WRITTEN BY BUTTERNUT / SHRIMP SYSTEM
A headspace/innerworld is an internal world where alters can be themselves and experience things you couldn't experience in the outerworld. A headspace is a tool used in therapy by both systems and singlets. Some systems do not have a headspace, others may have had a headspace for as long as they remember, and some may be looking to make a headspace.
No, they cannot. Alters can split, fuse or go dormant, which may appear as death, injury, pregnancy, etc in headspace, but it obviously isn’t real. When things that make no logical sense like this occur in the innerworld, it is likely symbolic of trauma and/or stress.
Some systems have accounts of being sexually assaulted in headspace. Often, this is a symbolic manifestation of previous traumas. If an alter sexually assaults someone in headspace, it likely feels real and painful because you have experienced something similar before. Anything like this can potentially leave you with a sort of “phantom” pain when fronting/being in the body because your body remembers the feeling of these types of events.
In systems with a headspace, some alters may find themselves unable to access some or all of their headspace, while other alters can access most or all of it. This is not an uncommon occurrence, and there are many reasons this could happen. It may be to protect some alters, due to denial, due to lack of communication, due to unawareness of the headspace or system's existence, etc.