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.