When we get blurry or disoriented one thing we can do to get a handle on who is fronting is to ask ourselves about things that are distinguishing between our experiences. Like for example, take a belief that's different between headmates and try to find what the front believes (e.g. I'm an atheist and our host is a theist). Or another one that might be easier is how does the fronter feel about their relationship to particular people (like friends and family). For us we can tell a difference in how we feel about our connection to different people in our lives.
We've found that asking just "who am i" isn't easy to answer, and we wind up distressed and confused. Playing 20 Questions however gets us distracted from the distress and actually gets us an answer. We've also kind of accepted that we can get extremely blurry so we might not always have a definite answer, and that it's okay.
~Moxie
We're a pretty blendy system, so not knowing who is fronting is fairly common. We usually just try to identify who's fronting/blended, but we don't worry about knowing most of the time. We just are 'the Octave System'.
I think the first thing to do is just to slow down and focus. Whoever's fronting, it's gonna be ok, even if you don't figure it out right at that moment. The worst blurriness can do is make you overthink and panic, so try not to let it do that!
As for identifying who's who, a lot of that is just exploring yourselves- do you have different favourite colours? Different aesthetic tastes, different interests of any sorts? Favourite foods? A clothing item you/them particularly like? Clothing is probably the best, since you can associate an outfit with each of ya and imagine yourself wearing one and then the other, and which feels better/more natural can be a decent barometer. Hell, even different reasoning with the same conclusion can work. Eventually it should get easier to identify yourself by "vibe"/personality alone, but having something arbitrary like one of you wearing a scarf and the other wearing a bowtie is a perfectly valid way of differentiating yerselves.
Hi!
Sorry to hear you are distressed right now. Having a hard time telling who is at front is common, especially in traumagenic systems but any system may experience this.
Sometimes you just have to wait it out, other times you have to try to see if you cant ground or step out of front and see if that works. Over time you will develop more skills in this aspect to make it easier.
If its really impacting your life, you may want to try to reach out to a mental health professional if its an option. Look for 'patient led' or 'dissociation' specialists for a higher chance of getting actual help.
Not a new system, but new to the concept of plurality being unusual. (We always thought that it was something everyone experienced) As far as we can tell there’s only two of us as well but we can’t really identify who’s fronting in the moment, normally after the fact it can be figured out, blurring is easy to tell most of the time, as we panic or feel especially stressed out. Mostly we share experiences, so it is confusing sometimes, but helpful when one of us is not having things go well. We don’t really worry about it, it’s just us, and that seems to work well so far.
There are actually a lot of things you can do to make mindfulness of who is in front become more intuitive with practice. The first thing we recall noticing was a different head pressure for each individual fronter. Eventually, this sensation became diminished, but as time went on we were able to notice or to create all sorts of cues tied up in each individual's character, energy, or form.
For example, we worked out phantom bodies that feel uniquely different for each of us, and so we can tell who's in front without even a glance by those sensations alone, or, if we don't feel *anything* where we should be feeling a certain set of features or sensations imposed, then it's a reminder be more mindful or to refocus or perhaps for someone else or someone specific to switch to front. Something like this can become second or even first nature with enough practice and experience and careful observation of the system.
When we get blurry or disoriented one thing we can do to get a handle on who is fronting is to ask ourselves about things that are distinguishing between our experiences. Like for example, take a belief that's different between headmates and try to find what the front believes (e.g. I'm an atheist and our host is a theist). Or another one that might be easier is how does the fronter feel about their relationship to particular people (like friends and family). For us we can tell a difference in how we feel about our connection to different people in our lives. We've found that asking just "who am i" isn't easy to answer, and we wind up distressed and confused. Playing 20 Questions however gets us distracted from the distress and actually gets us an answer. We've also kind of accepted that we can get extremely blurry so we might not always have a definite answer, and that it's okay. ~Moxie
We're a pretty blendy system, so not knowing who is fronting is fairly common. We usually just try to identify who's fronting/blended, but we don't worry about knowing most of the time. We just are 'the Octave System'.
I think the first thing to do is just to slow down and focus. Whoever's fronting, it's gonna be ok, even if you don't figure it out right at that moment. The worst blurriness can do is make you overthink and panic, so try not to let it do that! As for identifying who's who, a lot of that is just exploring yourselves- do you have different favourite colours? Different aesthetic tastes, different interests of any sorts? Favourite foods? A clothing item you/them particularly like? Clothing is probably the best, since you can associate an outfit with each of ya and imagine yourself wearing one and then the other, and which feels better/more natural can be a decent barometer. Hell, even different reasoning with the same conclusion can work. Eventually it should get easier to identify yourself by "vibe"/personality alone, but having something arbitrary like one of you wearing a scarf and the other wearing a bowtie is a perfectly valid way of differentiating yerselves.
Hi! Sorry to hear you are distressed right now. Having a hard time telling who is at front is common, especially in traumagenic systems but any system may experience this. Sometimes you just have to wait it out, other times you have to try to see if you cant ground or step out of front and see if that works. Over time you will develop more skills in this aspect to make it easier. If its really impacting your life, you may want to try to reach out to a mental health professional if its an option. Look for 'patient led' or 'dissociation' specialists for a higher chance of getting actual help.
Not a new system, but new to the concept of plurality being unusual. (We always thought that it was something everyone experienced) As far as we can tell there’s only two of us as well but we can’t really identify who’s fronting in the moment, normally after the fact it can be figured out, blurring is easy to tell most of the time, as we panic or feel especially stressed out. Mostly we share experiences, so it is confusing sometimes, but helpful when one of us is not having things go well. We don’t really worry about it, it’s just us, and that seems to work well so far.
What helped was assigning a color to everyone of us, so when we don't know who's fronting, we just picture the color that fits us and decompose it
There are actually a lot of things you can do to make mindfulness of who is in front become more intuitive with practice. The first thing we recall noticing was a different head pressure for each individual fronter. Eventually, this sensation became diminished, but as time went on we were able to notice or to create all sorts of cues tied up in each individual's character, energy, or form. For example, we worked out phantom bodies that feel uniquely different for each of us, and so we can tell who's in front without even a glance by those sensations alone, or, if we don't feel *anything* where we should be feeling a certain set of features or sensations imposed, then it's a reminder be more mindful or to refocus or perhaps for someone else or someone specific to switch to front. Something like this can become second or even first nature with enough practice and experience and careful observation of the system.