Systemhood Speaks

We asked systems (Both DID and OSDD) about their experience through a self-report survey of 174 participants to date. Here are the results.

Please note that although we have done our best to ensure the results are as accurate as possible, we cannot verify or guarantee the accuracy of every individual response.

Want to contribute? Contact us Here!

Inner worlds

Do you have an inner world you are aware of? What does your inner world look like?

Yes. It’s a small house attached to an ice rink and a play place with all the bouncy things (English is not my native language I hope you get what I mean).
Yes, I am aware of an inner world; it is a decent-sized house with a large backyard that expands and stretches into the ‘woods’. Out the front door is a very hazy and foggy forest with limited vision; only one of us is able to explore safely. The house has two floors, the first one where 2 alters share a room, our kitchen, doors to both outsides and our living room. The grand staircase leads upstairs for only one of our alters (the one who can shift headspace at will) with his bedroom and study. The first outside is our “backyard” it would be more correctly described as a courtyard or a garden due to its size. 1st outside has flowers, a bed of roses, a lake/pond, statues and fountains. The second outside is through out front door, the cliffside of foggy woods that overlook a fake town.
It’s like different dimensional planes. Like in D&D. All but one of us has access to it, and they all coexist like private rooms in the same house. They’re reflections of our innermost desires, aesthetics, and motives.
The house is split into three sections vertically, not by walls, but by feel. So many stairs (inside). Front, back, round the sides. A corridor certain people aren’t allowed to go down, weirdly similar to our relatives’ business house.
Yes, there is just the inside of a little office-type room, filing cabinets, stacks of books and papers, an old-fashioned computer… pretty simple and practical. There isn’t really an exterior for that construct; it’s just a room with a door. Everything outside the door is “the secret garden”, where the kid parts live in perpetual joy/fun/play. The tale of the secret garden always resonated with us, it’s a magical place where kids can heal mentally/physically.
Yes – a long cabin – esque meeting room, a tree house w/rooms and a security system and moat. A cottage with a garden.
Yes, and also no. We have our…. Bubbles? Each have their own bedroom where they retreat too, and some are far more detailed than others, but they are like little portals that drift closer or farther from the front, which is how easily we can hear each other.
We’ve slowly been forming an inner world suitable to us. Currently, as far as we’re aware, it’s like a small rotunda. We all have our own rooms that surround the living room in the centre. The “front door” or entrance area is like an office break room that we consider our fronting room. It’s the very first room we recognized and is a soft green colour with a nice wooden table in the middle and bean bags in the corners. We don’t truly know much else about our headspace besides that.
There is a large house with a separate garage, a pool, and a garden, a large forest, intricate pathways, a stable, a tree house, a lake, a log cabin, mountains, and a Meadow.
Yes. Inner World is an a-line 2-story house with no porch and a central entrance about 3 steps of parlor space. Then two bedrooms on either side, a staircase on the left, an alternating 70’s style yellow and honey cabinet kitchen/ modern black and white kitchen on the right, which has a staircase down to a cellar/ small cave with a bank-memory vault at the end of the cave. A living room is on the left with a staircase with a small half-landing leading up to the second story and a library- books are safe- and Gatekeeper’s space overlooking the entrance/fronting door. The host used to sleep in a blanket fort under the stairs. We also have a weird flower field that leads to the woods. We don’t go in the woods.
It looks slightly different for each alter. T*** and J*** have a very detailed inner world that looks like the physical world, with two houses that they stay at, shops, “people” who are not alters, jobs they occasionally attend, etc. James has a similar view of the inner world with more of a city vibe.
I do have an inner world. I cannot access it, but apparently, it looks like a farm with the centre circle as a table and chair where parts can talk together and to the person fronting and their own paddocks that is their own space and customisable. I wish I had access. I just go black, time pauses, and I am in black.
Yes, we do; when you “go in”, you go through a doorway of bright light. It’s a barren land of reddish rock like the deserts in Utah U.S. and a shin-high fog of dust; diagonally to the right is a city of skyscrapers where 5 of us live, further back, but in front of you, three alters live in a foggy forest, and diagonally to the left is a mountain made of the same rock type with a cave where the other two live. It takes about 10 seconds to travel anywhere somehow. The city and forest are near each other, but the city/forest, mountain and “door” are about 5 miles (8.05 km) away from each other.
Yes. A large house on a hill in a forest
We have a common room for fronting, and depending on who opens the door in the room/on their intent, then a different place is accessed. Everyone has an area, and I haven’t seen many as I am fronting the majority of the time.
Yes, so far from what I have access to, it’s a side that’s bright with a lot of rooms and a dark side with about four rooms and a huge monitor screen that’s kind of creepy but also a lot of open space. On the bright side, it has a big whiteboard with schedules and tasks and things but also chairs like a conference room. All the doors are different colours, but I don’t have access to get in all the rooms, unfortunately.
Yes! it’s a penthouse-like apartment that apparently is mostly white monochrome colours, but a lot of us aren’t able to visualize as well, and it ends up looking like everything has a bit of TV static type of pattern/material/texture. Whatever you see when you close your eyes but don’t have anything in mind, it’s that pattern, but you can tell what parts are what.
For most of us, it’s just a blank void with “pockets” of things- IE, one part has a hammock that sometimes appears when he is distressed, a fridge with comfort food (although eating innerworld is difficult). But a few of us have access to an actual house/office.
