When all your parts know each other

Hi, I am new here and have so many questions.

Are there others who can say that they know all their different personalities and what they are doing all the time. I know when I click into a different part and can also pull back so that I am present again where I am. Do there people do this?

And has anyone been successful at integrating/cooperating and then having one part step out of that agreement.

I was very much in separate pieces but seemed to have pulled it all together for many many years but know one of my selves is breaking off again. I am 52 and going through peri-menapause so am thinking maybe hormones has something to do with that.

Has anyone else experiences this. It's getting noticeable, I am spacing out a lot more when she is active. I know what she's doing, it's not that I lose info, just that I click in and out.

I also click in and out fast, and sometimes exist in two personalities at once these days. Or three, or four

I also want to know if anyone else has named all their personalities the same name. We are all just me… but we all know which me is which. I have not heard that with anyone else and wondered why.

I know, lots of questions…

Thank you!!

manymoods wrote:Hi,

Welcome

manymoods wrote:Are there others who can say that they know all their different personalities and what they are doing all the time. I know when I click into a different part and can also pull back so that I am present again where I am. Do there people do this?

Not me but I guess it's possible.

manymoods wrote:And has anyone been successful at integrating/cooperating and then having one part step out of that agreement.

We've never been integrated with all the parts but there's days where some of us are a lot closer to each other than usual. Has there been a lot of stress or maybe a trauma anniversary or something that changed life?

manymoods wrote:Has anyone else experiences this. It's getting noticeable, I am spacing out a lot more when she is active. I know what she's doing, it's not that I lose info, just that I click in and out.

I hope you'll stabilize soon. Yes we have periods like this but then we do lose a lot more information when this happens.

manymoods wrote:I also click in and out fast, and sometimes exist in two personalities at once these days. Or three, or four.

The first is called rapid switching and the second is called co-presence or maybe co-consciousness. Rapid switching happens under stress, and co-presence and co-consciousness is something a lot of systems have to work (heal) for to achieve.

manymoods wrote:I also want to know if anyone else has named all their personalities the same name. We are all just me… but we all know which me is which. I have not heard that with anyone else and wondered why.

Not even an abbreviation? I get that you can tell them apart but I think it would be confusing for us. We have someone called Jenni and someone called Jennifer but others all have different names but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for a system to have the same names.

manymoods wrote:I know, lots of questions…

That's what this forum's for

Hi Manymoods. Welcome to the DID Forum.

I don't really know all of my other parts: one is very inaccessible to the rest of us. None of us had a separate name until we began talking to other people about us. That is when an identifier was needed for each, so we could be clear about which one was being referred to. Only Alter 2 chose his own name (which I don't disclose online).

Some of us do sometimes "blend" for a few minutes. Blending is closer than co-presence or co-consciousness, but not as close or as persistent as fusion.

There have been 3 fusions in my system, all involving me, so now I (Una) am the product of 4 previous parts. I conceptualize fusion as converting a dissociated identity (alter) into a "normal" ego state. Post-fusion, at times one of us 4 is able to "step away" from the others, to separate from them just a little. We do this in order to speak to each other. I think this is like the therapy practice of "chair work" done with ego states.

Do you think I "get" where you are coming from?

Hi there...I am new here too and pretty newly diagnosed, so I have similar questions. I don't know what is "normal" for DID and what is "normal" for everyone else. I don't know what the difference is between having an alter in control and what a regular person just calls mood changes or different personalities for different situations.

Personally, I still have a lot of denial when I am in what I call my "regular head". I believe I am making something out of nothing, that I'm forgetful, moody and just emotionally unstable...most of which is probably true either way. I don't have actual names for whoever is there, I think because each of them thinks they are in charge and are, therefore, just "me". I also hesitate to name them because it is a step closer to accepting this whole mess, and I'm just not there yet. I know I have "that kid", "the teenager", "it", and "the really bad one".

I make no claims to how this works, but for me it seems like I do have some executive functioning most of the time. That doesn't mean I can control who is coming, going, speaking in my head, etc...it only means that I have some awareness of the others when they are there. I refer to it as the amount of "noise" or "fighting" in my head. On a good day, I am about 85% regular me. On those days I feel like there is so much space in my head...I can see the blue sky, I can hear traffic, music, all of my surroundings. For the most part, I like to think I have some control over how much of the chaos actually comes out of my mouth or what I let other people see. On bad days, I can go to A LOT less of "me" in there...maybe 0-5%. On those days I call in sick and stay home. I still have a lot of denial about those times, but I know they happen occasionally because of losing time, memory, and things happening that I don't remember.

It's confusing and upsetting sometimes. I don't hold out a lot of hope for "normal", but I am working toward peaceful coexistence.

Thank you so much for all of the replies. There does seem to be a huge spectrum of what is normal. Honestly, even with people who don't have this challenge of living with so many parts, what is normal!??! I'm telling my kids all the time, create their own normal and forget what other people think. As long as you are healthy and safe and happy in your skin,then it is good. I (we) should live by those words myself.

I have always hidden this. Even my husband does not know. He just thinks I have a short attention span and shift moods really fast. He laughs and says, you are a complicated girl and that is why life is a challenge. But he doesn't know that he is really talking to someone else at that time…

Have others been able to hide this from the world…..

manymoods wrote:Have others been able to hide this from the world…..

Yes. I hid it from the world and from myself until I was in my 40's. Until I met someone with DID whose behavior triggered a DID crisis in me. I had no idea what was wrong with me but I knew something was wrong and I needed help!

I wish I had found out decades earlier.

I actually do know all my parts, but I don't always know what they're doing... Yuki is in my mind somewhere when she's not taking over but unless I actively go check up on her I'm not sure what she's doing.. Marvolo is generally out of my body and I see him like a hazy/see-through figure and he hangs around me so I know what he's doing all the time... there are actually two more beings in my mind but both have only ever taken over once and are extremely inactive, only when there's really a crisis. I actually don't know if they're alters or not. one is called Logic or Liar, the other Heart, and they more.. govern how everything works? They're the ones who claim to have created Marvolo and Yuki.

Anyways, that's about it and I do know all of them, and the people in my surroundings also know about them. I see no reason to hide my DID, especially not to my lover, whom I told the day I met him and we became friends. If people can't accept me for who I am, I'll never be able to call them real friends so.. that's why I tell, and until now, most have been a major support to me. The only ones who can't handle it are some of my family really, especially mum.. But i'm still glad they know..

A question.. why do so many people actually hide it from the world? For me, the others are part of who i am and they want to be recognised as that.. To hide them from the world would feel as if I'd be taking something away from them, the chance of a real life.. if they'd always had to act as if they were me... I wouldn't do that to them..

GeMerope wrote:A question.. why do so many people actually hide it from the world?

Because that is what our families of origin taught us to do.

I think I didn't consciously hide it…hide this…I think I am all of us and all of us show up in the world. I just don't talk about it. and no one has asked.

Does that make sense??