Semantics: Parts, Alters and body ownership

Well, this is kind of academic but I'll ask anyway

Over here we mainly think of each other as "Parts" which we use as a synonym for "Alter".
The reason the term Alter kind of snagged for us is that it seems to imply that there is one primary owner of the body with a group of "others" being the alters. It seems to me to imply a hirarchy, which we were all intensely uncomfortable with.

I understand why my mind snagged on this - There are six more or less regular Fronter's here (four of whom Front very frequently) and with none of us feeling a superior ownership of the body it is easy to think of ourselves as a group of equally important Parts.

So I guess I just want to chew the fat here: What do you refer to yourself as? Do you think of yourself as an Alter, a Part, a "Host" who has Alters? Do you feel the body is yours rather than your Alters' ? Do you think the term you choose for yourself and your others affects the manner in which you interact with each other?

Here is to words!
Rae

Great topic

We have a host, in this system that means whichever unlucky part gets to be the primary cleaner of the home et cetera Really nothing too exciting or prestigious there. Also seemingly the part who will almost always be the one to awake from sleep. We've previously had co-hosts, hosts, no hosts and so on and so forth. The host is just as much an alter in the system.

Then there is every other alter in the system. They are things like "protective alter", or "little alter" or what ever they want to be called. There is absolutely no difference between the host and these other alters. They're all alters. We're all part of the same system, the same person, the same body. It's everyone's, and that includes baby alters, older alters, funny alters, sad alters, animal alters. Everyone's.

We are all responsible for the conduct of the One Human we are. Even if that Human is made up of many Persons.

So everyone of us here is called an Alter. I think that helps us feel more "together" and communicate on a more equal level

As I see it, I am an alter, the host alter. My life is complicated, and has been that way for decades. My stronger insiders had learned to make extensive use of passive influence and blending, so that often I said things and acted in ways that I did not understand, that were disturbing to me. Often I was bewildered by myself. Only rarely did I hear voices or have experiences of overt possession or become aware of losing time (I lost more time than I was aware of). Now a couple of years post diagnosis and in treatment the dissociative symptoms are much reduced and we are well along the way to a final fusion.

Sometimes I feel as though my body is my own. As though I am a host for my alters. But there are days where I dont feel much of anything. Where things just ebb and flow, and go where they will. Usually I have know idea that my alters are there, and others they come and go so often that I can almost reach out and shake their hand. It is hard to say who is the host and who is the alter. As far as I know one of what I assume to be my alters is actually the host and that I am just an alter. Maybe I am just another part. Maybe we all are. Maybe there is no host. We could just be a community that shares a body. Like a twisted version of the Brady Bunch.

Then again, maybe I am full of it. Its up to you I guess.

We call ourselves Souls, because that's how we feel we are. We don't feel like some fragmented piece of someone else, because we're not (and if medical notes are right, we were never technically integrated as one in the first place.) We are each individual people, even if we're not considered "complete" by the outside world.

-- Fri Sep 13, 2013 3:42 pm --

the body is no one's and everyone's at the same time for us. Whoever is in the body, it's "their" body for the time being (like a rental ).
Some members call me the host, because I'm the default for coming out when no one else wants to, but i don't have any superiority over anyone else.

We're a group of parts, whom we normally refer to using the word alters online and in discussions with other persons with DID. I am the host alter, similar to how Una describes. Overall, I'm still out the majority of the time so I am for better or worse very dominant. I have a vast amount of life experience (= time in the body) and I can call on this more quickly than anyone else. So when situations get complicated, I'm normally the one who handles it. If things get tough emotionally, who's up front is more open.

For years, there was definitely some passive influence on me, but it mostly didn't feel foreign for me, and me switching out was quite rare. As far as any of us can tell, it was largely me in the driver's seat. Fortunately, I don't feel like I'm a person with a bunch of alters though I've heard myself wording my situation like that. I have recalled how, when, and where I popped into the body and I've always had a vague inkling of being a visitor in my own body. My entire life just makes more sense when I describe and view all of us as alters, me included. It also feels fair and just to do that.

We're all the same person, so elevating any part of us as the true person or more real or more justified seems ridiculous to me. Any of us old enough to grasp our situation at all don't hold that we aren't the same person, even if we did at first return. The littles are understandably more confused about what their situation is. They usually explain things using an explanation or analogy that makes sense to them, like "I went to sleep for too long and then I growed up and you're John" -- sort of meaning "I'm John" (his name is also John) but it just doesn't feel that way so it doesn't make sense to word it like that maybe?

We are three quite differant indervidals but we are family me and my two sisters, BJ has the final vote on things as here name on Birth certificat but that is only if Babs and me can not agree.
Anything to do with the body we all have to agree.

Bobby

I use the word 'parts' as a synonym for 'alters' too, I feel it gives more of a sense of us all being equal. I refer to myself as 'host' because that's the most usual term, but I don't see it as meaning I have more entitlement to the life/body/anything else. If anything, it's the other way around. The other parts/alters are the ones who have strong emotions, different talents, ambition, dreams, humour. They are the ones who could really live life. I mostly feel like a 'shell person' who, as lifelongthing says, does the cleaning and cooking .

We are all alters without a host we did have a host but it was to much work so we work togethere and help elseother.
~Sam

I am the Host, fronted the majority of this body’s life. After 4 ½ years of therapy a painfully honest talk with my female alter a month ago has helped me to understand I am an alter, one more face in the peanut gallery, but no more or less important than anyone else in my System. As hard as this was to for me to accept, that I am not and never have been in control of the System has been even harder. My false sense of superiority, groping for control of the body and attempts to suppress the others after years of fronting continues to be a stumbling block…but I am trying.

I have a rather simply System and often use a “Hershey Chocolate Bar” to describe it:
-The Original personality (OP) was the bar as it came out of wrapper.

-My alters’ psychological ages correspond to the age of the host at the time of their dissociations.

-Somewhere in the background the Ego (might be Id or Super Ego but I think I have it right) began to function as an Inner Self Helper.

-The trauma that caused the first dissociation created my child alter just as you would snap a piece from the chocolate bar. The OP was replaced by the child alter (individual chocolate piece) and a diminished Host (rest of the bar).

-The second dissociation snapped off another piece to create my preteen female alter and a more diminished Host in what remained of the bar.

-The third dissociation snapped off another piece to create my Protector leaving an even more diminished Host. Barely distinguishable from its pieces, that would be me; what’s left of the chocolate bar.

*** Trigger Warning***
The “Golden Child,” I am what remains of the Original Personality, the part of the Self that was so precious my dear sweet alters took a bullet to protect. And it brings me to tears that I could dare think I was better than them. The original bar no longer exists yet everything it was remains as surely as ever in the fragmented pieces scattered on the table.
***End Trigger Warning***

Each of us in my System perceives ourselves to have existed since birth, to be the “original” personality. My Hershey Chocolate Bar model helps us see that in a sense we have and we are. This understanding of Self has been extremely validating to each alter’s reality, helped all of us come to grips with our relationship to each other, the OP and the System. And it has been very humbling for me.