There are different levels to our inner world which are like different levels of consciousness. If an alter is co-fronting then they’ll be in “the front room” which is a room with a big screen of what’s happening outside the body so they can witness the surroundings. Then each alter has their own room. And then there’s “the woodlands” which is the area surrounding the house where the littles spend the majority of their time.
A giant apartment complex where everyone has their own room. it’s surrounded by a forest.
I may have one, but I’m not aware of it. I think I have one because I can picture a control room with a sort of computer-like desk, a little like the Vice Versa film. And it’s like when you’re on this desk, you’re the one fronting. And sometimes you can feel alters at the door or in the room with you watching you.
Most of the time, it’s just as if the parts are asleep when not fronting. But recently we have been working on creating safe spaces for each part to go to, like a sensory playroom for the younger parts, a special safe bedroom for older parts, and spaces farther away for parts still under the programming and can be harmful or dangerous.
I am aware of our inner world, but it is a little difficult to describe in writing. The best I can do is this: visualize a grey, cloudy room with some distinct doors that lead into other rooms. And it just goes on like that for a while. Sometimes, the doors lead to bedrooms or areas that look like a classroom or a church. It’s a confusing place to navigate.
Yes, it is a big white room with a table full of buttons (most just decorative), and it has a big screen showing what the eyes are seeing. Then there’s this corridor that gets to a big white living room with a table and some sofas, all white. And around that, there are doors for each of our rooms, which have their own colours and names, and inside the room is like the alter wants it to be.
I have no access to an inner world, though others have drawn what I assume is one, but still not 100%. it’s a rocketship, however, split into 5 separate rooms for certain groups to go in.
Yes. Our main protector and ‘gatekeeper’ has an apartment where most alters either live or hang out. His living room has a TV that sort of looks out over the outer world. There’s a play area on the rooftop with a drawbridge to a tree house for the littles. The apartment is situated in a city, which has a whole network of roads an shops etc. The city is mostly a city centre, no suburbs or whatever, and around it is a forest to the North West, a walking trail with sort of sideshow attractions and a theme park, ending in a big ocean or lake to the North East, there’s farm buildings and a large late 1800s type of asylum to the South East. And construction and factory buildings to the South West. Many of the buildings have their own stories, and many of them are very symmetrical and dreamlike. Some alters live in the areas surrounding the city, but most live or at least stay in the apartment. Even though the apartment looks like a standard apartment in an apartment building, there aren’t any neighbours. There is a door that goes nowhere. A basement’s basement. A wall that screams. And, of course, a treehouse on top of the roof. This place feels more like home than any place we’ve ever lived.
We have a constructed inner world. There’s a garden and cottage the caretaker lives, a conference room with accommodations for all, and some individual touches of rooms. We don’t use it super often, but can help with communication. Our inner world has two active layers: one of the places we worked in and were heavily abused at and another of the town we lived in when we were in the car accident. There is some sort of highway in between both layers that parts can sometimes use to go from one layer to another. At one point, most parts worked inside, doing the same jobs that we used to do. Every single time we were inside, we attempted to leave but couldn’t find an exit or quit but couldn’t find anyone to give a resignation to. Slowly over time and one by one several parts have decided to leave and begin healing, shedding their loyalty to the abusers and taking up roles and jobs that are healthy for the system instead of harmful. We can go to town and into grocery stores, into a full mall, theatre and hotel, but the way we experience everything is like watching from above as if we are floating – we never feel like we are in our body from the inner world. In an attempt to find safer spaces in our inner world for parts to dwell in, we have been able to go further away from both these layers and stopped at places that imitate spots we have been to in our travels when we travelled several years ago.
Yes, we do. It’s like the Barbie dream house, but it’s in blacks, greys, and whites instead of pinks and purples.
A full world of Continents and diverse races. Our alters actually announced themselves as that culture since they don’t want to get into trouble for racism. Most of the races are based off a real life. The world itself is vast and has seven land masses. Each landmass has a culture or a few cultures associated to it. Unfortunately, some cultures aren’t the best. We’ve actually used our inner world as a basis for a dnd game. Now Corzan is writing it into a book. The D&D game allowed our ex-fiance into our world to see what we see. But it also brought for switches that wouldn’t switch out once the “game” was over. Over time it became more of a role play where a certain “character” would come out to give their memories and life story. Or just role-playing with her characters. Unfortunately, this was devastating to lose as it really helped me(kaion) dive deeper into the inner world, now I feel lost. She also played a few characters that some of my alters fell for and losing them has become a detriment to their mental health and left separation scares. Especially to those who couldn’t and can’t understand what acting is. To them, it felt like she was switching as much as we were.
From what I’ve heard and others described, there’s a forest-like area with a main cabin or house structure in the middle. Each alter, or there’s a group of two I believe, have their own “section” of the inner world through openings in the trees. There’s something beyond the forest, I know that, but I haven’t personally been able to look.
Our inner world is an “enchanted” forest, the main area we call “the meadow” that’s where the various places where most alters live (cottages, treehouses, dens, etc.) are, and it’s a safe place where it’s always daytime. Further into the woods, there are darker areas only certain alters can navigate; if an alter who isn’t supposed to be there goes, they’ll get lost and end up back where they started. In the dark area, there are a lot of dilapidated old buildings like they’ve been sitting for years, and moss is growing from the cracks; the buildings are all places we have been through many of them I don’t remember. Some alters live in the dark area, it’s not really a “bad” place as long as you don’t go in the buildings.
