Does the original core being exist?

A psychologist I talked to for awhile told me that there are only parts, that we are all parts of one body and that there is no original part and that it just feels like there is because some parts have more of a handle on things and often take control.

I couldn’t really get my head around that.

What do you think?

Sometimes I think this is the case with me, because truly I switch so much I never really know, and I dont know who I really am or anything.....because my alters take over so much, and since I was probably younger than 5 this has been going on, and somtimes my own reality doesnt feel real, just acting out roles to make it through, sometimes remembering sometimes not.

My T talks about
"coming together" not finding the core.

Neurologically speaking, when we are young our brains are still forming connections and pruning different neural pathways. Our "primitive" brain (the area associated with trauma and memory) begins to go a bit haywire under extreme stress and, as a child, this affects these pathways being developed. Because this area is associated with implicit (or unconscious) memory, events that occur start to be stored in different areas of the brain and are not connected to each other. Simply, this is DID. A "split" does not happen. It's that integration and the proper formation of these neural pathways never occurred. So, coming at it from this angle, there is no "core" self. It is parts that are associated with different pockets of memory, emotions, and activities, and different "parts" can form as a child while these areas are still developing and as new traumas/ memories occur.

I know this is a little sciency, but the technical sometimes helps make sense of the abstract, subjective experience. A "core" self is still very, very real to those that experience it and may help with identifying where one's fears and deepest emotions lie. But, like so many of these terms, they are just ways to explain and try to understand- they are not solid, tangible things that unequivocally exist. So, if you feel that you have a core self, then there's nothing wrong with you using that term to help you and your T understand.

boopsy26 wrote:Neurologically speaking, when we are young our brains are still forming connections and pruning different neural pathways. Our "primitive" brain (the area associated with trauma and memory) begins to go a bit haywire under extreme stress and, as a child, this affects these pathways being developed. Because this area is associated with implicit (or unconscious) memory, events that occur start to be stored in different areas of the brain and are not connected to each other. Simply, this is DID. A "split" does not happen. It's that integration and the proper formation of these neural pathways never occurred. So, coming at it from this angle, there is no "core" self. It is parts that are associated with different pockets of memory, emotions, and activities, and different "parts" can form as a child while these areas are still developing and as new traumas/ memories occur.

I know this is a little sciency, but the technical sometimes helps make sense of the abstract, subjective experience. A "core" self is still very, very real to those that experience it and may help with identifying where one's fears and deepest emotions lie. But, like so many of these terms, they are just ways to explain and try to understand- they are not solid, tangible things that unequivocally exist. So, if you feel that you have a core self, then there's nothing wrong with you using that term to help you and your T understand.

Sciency! yes! I love you.
Perfect explanation that does not leave much room to misinterpret!
This is the sort of thing that I come here for!

Oh Brilliant one...

Where in the heck did you get the user name Boopsy from


I have so many questions about this and your post is the best answer I have ever read!

Thank You

I guess I agree. I don't really see my system as having a "core self". We all make up a whole. As far as I'm aware as it stands, its all 10 of us making up a 1. Nothing is missing and I don't need to find a Core self before finding the "true me".

Carroll, my Life Coach wrote this to me to answer my many questions about Core Self. This is what he told me.

"The essential idea is that it is who you have to be - it's your irreducible, immutable self. Saying that, to my mind is only modestly clarifying, however, as "self" to begin with is an abstraction, and "Irreducible self" even more so. As I think I've said before, more than anything else, to me, "core self" is an idea we keep because it's simply useful to ask ourselves "Is this really me?" As we peel off layers that aren't, we finally encounter aspects of ourselves which seem unavoidable. Presto - the core self appears. Because who we are is driven by genetics, expressing itself through the experience we've had to this point, our irreducible self has been created by these two things: genes and experience. There is no avoiding this. I've read a good amount of technical material on evolution, and again and again I encounter modern biological studies which report that morphological presentations seen in animals are about half due to genes and half due to environment. The same finding came out of a series of very good studies at the U. of Minn. on human personality. So, core self is, if I may put it this way, irreducibly a complex idea! It's also a rich, fascinating idea."

I have so much trouble with abstract things like Core Self, but it's getting clearer.

So what or who are the parts of us protecting from trauma memory? Or is there nothing? Each part simply holds them until they can process them?

If who we think of as Core Self, a part that does not have a body like the other alters is host, then what part is this? The part that other parts are integrating with.

I have tried to steer clear of definitions which don't fit myself. What I want to avoid is trying to make my experience fit someone else's idea or theory about what's happening within my mind and reality. I read a lot, and if a word or concept tends to explain certain things, I'll hold on to it. It is much harder for me to entertain anyone's theories unless I hear confirmation that they have previously worked with a significant number of DID clients in a therapist-client relationship. This to me is developed expertise.

