heyy, we remember you all posting something about being addgenic once and, if you have the energy for it, we were wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on that experience a bit? specifically when it comes to ensuring everyone is getting their needs met! we ourselves have spontaneously grown much larger than we ever anticipated (and there's always the possibility more will pop up in the future) but we're feeling a little overwhelmed making sure everyone feels involved enough in our life. admittedly we're not technically very big (only in the late teens in terms of headcount), but it's enough for us to be struggling and we wondered if you had any tricks or advice as an addgenic system!
fwiw also in case it's relevant: we think part of our struggles come from our awareness/senses of self being connected to fronting, and our brain struggling to render very many headmates at a given time. so it's difficult for a lot of us to have enough time to feel "solid" given the logistics around coordinating front time...also doesn't help that we have a frontstuck host who takes up a lot of fronting energy lol. i hope this isn't too much info, we've sent asks here before i think and they were very helpful for us. you're of course under no obligation to answer and we hope you have a calm day in any case :)
Hi anon! So this is actually a super good question and one that every larger system will find different answers to. What works for us may not work fully for everyone, but making sure our members are happy and healthy mentally is really important to us, so this is what we do!
We're the exact same way with not being able to handle a ton at a time (maybe five people at once before it starts getting too much, but we're usually more around 2-3) and a frontstuck host makes it all the more stressful since you can't just "leave". (Letting go of the body is a worthwhile skill to learn, even if you can't drop completely out and use headspace) The way we've handled things since the beginning has been an extremely in-depth and focused headspace/innerworld/wonderland. If you work enough with your innerworld that it's deeply engrained in the body's subconscious, then it's possible your headmates will be able to live fuller lives whilst in that subconscious/"not in front" state. We have a sizeable city area with different types of home spaces, fields and forests for people to set up their own places, and lots of recreational areas that appeal to different tastes (library, clubs, hot springs, cafés, etc).
This method does take significant time and effort, though, because engraining something into your subconscious enough that it operates in the background takes a long time. But, your headcount is currently small enough that it will be WAY easier for everyone to get accustomed to it than if yall had a lot more than could reasonably practice. For us, it also helps to have a designated "fronting room" that you can't see out of without using a headspace body/mindform, so that headmates can walk out the door and leave front without just kind of poofing. A lot of little mental indicators like this can help bridge the gap to certain mental goals.
I used this amazing audio guide by a tulpamancy youtuber in order to create our wonderland - everything from sections 2 (the fourth video) through 6 is completely focused on creating deeply immersive wonderlands, with objects that have internal structural identity and places that stick with you when you're not actively thinking about them, as well as how to use your own mindform and interact with your own inmer world. You can even get your headmates in on this too, having them interact with the innerworld around you as well in order to help reinforce a sense of space, tangibility, and the feeling that they can reside there when out of front. Especially because you have less people to work with, engraining this early helps later on!
This has been successful to the point where we rediscovered a headmate that had dropped off the face of front for months and months because someone else casually told us he'd had a fling with her in headspace
But hesdspace stuff isn't all you can do! There will be some headmates that are naturally drawn towards your innerworld and some that will be drawn to front, especially with large systems. We've found that a strict "schedule" works out less well than simply having reminders up for who wants to do what when. Like we have a little whiteboard hanging up we can write on when we want to do something (we keep it someplace visible because we have adhd). So if someone is feeling bored or antsy, we can check it and see what kind of activities others of us want to do, and from there see who we can call up to front!
Another thing we do is try our best to ask headmates who don't show up as often if there's anything they want in the future. Something in headspace, something in front, if they need anything, how they're doing, etc etc- some things end up going on the board, but often there are requests to be front summoned more often, so we keep those in a separate list we can try and get ppl from if things are quiet.
We hope this helps out some! Good luck with getting things sorted, and make sure to listen to your headmates' ideas too!