As far as I know, it’s a garden, if it even exists. Our fronting area is a big, dark, open space where we can usually feel parts behind us but not see them. Yes, but I only know sections of it, others in our system have much greater awareness and access to system information than I do. There is a boarding school that has beautiful old but detailed architecture and massive grounds/gardens. This is where a lot of our adult headmates who have taken on caring/supportive roles reside with the under-16s. There’s an enclosed secret garden surrounded by large overgrown hedges, twelve gates, wrought iron gates, a stone bench, and a lily pond. I know there’s a village, but I haven’t had access.
Yes! We have a complex inner world. It’s a house with doors that lead to other realities. The front room is an office with couches and a TV monitor.
I can’t really enter it, but I know a bit about it. Somehow, our brain didn’t often decide to bond to people to make a ton of introjects (which often happens in autistic systems), but rather bond to places and copy them in the inner world. We have, for example, Hogwarts, which is our memory storage, and we have a lot of places out of less-known fantasy books (Edge Chronicles and Artemis Foul).
It’s basically a big planet full of medieval and fantasy places, and above it is a spaceship. I think the spaceship is the place where headmates can see and hear the outside world and can get to the front. To get to the spaceship, we have portals (for example, Stonehenge stone circles) that teleport you to the spaceship. Because of the structure of the inner world, I’m pretty sure we’re more than just 20 ppl, but maybe not all of us can enter the spaceship. Idk because I can’t leave the front I can only get glimpses of it from others.
Our inner world is a house on a hill with many trees (funny story: we’ve been drawing that same house since we were very young but only realised why it seemed so familiar when we were a system). Inside is a living space and a hallway with many doors and a staircase leading to more rooms; it’s bigger on the inside than the outside, and at the bottom of the hill is a door to what we call the fronting room/void, which is honestly a void that we can manipulate to our needs.
Yes, we’ve got a big modern-ish house, outside it is just a big dark forest. We’re not allowed outside, though.
We do! Our inner world is still heavily in progress; it’s something we have to work at and build actively – we didn’t immediately have one/have access to it – but once we began working on it, things almost started to take hold by themselves. Our inner world consists of a small town with one large cottage serving as the primary residence and fronting room. Outside the mossy stone gates of the town, there’s a lake to the west and a forest to the east. Train tracks connect different areas of the inner world. (I say this, but it’s not as big as it sounds). We also have a duck pond. That’s very important. You needed to know about the duck pond.
There’s a house with a long hallway and rooms.
Coming off it. Trauma holders are on the left and protectors or those with other roles on the right. At the back of the hallway is a room for the head of the system, but only he can go in there. Outside there’s a beautiful garden like a forest, or has a river and willow trees and a rocky beach and a water fountain, ferns, flowers and a bench. From the outside, the house looks like a big castle but I’ve never seen more than what I describe above on the inside.
Our innerworld is massive. It has a wide open plain with golden grass, a stream that flows through it and a lone tree. The shores flow out to an ocean with an island in the distance. Opposite is a forest and mountain range and a giant floating castle. Our architect may have gone a little overboard.
From what I’ve been told, our inner world consists of four areas so far. Front room: simply a void with an ebony table. Grey room: I don’t really know the function of this area. However, one of our headmates recently told me that when I hear people’s thoughts or know how they feel without them being in the front room, that’s where they are. It also would connect all major areas. However, I only know of one of the said areas. Home: From what I know, it is simply our childhood home but much bigger. It’s where everyone stays. Garden: This is more of a sub-area of the home, which is easy for anyone there to access and hang out.
Yes, it’s a giant tree house in a never-ending forest.
Yes. It’s something we are working on creating. Right now, it’s like a long hallway with doors that lead to bedrooms for each self. Some share rooms (the littlest ones share a room, so they aren’t alone or scared and can play together). Each room is themed to the personality’s liking. There is also a conference room where we can hold meetings and discuss things with each other. There is space at the table for the youngest ones as well (high chairs, booster seats) because their input is valuable as well. One of our selves hides in the darkness at the end of the hall. He is three and very scared. He used to scare the others, but he wasn’t being threatening; he was warning them of the dangers of the world because of what he experienced.
My inner world, for the most part, is a huge theatre with a large centre stage and spotlight that the part fronting will stand in. Then there are parts backstage in the seats out in the theatre and even balcony seating. I also have a meeting room in which we can sometimes communicate internally, but it doesn’t always work out well.
I am unaware of our inner world, or do not have access yet. I’m inclined to believe the repeat settings in our dreams are part of the inner world, but can’t confirm. I have attempted to build some structures innerworld, but I’m unsure if any parts stay there.
We do! Our inner world is super complex and kind of doesn’t really make any Euclidian sense – think about, like, the tubes on those shitty hamster cages that connect to different little areas of the cage, right? It’s like that, but each area of the “cage” is a whole other isolated pocket dimension type place. The size of the bubble encompassing each area has no bearing on its actual size within the world – some of them are as small as a bedroom, while others are basically infinite, almost procedurally generated. The worlds inside also have a wide range of complexity and can house cities, forests, infinite swathes of outer space, or even just an empty room. I, as a host, no longer have control over the headspace like our previous one did, so a lot of it is unknown to me ^_^; I recently learned we have a backroom in here somewhere that I suspect has something to do with dormancy bc a previously dormant alter told me about it, but I know nothing about it nor what else could be hidden from me at this point.
