How'd you know you found everyone?

I was wondering..

For those of you who have mapped your whole system..

How did you know you had found everyone?
Did you just know?

I realize you can never know that there are no more alters. But at least those of you who believe (all alters believe) that there are no one else..?

Sorry if it's a stupid question, I'm just thinking about it lately..

Actually, I think that's a very good question. Kind of fundamental really. You want to find all parts of you so how do you know if/when you've done that?

I think we've found everyone but then again I've believed that several times before. What seems different now is that there are no inexplicable gaps where an alter would have been needed. I myself arrived at age two and a half. I know the parents were deeply damaged and Sphinx confirms the abuse in different forms was continuous from both parents and others. Yet from my arrival to age four, no alters besides me were around, save Sphinx who didn't intervene. It didn't make sense that for one and a half to two years it would have been just me to face all that.

When we discovered Carter, who arrived around age three but eventually aged to six, we had an explanation for how we handled the mother's abuse. When we distinguished Max, who arrived around age three and is still three-ish, we had an explanation for the father's abuse. Moreover, we knew what they both dealt with, so Max's shorter span was consistent with the arrival of the twins and Quato at age four, when the father's abuse advanced.

We still don't have any real persecutors, which feels odd, but there may be reasons due to our system and environment. Dan might have become one towards others but we shut him down fairly soon. An early mission of everyone was to protect a younger sibling, so the idea of deliberately hurting anyone, including one among us, wasn't acceptable. Plus the parents weren't always monsters, sometimes they were normal and nice, as were a grandmother, aunts, an uncle, cousins, some neighbors. I/we had several examples to help us distinguish good from bad. I'm still on the lookout for possible parts I don't know about. There are no longer any identifiable gaps in time but there are areas of blockage I can't explain.

My system isn't outrageously complex and when I plot it out over time, it now makes a lot of sense, given the abuse my mind and body endured from people who should have been taking care of me.

To discover possible new alters, what's worked for me is to be on the lookout for anyone new and to maintain an attitude of welcome. I allow my alters into the body pretty often, plus if I feel myself getting triggered I try not to stop it (and sometimes I can't). Eventually I was able to distinguish one, Carter, based on the sense that he wasn't really anyone I had met before, that is, he felt different. Dreams, images, inklings, anything that suggested someone new or something I didn't know about, I tried to follow up on that. Naturally, that's an ideal I fell and continue to fall short of. When you're dissociative, you're used to shoving things out of your consciousness, making excuses or coming up with alternative explanations for something you're sensing, changing your focus to something else, going fuzzy, forgetting, having thoughts stolen or wiped away, switching, etc.

Another possible route is to find areas of your life that are damaged or crippled and see if an alter you already know about might explain that. For instance, I have had a real problem with official paperwork type stuff. I don't understand the exact mechanism, but when Carter and Max arrived, their characteristic patterns of avoidance and freezing seemed to explain the quality of my own blocks. But without a therapist right now, we haven't made any headway into changing the behaviors, we just have a better sense of what emotional stuff fuels them.

A process I try to use is to pay attention to any felt sense that drifts by my consciousness. I suppose it's almost meditative but I've never been comfortable meditating per se. I read Eugene Gendlin's book Focusing years ago, and I don't even recall if I finished it, but he describes looking inside for a felt sense of what's there. From that reading and other work, I try to pay attention to fleeting images, random feelings, recurrent dreams, repetitive thoughts and don't just toss them as meaningless. I've been able to uncover stuff that way, including alters.

Kind of fundamental really. You want to find all parts of you so how do you know if/when you've done that?

Yeah, exactly.

Thank you for sharing what's worked for you. What you write here makes a lot of sense Johnny.

I have the same questions too and I'm interested to see what answsers you get. It could help me out

Find your ISH or Observing EP's and ask them. Also ask other alters if they know of more alters out there or if any others might have once existed.

I did both and even after mapping all 25 levels with 330 parts, none knew of the 5000 plus fragments that were outside the system.

We have a mottos - leave no one behind! and All for one, one for all! We work together and leave no one out.

In our process of looking for anyone left behind we have found 71 alters that thought they were dead but were still inside the known system. Almost every time one of my Observing EP - Sage has found the ones thought dead.

It was the ISH that found all the fragments. The fragments were found during an integration process where we were looking for anyone left behind.

Find your ISH or Observing EP's and ask them.

Don't have an ISH but we do have a system manager. She doesn't answer though, for reasons I'm not sure of yet.

In our process of looking for anyone left behind we have found 71 alters that thought they were dead but were still inside the known system.

Very interesting. We have found 3 once thought to be dead (isalin then sia then now a 3 y/o little boy).

The fragments were found during an integration process where we were looking for anyone left behind.

Glad you've found them

Thanks for answering

Don't have an ISH but we do have a system manager. She doesn't answer though, for reasons I'm not sure of yet.

Not all systems are thought to, but I think they do. Even the normal brain has their own form of this called a Hidden Observer. My ISH was one of the last parts I found other than fragments. They can be quite elusive. How about Observing EP? Do you have any parts that seem to sit back and simply observe the internal workings of the system?

Very interesting. We have found 3 once thought to be dead (isalin then sia then now a 3 y/o little boy).

Love it!

Just keep searching and you work to integrate.

Even the normal brain has their own form of this called a Hidden Observer.

This I know.

Not all systems are thought to, but I think they do.

This I didn't know. Do you have any literature to back this up? I'd be very interested to read about it

How about Observing EP? Do you have any parts that seem to sit back and simply observe the internal workings of the system?

We have a system manager - she watches everything and controls a lot of what is going on inside. She sees everything that happens outside, but is more pre-occupied with the inside, in that she keeps things how they are supposed to be (safe, calm etc) and doesn't front often at all. She watches everything that happens though, as said. She knows how many we are, she knows where they live, she's helped the ones who thought they were dead even before us others knew about them. The problem is, she refuses to tell a lot of things We usually figure out why later on.. and they're usually good reasons. But sometimes I just want to know But impatience will get me nowhere (and it's not really a trait us in the system have much of, thankfully) so in the end, I guess I will know when I know

My best friend said that her 'guardian' alter knew of them all, but he refused to allow her to know of a couple of them. He said some were very dark and he refused to allow them to come out, so they stayed in hiding. So she knew most of hers, but agreed with her 'guardian' that she didn't need to know the bad ones I think her decision was the best for her, but everyone is different. Not having DID, I've always wondered the same though... how do you know?

Our system manager is not always the brightest, and she once accidentally told about another alter, but she won't tell us anything if she is aware of what she says.