I'm more comfortable with reading biographies of individuals who themselves have or had DID and I've particularly sought out autobiographies by men because I'm a man and I can relate even better sometimes. I am far more open to momentarily inspecting my own system as a comparison and contrast to someone describing their own DID system.

I don't really know what the term "core self" means and it feels loaded to me. It tends to imply that the self (or real self) is more authentic in one part or something. Admittedly that's just the connotation. When I hear Tylas use it, I kind of assume it's like what I refer to as my core, the baby Adam.

My gatekeeper tends to disagree with the assessment that the mind doesn't split or that a "split" is somehow not authentic or representative of reality, of a physical reality in the brain. In the case of gatekeeper/objective observer, his part of the mind or something with very similar characteristics shows up in completely average people during hypnosis. The objective observer, which has been referred to in many psychological works, is a normal part of the mind. It stands to reason that there is a locus of brain activity when this objective observer is active that might show up on a CAT scan or MRI or a similar future technology.

The gatekeeper theorizes that he (though not necessarily all gatekeepers) is a part of the mind/brain that has a connection to the body in a way that other alters in our system don't. So there may be an actuality, a physicality, a location, however intricately threaded through the brain, to his existence. He wishes me to do more research so that he can explain more of what he understands internally about that connection but he understands I have my hands full with several littles and processing our trauma.

The gatekeeper has record of his own "birth" as a stepping away from the ongoing mind, which at that moment became permanent, a "rift" that left him observing from that moment to this day, though most of his lifelong observing has been extremely passive. Because he can access records (images, raw emotions, central nervous system states, body posture/positioning) back as far as his birth at age three months, though they are in a form that does not provide easy analysis, he states that Adam, the core, holds memory, equally fuzzy before that which he has no access to. With that information, he and I can state that we do have a part which we call the core, a unity which existed before any rift or division.

This is our system and I wouldn't expect other systems to mirror it at all, but we have read biographies which give similar reflections. Any theory that uses neural pathways not forming properly as part of an explanation for or definition of DID should also account for the creation of adolescent and adult alters. If a normal person has a more-or-less fully integrated mind where neural pathways are normal and extensive throughout the brain, a person with DID has a mind all of whose parts are not fully integrated. The distinction between not fully integrated and separated parts of the mind escapes me at this moment.

Because the brain is ultimately physical (consisting of individual cells and billions of neural connections between those cells), I would expect an alter to show up as something roughly physical as well, if we only had the technology to image that. I'm getting very theoretical and clinical and at least one little is feeling "icky" about all this right now (!), so I have to stop.

Nice reply JJ.

A couple of thoughts.

1. Those inside only know what we/they have learned - via reading, talking, observation. This includes the use of any label. What they know can, just like with anyone, improve with gained knowledge. This is not changing to meet someone else's ideas. It's learning and growing from that knowledge.
2. Watchkeeper and ISH must be the same thing. My ISH are genderless, ageless and are much like what you describe your Watchkeeper to be. They do not have a body that the alters can see, unlike alters, they do all have a body that each other can visualize.
3. Whatever I am - I do not have a body inside. My body appears to be the real body. This part of me has not been aware since infancy.
4. I do have an original part that was traumatized. 3 month old Archespore, but this part is not me.
5. I am not a child or a teen even though I have been un-aware all but the last couple months of life. I am an adult part of the brain. I am the part the others protect. I am absent of trauma memories and all childhood memory for that matter. I share some memory, almost all of it adult memory, with other parts or probably more like they share theirs with me.
6. I am the part that all other parts will integrate with. The part that all other parts should have integrated with as a child.
7. I will call this part Self, I think.

This may be all off base, but it's the conclusion I have come to until I gain more knowledge.

PS - You are another reason I come here. You are a great source of knowledge.

My core is very real in my system. Every other in my system knows about the core and says it is important. I don't understand it all. I read stuff online about DID and cores and all but I don't understand the significance of it.

I trust my own system more than anything I've read. The way it is explained to me by others in my system is that Seed (my core) is the most important one of all. The rest of us sacrifice for the protection of Seed. The body belongs to Seed. Everything is done for Seed. Seed is the unifier of all of us. She is central. Once Seed is awoken, she will consume all of us and make us all one.

I have SRA abuse in my history, so maybe the core is more important to us because of that. I have core splits and my programmer sealed my core. In SRA victims, the core is an important part. It is also one of the targeted parts that programmers go for.

So for me and my system, the core is a very real thing. I've read things online that others feel the same way, yet there are those that don't have/can't find their core, or their core has been active all their life.