Yes – like a mini neighbourhood. Most alters live in an apartment block with their own flats and rooms, but some live in houses, especially if they have families (littles and middles) and there’s a city nearby.
Our inner world is a big house, with branching rooms and hallways.
We have a very big inner world. We have a spaceship-like front room with a white light that takes you to the front. On the other side, a wooden door takes you into the inner world. There is a giant circular clearing with a forest around it. On the other side of the clearing, a path starts that leads you to the house. It sounds big, but it isn’t that much of a walk. If you’re in an emergency, you can run from the house to the Red Room (that’s what some people call the front room) pretty fast. The house is more like a mansion with four floors, including an attic and a basement. It is surrounded by a forest that has a lake in it somewhere deep inside it. Everyone lives in the house with their own rooms. The house is very homey and pleasant, but there are some parts where the lights flicker, and there is an eerie feeling. Like in a horror movie right before the monster shows up. The attic is downright frightening, and only some people can open the door to get up there. The people that have, say it is a crowded storage room but with that horror movie feeling again. The basement holds a lot of trauma stuff and is completely different from the house. Only some people can go in there, and the entrance doesn’t even exist all the time if that makes sense? It is stone-cold and castle-like, and it sends shivers through your spine. The forest also holds trauma, and people have reported hearing odd noises. We don’t know if it’s an alter or a monster, so we keep out of there. Some people live at the beginning of it close to the clearing. The beginning is fine, but the deeper you go, the worse it gets.
Primary Protector here! Just wanted to add some shit to this. So the attic is stuffed with boxes and cobwebs and is super hard to navigate. A lot of the stuff seems to be objects from our childhood, pictures of memories, and videos that are also memories (probably repressed). The basement holds trauma holders that are either fragments and don’t do much or trauma holders reliving a memory or multiple memories repeatedly. I tried helping them, but I don’t think they can hear me. Also, sorry for this really long explanation. She was right; we’ve got a big inner world.
Our inner world is basically a giant house. There is a forest area as well.
Our innerworld is small and subsystem-locked. It is a small forest/grove.
As far as I’m aware, it’s two buildings with no connection between them, and the second one has a basement. They’re like the school buildings that are just long hallways with rooms on each side, but they’re far more hospital-like.
Yes! I might go on a bit of a rant here; sorry about that. Our inner world is multidimensional; different dimensions have different functions. Some of them are linked to allow for travel between them, but we can also teleport inner world, though not everyone can teleport everywhere, and not everyone has access to every dimension. I (as the host) have access to six main dimensions, plus two less developed ones and sub-worlds within those dimensions. I’m pretty sure there’s more, though. I’m just going to briefly explain each of them as well as I can.
The main part/dimension of our innerworld is a building in the middle of a forest that contains a corridor with rooms for a bunch of different alters, a meeting/common room, a room for the Littles and their caretaker, and others. The building’s by a big lake (there’s another lake and a river somewhere in the forest, but I haven’t been there yet).
In the building is also a portal to a subworld, which we call the Revolting Rooms – it’s basically a bunch of rotating corridors, rooms and spaces with a maze-like structure that is pretty much impossible to navigate (for me, at least). It’s always nighttime in the main part of the inner world. The lake is also linked to another dimension, the Memory Library. As the name suggests, the Memory Library is filled with books and other objects from our life that store our memories. Of course, not everyone can just look into any memory, and some parts are locked off from anyone who isn’t a memory holder of those memories. Then there’s The Collection, a big collection of subworlds representing our creativity. It’s filled with all sorts of stories and inner-world NPCs and the only dimension everyone can modify. Another dimension contains a castle which, as far as I know, is built mainly to keep some persecutor fragments safe (and keep the rest of the system safe from them). Most alters can only access this by going through a smaller world full of clouds in between the dimensions, which, in turn, can only be entered if a certain alter allows it, if at all. We also have a relatively new dimension that our inner world architect created, which is meant to be a rage room, so it’s made up of a corridor with a bunch of different rooms, e.g. one filled with glass to break or another where you can burn a bunch of stuff; the rooms can all be reset, so there’s no permanent damage. Technically, every alter can create new dimensions, but keeping them stable and running is more difficult. One of our trauma holders once locked themselves away for months in a self-created dimension, for example. There’s at least one empty dimension, too that we use to allow for easier communication. I’m pretty sure there are more, but these are all that I know of.
All I really know about is underground, I just came out of dormancy so…
Yes, and it’s a long hallway that leads into rooms that are headmates worlds, and most headmates share those with others.
We have a very large inner world. It has several sections. The first is our “fronting room”: it is set up like a large technical room you would see in a sci-fi movie, with many switches and screens, and the carpet and wall are maroon. The main wall is domed, with a regular flat wall behind it. This leads to the next room, a cozy living room with cream walls. There is a blue couch against the back wall and a coffee table on top of a rug. Both sides of this room have doorways, which extend into long hallways with doors. The doors lead to the “rooms” of various alters. Outside of this house area is a large flower field full of butterflies. To the right of the field is a dead forest; the trees have no leaves, and there is no grass on the ground. Further back and to the right of the flower field is a living forest. Beyond the flower field is an entirely blue flower field; the dirt is blue as well, and this flower field borders a blue lake. To the left of all this is a tall mountain range bordering the left side of everything just described; there are some caves along this side. As the host, I do not know what exactly is on the other side of these mountains.
