Quora - May 20, 2023: Losing a host 🖤
Intense week
TW______________________ Losing a host
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As is customary when we write, anybody in the system who wants to contribute is blended in, providing an interestingly balanced mix of views and perspectives.
It has been a rollercoaster, we have had some very negative experiences, but these were interspersed with wonderfully fulfilling ones.
As always, inner life is easier than anything that happens IRL.
I’ll start with the biggest bad news of the week as it has had a considerable impact.
This week, our last host “disappeared”. We called him #7 because we believe he was the 7th reincarnation of that specific host.
We noticed that when we carry out a specific task, the host always ends up “breaking” and being replaced. This happened again on Monday after he did what he had to do.
For us, the death of a host is devastating. Our inner world is quite limited. Therefore, the host is usually the one with the closest relationship to all the member of our inner fam. He empowers everyone to join in the now-space, i.e. that area of the brain where people can partake in the daily running of life. He has been especially close to the young ones. He spent many, many hours with them, playing, talking, sharing their pain and their fears, teaching them about life, showing them what it feels like to be loved. He was a kind of grandad to them.
Admittedly, this death of a host has happened 3 times in the past 12 months so we are developing functional coping mechanisms. However, emotionally everyone is grieving.
He did a great job up to the last minute that he was with us, and this post is intended as a tribute to him.
3-year-old & 7-year-old
Our 3-year-old is fantastic. Such a sense of adventure! He is quite literally a bundle of joy on most occasions. His happiness is so infectious that when he smiles, everybody smiles.
The two of them are always together and when fronting give us the most amazing sensory experiences. All 8 senses are heightened. They can literally feel colours and every living thing. Everything is brighter. Louder. Bigger.
It feels like sitting at the edge of the Universe looking in, in wonder and amazement.
Everything is exciting. The heart races as the eye follows a speeding bee moving on to the next fieldful of flowers. As the wind slides on the surface of the pond in ripples, the little’s smile is only held back by the ears at each end.
He has a “thing” that he loves to do. He comes front at night, when we go to bed, and spends a good half hour doing full body stims in bed. Feeling the sheets with heavy blankets on top, hiding his head under pillows, rolling, and laughing as if that feeling was the absolute best that the whole wide universe had to offer! And every night, when he does that all the kids share in the sensory experience. It feels like they are purring, and I am sure that we can even hear some of their thrumming!
He doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t need to. His vibes, his emotions, and his soul are his means of communication. He is our essence. Our biological soul, in many ways.
His flashbacks are really difficult to piece together. They tends to be sensations, emotions. He feels terror. He has panic attacks without any apparent reasons. Sometimes wakes up at night in extreme distress, especially when someone has shared some of their fragments or flashbacks.
If we look at the dissociated (IFS) Self, he is the part that provides curiosity and playfulness.
His 7-year-old caretaker is pure love. The way he is available to protect the little one is difficult to describe. His loyalty and devotion are beyond those of a legendary hero. He doesn’t know why the little one is so important to the system, but he feels he is. He senses that the little is our essence, the first and most important piece of the puzzle. With the 3-year-old, we can start understanding ourselves and our system.
So, he is the voice of the little, conveying everything the little wants to express accurately and diligently.
And lately, 7-year-old has been more chilled. He knows the little is safe, so he’s been starting to express himself. He has been close to the front a few times. He has been working on his playlist.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2oFFrHUVOpGbg7YyYSAl17?si=561846b552254628As he is more comfortable, he has also been able to begin expressing his own pain. He has begun having his own flashbacks. They too are very emotion based. There is sometimes a narrative, but most often there is no context. Not being able to see inside our inner world because of our aphantasia means that it is difficult to get situational awareness from single fragments.
He is overall a happy child. He is our role model when it comes to self-love.
If we look at the dissociated (IFS) Self, he is the part that provides compassion, calmness, and patience.
Teen
There’s been a lot of activity with the teens. But I will focus on only one as this post is starting to take time to read.
