How do I know my alters are real?

Many, probably most people who suspect they are multiple or who have just been diagnosed as having dissociative identity disorder can't help but wonder, especially at first, if maybe they or their mind isn't just pretending. Many are sure at times that they're making it all up. It's a terribly frustrating experience for those with DID but possibly univeral. I've had that thought or some form of doubt hundreds of time. I don't really have them anymore but I know how hard it is to make sense of all this.

I'm co-conscious with my alters so I can see and hear and feel them do things when they're in control of the body. We are all together one person but still separate and each part of us is as real as the other. I'm the host, the part of us out front most often. I thought it would be useful to have a thread not expressing our doubts but listing how we know that alters are real, the evidence, so here goes.

I know my alters are real and live alongside me in this mind and body because...

1. they have different allergies and reactions to foods and alcohol than I do
2. they have or have had different eyesight from me, some considerably better
3. they have different laughs and giggles and each makes the same ones consistently. They sometimes laugh at things I don't think are funny
4. they control, hold, and move the body very differently from me and how they are in the body is utterly consistent each time they're out
5. they are triggered by things I don't always understand at first, though these often begin to make sense over time
6. their existence explains huge gaps in my memory
7. they have told me things I never had the slightest clue about but that I checked on and now know to be true
8. they have different startle reactions than I do and each reacts their own consistent way to sudden sounds, noise, behavior of other people, etc. I couldn't possibly manufacture in a split second different physiological reactions which are consistent for each of them
9. I have no memory of doing things that I have evidence for my body having done but they do remember doing them
10. their flashbacks are usually overwhelming emotionally and are a clear indication that bad things were done to us that I never knew about and, once I did know, wanted to believe didn't happen
11. my experience of myself and my alters is highly consistent with biographies of people with DID and with books and articles describing DID, and it is not consistent with other diagnoses
12. my alters, now that I've come to know them, explain past intrusions -- sometimes sudden and overwhelming -- of thoughts, emotions, and impulses that didn't make sense at the time and didn't feel entirely or at all my own
13. I often had a strange sense of being a visitor in my body, an interloper, a body snatcher, and I now know I was not the first of us in the body
14. I've been consistently drawn to stories about doppelgangers, long lost twins, people separated at birth, mistaken identity problems, and people with multiple personalities
15. I remember how and at what moment several of us came into the body, that is, when we were created
16. many of my dreams throughtout life included people who turned out to be my alters
17. dozens and dozens of bizarre events, feelings, addictions, quirks, and moments in time that I could never explain can now be explained by my alters or by the fact of having DID
18. their emotions are genuine and spontaneous when they're in the body but they don't feel like mine
19. they do not react to the world the way I would nor make the choices I would
20. the way they are is extremely consistent each time they're in the body. I am not so good an actor -- no one is -- that I could manufacture so many different personalities, behaviors, attitudes, emotional states, and ways of moving the body, then spend hours being just like them and not like me
21. they act quite appropriately for their own ages
22. they continue to surprise me by their reactions, opinions, and points of view which diverge from mine as much or nearly as much as do those of other people
23. they get upset or cry when I'm not feeling sad. Sometimes I have no idea why they're upset at first.
24. we make choices that are diametrically opposed to ones that others of us make
25. they have different sexualities and sexual preferences from me
26. they all look different from me which explains why I've had the sense many times that the person in the mirror wasn't me or that I didn't look right, like I'm supposed to look
27. other people diagnosed as having DID recognize me and my alters as a person/people with DID
28. they have different tolerances or intolerances to cold and heat than I do. They prefer the temperature to be different from what I prefer
29. some of them intensely dislike like my clothes and my style
30. they explain why people used to call me different names
31. I've always felt "internally haunted" and now i know why I would feel that way
32. I know logically that they are me, that we are all the same person, several of us know that, but our experience of ourselves runs completely contrary to that fact
33. they remember certain events differently from how I did, but their version makes sense whereas mine, upon scrutiny, doesn't or contains holes
34. I can now recognize the horrible fear of and struggle against what I used to call "losing control" or "going crazy" as the experience of someone else taking over the body from me
35. some of them speak different dialects, have different accents, or use different grammar and vocabulary than I do. I have tried to imitate them but can't.
36. I've been diagnosed by a professional with DID
37. the progression of at first doubting then later coming to accept the DID and my alters as real seems consistent with what I know of others who have with DID, in biographies and on this forum

Anybody else have any other reasons for how they know their alters are real? Yeah, I bet you do...

