Pattern; young parts fronting when adults are needed

IainEtc wrote:Hi Brejer,

You're nice!

We use "anchors". Like car keys for Host and phone for me and pocket knife for Colin. We hold them and they remind us who's supposed to be front right then. It works unless we get like totally overwhelmed.

Oh and body positions too. Colin stands tall and I kind of slouch in chairs... stuff like that.

Iain

Thank you, Iain! I think you and 'etc' are nice too! And that's brilliant, the anchors. We already know about preferences/what 'belongs to who' with some stuff so we're definitly trying that (woah, it feels big to 'seperate us' more, that way, which we have to do anyway to understand the system better).

birdsong87 wrote:it might help to see it as a systemic problem, not one or the other part doing something wrong. It's like everyone is positioned in a way that this is the outcome.
Also it might help to ask yourself which problem the system is trying to solve or cover up by functioning this way. the system is not stupid, we don't do stuff that creates problems unless it seems to be the only way (we know of at that time) to avoid even bigger problems.

You're right. It's not about blaming a part. And yes, I'm going to dive into the 'why'.

Thanks y'all!

These are good ideas! Thanks for sharing, everyone.

Bejer wrote:Do you think it would be 'unfair' to ask our R (who worked in mental health care and as a manager herself) to deal with such? Or is it up to me now (Ex (and my younger versions) who only started fronting a lot until this crisis, and a lot easier overwhelmed (I'm suddenly wondering if it's actually DDNOS and R is the ANP and the rest of us are insiders who are scrambled around since the crisis). I'm always scared to make the system do something that's unhealthy/will make things worse.

I think you could ask R, but ultimately you probably can't *make* parts do something. Whether it's unhealthy or not is impossible for me to tell - my guess would be that asking is OK, forcing is not OK.

Take care!

Even before you responded, I was wondering if I was putting too much on your plate by asking that about R, fireheart. Sorry. Ofcourse it's impossible for you to tell what's healthy here and what not. Duh:)

And thank you!

Maybe this is helpful for others as well; I suddenly realized that one of my biggest struggles contributes to this as well; letting young parts front/do what they like to do. I don't know why this is so damn difficult (lots of shame and stuff) because this isn't something that makes me feel uncomfortable or anything around others with young parts or an expressive 'inner child'.

**TW very negative vibe from my mother and an ex**

They were disgusted by me when being lively/playful etc, maybe I internalized that somehow.

**end of TW**

So if I finally focus on giving the young parts some space as well, maybe begin with drawing or reading books for children when I go to sleep or something, they will stay 'in their position' because they also get attention. The last T also said this would help against them fronting on inappropiate (for them) moments.

So, the adults need to be adult, and that also means giving the dozens of kids time. I think what scares us most about that, is the 'possibility' of not switching back when we need to. So I'm going to try this when we're alone for at least two days.