Headspace

“Headspace” is what I call the interior of Abyss as viewed through a variety of dissociative lenses that distort and fictionalize it into something fantastical so I don't have to think about it as hard.

I won't elaborate much on each location (i.e. won't give each location its own page) because I don't think it would be very useful to my healing process. I could, but each specific location is a metaphor, and the usefulness of each metaphor is transient. If there are places in there where I don't go anymore, it's probably because nothing remains to be gained from going there, and if I focus too intently on places that no longer serve a purpose, my headmates could get stuck there.

I changed my mind. The single-page list wasn't really cutting it. I ended up reproducing the more per-location-individualized format I used in the previous iteration of this subsite, but I've tried to cut down on melodrama a bit this time.

• Black void
  • Abyss
    • Ocean
      • Wasteland
        • Tower
        • Mine shaft
      • Flying castle
      • Witch island
      • Orphan island
      • Forest mountain
        • Mountain city
          • Mom's house
            • Car
          • Park
          • Infinite offturn
            • High school
          • University
        • Valley of acid rain
          • Cabin
        • Land of the big funky bugs
          • Civic auditorium
          • Friend's house
      • Mannequin city
        • Dad's house
        • Stranger's house
        • Hotel/hospital
        • Supervised visitation office
        • Abandoned elementary school
        • Mobile shelter
        • News station
    • Shopping mall
      • Grocery store
      • Thrift store
      • Pharmacy
      • Public bathrooms
      • Network of swimming pools
      • Empty parking garage
      • Airport
    • Museum in outer space
    • Suitspace
    • Hell
    • Meat locker
    • Featureless white room

Psychoanalyzing yourself is never advisable per se, I don't think—but for better or worse, I'm no stranger to it. So, here's what I think…

• The black void, and how Abyss itself presents there, clearly represent my primary self-disconnect overall. There's me, and then there's everything I don't get to know about my own thought processes.
• The ocean represents the splits within me. Instead of one landmass, my mind is divided into islands.
• The wasteland represents isolation, feeling trapped within myself, and feeling undeserving and less than human.
• The flying castle represents the modicum of love I still feel for my father, and how even that has been tainted with anger.
• The witch island… I don't really know. Seems like just a chill place for some of us to hang out and talk. Maybe it controls my mood?
• The orphan island clearly represents that I feel like I tore my family apart, was ignored and gaslit by psychiatric professionals, and really ended up only having myself to rely on when it came to this stuff.
• The forest mountain is the nexus of all my happy memories, or at least all the memories I find it easy to accept.
• The valley of acid rain is where I grieve.
• The land of the big funky bugs is an in-between state between acceptable and unacceptable. Things I can access mentally if I try, but actively don't want to deal with, go here. Like, for instance, leaving the house to pick up my prescriptions, or owning up to bad things I did in my childhood.
• The mannequin city is horrible awful nightmare world where all the worst and most unacceptable things go. Except for certain really bad things. The facts live in mannequin city. But they're decoys. The emotions… well…
• The shopping mall represents an intersection point where different memories all blend together and get confusing.
• The museum in outer space very clearly reflects some of my more subtle, toxic-positivity-oriented dissociative mechanisms, namely glorification, fictionalization, analysis, fetishization, and endogenic perturbation.
• Suitspace is my “integration station.” It's where I work to tie things together.
• Hell is the realm of “if I'm so bad, let me be bad.” The place where shame and anger come together to birth a reclaimed negative self-image. “I am the devil and that makes me cool as fuck.”
• The meat locker is where potent trauma-related emotions are stored that I am ready to confront, but haven't yet.
• The featureless white room is the world of everything that's still stronger than me.

I discover these locations through one of two avenues:

• A: by dreaming about them or seeing intrusive mental images of them (subconscious);
• B: by daydreaming about them or feeling compelled to include them in creative works (autojected).

In general, to be eligible for consideration as a part of my headspace per se, a location must either:

1. be the setting of important events;
2. or, feel physically connected to several other places in headspace;
3. or, simply feel like an important place to me.

This suggests a typology that can be used to classify headspace locations:

• A1: subconscious event site;
• A2: subconscious nexus;
• A3: subconscious independent;
• B2: autojected nexus;
• B3: autojected independent.

In theory, type B1 would be an autojected event site—that is, the setting of a daydream or creative work of mine, wherein the daydream or creative work has personal significance to me but the setting does not—but I don't find it useful to actually consider such locations to belong to my headspace.

I will further qualify the type specifiers with the following suffices:

• -b: blended; the location is associated with more than one specifically identifiable real-life source but they have all been rolled into one idea;
• -c: confining; it is possible to become trapped in this location;
• -f: fluid; the location has a highly dynamic structure and is easy to get lost in;
• -h: hazy; the location or its associated event is recalled from a real-life source, but my recollection of it is not entirely conscious or clear;
• -m: memory; the location or its associated event is consciously and clearly recalled from a specific real-life source;
• -r: recurring; the location or its associated event keeps coming up in my mind repeatedly;
• -s: stream-of-consciousness: an autojected location contains subconscious elements;
• -t: traumatic; the location is associated with a specific and concrete real-life traumatic event or category of events, whether certain or only suspected;
• +: positive; the location is connected mainly to positive feelings;
• -: negative; the location is connected mainly to negative feelings, but not to any specific and concrete real-life traumatic event or category of events.