Our innerworld is really blurry and the host has little to no access to it. Essentially it looks like a white-grayish void, and in said void, there are rooms. Some alters have their own personalised rooms, two live in a small theater stage and one has a little patch of land away from the rest of the inner world. It’s really confusing and unclear but somewhat functioning.
We do! Our inner world is basically a huge island with different buildings and biomes. It’s kind of hard to explain, but we are working on a “map”.
Maybe?? We sometimes imagine this house with an atrium in it but I’m not sure if it is really an inner world.
I’m aware we have an inner world, and I’m aware it’s very big, but I personally haven’t seen much of it at all.
Our inner world looks so disorganised and wack; not even sure how we have an inner world when we have aphantasia. It’s not very defined or cohesive, and there’s no colour; it’s black and white.
It mostly just consists of a hospital that is surrounded by a forest. Beyond that, there is not much I am aware of.
We have an inner world; it’s a large forest and caves and catacombs underneath. We believe there is more, but we don’t have access.
The inner world is a village. Each sub-system is a house. The modern house is where the functional alters life, and the littles have been located and rehoused here. The manor house holds trauma holders and memory keepers. The treehouse has alters with childhood joy and wonder. There are a few solo alters. A mermaid in a pool, a bunyip in a separate pool, an elf in the garden, a woman who lives in a teepee, and the current ‘host’ lives in a tower. The village is surrounded by a forest. There are subsets of alters that live in the forest, watchers and punishers. We have made a healing room in a clearing near the edge of the forest for EMDR. There’s also an invisible building called the asylum that holds S-RAMCOA trauma.
Yes, we have many worlds and areas. It’s a galaxy of small locations to make everyone comfortable.
Yup, I won’t go into much detail, but Layer 01 (the only one I have access to) is a group of buildings in this sort of area with a huge cliff surrounding the area.
We have an inner world, but parts of it are blocked to us. It is a series of 5 buildings that are interconnected by walkways. I only know what 2 of them are. One is a concert venue. The other is an ops centre where a lot of our protectors and military alters hang. The front is an aeroplane, and it moves around. Its really annoying. There’s a maze under the whole place. It’s not a nice place, unfortunately.
We have an inner world, but I’m not sure what it looks like as I myself don’t have access to it, but there was a drawing from a little about it.
An island. There’s a forest in one area with mountains, a beach and a lagoon in the other. The main house is a large mansion with lots of glass. The bottom floor is the kitchen, library, game room, and some bedrooms. Mostly a collective space. Upstairs is individual bedrooms. It’s an extremely large house that is kind of magical; things shift, change, and appear as needed. Some alters have their own little cottages just off the house for more privacy.
Our inner world changes depending on how well we are doing mentally. Its always a forest, but things like weather and the time of day or thickness of it vary depending on the well-being of the system.
Yes! It’s a small trailer.
An abandoned manor surrounded by forests. There are different parts, like a beach and colonial Virginia.
I only know parts of the inner world. But it’s a forest with lots of different paths that go to different places. Like a maze or a castle
An apartment building with a fountain and a courtyard. There are things beyond it, but as a host, I haven’t been granted access to it—I also believe there’s a forest.
We sort of do, but it’s mostly metaphorical. We don’t have one naturally, but we can envision one, which has been very useful in things like developing communication, helping switches happen more smoothly, and helping individual parts with what they need when they’re not fronting.
Yes, we have an inner world. Our inner world is a very large forest with a few clearings. There is a house in one and a large, dark castle in another. The other clearings is accessible only through a portal in the woods. It takes us to our safe place, a field with long grass and wildflowers. In the distance is a large body of water and a beach, which we also have access to.
We do have an inner world, but it is not visually complex. We have special awareness of others in the system and general locations, but they are not represented visually by more than impressions or shadows, etc.
We have an inner world and a headspace. Headspace is where we come to front, in the front of our mind, almost like a top layer. The inner world is a second layer where alters go when they aren’t fronting. Our inner world is very large, and consists of an island. It has a large forest, a mountain range with a snow-capped peak, a big reef off the coast, a large bay by the diamond falls, train tracks that go around the whole island, and lots of different structures that house the alters. I only know of this one layer, but we have been told not to dig any deeper so there are things I am unaware of.
Yes, and honestly, I’m not sure how large it is, but it’s complicated. It starts with a castle-like place like in Beauty and the Beast, and then there’s the fictive land. And then the EXTREMELY large field. Oh, and the random empty world that supposedly is in case of future expansion
A meadow with a cobblestone path. Down the path is a Sakura tree with a rope swing. On the ropes are flowered vines
Yes, our inner world is very complex. It has individual areas that we teleport to. One part even has a cabin in the woods.
Yeah, we have this forest glade area that’s really serene. There are a few trauma-based buildings for certain alters.
Yeah. I know only one part of it, which looks like a Victorian city.
Yes, it’s a huge apartment complex with a forest surrounding it. There’s another building deep in the forest and a building we call the Archives way out. Only gatekeepers have access there.
We have an inner world and quite a huge one at that. Explaining it in one sitting would be crazy, but we drew up a map for our sys friends to label spots where housemates usually hang out if we want to front-trigger them.
