Deceptive alters?

Disclaimer: I'm not diagnosed with DID and probably wouldn't be, 'cause there's no amnesia or alters taking full control etc. All I know is, I have some similar symptoms and "inner people" - I can be called manager, 'cause I manage basically everything. Now when that's out of the way...

Has it ever happened to you, that some of your/you alters pretend to be another one or a completely new one? If yes, how did you find out and manage the situation? And what was their motive for that if you care to share? I'm just curious and the replies could be useful for me too.

Hi lindi,

Yeah sometimes we pretend. It's mostly just to feel safe. Sometimes happens with our T. New ones pretend to be one we know she likes. I like to pretend to be host so people treat me like an adult. Everybody in our system lies alot. We grew up lying all the time. Feels safer to go on doing it. Sometimes we can't shut it off even if we want to. It's just the way it is. We try not to hurt anyone with it.

Iain + others

Thank you for your honest reply! Could you imagine that some of you would fake being a completely new alter to get more attention from the host or even from the outer world?
Maybe I should tell, that I'm in a situation where I've kind of found a new alter, but I don't usually find them just like that, so it's confusing, and the possibly new alter also sounds quite much like a younger version of an other alter who likes attention and sometimes plays tricks... I guess no-one else can say what's up with that, but I'm interested if other people's experiences could give me insight.

Hi lindi,

We don't know about your system. In ours we have several versions of most parts because bad things happened over and over and used up parts. It's complicated. Anyway could be a younger version of your alter you just found or just woke up.

Iain

IainEtc wrote:Hi lindi,

We don't know about your system. In ours we have several versions of most parts because bad things happened over and over and used up parts. It's complicated. Anyway could be a younger version of your alter you just found or just woke up.

Iain

I'm sorry that you had to go through all that But thank you for the reply again! I hadn't given much consideration to the possibility that someone could be a younger version but still a real, separate alter.

I believe I speak for a lot of us with DID when I say that our alters can be very deceptive at times. They have the ability to cloak themselves so to speak to avoid detection. They will go to extents of lying to say that they are you the (host) or make you or others believe they are another alter.For me I had a fourteen year old alter posing as me, a grown woman of twenty nine years old at the time. It can be confusing to try to decipher who is who. However I believe that the subtleties and motives are the key here to figuring out their true identities. An alter could be shy, it could be a new alter's way of coming out for the first time. There are so many possibilities. I would definitely talk to your therapist about the situation to put the pieces together, they are a great resource for us and they tend to see the bigger picture when we cannot. Keep us posted on your journey.

Thank you for the kind and insightful reply, Emily Thomas! I certainly sometimes have difficulties telling who is who and especially who am I. At first I felt extremely shy to post on this forum, 'cause I thought that it might offend someone who has way more severe problems, like total black outs etc, but everyone has been so friendly And reading posts here has made me realize that I have more symptoms than I originally thought - for example I have no amnesia, but I have a terribly bad memory about phases when I was in a very different mindset so to say... Well, right now I have no therapist, but in August I should start with a new one, and if the therapist seems understanding I guess I should take up dissociation. It just feels very difficult to even think about

Interesting question. Everyone regularly pretends to be me, the host, or at least to be our age in public places, except on vacation far from home. Then we assume a young alter will make us appear retarded or something but we don't care much anymore.

In our system each time we've thought we had an alter who was just being a younger "version" of an alter but still the same alter turned out to be a separate alter, if that make sense. That said, many systems do have age sliders who appear to be a variety of ages. In our system, Chase just went from age 5 to 7 and we don't know if we (and he?) were wrong about his age initially or if he just matured or what. He was always extremely polite and serious and was rarely out until recently so it was hard to tell, but he certainly seems 7 now.

Several of our alters have been out many times before we know they're a distinct alter. They and I feel that they're me, me in a very distinct mood but one that I have seen myself carried away into many times. Jonathan in particular has a state he goes into where neither of us realizes he's out front until he does something that's distinctively him -- a gesture, a choice I wouldn't make. We see how this would have been effective when he went to school for us intermittently as a child.

When Aaron came forward to us for the first time, he himself had no idea if he was brand new or even a distinct alter. He came up with a hypothesis that he was be a newly created shell into which we might integrate. But we later found he was an altered created years back "accidentally," he just had little experience.

Ultimately all of us are the same person. At the same time we're dissociated parts so recurring identity confusion and questions like "wait a second, is this a new alter" or "who is out right now?" seem normal at this point. Alters can definitely pretend to be new or someone else. They should be asked whether that's true and why the pretending. There's also a chance it's by design or a result of the confusion inherent in DID.

To be honest, this situation you're describing could be many different things from age sliding, to splits that happened in one person creating multiple "versions" of them, to deception, to anything really. DID and other dissociative disorders are, in my own experience and from reading, very complicated and extremely individual. I say your best bet would be to ask this person who they are and if they are "new" or not. Also talking with a T would be a good idea, I think, so once that's possible that'd probably be good to do.
-Kit

Thank you so much for your advise, Johnny-Jack and fox13!
I'm starting to think (at least for now) that it's a separate alter, because the alter I thought it could be has a short attention span and probably would have given up the pretending by now. It also rang a bell, when you mentioned an alter who was created earlier but had little experience. That would explain why she is so sure of what she likes etc despite being "new". Straight asking doesn't work very well for now - she just gets really frustrated and feels self-pity over not being trusted, without properly answering the question Or maybe she isn't even completely sure of the answer herself, if that makes any sense...