Range of Emotions within each Alter "TW"

Question about rage.......It appears much of what ever emotion is being felt carries across each alter. The little or big if either one is manic when he switches the other is manic. This is true with happy, irritated or rage.

Sometimes however the little will stay out and directly say that that big is still mad and not ready to come back again.

I have read from others that some of their emotions also carry across different alters. The one that concerns me is the rage part. I am not quite sure how much of an emotional pendulum there is with in each part or if there is another alter that has a great deal of rage that co-present sometimes or fully present and not identifying himself.

When ever asking my son he says it is the host, age 13 or the little, who is raging. This comes mainly from the little part who says this. Tonight I asked him, after a rage, he said it was him and the host. Then I asked him does it feel like fully him or the 13 yr old and he said no he nor the 13 yr old would do that and it scares him........But I kinda feel I worded it wrong and gave him an out so to speak.

(He took off after he asked us to go to the pier and we said no, an hour later of trying to catch him and after a bystander called cops we finally caught him. But in the mean time he was throwing rocks at the cops, trying to kick their windows out and so forth. I got him calmed down and had him switch to the little asked if he wanted a piece of candy an all was good. The cop figured we had enough control and we brought him home. It helped that we both knew him personally)

So I guess I am really asking is how do I figure out if the rage is in each the host and the little or if there is another alter that is not ID himself and letting the others take the fall.

There is another alter Luke that is older and serious, he hardly every comes out but in the past I have called him out when it was very clear that the little was not the little and there was another acting like the little. He finally came clean and said yes it was him Luke and he was pretending to be the little as he said he wanted to get him baker acted cause he was mad at him. But the little is always talking about Luke and how much he takes care of him in the inner world and how now they are friends and get a long now. Now as I am typing I wonder if the rage is really Luke co conscious as he does hardly ever come out fully on the outside... Sorry thinking/typing out loud.

Hi,

I'm glad your son is ok and the cop knew you guys.

Rage is so contagious it's hard to tell where it comes from. Like it spills out from somebody and gets all over everybody and nobody can tell where it came from.

Sometimes when we're really angry T asks "Who all is angry?" and we make a list. Then after we work on calming down she says "Who's still angry?" in case we forget somebody. Then she says "Who got angry first? second? third?" That helps us figure it out without making it look like somebody's going to get punished for being bad.

Iain

IainEtc wrote:
Sometimes when we're really angry T asks "Who all is angry?" and we make a list. Then after we work on calming down she says "Who's still angry?" in case we forget somebody. Then she says "Who got angry first? second? third?" That helps us figure it out without making it look like somebody's going to get punished for being bad.

Iain

Ok that make sense one gets angry then everyone jumps on the bandwagon.

fmkeylock wrote:Ok that make sense one gets angry then everyone jumps on the bandwagon.

It's complicated. Emotions cross barriers between the dissociative compartments much more easily than other stuff (verbal communications, thoughts, memories, imagery). In a person who is unaware of having DID, the frequent result is an attribution error. Normally a person has emotions about what they are thinking about or experiencing ie what is going on around them. So, when a severely dissociative person has an emotion "out of nowhere", often they don't notice the unusual origin (or don't realize this is not what most other people experience) and they assign (attribute) the emotion to something they perceive in the here and now. This can result in a kind of accumulating snowball effect, compounding the intensity of the emotion.

This was a perplexing problem for me early on in therapy. I was apparently unusual in being aware that the primary emotion I was feeling, infatuation, did not originate in any thoughts or experiences I was having. I got into an argument with my T about this. T kept insisting emotions always follow thoughts and I must be denying or repressing the thoughts. I agreed that someone was having thoughts consistent with feelings of infatuation, because I'd also heard a voice saying "I love him". But it wasn't me, and this is why I was seeking therapy! I am no stranger to infatuation, and I don't feel shame or guilt about it; I have no need to deny or repress that particular emotion.

Back to you all. The body is 13, so almost anything is possible, emotionally. It sounds like at least some alters are doing a good job of mentalizing, being aware that some aspects of what they are feeling are a result of human biology and dissociative pathology, and they don't have to "own" those feelings. Good job!

Thanks for both of your replies Una and Iain, it helps me better understand the emotions that carry across...I have been wondering about this for a while but felt stupid to ask. I am glad I did................

I did what Iain suggested how his T asks and he went down the line from who was first to get angry and who was last to calm down. Gives me a better grasp on the order of operation.

Luke at first denied it was he who threw the rocks at the cops and kicking trying to kick out their windows, I knew though he was not be forthright by his body language. I did not press him as it gave me answers that I needed. The little told me later it was Luke, so then we had to do some brotherly love skills to solve that particular inner war after he told....

But now it really helps me refocus where I need to concentrate with him and that is rage across the board. We have been working on it but once again thanks as I now know how much it truly does cross over........

thanks again.