It’s extremely large. Atop a mountain, there is an infinite manor with rooms custom made for each alter. There’s a cult on the mountain. There is also a cavern underground in the mountain with a lab. There is an abandoned town, then a town for alters, and an infinite scraper. Outer space is accessible, and recently, we uncovered a new sect of headspace. There’s also another part of headspace which is more commonly seen in very dark periods of our life, called the Unknown Empire
Yes, we do have an inner world.
It is set in a dying universe, so there aren’t many stars. The fronting room is a room with a control-desk, though the area sometimes changes to a bed or a seat. Behind the control is a rug, behind that are two couches, then there’s a doorway. The Front-room floats in space and has a roof in which an alter resides. Bigger parts also watch from above/around, floating in space. The doorway leads to a hallway. It’s guarded by two main gatekeepers, and the door can be locked. The sides are littered with doors, some rooms are open or have opened in recent times. After about 50m, theres a dorm-like living room with a kitchen. Thats the meeting place for frequent/active alters. Way behind that, the hallway leads to the apartments. They are the living quarters of all alters who rarely or dont front at all. Then we have a floating library outside of this structure, in which archivists store our memories etc. In the outer space, some alters are able to traverse the stars or even walk through. There are some portals and ‘islands’ which hold stagnant memories or moments. Some doors in the hallway lead you outside — this is where many get lost.
Then there is the void. It is far away in the universe and holds locked alters, dormant identities and trauma fragments. There are probably places we have not discovered yet, or I do not have access to.
Our host has a special void (‘in front/above the front room’) in which he gets locked in whenever he is not fronting since he cannot enter the inner world.
The best way to describe the inner world is like the x-man mansion, with a huge forest next to it. In the mansion, alters have rooms and hang out. The forest is out of bounds, and has The Well in it, where we have a sub system of exclusively persecutors and trauma-inducing parts. There’s also a mini portal near the forest to ‘heaven’ where the gatekeepers reside. The front is also a part of the inner world, with the front then a small side room where alters are when dissociating but still in front.
We do have one! It looks like a living room that has two portals to different places one is an open ocean, and the other looks like Pandora (the place from the movie Avatar), also they have a corner for the age-regressed littles, then the hallway with rooms that leads to another portal which goes into the city of the dead.
We have a very limited/non-existent inner world. It’s extremely hard to explain through words and can only really be done through feelings or rough images.
Yes, a lot of nature areas that each have areas in with either hidden places or rooms. An area fenced in for some. A cave that leads to the other side that is a bit more unknown.
We do. But I have a very limited view of it.
Yes. For a very long time, all I could see was darkness. Then a hallway. Now I can see a castle and grounds, tunnels, and some individual rooms. There are a lot of levels and SO much I’m not allowed to see.
It’s very complicated but the place I spend the most time looks like an English countryside, with a small town and lots of cottages, and meadows/fields.
Our inner world is a complex mesh that I refrain from talking about. However, there are different lands/layers of them.
Yes, it has many houses, rivers and schools for the littles but also parks and swings but there is a jail where some bad alters go and little boxes in another house. When they go into dormancy they refer them selfs into boxes.
Our inner world is a combination of real world places of significance to us (such as our old schools), fictional locations (such as the plaza from FFXIV), and brainmade ones (such as the garden maze). It’s large and detailed, but there are areas that are shrouded in darkness that cannot be accessed.
Ours is pretty big, mostly forested with a desert area, too. We live in small towns and it’s pretty cozy.
Yes, we have different planets.
yes, we do. it is far too expansive to explain here, tbh. We have three layers that are set up like heaven, earth, and hell. each layer and subsystem has its own inner world.
yes, we have an inner world. It’s stupidly complex, but the main area is an apartment complex.
Yes. It looks like a giant college dorm with different rooms, a cafe, and a daycare for the littles. Each room has access to a different “realm” depending on the alter’s source.
Yes, the main fronters are in a white Victorian-style house where where the front is a void that breaks the floors and walls from the house. Our inner world is liminal, set up like a video game world and character selection, but we can’t pick alters to front or interact with anyone. There are seven places in the inner world: the house, a shack by the house, a castle, a temple entrance gate, a rock open concept seating area, and a hospital and experiment lab connected in two towers.
The host struggles to have access to the inner world. However, it changes and moulds, similar to how it is in dreams, but alters always know where certain locations are. (Central locations, let’s call it.)
We do have one, but I’m not personally super aware of it. I know it’s circular-ish and layered both horizontally and vertically, and there are a lot of blocked areas.
I’m not allowed much knowledge of it due to safety reasons.
Yes! Our inner world is definitely a weird one, I would say, there’s one part of the inner world that looks like an auditorium where we hold meetings as a system, different houses where the alters have bedrooms and can hang out, a park for children alters and even one area where there’s a cabin in the woods that I believe one alter lives in.
We do have an inner world. It has a layer-type structure. Every layer is different, but the main one it’s like a huge city surrounded by sand dunes and a forest.
The area that I have access to is a U-shaped valley town with a surrounding forest. On the outside of the mountains is an ocean, and the land stretching out from the valley looks like flat plains. I know there is more beyond that, but I can’t access it, other than small parts at a time. There is also land and dwellings in the sky, on the clouds. I have access to this closest to the valley but not the entire space.
Yes, we do; I was told it’s a mansion with a lot of doors, some of which are locked, leading to completely “out of place things” like a dingy alleyway. Most human alters have a “room” there, and there are multiple shared living/common rooms. A big garden/outside space where most animals and creatures live. There is a basement “archive” where most fragments are “stored”, and the “trauma soup” (trauma that is “unarchived” and has not formed a fragment or holder) is, and a dungeon where alters that harm, hurt or are “dangerous” are (it’s maladaptive but our gatekeepers are stubborn about both the basement and the dungeon).
