Thread by @TheCrisses

Trouble working with or finding your inner world? Hopefully this info helps folks. 🧵 We keep finding folk having trouble with or mistaken impressions about inner worlds. #pluralgang #pluralpride #plurallife #dissociatwt #DIDOSDD

We have found some plural & DID systems “trying” too hard to make/create their inner world, imagine it, picture it, visualize it into existence, etc. It seems that somehow there's some mistaken information about inner worlds being shared in the community.

We are pretty sure most already have this “place” and are overlooking it, making it too complicated, or under the mistaken impression that it has to be more elaborate, therefore *that* must not be it, it must be more grandiose.

Then they are imagining or visualizing something, not getting the results/benefits of inner world work, getting frustrated, saying they don't have one or it isn't working “right” etc.

All systems are different. But we can say many systems are overcomplicating this.

It's very important to realize inner worlds are not always visual nor always colorful or elaborate. Folks with elaborate inner worlds often have been aware of them and working on them a long while. Drop expectations of some visual elaborate place you create…

…and instead reconsider the things right under your nose, or “behind front”. Some folk are like “OH - that void, flat, empty, colorless, space? That has been there forever.” “That room?” “The place we picture the front interface?” Oh THAT? Yes, that.

Often it’s not something you create at all. It’s something that likely has been there almost as long as you can remember, or as long as y’all have been plural. And it’s so normal/natural or even boring seeming that y’all are overlooking it.

Or “When I was young I would run away inside to a cave.” Bet it’s in there. “We always picture front as…” that’s probably your inner world. Sometimes you create it by accident “We always picture ourselves like roommates in our head” that was ours I think.

And by considering it that way our head took on an apartment look for a long time. The underlying system heard us, and made it so. We didn’t try to picture it; it was there. When we hugged or held each other, that’s where we were.

We aren’t visual; it took letting go of external reality to turn our mind’s eye to see it. We usually sense it more by touch/placement/object relations/interactions/distance/depth. When we do see it, color is irrelevant. We don’t dream or remember in color either.

It may be different for y’all, or it may be similar. It’s probably rather plain to start with; ours was “just a room” but when we started interacting with each other things would appear to help fill needs, or based on things we talked about.

We used to say our memories were stored in a file cabinet; there it was. We needed a place to rest or cuddle rather than just stand around; a pile of pillows appeared. A place to sit and talk; a park bench. A place to organize internal affairs; a desk.

These first basics were supplied early on by our background system, or maybe by a system manager who heard and responded to the need without our knowledge. We still put in requests and after a time the thing is provided.

So if y’all think you& are having trouble working with your inner world, please let us know. Check out this thread and the link at the end; we’re willing to try helping a few folk directly if the stuff we’ve been writing and sharing aren’t helpful for folks.

We’re concerned that there’s information about inner worlds that’s misleading a lot of folk and they’re not able to leverage the benefits of working on/with/within their inner world because the information they get about it is off the mark.

When you are front, where are the voices or people in your system? On your right or left? Close or far? When you step out of the front interface, where are you stepping out to? What does your “mind” or “brain” look like to your system?

Where did y’all go when you dissociated? Where did you meet each other?
Can you hug or comfort or hold each other? Where are y’all when you interact?

Here’s our starter article on inner worlds, and there’s a whole category with about a dozen articles talking about inner world stuff on the site kinhost.org/Main/InternalL…

The page includes a list of some benefits you might tap into working with your inner world.

It may also be good to nudge mistaken resources. Therapists who use visualization or imagination techniques are missing the mark, and community members sharing those techniques are well-intentioned but folk get disappointed that it doesn’t work “right”.

Singular folk don’t get it and can’t really teach about finding or utilizing inner worlds without having been first taught by plurals. Therapists didn’t invent inner worlds; these are an emergent feature of most if not all systems.

Oh and a side note of gateway systems etc. Sometimes our “inner world” is a real (seeming?) world on the other side of a front interface. It CAN be extremely elaborate with rich landscapes etc. We are mainly addressing those overlooking it & misinformation.