I've known for a couple years that members of my system experienced deliberate programming of some kind from the father. We identified a few alters who dealt with his attempt to threaten us into silence. We've only gotten a few more clues or impressions here and there but this week we started focusing on it, more or less accidentally. We were actually starting to work with Xavi (hah-vee) who we know has played a major role in is losing focus when we're trying to remember something that was related to the abuse.

This week he was with in therapy when suddenly it was like someone smashed through a door to scare the crap out of us, to threaten us. We knew it was either an unknown introject of the father or someone dedicated by habit to stopping our inquiry. So we were working with Xavi, but now we'll be working with Abraham, whom we haven't met yet and maybe others, Sky and Vince, who have visited us briefly.

When we were 8, I feel the father started worrying that we might tell someone and he wanted to make sure we didn't. He had been an FBI agent before we were born so he had plenty of mind control techniques, some of which he told us about when he was being "normal dad." But he probably didn't need to try anything too fancy. I was a child and easily threatened.

We're about to dig into this and we're aware there may be self-harm programming. But it won't work anymore because we're prepared and won't rush.

I was casually grocery shopping after work tonight and felt an openness, then a youthfulness of the body and a cluelessness, a sense of being a bit lost and nervous. It was clear that a young alter was nearby but who it was wasn't immediately familiar to me. As I looked, he felt downright unfamiliar. I thought at first there was someone new. We asked the name and heard a bit garbled "Hank." Well, we do have a Hank but I'm not sure at the moment we ever met him other than perhaps very briefly. We've known about him for him for over three years.

Well I just read our full record of early encounters with him, which we've shortened and sanitized for quick reference, and it's disturbing. He has visited and we know that he was the victim of a specific type of manipulated sexual abuse. When we met him three years ago he was confused and pretty traumatized. But tonight he was more or less just a kid. Kind of like the other kids his age here but different. A nice kid, unsure, nervous, but not too scared. I liked him. He stuck around in the body a long time tonight, wanting to check things out, be here, spend time as himself, do stuff we do, like put the food away and eat some food for dinner. What he bought was something we don't usually buy but what may have been more familiar to us at his age.

He knows what's going on mostly. All our alters are able to watch a bit or maybe it's that communication among us has increased naturally and he can find knowledge and know-how pretty quickly. He's familiar with the house and our room, though he made a lot of comments about how messy it is, which is true. He didn't like it and picked things up.

I'm really glad to know more about him, though rereading what I wrote about our first awareness of him three years ago, the details of which had since been largely forgotten, it's disturbing once more how sick the father and mother were. Hank is here due to the father. That man alone caused us literally hundreds of traumas, his perversions were never-ending. Well he died when we were twelve so they did end, thankfully.

We like Hank. He's a good kid, strong, and no longer hidden away. He'll surely visit in therapy tomorrow and we'll work with him. Lastly, he wanted to respond to the woman in the grocery store and we didn't really get a chance to think about it. He did but his voice was a kid's voice, if spoken through an adult male's vocal chords. She looked at us oddly. So maybe the voice was off. Yeha, probably. And he wasn't acting like us when we shop there. It was him, an unsure kid. Being a kid in public used to be a bit terrifying to me. What would people think, would they know? Now it's just amusing. Who cares? Nobody is 100% sure what's happening unless maybe they know someone with DID.

We just had a huge revelation as to why our most recently discovered and most perplexing group of alters is here. Seven alters who are connected somehow to keep us busy in our free time -- perpetually, so we don't remember, it's now clear. Not a single alter or even a pair whose roles combined make sense. Seven. But this remembered stuff justifies well why our mind had to have so many of us teamed up then to protect us. And there may be others.

We now know why they needed to arrive, and the cause is awful. Far, far worse than I thought I had figured out. I am devastated to learn what happened to us around age 12 and/or 13. I'm am sickened and disgusted. But we can snap back from almost anything for a time and quickly. It's how our system works, has almost always worked. Except now we don't bounce back by forgetting all about the trauma. Nowadays we just put a lid on it -- temporarily. We know it's there, there's no memory loss or denial ever again. We can choose to think about it tomorrow and we do. But not postpone or bury it for years. That is not an option.

I wish this weren't here. I wish I didn't have to know. I wish it didn't happened. I wish I'd had a safer childhood. And I know my wishing changes nothing.

