to just move on? i dont know but i have to. im not sure why im writing this.. maybe just to say, if you're going through this, you're not alone. that it matters.

[greens-spilled-tea]

TW: Discussions of alter death

So I know alters can't die in the sense that they are a literal part of your brain and the only way for an alter to truly die is if somehow, that specific part of your brain dies. Alter death seems to come up a lot in relation to inner world stuff, where an alter appears to die or is killed in some way. Oftentimes people will tell others that the alter that appeared to die in those moments are not truly dead.

However...

If an alter splits into enough parts, or an alter goes dormant long-term, or even if alters fuse together, could that not be a sort of "death"? Maybe not in the traditional sense of death, but... wouldn’t that still be a kind of loss, in a way?

(I am trying not to imply that alters fusing means that one or more alters are disappearing, but I know that sometimes the fused alter feels like a new identity or that one of the alters no longer exists. I would rather acknowledge these feelings and perceptions even if "logically" and "scientifically" this is not actually happening.)

I don't really know what I'm trying to say. Just. I feel like there's some kind of discussion to be had about what people may call "death" in regards to alters and being allowed to grieve for these alters. A discussion that's oftentimes swept away with the phrase "alters can't actually die" over and over.

And I know I'm approaching this from a mainly CDD view, but what about non-CDD systems? Are headmates able to die? What do people consider "headmate death" in non-CDD spaces?

[sophieinwonderland]

Hi! While I can understand your point of alters death is meant to simply discuss on what's the truth of the topic, it makes me a bit unsettled to think that it means one could really execute a plan to kill someone within the system.

There are self helping materials for disordered system (Be A Teammate With Yourself), and regarding stuff like someone in your head threatens to kill you they suggest that it's not possible so you don't have to worry. And when thinking about about the definition of "death" like this, it feels unsettling, especially when we have some really aggressive guys here always trying to lure us to just "die" in a philosophy/mental way, could also lead to physically harm/death.

I mean, I'm pretty firmly on the side that irreversible headmate death, if it exists, can't be intentionally caused. At least with developed headmates.

The reason is that, as I see it, headmates are made up of memories. And memories exist, in a sense, within the physical brain. As long as the memories exist, so will the headmates. And the inner world is just mental imagery. I don't believe anything you can do in the inner world would be enough to permanently irreversibly kill a headmate.

Now, in the tulpa community, there's what's called "dissipation" which was a concept created when the tulpa community was new, and it was commonly believed that you could ignore a tulpa for a few weeks or months, "starving them of energy" and they would slowly die never to be able to return again.

It's a horrible practice... and also one that doesn't seem to produce the results people thought it did, with many tulpamancers who had dissipated their tulpas being able to reconnect with them later.

Turns out, most of the so-called dissipations were just forced dormancies. Horrible forced dormancies because the host usually thought they were killing their tulpas, and the tulpas likely believed the same. But they weren't actual irreversible deaths.

I do think... there may be ways for headmates to actually permanently die. I fear brain damage... or when we're older, developing a neurodegenerative disease that could start eroding the very neurons that make up who we are. That's a terrifying thought to me.

But I don't think you have to worry about another headmate actually killing you internally.

[my-brain-is-hatching]

I hate fakeclaiming as much as the next system, but when someone actively claims to kill alters or reset the system successfully I feel like people should call out that kind of blatant bullshit

[shitty-goose-quack]

an update (of sorts):

so, system wide a bunch of shit has happened, a lot of the old crew has fused/gone dormant/is gone, including Quinn, Thea, Violet, Nigel, Cuatra, and prolly some others idk

there are a bunch of new ppl, including our new host (i think) Ethan?? or smth honestly idk, we're trying to just like vibe and live life and thinking about did/being a system has kinda been put on the back burner, meaning that most of us are all kinda blendy and shit? idk bro everything is confusing and thinking about it makes us dicociate and maybe we're not a system? it feels so much easier to just live life as once person, whose name isn't our birth name and isnt quinn and isnt ethan, (idk what it is but none of those feel right). Also, as you may have noticed a couple of us started hyperfixating/obsessing on taylor swift and so i've been doing "swiftie rehab" (i mean obsessing litteraly it was not/is not healthy) and now that its goin away life feels meaningless and just jesus fuck no one cares

i want to be a system, i want to feel how i used to but now nothing feels real and i just keep feeling like one person, a person who wants to be involved with their irl friends, and wants to be able to listen to music besides stuff by taylor swift, and wants to find a name that works and stick to it, and find a gender that works and stick to it

i love myself, i love who i am, and sometimes, I don't feel like this. sometimes i feel like a little autistic boy like i wasn't alowed to bewhen i was little, who stims and likes trains and can cry. but maybe that isn't me

~~~okay sorry for all the word vomit but im having an epiphany~~~

i am who i just talked about. that is me. i am trying to find a name. i love watching youtube videos about language evolution and geopolitics. i have a love/hate relationship with competitive swimming, i'm exicted for this wednesday and everything after that. i like hanging out with A***a, Ar****s, V*****e, N***n, and probably A*e, G****a, H*****, N** etc. I dont really care how i look gender-wise, or im happy with how i look now. that is who i am

there are other people who i know who are not me

okay so anyway, that was kinda for me, basicaly to translate im gonna try and not be so fucking controling over the other people i share this body with. they can do their own things and i'll try to leave control and trust them.

tl:dr: im back maybe probably, my pronouns are he/they, and i dont have a name

im a fusion or smth from people who posted here before, but i think i front a lot more than the other people do.