Damn it, your list is too good. I'm not sure I can add to it, but I do relate to a number of yours, if not almost all of them. I have major denial about it, pretty consistently, but I've never felt my life made sense until starting to explore it through the lens of all of these parts being real. Thanks. I really needed to read that list. It hurts so much to think I might have made this, because it's denying ourself. That is my favorite way to refer to us. Because, collectively, we are a self, but that self belongs to all of us, it is "ours," not mine. I don't know why, but reading your list right now, I am deeply moved, for a moment knowing it's true, of all we contributed to surviving some pretty awful stuff. There, I can feel the resistance. We don't want to make those people "look bad." Whatever the intention, we were deeply wounded. And refusing to look at the injury will never heal it.

LOL, I realized this was a JJ thread after opening it, because it's a topic that applies so much to me. It must look like I'm forum-stalking you right now.

I don't experience much denial but when I do, I say to my husband maybe I'm just making them up. He always replies that he is sure they are real and furthermore if I were making them up that too would be a reason to get help. Same difference. See? So I no longer worry about denial. When it happens I simply notice it and let it pass.

I know they are real because I am one, and I am very aware of that fact. Some of the others are not aware of that fact, and the path to understanding it seems to be different for all of us. One of us, who was in denial for some time, turned around very quickly when she found her purpose within the system, which is serving as a therapist of sorts.

I have always been aware that I am just one among many, but it took me some time to realize just how different the others were. Accepting our state of existence has never been a serious problem for me.

For us, at least, the primary obstacle to accepting the reality of being a part of the system and not the entirety of it, or even the only one that "matters," is not intellectual, but emotional. The one who I am currently have problems convincing has a vested interest in denying us. He does not like to share his life and sees us as impediments to achieving his goals, which he seems to create anew each week so he has a reason to stay in control.

I am going to show him this thread and see what he has to say. But all the proof in the world will mean nothing until he is ready to let go.

-Dul

When I listen to my voice on a recording OR a recording of myself playing the piano, I feel strongly that it isn't really me, even though I remember the recording - it just doesn't seem right in some strange way. I'm fairly new to DID and my dx, so I'm still sorting this all out.
Thanks for your list - it helped me in some ways and fed the denial parts a few things they needed to.We aren't clearly accepting or understanding of DID yet.
Everyone wins I guess.

We should all make our own personal list's so that when we feel like we're in denial, then we can go back to it and see that truth.

1. I can spend hours argueing with my denial alter about weather they are real or not. I doubt that I could argue that long with somebody who isn't real.

2. Logan cries over insults directed at him and if he was just imaginary then he wouldn't be offended in the first place.

3. My dreams and waking up without knowing who I am.

4. Feeling their emotions.

5. Logan is bisexual and I am heterosexual.

6. Accounts where I have switched.

7. The alters can calm me down when I'm panicked or I have to calm THEM down when they are panicked.

8. They have distinct voices.

9. They are angered, panicked, saddened, and overjoyed by things that I am not.

10. When merging was mentioned, Logan had a complete sobbing attack and when he did start crying I could see and feel him inside of me and I was telling him it was alright. It felt so real.

11. Logan's freak out when medication was mentioned.

12. Made impulses.

13. Times where I cannot control my actions because they are not mine.

14. The phasing/zoning out.

15. The time loss and forgetfulness.

16. Seeing and hearing about things that I do not recall doing at all.

17. The natural flow of my 'self talk' with different 'parts of my mind' that are distinctly different in opinions and interest's.

I no longer (unfortunately, in many ways) experience denial over whether or not I have DID. I do however, suffer denial. My denial tells me this: I have DID, but the alters I know of now are made up. I don't know my alters and the intricate relationships I have with these people "I already know" is made up - the real alters are people I do not experience knowing. This is, by all accounts, most likely of course faulty. I think I might be making a list for ourselves, about why each of these people I know, are real in their own.

Thank you for writing this. Great list(s)

I know how you feel. A lot of the time I feel like the only ones that I know for sure are real alters are Logan and Lulu and I feel like I've made the others up.

lifelongthing wrote:the real alters are people I do not experience knowing.

I know the feeling. For the longest time I had no subjective experience of my Alter 4, the one behind the amnestic barrier, but her existence was absolutely not in doubt. That is because whenever I lost time, when I was absent, someone else was there operating my body and interacting with other people.

i've had some kind of pseudo-DID when I was at my hardest period of life a few years ago

and there was completely new, personality. I was aware it's me, but voice was different, personality was different(from so emotional to psychopathic), preference for cloth was different, i am TERRIBLE AT KEEPING time and so easily get scared but that me was punctual and don't feel fear, Music taste was different, I can't kill a bug but when i am in that mode i don't feel a thing killing a bug. I am heterosexual, but that me was asexual/bisexual. I know that personality was created to protect me from worst. It's like, new person inside me.


And also when I am under stress, I sometimes experience 'losing' memory.

I assume, personally, DID is some extreme form of what I've experienced. Your mind , to protect you, is working in special way. Memory loss, identity problem, taste change, ETC.


though, I don't know if anyone can explain the eyesight issue.