It's not even a new category of abuse nor a new perpetrator. We were physically and emotionally abused as a kid. We were sexually abused by both parents, some relatives, and several people outside the family, the latter arranged by the father. But this new thing...it's just a horror to know about and I don't even have the whole story. As it came up today, I stopped it. And I guess I'll have to go further in the future. That's why I'm in therapy. That's what I need to do to heal, to be free of this stuff that continues, to some extent, cripple us. But emotionally, I absolutely, positively don't want to deal with it.

At least none of this stuff was ever anything we did to others. That we could not endure. Our gatekeeper confirmed tonight that this new knowledge is the worst, as in the worst thing that ever happened. It was good to know it ends here. Since he's never confirmed anything like that before and he's never outright lied, I believe him.

I want to crawl into a hole somewhere and stay there. Instead, I'll go to sleep tonight and tackle it later, when I'm readier than right now.

I've had a lot of cases where I feel pretty sure there may be an alter I don't know about and I write down the details. Often it starts with the vaguest sense of another someone and I quickly get a name. Like it just pops into my head or I start hearing a bunch of sounds like the name. When I get a focus on the name, an ownership of it, discovering a new alter may happen shortly after. Other times I'll go looking for someone new based on a behavior I realize is odd or could indicate an alter.

Some of us have been really difficult to distinguish from known alters. Me, John, the one of us who does many if not most of our posts, wasn't even aware I was a distinct alter from our primary social/work host Johnny. I myself didn't seem to know about me (at least as an independent alter) until a couple years ago!

Given that many of us been co-conscious with each other for probably decades if not always, how were we supposed to know that we had DID and that we technically weren't the same person (okay, technically we ARE the same person). Yes, I can see it very plainly in hindsight and there are clues all over my journaling and from prior posts here. For example, alters kept referring to "John" but we didn't have anyone named that specifically, we just figured they meant Johnny or the collective body, since the birth name is John. We still don't know if they were referring to me per se.

I would for years watch myself pull off social feats that I myself couldn't imagine doing. I would watch and think thoughts like "how am I doing this, chatting so comfortably and fluidly in this situation?" while Johnny just kept going. I was present, I was watching, it was absolutely normal for me to do that. We had no idea about the DID. How were we supposed to figure it out? We just swapped places as necessary and our memory of each other's escapades weren't as crisp as other memories (of our own escapades) but there was no black out, no amnesia between us.

On Ryder's part, there were thoughts along the lines of "why am I being so smarmy, so warm to this person who I couldn't care less about?" when Johnny or I were out. He wasn't sitting there thinking "well, I'm a different alter, that's why." Dissociative Identify Disorder doesn't work like that for many if not most people.

So back to the point of this blog entry. We have a sense there may be a Hoyt or a Coit who keeps us busy at night and on weekends but not with things we need to get done. He seems like one of the country boys in our system but we might only see that if he fronts entirely on his own. From my POV, he wastes time but he certainly seems chill. We laid this all on Mick but it's possible Mick does more compulsively repetitive things in times of higher anxiety? We just don't know. If he's here, he may be an adult somewhere in his 30s? What if he's not an alter, why do I sense even this much?

Jeez, there's another sensed alter but for the life of me I can't recall either the name or a reason for being in our system. Something about eating or sleeping maybe? I think I'll add to this blog entry by posting replies, much as our blog post "Summary of who we are" lists everyone we knew about in Dec 2016 but adds a new for everyone we've discovered since.

Yesterday we distinguished Cal a very host-like alter, whose slightly hoarse voice we've been noticing for a year or perhaps much longer. His personality seems similar to John's, so when he switched in front it wasn't apparent to any of us, including John or Cal. Cal seems lighter in spirit, less burdened, younger, more hopeful and positive. He may be even younger than 30 and it definitely feels that he arrived at a younger age. He's fairly gentle, inclusive and team-oriented, in fact that seems why he's become distinct now.

We know we have to start communicating again but there's something blocking John somehow and John was quite committed to internal communication. He still is but it just doesn't happen as much as a couple years ago. So yesterday Cal just stepped forward and addressed everyone in a way John doesn't anymore. Cal's voice is thin, higher and a bit creaky. He and then we realized that, aha, this was not John.

Since he's been around and voicing his opinions for a long time, we're actually pretty used to him and feel we know him. We just thought he was John. We've noticed the slight change in voice quality and wondered if others have. More recently, a colleague said "your voice just changed, what was that?" but we weren't aware of it at that point. So that may be different, maybe a sign there's yet another as yet unidentified alter.

The birth name is John and in childhood we heard names like John Henry, John Brody, John-Luke, John Calvin, John Watson. It's a clear pattern that we have alters with the John-linked names Henry, Brody, Luke, Cal, and Wats.