“So is there always just one someone “fronting” at a time?” -Dylan
“Do you or others get amnesia when switching like in the movies? Or is that just a Hollywood myth?” -Dylan
Hey Dylan!
Thanks for your questions, as always. These two areas actually pretty interconnected, so we’ll answer them together.
There is supposed to be at least one person fronting at all times in my system, however we’re built to handle up to maybe 3 at a time since we blend a bit. When we blend and share front, we all experience input from front. For instance, when one person is listening to Spotify, someone else may be handling the computer. Our memories separately follow what we were individually doing at the time, but since we are all in the same body, it’s pretty close to the experience of being two different people in different bodies but experiencing the same situation together. We’ll often remember what the other person was doing if we were in front together. The only problem that comes in is when something hits a trigger memory for us is when we’re thrown from our driver’s seat/front. It’s hard to get back to the microphone and talk or get back to the controls to move the body at that point. Major trauma triggers can do this to us, and thankfully we have a support system that understands how to quickly get us back to front in most cases.
At this point, you may have started to see where we’re going with answering your amnesia question and why it’s related. Amnesia versus shared memories is something that, in my system, is a slider bar depending on how much i’m interacting with them internally. There are some headmates that I simply never have contact with. I literally never cross paths with them. It’s like a neighbor I’ve never met, but I may have seen them once? Maybe twice? Maybe I have an idea that their car belongs to the apartment building? Glimmer and Lime are examples of headmates that I don’t necessarily live with. I have amnesia any time they are in front, and I get cloudy memory if they have been paying attention to front. There are others that live with me internally, apartment style. Closer to family or sisters living in one place and all knowing what’s going on. Yeah sometimes we won’t remember to mention things to each other, but we try to keep communication as open as we can like any respectful family. Having this many people to one headspace can get complicated and communication and mutual understanding is the only way we have found to quiet our head down and simplify our day to day life. I’ve also known systems that have 100% amnesia, since they have NO internal communication. I’ve heard leaving notes on a cell phone or physical notepad helps systems that are built this way.
So yeah all in all, some systems are designed as a one-person front, some are modular-front, there are systems that do get full amnesia, and there are times that my system happens to experience amnesia. To answer your direct question though, in my experience, the typical confusion-inducing amnesia episodes are not NEARLY as prevalent as media has portrayed it. 🐝
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