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Unshaping is the process of recovering from shaping. This can involve anything, including just going to therapy after being shaped, but many systems who use this word instead of just the generic term "recovery" will be using it to refer to something that is more of a methodical process of recovery.
Here are some things that, in a forcigenic or forcibased system, can be involved in unshaping:
* Actively unlearning messages your system was conditioned to learn and that certain alters were split to believe
* Reducing or managing amnesia that was enforced or worsened to hurt your system
* Reducing sensitivity to triggers associated with shaping
* Finding and rehabilitating internal abuser parts
* Processing and understanding what happened during your shaping
* Actively breaking trauma responses associated with shaping
* Finding new roles or tasks for headmates who are heavily shaped
While unshaping can be achieved through basically any method that recovery can, two particular methods or things that are part of unshaping are "deshaping" and "reshaping".
Deshaping is any process or practice of unshaping that involves actively defying or going against the way you were shaped.
For example, you may have been conditioned and shaped to believe you were totally dependent on your abuser, but you may have been separated from them and forced to live without them. Deshaping yourself would involve actively challenging your beliefs about your need for your abuser, learning independence from them, and doing anything it takes to prove that you do not depend on them after all.
Source separation or headmate elaboration can be a part of deshaping. A headmate may have been split by a shaper to have a specific source or role because it benefitted the abuser, but that headmate may not find it helpful to have that source or role anymore. While source separation is rarely absolutely necessary, a headmate in this situation may want to go against their shaping by actively associating with a different source or finding new roles. This would also be deshaping.
Deshaping can also include reversing or undoing anything that your abuser did or that benefitted your abuser. For example, lowering amnesia is a part of deshaping. So is actively unlearning certain trauma responses or things you were conditioned to do.
In a programmed system, much deprogramming is deshaping, but some deprogramming may be considered what, in shaping terms, is called reshaping.
Reshaping is just as much a form of recovery as deshaping is, and it is a form of unshaping. It is not like how, in programming terms, "reprogramming" refers to a negative experience of being abused again.
If deshaping is a form of unshaping that is achieved by defying the programming, reshaping is a form of unshaping that is achieved by playing the shaping at its own game.
For example, imagine a system has an innerworld that follows a narrative based on a storyline. It is a very depressing story in which a character who has been split into the system is continually abused, and it is meant to reinforce the idea that the system cannot escape their abuse or their abuser. Then, in the future, they escape their abuser and are no longer subject to their innerworld being forced to follow an externally-implanted narrative.
Deshaping, in this situation, could involve breaking free of the narrative altogether, or identifying more with a different character than the original narrative. This would be an acceptable way to recover.
However, if the system reacted to this situation by actively engaging with and continuing the narrative they were shaped with, but with the goal of altering the outcome of the story to a positive one, that would be reshaping.
In the example above, the headmates of the system may agree, after all agreeing to recover, to play out a story in the innerworld in which a headmate who was abused in the storyline leaves an innerworld abuser and goes through events and moments that prove to them that they are more than their abuse. Meanwhile, the abuser headmate undergoes their own personal arc of understanding what they did was wrong and why they did it in the context of their shaping.
This story could end with the abuser making amends with the victim (which may be preferred for systems where those two headmates front a lot together), or it could end with them parting ways and living better lives without each other. Either way, going through this experience and treating it as a part of the narrative would be a part of reshaping.
Some people may not understand how this example would fit under a term like "reshaping", because it isn't accomplished through abusive methods or with an abusive end goal. The thing is, "reshaping" isn't actually a form of shaping. It's a form of unshaping.
Some people may also not understand how this example is any different than if the headmates just recovered in a general sense. Reshaping is about intent and about how you consider what it is you're doing.
If everything from that example happened in an instance of reshaping, it wouldn't happen just because those headmates ended up recovering or reconciling. The headmates involve consider what they're doing to be a part or continuation of the storyline they were shaped with. However, instead of following the narrative that an external abuser gives, they are writing the narrative themselves.
If the shaping was done in a way that involved innerworld processes that represented the effects of abuse but were not abuse in and of themselves, this can be a part of reshaping. For example, some programmed systems may have internal metaphors for their programming (e.g. robot headmates who have actual computer programs put into them). If they deprogrammed themselves by engaging with the internal metaphor - e.g. changing or removing code on in-space computers that control the programs - that would be reshaping.
Reshaping can also include forming or (consensually) altering headmates on purpose based on methods that were used in shaping the system. This may be considered a complicated concept, because shaping, by definition, isn't something you're supposed to be doing and that can't be done with consent. However, some methods of shaping can be done with informed consent (e.g. someone who wants to split a headmate consenting to having a friend treat them like a different person sometimes). If a system uses those methods in their system but for the purpose of recovery, this is also reshaping.