How did you meet your alters?

Hey everyone,

Was talking with my SO the other night and she told me that she met a couple of her alters in dreams years before she got to know them as alters. I'll let her describe said dreams if she so chooses.

How did you meet your alters for the first time?

I've met many of mine in dreams before meeting them. The dreams were a long time after they were made though. The others I have either "met" through other people (having someone else meet them and describe them to me), being co-conscious etc.

I remember when I was about 10 or 11 years old I had a dream where I was very closed to being killed. I opened my eyes and I was in a room with a little boy who looked very ill. We had a brief conversation and he told me that everything was okay and he had it all taken care of. I remember being so happy/touched by his presence that I couldn't stop crying, I even woke with tears in my eyes. I was highly distressed upon waking up because I wanted to spend more time with him.
I believe he's an alter and that I was in his room in our inner world, haven't met him so far though.

However, I've had dreams where I can clearly see faces of people who I suspect to be alters, can't remember what we talked about though.

VOICES! VOICES! and VOICES!
they got louder and louder so I freaked out and disappeared claureshia found me and took care of me until I was capable to accept what I have DID

but it was alot earlier than then I could hear and feel them in there lol

Earliest recollection of a voice was year3

Jen I actually stumbled upon in meditation - I actually went to the hall and saw her door and knocked periodically for at least a month before she responded. She was the first.

She was around for a year and then disappeared for 5 and was back for another year before the next one, LEll showed up. Hers was really strange to me, partly because I had never co-hosted before, and that's how she introduced herself; through co-hosting for a few hours. And it didn't help that she chose a time when I was really high on marijuana either. It was really confusing, and I asked if she was an alter and she didn't seem to understand the question, replying that she didn't know. So I asked her, "Well, if you were an alter, what would you call yourself?" And we spent the next 20 minutes trying to come up with a name that wasn't shared by someone else I already knew - she finally got fed up and made up her own name (making up the grammar rules along with it). But I bought her, like, 12 Disney videos that day, so I guess it went ok overall, but I was really confused as to whether she had existed or not until she showed up the next time - when I was very much not high.

I met Teen a couple months later. LEll had talked about her and the Little One, but I had no interactions with them until Teen came out once with my best friend. About a week after that, Teen began showing herself in the hall. I think I might have had a dream that Teen was in years earlier - I was having a normal dream, when I saw her out of the corner of my eye, just passing by, and I felt the urge to chase after - feeling like the dream I was having was not only less important, but less real, than finding her. I caught up with her once, and we both had identical looks of shock (which I couldn't understand at the time), and she ran off. She won't really say anything on the matter.

The Little One has been out a total of three times with my best friend so far (it's been about 5 months since I met Teen), but I have yet to meet nem myself.

That's interesting Tunes14, I've met some during meditation too (and apparently other people mediating with me have met some of my others that way as well).

Ways I have met alters:
1. Dreams (seemingly the most common for me)
2. Meditation
3. Through other alters
4. Through other people telling me about them

I can't be certain without alter confirmation, but I'm pretty sure I've met/seen them in meditation for years before they came out and I learned of them through what my husband told me.

This is correct. You met many of us in your meditations.

Related thread: How did you know you had DID?

For me, it started with intrusive thoughts and urges. That's why I started to investigate disorders and came out on DID (which I could relate to a bit at the time). But names were hard to get (they probably didn't know it themselves) and communication seemed to go mostly on a need-to-know base and was very confusing in general.

I think I've been influenced a lot at the time to read about did. And I was even "forced" to believe having DID.

Since friday (that's what I've been told, I started noticing it saturday) (that's about a week ago) two others have been out - one little and one that seems to be like me a few years ago. The latter was out the most. They seem to be different than the ones of which I have a name (that are currently listed in my signature) as they are much more confused about this all and don't know who they are.

oaktree wrote:For me, it started with intrusive thoughts and urges. That's why I started to investigate disorders and came out on DID (which I could relate to a bit at the time). But names were hard to get (they probably didn't know it themselves) and communication seemed to go mostly on a need-to-know base and was very confusing in general.

Oh god, I'm really glad I'm not alone on this one. I always feel like I'm making this up because no one really knows that they're there. They talk to other people occasionally and sometimes can identify themselves but it's rare.

One of mine, Kat, started out as an imaginary friend/sister that just ended up not really ever going away.

Most of mine I met through hearing their voices, and thought they were just like, consciences, like I used to call *possible trigger warning, religious* Kat my "shoulder devil" and Rain my "should angel" *end possible trigger warning*. They told me their names usually through choosing them for a character I'd end up writing about either in a fanfiction or the beginning of a story (that I wouldn't finish) or a short story or something. Rain, though, just told me her name (at least, when she decided to change it from Riyoku she did. I hear her voice, and asked who she was, and she said "My name is Rain," and then said something like "I'm here to help you", or something along those lines, at least).

Then, when I started to realize the voices could "take over" in a way, (I used to say I'd "lose control"), I started to call them "sides" of me. Like, Kat was my "dark side", Rain was my "good side", L.C. was my "depressive" side.

Ray I didn't meet until after she came fully out for the first time (that I could remember), and it was actually my boyfriend Mike who met her first, before me.

The others I've met either through written notes they've left, or seeing flashes of things happening inside, or meeting/seeing them inside, or through hearing something said by them repeatedly (like a name), or from hearing about them from another alter that's seen/met them, or by having them randomly come out and introduce themselves and just all of a sudden be "there". I've seen alters in dreams, but I haven't met any yet in dreams I don't think.

I think it'd be interesting to see how Cassie and Kyra, the two ex-hosts, would reply to this. I'll see if they'd want to share.


-Cassandra