An Exercise (not too much of a descriptive title)

I'd got this idea from a LiveJournal community Lishie/I are part of (fragmentedminds) and I thought I'd take it to here for a discussion.

You have a class of people, and as a group exercise you wish to show them what it is like to be multiple/median. How would you go about doing such an exercise?

Personally (if I was to teach someone of our situation) I would:

- Get two, four, six or more volunteers to pair up, and connect them by tying the ankle of one person to the other partner's with rope (like one would go about in a three-legged race). There's a small length of rope between the pair so there can be a little distance, but not too much.
- One partner is 'A' and is 'the core' - the one who has a final say in what the couple do. The other person is 'B', but still has his/her own strength and personality.
- As a class, give the couple/s a situation; for example, someone said something impolite or nasty. 'A', the 'core' is trying to think what to do, but 'B' continually suggests possible solutions that 'A' may not want to follow.
- 6 hours, together. Yes, including going to the bathroom, and breaktimes/lunchtimes (I'm not cruel enough to say '24 hours together' - and that'd be quite inaccurate, as I do 'go to sleep' or become unconscious. Lishie always is the one to stay conscious). Either partner can rest, or not pay attention to the surroundings around them, but only ONE partner can do that at a time. If 'B' is resting, 'A' has to stay alert.

That is ... the closest I can come up with for our situation. Maybe Lishie will think differently, if so she may make her own response. *shrug*

What would you do?

- Blake

I'd get a camera/headset combo, fit it to five different people, and have four of the people stay at home watching the cameras and giving advice to the person actually living. Then you don't actually have to drag persons B-C-D-E when they fall asleep.

Wow, I guess y'all have a very different ex[erience of nbeong multiple than I do.

Fiesr of all netiher of the above suggestions even come close to replicating my life, second of all if I try to fit into that paradign, I'm not a person with others tied to me. Say might be and my other half might be, but "I" am the product of that tying; not an individual part of same.

I’m not technically in your situation now, though I have experienced something like it when I first went threw my awakening.

So from that experience, I’d go about teaching this sort of class by having 1-4 different voices recorded onto a cd, each suggesting something different in their own unique manner. Sometimes going all at once, other times just one or a few at a time. And at some points just have sweet silence.
I’d then get the participants to wear portable players and have this soundtrack going while asking them to perform various tasks.

And if I really had a lot of planning time and was remotely coordinate it, I’d try and time it so what the voices said corresponding in time to the activity I was trying to have the participants perform.

While I feel this is lacking in interaction one can have with the voices (since they don’t really argue back or can even hold a conversation) it has the nice touch of the participant not being able to shut them up, or have any control over them or what they happen to be saying. Their wishes and responses are completely ignored.

This applies to our system specifically and may not be representative of anyone else's.

Nominate one person to be the body. Preferably, everyone gets an opportunity to be the body. Get a helper to assist the actual system members - that is, everyone else in the group.

The helper has a list of triggers for each system member. If the exercise lasts more than a couple of hours, the helper also has a list of random times to declare a switch and a method of randomly choosing a new frontrunner.

The frontrunner tells the body what to do. The body is not to pull any shenanigans like doing only what the frontrunner says literally; it's just a vessel for the commands and should understand. (If not, asking for clarification is all right.) If a strong trigger is encountered, the frontrunner seems to be getting fatigued or distracted, or the frontrunner's time is declared up, the frontrunner is told to stop and a new frontrunner comes in. If a weaker trigger is encountered or a "lightning round" occurs (this should happen at least once in a moderately complicated situation), someone else is "woken up" in addition to the prior frontrunner and they work together. They may have to agree on actions, if co-running, or the new person may just be riding shotgun and making commentary while the old frontrunner continues having sole control.

Preferably this would last for a full day in which the system either has real-life-type goals to accomplish or is told to go out and "have fun." (Ideally, the system members should have different ideas of fun. A lightning round while trying to decide on a movie to watch would be one good example.) Either way, interaction with outsiders is a must.

-S'aryn

It could be unethical or impossible to demonstrate, but it is just an exercise in thinking how to convey my experiences to a class. I don't have these issues so much anymore though.

1. You're very hungry but all of the food you are given is moldy. The purpose is to demonstrate the conflicts of instinctual needs at the core of our being. You experience the need for nourishment vs. the need to avoid toxins. What are you going to do?

2. You are given instructions to complete a task, but the instructions are ripped up and you are given a few of the ripped pieces of at random intervals over time. That's to simulate brain lag.

3. One of the students passes away at the beginning of the semester and everyone goes to the funeral and sees the body in the casket. Toward the end of the semester the same student comes to class and you find out death is an illusion. This it to demonstrate the weirdness of it.

This is an interesting idea..

If I were to come up with such an exercise for a class, I would have a group of students all play a single character video game. While playing this game 1 student gets the controller at a time, but the others in the group(the system) are able to talk and have input on what the student with the controller(the fronter) does. At random, the controller is switched to another student to simulate switching between who is fronting. This can be made interesting to depict co-fronting, by having 2 students be tasked with sharing the controller.

Throughout the game session, some students may be asked to leave the room for a period of time to experience time gaps where they have no idea what is happening in the game. This would give the perception of memory loss.

Theres probably other things that could be added to this that could simulate other factors and occurrences of what it is like to be multiple, but that is my basic idea of how I would create an exercise around it.

-Azaphaer