What happens when you look in the mirror?

I am a marriage and family therapist in southern california who is collaborating with a client with DID. This forum has helped me immensely because those of you who negotiate your way in the world with the challenge of DID (heroes, in my humble opinion) are willing to try and explain to me how you experience things. I can't thank you enough for trying to put the inexpressible into words!!!

I started another post (what happens when an alter doesn't understand they share the body?) and posed the following question, but thought I'd start a whole new topic:

What happens when you look in the mirror?

Are there parts of you who don't yet understand that a common body is shared? What does a child part, or a part who is opposite sex see when they look in the mirror? Or, for that matter, when they can look at any part of the body and see that it doesn't match how they sense they should look?

The Little Ones in my client's "family" (the word "system" seems too clinical LOL) are obsessed with touching my hands and arms when they're out, asking if I'm a "real self". I'm at the beach this week and promised to bring them back some sand dollars. I sent pictures of a sand dollar, and they asked, "Is that their house?"

Any and all thoughts and response add to my growing fund of knowledge and help me help my client. Thank you!

We see a stranger in the mirror.
She doesnt look like anyone inside. She is terribly old. And simply strange.
She usually looks a lot better than we feel.
I often wonder if we share this feeling with transgender people, that the body is just not right, that this cannot be what we look like, that we are this person who is stuck in a body that doesnt fit.

One of the kids likes to play in front of the mirror. She is making faces. Fascinated that she can control what the old woman is doing.

We practiced with one of the kids, keeping the ID next to the mirror, to help her learn that this is us, this is our legal name and that it is 2017. it was a shock for her.

Especially the teens struggle with the female appearance. It is like they are stuck in puberty, forever hating the changes in the body and hating being female. They refuse to look at the body.

The adult male is a philosopher who patiently accepts having a body that doesnt match his gender. As long as the body is good for enjyoing black tea and reading it doesnt bother him much to have breasts.

We have chosen a look. How to dress, how to do the hair and make-up so the body pretty much always looks the same. It helps us, almost like wearing a uniform.

Well I dunno. When Lex looks in the mirror, she sees our tummy poking out. Nobody else does. Scarlett and Lex see themselves as having a disproportionately long face while the rest of us usually see a more rounded face. It's mainly jaw structure that differs.

~Scarlett + Lucielle

It depends on who looks in the mirror.

Some of us see the body we're in, but don't recognize it. Like birdsong said, it's like looking at a stranger.

Some see the body and recognize it as us completely, they feel weird because the image in the mirror doesn't exactly fit they're sense of self, but they do recognize the image. It's almost like they see the image not as "Me" but as "Us". These alters tend to be the ones who have a really strong sense of the system. Like our protectors and caretakers.

Some can't look in the mirror without dissociating like crazy. When they look in the mirror they derealize or depersonalize completely. Everything feels super fake. So when they're fronting we try to avoid reflective surfaces.

Two alters, a male teenaged sexual alter, and our main helper/organizer, both don't feel weird at all when looking in the mirror. They seem to see their internal self image as different from their external one, which matches the body. Somewhat. They would match the body, if the body were actually male. So, they see themselves as they see in the mirror, but there is some gender dysphoria there.

-From, Our System.

Thanks to all three of you for the time you took to articulate some responses to my question. I am dumbfounded as I read your thoughts. Truly dumbfounded. The more I learn about how you all live with DID, the more in awe I am of your resiliency. Seriously. Life is tough enough...and to add these dimensions as an overlay to "normal" coping is mind-boggling to me! I would be truly interested in knowing the average IQ of someone living with DID...

Hi Teri,

There's looking in the mirror which is weird and we don't like doing it because there's an OLD person there! I mean it is SO NOT-US it's creepy! And then there's what we think we look like which is different for each of us. Some of us are pretty upset that the body isn't our age anymore.

Colin was out hiking and jumped between two rocks only it was too far for Host's body even though it wasn't for Colin's 17 year old body. The body got hurt pretty bad when it fell. Colin was like "but I can make that jump!" But the body can't because it's too old. Colin was SUPER sad about that. He feels trapped in an old body.

Your friend,

Cody

Thanks, Cody. That makes sense. Which is why it seems to me that a primary goal of the work with my client must be surrender of all the parts of the family system to the concept of a shared body, accompanied by the decision that communication and collaboration is absolutely necessary in order for everyone to have the best possible life experience. The analogy I use with my client is a good marriage in which two independent people, both with equal rights, voluntarily surrender the concept of acting with complete autonomy in order to achieve a higher goal (the peace and productivity of living in synch with another person who is firmly on your team).

Hi Teri,

Yeah I get that. Communication is really important. But being in the same body it's like a SUPER BIG DEAL! Things HAPPENED to the body and NOBODY wants to own that big bag of worms!!!!

And anyway people have always tried to MAKE us do things so we're pretty rebellious.

Your friend,

Cody

Iain, I got (and very much appreciated!) your PM, but the site won't let me send a reply. The error message says: "Some users couldn’t be added as they have disabled private message receipt." I'm too new to this site to know what that means or how to get around it...

Hi Teri,

I think I messed up. We might have the PM disabled. I'll get Colin to check ok?

Iain

I fixed it. You can try again.

Colin