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[prismaticbleed]

 

frankenvengers asked: hi i'm sorry if this is irritating for you, i was just wondering if one of you could explain to me a bit about the tar. i've read your faq and i know some other systems who have a similar thing but i don't quite understand it.

No worries; let me see if I can summarize.

The Tar is, essentially, a semi-sentient entity created as a result of internalized, compressed negativity. Within the System, it is made of Black energy (subconscious, potential, etc.), albeit in a heavily corrupted state— headspace energy is normally fluid and virtually insubstantial, like colored light, but when corrupted it becomes thick and sludgy and tangible. This heaviness makes it resemble thickly melted tar, hence the name.
Its initial seed of creation was about 15 years ago, along with Julie, who originally existed as a “psychological garbage dump” for everything negative inside the mind. As time went on and more and more bad memories/ thoughts/ etc. were “buried” inside the mind, and therefore inside Julie, all that heavy darkness began to turn toxic. After 5 years or so, it began to “seep out” into the open on its own, and Julie began fighting back. This coincided with heavy trauma, and so this was around the time our psyche “shattered” heavily and the System officially took root.

Julie was essentially the “holder” for the Tar until 2011, when she gained enough awareness to abandon that role. Immediately the Tar appeared as its own entity, in a previously unknown area “below headspace,” and proclaimed that it was the mandatory “offset” to our brightness, something to show us what we were not— a mirror of everything still wounded and brutal and vicious inside our psyche, of all the horrid things that forced our System to exist in the first place.
It actively tries to destroy everything that threatens its existence, but it cannot “make anyone do anything”— therefore it uses insidious means to manipulate people into doing its will. Since the Tar is passive and chaotic in nature, it must work THROUGH people in order to be direct.

Similarly, the Tar is impossible to fight actively as that violent angry impulse is what it has its roots in, and so fighting it gives it more strength— something we slowly learned after years of internal war. The only way of stopping it is to “transmute” it into neutral Black energy, something which our member Infinitii can do fairly easily, but not without risk to hirself— Infi is the Black core in the System, so ze runs the risk of corruption (even temporarily) every time ze takes the Tar onto hirself. We’re trying to find a safer way to do this, but right now that’s all we have.

Hope that clears some things up; sorry for the late reply, but this is a rather difficult topic to summarize!


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@ 04:16 pm

 

anonymous asked: When the body sleeps, are some of the alters awake? How are do you all experience dreams?

Sorry I took so long to answer this; it’s not something I ever thought or asked about before!
In short: yes, most alters sleep, some don’t. Those who don’t choose not to depending on jobs or personal preference. However “body fatigue” bleeds into the upstairs, so if the body is up terribly late the rest of us will feel it, whether we want to sleep ourselves or not. This can be very overwhelming.
As for experiencing dreams, that differs depending on whether you’re “inside or outside” when they happen. Only the person(s) fronting in the body as it sleeps experience “body dreams,” i.e. normal dreams. However, anyone can front when the body falls asleep and that can dramatically alter the content of dreams!
The body host/splinters themselves can also dream, but that only happens on very disconnected or disturbing nights, and they only have mundane/dark dreams. They also run a very high risk of hacks.
Jay is usually our main person for dreaming as his dreams are typically bright and rich. However, it is not uncommon for fellow system members to appear physically and/or switch out within body dreams, no matter who is the one actually having them. (We have some of those on record here.)
Inside, though, dreams are very different. The phenomenon of alter dreams was briefly discussed by Jay in a personal entry in April so let me post that here for you as-is (it’s the only bit we have typed about it):

"…I checked up on [Javier], and was surprised to find him sleeping, something I keep forgetting that headvoices do (mostly because Laurie virtually never does)… I wondered if he was dreaming, and if so, of what. To be honest I hadn’t been aware until recent weeks that headvoices could dream, and in fact only wondered about it once someone posed the question to us on Tumblr (we haven’t responded yet, as I feel unable to do so yet). True, there had been references to it before— Lynne has previously mentioned having dreams, and Julie has actually had one while fronting— but it was always just glossed over, never given any attention to because it was taken for granted. Anyway I wanted to know more.
So, I asked the Spectrum how headvoices could dream on their own, if they weren’t using the body to do so (which is possible, but rare— I’m usually the one who uses it to sleep.) And what were their dreams like? In response, the Spectrum said they went ‘into’ Black headspace to do so— headvoices didn’t have literal dreams really, they connected back with the essence of what they were. It was more of a peaceful recharging so to speak, all observational instead of interacting. but there could definitely be sound and imagery, although it was like when I meditate; it doesn’t always stick in literal memory. Also if that individual was shaken up or disturbed, that could reflect in their dreams too? The Spectrum said that’s partly why Laurie doesn’t like to dream… apparently all the things she protects other people from, all that pain in her own heart, could overwhelm her in her sleep if she wasn’t careful… Also, the Spectrum said that a headvoice had to “choose” if they wanted to walk through the body’s dreams? Otherwise they’d just go to blackspace. (Laurie and Lynne have notably referenced this before, but again, I didn’t realize how it applied to the bigger picture). I guess the whitespace works with dream-walking more.”

So that’s the info we have on it right now.
Thanks a ton for asking about this by the way; it was a very informative process for us in answering it.

 

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@ 08:08 pm 

 

tw: eating disorders, self-abuse.


Does anyone have advice for dealing with a trauma-rooted eating disorder?

This thing is simultaneously a purgative mechanism, a form of self-abuse, and an outlet for violence and rage. Almost all our stress goes to our teeth. Plus, because of past associations, food and consumption are both viewed as evil incarnate, therefore we go back and forth between hardcore fasting and total annihilation of anything even remotely edible. The very sensation of eating is so similar to past trauma memories that it is unbearable most days.

It takes up 6+ hours of our day, every day. It's making us terribly ill, physically and mentally, and it's costing us a lot of money that we do not have. We want it to stop. We just have no idea how.
We used to funnel these impulses and horrible instincts into the sort of self-abuse that leaves scars, and that was actually cathartic and healing to an extent. This isn't. This was why we had to self-abuse in sharper ways, to get the poison and lingering trauma memories out. This sort of abuse perpetuates itself, and spikes both hatred and anger through the roof. Again, we want this to stop at any cost, besides dying optimally.

Nevertheless, we're genuinely struggling here and have no one else to ask. Can anyone offer help or ideas or tips or similar experiences?