This is a mid-teen boy with a history of … having a history … 🤣
He is the first one that has fully embraced starting a new life as a new person. Essentially, put everything behind him and find himself.
He likes that. He is so excited by not having to do the things he used to do. We are discovering new sides of him that we never knew he had. As we get to know him, it is becoming clearer and clearer that If we look at the dissociated (IFS) Self, he is the part that provides connectedness, confidence, and creativity. Well, he is surprisingly rather feisty!
He likes to co-front, but not to deal with people. Understandably, he prefers to avoid humans. Likes to wear a hoodie, go out before sunrise or after sunset. Walk through back roads in quiet, empty streets. He has a really naughty smile, one expects him to do something worthy of disapproval at any minute. Yet, he doesn’t. He’s just a sweet boy who wants to be loved and accepted.
He has been chatting with a younger teen in our inner family, and they have started to look into gender identity. Admittedly, this was completely unexpected and we were unprepared so we enabled them to research the subject.
Something else not anticipated is that he made friends with another woman in another system. ACTUAL HUMAN CONTACT 🫣 It is through messaging, but it is still amazing. They are quite close and chat frequently. We are hoping this is a positive experience for them both.
Also, a few days ago, he was really upset with a friend of the host. He tried to avoid the subject out of respect. However he was becoming increasingly irate, and in the system we didn’t really know how to support him. So #7 told him that his complaint was valid, and agreed with the teen that he could express himself, requesting him to however be polite and respectful.
That was intensely validating for the teen. To our immense surprise, he took to a messaging app expressing his displeasure in no uncertain terms .
To cut a long story short, somehow he managed to start chatting with another teen in our friend’s system, and they seem to get along nicely.
We, as a system, haven’t had the opportunity to chat with our friend’s system about this yet, but I am sure that it will come up in conversations 🫣
I think the most noticeable change in this teen has been his confidence. He has been validating his arguments by saying things like “I am real” and “I am loved” and even “the old man backs me up” (referring to the host).
The 11-year-olds
We have two 11-year-olds who have been hovering in the now-space. One is a protector. He is always around watching over the other teens. He is close-by.
If we look at the dissociated (IFS) Self, he is the part that provides courage and persistence.
The other seems to be a nerdy youngster who has been interested in exploring sexual identity. They have been researching and chatting with a few of us, including the teen.
If we look at the dissociated (IFS) Self, he is the part that provides clarity, presence and perspective.
They have been very discreet and considerate, allowing the system to focus on the other 3. I mention them because we believe that this team of 5 combined (plus the brain, whom I am just introducing for the moment) can probably considered to be both our dissociated self (structural dissociation) AND our dissociated Self (IFS). (maybe!) We do try to combine the theory with our lived experience and see if they make sense, which they seldom do.
But also they should be mentioned because while their contribution may have been “in passing” so to speak, it was invaluable in ensuring the successes we enjoyed.
The host
I mentioned how important the host is in our system. He is the glue that holds us together. He is the embrace that nobody escapes. He engages, enables, and empowers everyone in the system.
We have been discussing with other multiples the concept of the shell host. #7 was terrified that he was not real, that his life was not worthy. So, we all agreed we’d never leave him alone.
And we all had wonderful times together. Obviously, all the hosts before did fantastic jobs. But we feel it is important in our system to recognise that the progress mentioned in this post was all thanks to #7.
He promoted change. He supported development. He nurtured self-expression. He loved everyone unconditionally and unreservedly.
And now it seems that #6 (Neuro) is back and that is reassuring because many of us are already close to him and because it should mean that all the other hosts will return too in some way!
So, we want to pay our respects to #7
TL:DR, Conclusion
We have had a turbulent week. We enjoyed some great times, bonding and learning more about our individual and collective strengths. We also shared flashbacks and pain, and that is ok too.
We cannot forget that we lost another host. We don’t know what happens to hosts when they disappear. It looks like they do come back at some point, and we long for that day! In the meantime, we mourn their loss and we celebrate the success that we enjoyed thanks to their love and commitment to the inner fam.💜
