#immersive systems

[cemeterything]

just got this email from the library confirming my reservation of house of leaves is finally available and i can't get over their decision to attribute it to the fictional made up author from the book instead of the actual guy who wrote it

[sophieinwonderland]

what are your opinions on Maladaptive Daydreaming being considered a dissociative condition as of 2022??

(the link is to the source for context: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349477165_Maladaptive_daydreaming_is_a_dissociative_disorder_Supporting_evidence_and_theory)

This is a great paper!

Just for clarity, Maladaptive Daydreaming isn't an official disorder. It does not appear in the DSM nor the ICD at the moment, and so it's not yet an official diagnosis dissociative disorder.

I doubt you meant for it to be interpreted that way, but I wanted to clarify for any readers who might come away thinking MaDD is an official dissociative disorder when these are arguments for why it should be classified as such.

Having said that, like I said, I do very much like this paper, and hope that MaDD can be added to the DSM and ICD in their next editions!

I especially find their continuum of control particularly fascinating, as it acknowledges these different characters as having increasing level of agency.

I'd love to see the authors' take on tulpamancy!

I really think this is incredibly important, as it establishes a form of plurality that is both disordered and can be endogenic, while including internal agents with their own agency and ability to act outside of the host's control.

[plural-culture-is]

immersive daydreamer plural culture is enjoying the story you have going on and suddenly you introject the character you were playing

(this has happened eight times now)

.

[artbyblastweave]

Crying shame that Gene Wilder passed before they could adapt the sequel where they go to a space station and just fight a bunch of xenomorphs

[captainhoers]

so shadows of doubt is really good here’s something that happened to me yesterday

[devileaterjaek]

[the-moonjay-forest-system]

I wanted to share my experience with system communication as a system who maladaptively daydreams. I'm unsure if any other systems share our experience with this or idk maybe it's a sign that we're faking or are wrong about having a CDD.

We really struggle with internal communication (communication in general but this is a bit different) like talking to eachover inside our head, we do have an inner voice and if there are multiple alters near by there will be multiple voices but conversations between them just do not work.

We maladaptive daydream and it seems that's what's getting in the way of communication. If we're not actively daydreaming about the world's and characters we've created or different scenarios that could happen in the real world we're kinda just monologueing about our every thought, feeling and whatever is going on around us as if we're writing a book or something. some alters even monologue outloud if they're alone.

So let's say that there's two alters co-conscious with another and there's nothing really interesting going on or anything they're really doing the body's just calmly sitting down. In that scenario we're gonna be very compelled to daydream in some way, the two alters trying to talk to eachover are going to struggle remaining focused on talking and blocking out that urge. I don't know about you but our brain just cannot hold a conversation between two alters and some form of daydream at the same time it has to be one of another. And just like how our brain chooses to daydream over sleep, food, hobbies, socialising, work etc. It chooses it over the alter communicating.

So we have to resort to talking to eachover out loud which isn't always an option, or writing down our conversation since the daydream can't interrupt a piece of paper or a screen but even that isn't always possible. I also prefer more physical forms of communication so I know it is an actual alter talking to me and not me just imagining their response if you get what I mean?

Anyone struggle with internal communication for the same reason? Or maybe different reasons? Maybe you have some advice but I'm not sure if anything will actually help

[1stprototype]

I appreciate how Nightdive made the final boss fight area resemble the super radical Japanese box art for the original. 

[sparethedreamer]

Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder and Immersive Daydreaming, we feel, have been such an important part of us for our whole life. It's brought comfort, a place to belong, a source of learning, exploration, and growth. The ability to create expansive worlds and develop intricate beings with detailed lives has really been valuable in unexpected ways throughout the years. Sure, sometimes it's set us back socially or academically. Sometimes the longing for our creations to be real were overwhelming and brought us emotional pain. But the gifts that we were able to receive from this ability, we feel, have far outweighed the hardships it's brought.

We feel like it's also played a significant role in our plurality. Many in our system are paragenic and are very involved with the paracosms. We feel like our many years of immersive daydreaming also enabled us to become plural more seamlessly during a time of extreme stress and mental overload, providing the coping mechanism we needed at that time.

It's also been so instrumental in our ability to accept, learn about, and find joy and harmony in our plurality. We still had a significant amount of adjusting we had to do, but overall we feel it went really well. We were already used to interacting with beings of various levels of autonomy, so this seemed like just the next step.

In a lot of ways, MaDD/Immersive Daydreaming has been and still is a really helpful tool not just for coping with and finding additional joy in life, but also as a great foundation setting up for a more healthy experience of our developed state of plurality and helpful tool while plural, too.