Yes! We possibly have a combined inner world of Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz (due to possible programmed scripting), then another layer is a galaxy, and another layer is heaven-like. I believe another layer might be a void.
We do have an inner world! Basically, we have the main mansion that has rooms for all the alters!! And different sections depending on their source!! And the rooms are small on the outside and big on the inside. Then we have the slender man woods, which is also the dormancy area!
Our inner world is very square, hotel-looking almost, and there are a few layers. Two layers for housing and one for mingling(?) There is also the front room and a large forest-like area
We do. It has two layers that we know of, one of which looks like a wooded area with a nearby city, and the other which looks like a recreation of heaven.
Yes and no. Our inner world is complicated in the way that if we are not currently thinking of it, we cannot see it. We must actively think about it or focus on it to be there – if we are distracted by a task or talking to family, it fades into the background. Our inner world/headspace is a large underground, mostly wooden building with long hallways and hundreds of rooms, as well as a few communal areas. Despite the description sounding scary, it’s very cozy. A staircase leads out onto a small house on top of a very large hill above the clouds and another that leads to a garage. Nearby the hill is a city with NPCs and a large forest. Our innerworld is layered, but most alters only have access to this layer. (L2).
Yes, it’d take ages to explain; there’s so much to it.
We do! Our inner world is rather complex, tho. It is built up of different cities and a Forrest and hideouts and a circus and a camping spot and a castle; it’s very confusing and takes ages to explain.
Yes! it’s a small country. The front is in a like small cottagecore village. There’s a castle in the mountains, a ruined metropolis, a summer camp-style place in the woods, a large lake and river, a beach with a lighthouse, and some people in the system live in the stars, too
Yes. It’s a really big city that resembles the GTA V map.
Yes. Our inner world looks like a village surrounded by mountains with thick forests on them.
Yes, we can’t share about it because it would give away too much info about our programming.
Yes! Our inner world consists of an island in the middle of a tropical ocean with a large coral reef. The island has a large mansion with individual alters’ rooms, the front room, and a “living room” area with a connected “kitchen”. There’s also a large forest area with a tall cliff. We have one subsystem that lives in the ocean, and at least three other subsystems that we’re unaware of the locations of.
our inner world is Halloween town from the Halloween Disney movies. It was a major comfort for us a child. of course we have some extra stuff like trauma locations, and comfort locations but the main inner world is Halloween town. Our inner world functions in a very dreamlike way, so the details do change, mush and warp. But, the main area is a hotel-like space; some alters have distinct rooms, some have vague ones, some do not have rooms at all, some have an area outside of the hotel, and some aren’t sure. The structure of the hotel doesn’t really make much sense or stay too solid.
Outside the hotel are like… fields, they have similar vibes to that one windows background lmao.
Then, somewhere on one of those fields, a forest starts; the entrance looks like a park near us.
Within this forest is a “pond”, but once you go underwater, it behaves more like an ocean. In here is an underwater cave, which houses a nonhuman alter who seems to hold some of our exhaustion.
A few other alters live in various areas of this forest. Elsewhere, there’s… an entire carnival? It’s mostly run by indistinct black smudges, like the sorts of “people” you see out of the corner of your eye that aren’t actually there when you turn to look at them. Alters sometimes visit it, though the actual known alter that owns the carnival has been dormant for around two years, give or take a few months. Elsewhere there’s a very unknown large building. It’s jokingly nicknamed Crockercorp due to the alters that have made a note of its existence and say they’re from it. It’s suspected to be the visualisation of a seperate layer, especially since regular alters can’t travel to it. There may be areas that I do not know of due to our polyfragmentation, but all the areas I’ve actually seen have a sort of pseudo infinity to them.
Yes, it is a planet with many different styles of living, from sci-fi to medieval, as well as different cultures. The planet itself is as real as the outer, but the plants and visuals are not of the outer world.
Yes. It is hard to describe, as it is extremely complex due to being a programmed system. Genuinely I could write a dissertation on the complexities, so I will leave it at “so complex it’s hard even to describe or comprehend, even as someone who basically lives in it.” If you want more details, I would be happy to oblige, but I am typing this on my phone, and Google Forms has limitations.
Yes, we have a big inner world with lots of different cities and towns.
We have a complicated inner world that constantly changes, but there are dedicated sections that alters can change and form into what they want.
Yes, we have an inner world, but I cannot say what it looks like that well. It changes pretty frequently. We’ve had 3 major updates to the inner world in 8 months. We also have multisensory aphantasia that affects our inner sense of sight, smell, taste, and hearing, influencing our inner world.
It is always changing, and very complex and based on trauma
Yes. It is very big, I would not be able to describe it since it is multiple planets and galaxies.
We do have an inner world. However, it isn’t an interactive one. We have a conceptual innerworld, meaning that whilst we know it’s there, what it looks like, and what goes on, we do not have memories of these things taking place.
Yes, or rather multiple ones for different subsystems. The main part looks like an old two-story building, where we have the front room and where most of the memories are kept. Main plan: We have areas with mountains, cities, forests, and waterfalls. Different plans have a rendition of a modified version of Hell and Heaven. Another plan has a jail-like area we can’t all enter. Some of our inner is locked/I can’t remember what it looks like personally
Our inner world is very complex, with multiple layers, side systems, and subsystems. Our main layer is like a small town and neighbourhood with a huge forest. Most of us know very little about most of our inner world.
