Auti-multiplicity

Why did our Therapist imply that we're relying too much on our alters(?) He said for us to try and wait 90 seconds to process our emotions and feelings without having an alter switch in to deal with it. We don't consciously do it, we don't have control over it, and we found it very offensive that he suggested it. Are we right to feel upset about it? I’m gonna answer as a fellow multiple, rather than being technical. Of course you are right to feel upset about what happened. Whatever emotions you feel they are yours, and they are absolutely valid! I am torn here on the answer to give you. I can see that there would be some usefulness in doing what your therapist suggests, however, I wonder what the motivation and final goal are. The way I see it, obviously as you say we don’t have control over it. But also, there is a reason why someone switches to handle the emotion. That could be because you are not ready, or because you need to be eased into it. Or simply you or your alte...

What are your opinions on system persecutors? Some people say they're evil and others say they're misunderstood. I think they're misunderstood most of the time but what do you think based off personal experience or research? Ok, we are a system (unimaginatively called the Dark System) that has a persecutor sub-system made up of a lot guys from different phases of our lives. Let me tell you about our first persecutors. We were 4–5 year old. We kept getting told “why don’t you just die” or “you should kill yourself”. So, our first persecutors were the dark twins. One used to remind us that we should unlive. The other would look around and find opportunities to do it. But, the twins weren’t hurting us. That was actually soothing. Our middles used to find comfort in those thoughts. And for as twisted and perverse as it may sound, they have been comforting us ever since. When life gets really tough, talking through unliving with them actually keeps us living. After that, we got ...

We are not yet formally diagnosed other than having some form of DDs … but when comparing our experiences to others, we are more likely to get labelled OSDD-2 or UDD. Switching has been morphing lately. Our inner structure and composition is changing greatly and very rapidly, and this has affected how switches occur. We have multiple systems that each have subsystems. These most often are grouped by age groups, although lately we have had systems organising according to experiences, or personality type (what we call identity streams). So a member (whether a full self, a fragment, a part, or a facet) can join more than one system. So, someone who experience a certain type of abuse at a certain times will become a member of the relevant age group system, the identity stream of those specific personality traits, as well as the system of those who share the same type of experiences. We are still trying to work out what the implications of this are because it seems to be changing considerab...

Sometimes I don’t know who l am. Has anybody experienced this? Hum, for us it’s the opposite. Sometimes we know who we are, but most often we don’t. It is curious, because we only have just over a dozen systems who have names. We do have some systems without names. We also have (potentially) many more other systems that we don’t recognise individually yet. LIke now … We (the system that is writing this) are aware of everything that we are writing, and of the other systems (we are co-con) but we don’t communicate with them. And we don’t know which system we are. We know what we know, but we don’t know what we don’t know. You will find that a lot of us identity as “me”. Many littles do, but some of us grown ups too. Who is writing this? It is “me”, this “me” here that is typing this… to us it makes sense, and it is actually easier to refer to one another this way. If you ask me who told me something, I know exactly who that “me” is, I can spot them in a crowd of however many there are … ...

What is it about dissociative disorders that make you feel like you are faking it? And how do you work out what is real? For us, co-consciousness, co-fronting, and co-hosting are what help us understand and delineate each individual self (or system) in our system. So, when we are co-con, or co-fronting, or co-hosting we can see and feel that our reality is composed of multiple identities. Although at this stage we don’t really know how many we have, and who many of them are. When this happens, we can talk to each other, hear each other’s thoughts, feel one another and their feelings. There are lots of clear evidence of how crowded our brain is. Sometimes, however, we switch into a system that does not have any of that awareness. There is no co-whatsit … In these situations we have come to the conclusion that reality doesn’t change. Members of that system still do all the micro-switches and finish each other’s sentences, and share functionality. But it is done in a way that the host orc...

Can someone with a polyfragmented system help explain it a bit more? We've looked it up, and usually the top results say polyfragmented systems are defined by a high alter count. Is this true, or is there more that goes into it? (We will be doing more research!) TW: Mention different types of abuse Ok, this is our theory of how complex systems work. This is based from talking to others as well as our own personal experience. Let’s start with the diagram. At the top level we have brain inputs/outputs. Below that we have conscious/unconscious, etc. Structural Dissociation creates an additional layer of consciousness that enables the separation between body (physical) consciousness, and other levels of consciousness. Then, we consider trauma that starts too early for any sensible degree of integration between action systems (see Theory of Structural Dissociation, a few references are available here: References ) This means that early on, instead of developing a single personality, a c...

Ok, I am going to give a bit of a different perspective. We are a multiplicity, and I am the one in charge of “depression”. But we don’t call it that, we call it the sadness because we find the term depression very invalidating. I am Triste (which means Sad in Italian). So, let me first dispel a myth. Depression and Anxiety (that’s Timor in our system) are often curable. Example 1: curable Let me give you an example: OMG I run out of milk for my cereals, it is raining, and Getir is not going to be here for at least 37 minutes! That situation can trigger both anxiety and depression … and it is bearable and curable. Example 2: is it curable? And the one above is a good example of why anxiety and depression are invalidating, if we think: OMG I am alive and I can’t stop breathing! The whole living/unliving thing takes a different perspective. Woah! So, it depends where the sadness and fear originated. If we are sad because of current events, and that causes us anxiety, that it likely to b...

We have been going through a period of intense instability, and that is why we want to validate the efforts of some of our members. Memories have been flooding in for some of our youngest. We found quite a few “new” littles and middles, and have been trying to keep a semblance of normality while dealing with the internal turmoil. Everybody has been soldiering on, so to speak, despite the difficulties, and that alone is a reason to be proud of each and everyone. One of our members, however, had more difficulties than the others. They are a teen, and they are one of our major trauma holders. They come in many versions from a few months old to around 15 year old. Most the the new littles we found were young “copies” of them, all with just fragments of memories. This was understandably difficult. Those memories were … very painful on many levels … not just the factual memories, but the associated kinesthetic and emotional reminders were making denial of those events impossible. Yet, they s...