Sorry if this sounded really formal or like an essay. I'm not good at writing for tumblr but wanted to share. -Nål and/or Nyx

And this isn't to say that you suck if you don't have MaDD or IDD. Or that MaDD is all fun and games. It's a disorder and causes issues. We're just saying that we've really been able to get a lot out of it and really have found it to be an important part of our lives. Idk. -?

[sophieinwonderland]

what do you think the connection between maladaptive daydreaming and tulpulmacy is? theres a known cross over between dissociative system and maladaptive dreaming because of the way inner world building and physically seeing alters is easier while daydreaming. would any of these traits also help with tulpulmacy? i ask because, i read the guide to creating a tulpa and everything says "take your time" but for me its very weird because i dont really NEED to take my time? its like...i'm just kinda able to procure it in my minds eye?

Oh! There's definitely a connection!

On Wonderlanding alone, yeah, you've been training those skills your whole life. Wonderlanding is really just multi-player daydreaming.

I also think some Maladaptive Daydreamers might be making tulpas or proto-tulpas automatically without realizing it, which helps in the creation of intentional tulpas.

It's pretty common to have paragenic systems born of daydreaming. Interact with the same instance of an imagined construct over a long period of time and it will likely become sentient.

So many describe their paras behaving in ways that are outside of their control and reflective of personhood.

One reason I think it's difficult recognizing plurality in maladaptive and immersive daydreamers, as well as other sorts of imaginary friends, is what I call the M-bot Paradox.

M-Bot is an AI in the Skyward Flight books. He's intelligent, being able to think and feel, but dismisses all of his emotions as being fake as he's just simulating human emotions. He's programmed to dismiss his feelings as not real.

I think a lot of paras and imaginary friends operate under the same principles. They're made believing they aren't real. They develop their own memories and personalities. But if the host asks if they're real, they're likely to reply that they're just imaginary.

At least, that's how I was.

I actually needed an external push before I really started thinking about my existence objectively and realized my feelings were real. Because before that, I KNEW I was imaginary. I was programmed to believe that.

So there are probably a lot of plurals with these sorts of accidental tulpas who just don't realize that they're plural because their headmates don't realize they're real.

[granulesofsand]

We used to daydream maladaptively. It was distressing because we were afraid to talk about it, and dysfunctional because we would spend hours pacing or staring at the wall or redoing some repetitive useless task.

I think we used to be stuck in it so often because we couldn’t safely exist anywhere else. Our external lives, whether regular or extreme, were nigh unlivable. Our internal lives were often loops of trauma, reenactments and terror. We dissociated from both.

For some of us, we changed our internal lives as a result. Many of our genuinely safe innerworld locations came about because we revisited a daydream so often. We have a few bubbles off layers that were never part of our innerworld, but were parallel to it.

We still daydream in the innerworld. It takes a lot of mental energy to do vividly, so we mostly only get to when we have chores to do. Laundry is prime daydreaming time. Azure is the best at outerworld overlays, but they only do it when we’re meant to be sleeping or have to sit quietly.

We daydream together, bicker over the flow of a scene, have alters who embody paras, pilot different characters. It’s more common to daydream vaguely, alone, but it’s often collaborative if it’s done in the fronting realm.

I miss daydreaming. We have a section of the archive of perfected scenes in each series, where you can view other alters’ work as writing or video. The layers with the parajects are lifelike, for better or worse.

We don’t have much time to do it anymore, and we stopped because we had to for our continued survival. System policy dictates that “you can’t daydream if you’re dead” — we can’t prove it, but it helps keep the “angel of death” thoughts away (where some of us were taught that the only way out of the pain was to die).

It’s one of those almost cultural things that I’m not certain I consider disordered. It doesn’t currently inhibit our functioning, and I’m not distressed now that I know it’s a valid experience. We’re getting good at taking ourselves seriously, which means I can work through the shame that came with feeling alone — we rarely spoke about the daydreams, so we only had to overcome our own fears. I guess I’m just not one to consider any experience “crazy”.

I’d have to find someone who remembers the more maladaptive days, because I can tell I’m idealizing the habit. We still are not bad or broken for finding solace where we could. Just like our CDS, immersive daydreaming kept us alive and as well as we could have been.

[comicbookluv3r]

Dreaming?

[fm-synthesizer]

[gaspardos]

I really like Shodan's design from the System Shock Remake that Nightdive Studios did, please don't hurt her

[devileaterjaek]

[everyone-with-a-para]

I hope everyone who feels like they are all their paras has a great day

^^^^