Various -- Another Discovery's Translation To A Spoken Language
What follows is our rough attempt to put together a description of what it feels like when one of us forms from splitting and connects to the rest of the community for the first time. Note that this description does not apply to walk-ins or those of us who were not born from some kind of dissociation; their process of connecting with us is somewhat different. For purposes of clear understanding on the part of the reader or readers, we are saying here that this is written from the point of view of the insider who is forming and connecting to the community. Because it is also a general description, some of the details may very according to a given insider’s starting cluster of experiences.
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Rawness, detachment, being frozen, having no awareness of myself. I am not I, I am simply disowned experiences arranged in a cluster and cast to the side.
I begin to organize. The experiences that compose my sense of being shift into distinguishable order, and I begin to gather other information that will form the bedrock for my identity based on what I was first born from. I am still a set of happenings, but now other information is associated with them as well, and it all looks a little less chaotic than before.
The associations that currently define me begin drawing together, and the others within the community begin to see my form in a sleep state. They know of me, and some may even know me before I have awakened. At this stage, I am I, but it is the rest of the insiders who recognize me as such. Without their recognition, I myself never would see that truth.
I wait, until something calls me to awaken. Perhaps it’s due to the effort of another insider working their way back through one of the emotions connected to my experiences in an attempt to find out why they’re feeling it, or perhaps it’s something outside of the body, or perhaps something else that nobody within the community would suspect that eventually leads to my rising from sleep. Regardless, I do awaken, realizing as I do so that I am I and that these others, whoever they may be, are not me.
I am as a baby would be in its first moments of a new life. Who am I? Who are these people? Are all these feelings and thoughts really my own? I’m trying to figure out what makes me myself, and what makes the others the others, aside from the experience of our view of ourselves and of one another as individuals. At this stage, I may pick a name, if I haven’t done so already, and my unique characteristics begin to make themselves known to the rest of the community. I may or may not remember what formed me, and I may or may not know of the outside world.
I begin to interact with various things and beings, both within the community and outside of it, in the world one meets when they come to front. I begin to have reactions to these things, and if I don’t remember what formed me already, I will probably begin doing so at this stage. Here, other insiders may suggest that I go into a partnership with another of the community who is further along in this process as a whole so that I can correct any emotional problems I’ve identified within myself. I may still believe myself to be defined by my experiences, or may be having flashbacks of how I came to be, or simply need a chance to explore my own nature away from the group setting of the inside world. I may have tried to harm myself, or there might be some other reason why I would need that kind of support. Regardless of whether or not I do end up taking the chance, I will eventually end up discovering my place within the community, the skill sets I have access to, and how I can put everything I’ve learned, and continue to learn, to use.
I begin seeing my own developmental pattern in others as I spend time around them. I begin offering help at various points, depending largely on my skill set and what I feel confident helping with. Now it is my turn to be there for the community’s births, as the community was for mine. At first I may be a little nervous, but eventually the confusion and fear fades as I come to understand these seven stages of development.