Yes, we have an extremely elaborate inner world that is always growing; it consists of extreme landscapes with deep oceans and many hills and mountains & volcanoes; we have many different land masses and islands and many, many forests. Our system has many layers that exist on top of one another with different alters living completely unaware of the others on different layers. You can feel almost all sensations, and it feels very real for most of the system; some even confuse it with actual reality out here. We have a main apartment building of sorts that stretches far into the clouds that holds some alters and holds our front room. Outside of that we have many cities and towns in which parts live and there are many fantastical aspects such as actual magic and things like potions, as well as alters who have powers of gods.
We have an extremely complex and large inner world because we are a HC DID system. There are more than 3 spatial dimensions and 2 time dimensions. Because our inner world was designed by abusers, it is a lot more complex than a child’s brain would normally be able to create. It’s also incredibly terrifying. There’s a lot of re-experiencing of abuse, alters being tortured by other alters, and imagery and statues that remind us of abusers.
Our inner world is not a safe place to be. It is intentionally unsafe because the abusers made it this way so we would be unable to escape or feel safe anywhere. The abusers also used this to make us feel as though they have control over reality itself.
Some of the landmarks we have in our inner world are colossal churches, a forest made of body parts, a lake of fire, the mountain on which the Messenger of Allah sits, hotels, hospitals, and a nuclear power plant.
Yes, we have nine known layers, each with their own features and characteristics. Levels 00 and 01 are similar to hotels, and alters have their own rooms; level 02 is a forest, level 03 is a sea/ocean with a beach (half rocks, half sand), level 04 is a giant bookstore, and if you open certain books you can be taken to side systems, we aren’t sure of level 05 since no one from it has fronted recently, level 06 is a graveyard, level 07 is a library with everything including alters, memories and other information but it is very restricted and level 08 is an office for our higher-ups (the heads of our system)
Yes. It’s very vivid as we have hyperphantasia. It has many places we know from the past and from media.
Our inner world is very big; we have three main buildings that branch off into specialised seasons and areas.
Our inner world is quite vast and highly complex. There are many layers, subgroups/sections, subsystem innerworlds, and programmed side systems. All look and function differently, though side systems differ the most.
Oh, it’s way too big to talk about everything, + the main area is being rebuilt, but we have fictional places such as the Crystal Temple from Steven Universe and Mondstadt from Geneshin Impact (we do not support Hoyoverse whatsoever.)
Yes! We have an extensive inner world that mimics the city we grew up in with its rivers and mountains. We have many childhood homes and schools represented in the inner world and places from stories and shows we grew up with.
Yes. Vividly detailed fog-covered fantasy/post-apocalyptic world.
We have an inner world, but we don’t have access to it anymore, as the part of the inner world we had access to was burnt to the ground.
Yes, but not very aware
no
I’m not sure what it looks like. I can’t ever remember because I’m someone who doesn’t have memories of what it looks like
We don’t personally like talking about our inner world, but we have one.
There is no inner world for me. My alters can communicate with me and with each other but no inner-world.
I don’t believe we do.
Pretty empty and blank. Things come into it as needed ie if we need to rest, a couch might appear.
I don’t know at the moment. I don’t think I personally can imagine an inner world asides like a hallway with lots of doors and a boardroom with a cubby house for a headspace so far. Still new to it all. Maybe somebody else has access to that information.
Not that we’re consciously aware of. We suspect there’s something, but no knowledge of it carries through into fronting. It’s hard to say.
The only thing I’ve really seen is an elevator. We can get stuck there while the person controlling it figures out what floor/what person is to be pulled to the front.
As the host, I am not aware of what the inner world looks like, but I know there is one. I don’t know if different parts of it are connected to each other. I can only see the apartment of one alter from the Birdseye perspective, sometimes with him in it, and occasionally flashes of places.
Room in the brain with couches.
I believe so, but I personally do not know what it’s like or how it works. I actually find the concept quite confusing, and I am doubtful of it actually being there
Not yet, but I can hear voices when no one is there.
The host is the one taking the survey. As far as I am aware, we do not have an inner world
Just inner conversations and arguments.
We might have one. Possibly a multiple-storied building I, the host, do not have access to yet.
I’m pretty sure there is one, but I’m not allowed in.
No, I’m not aware of an inner world. But I assume the other alters have one/there is one.
I’m not too sure about much of it. I know there is one, but I haven’t been shown a lot yet. There is a general meeting space that is a cafe, which is really cool.
Not that I’m aware of. Sometimes I see a giant dark room with massive spotlights spaced out, but I’m not sure if that’s it.
Yes, we do. Everyone has their own area.
From what I have learned through therapy, they all have their own rooms. I get amnesia blackout, and I don’t ever really see those rooms.
I think I had one when I was younger, which is a kind of campsite in a forest or on land, and there’s just a single campfire. I don’t quite remember. I can’t access any inner world now, my ability to imagine has drastically decreased.
Yes, it’s small now. There used to be many places, but it’s just a single house now.
Yes. Our inner world looks like a fantasy medieval Empire.
We do have an inner world; that’s all I’d like to say.
Yes. I do not have the energy to describe this.
Our inner world is very complex. I am only partly aware of our layers.