Keeping continuity on the outside

Hi, I'm a recent front person who hasn't been around since about 2000. I just came to the front without warning last week, and have been at the front ever since.

This has been a very upsetting week trying to adjust to being in front and everything being so different. I go by a shortened version of our birth name. We (the body/entity) now goes by our full birth name. I hate it! And I hate being called the full name. But I can't suddenly tell people to start calling me the nickname (in 2000, the person who replaced me at the front started going by the full birth name, so people are already aware this was a desired change). So I just gotta accept it.

I also have a problem with drinking, and others of us don't. The stress of all this over the weekend nearly drove me to drink. I finally found a secular recovery meeting group I can go to and have gone to two meetings since Sunday which is helping. But others of us drink, and have wine in the house and apparently don't have a problem with it. I am not much interested in wine so hasn't been such a huge problem but I don't want to throw away other people's stuff.

And when I go to the recovery meetings I feel like I'm lying when I say I've been sober since 94. Everyone is really impressed - wow, 24 years! And I want to tell them that 18 of those have been in deep internal storage (I guess?). And then what if someone else is out and has a drink and they are seen? Then people will think that I fell off the wagon. Which is not true. In my mind, I have been sober since 94 and it's super important to me.

When I went to the meetings I introduced myself as my nickname. But accidentally said the full name later. And now I don't know if it is good to do that or if for consistency I should just keep using the full name. I was hoping at the recovery meetings it could be one place where I can go by my nickname.

The previous front people also carried a purse which I cannot get myself to do. And our clothing is very feminine but I am much more androgynous in nature and likes. So I got our hair cut off, stopped carrying a purse and started wearing our most androgynous clothes. Like overnight. And I wish I could change more things but I don't know how long I'm here for and I'm not hearing anything internally about it. I don't know if people are noticing (at work or whatever). Both the therapist and p-doc said they knew right away they didn't know us - we were different from anyone else in front they had met. So I don't know how obvious it is to others.

It's just so hard and I don't know what to do with all this. I am the most different of anyone who has been in the front the last 18 years I think, so I guess it's never come up to this degree before. And in this situation, I'm not an alter who comes and goes during the day or whatever. I am just the new front person until...whenever...

It's so frustrating and so isolating. And I don't know how to deal with the friends...it's just hard. I don't know how to deal with so much. At least here I know people can understand it.

P.S. Apparently we have had a new hairstyle about 4 times this year alone. I told the work people that I had enrolled in a "hair of the month" club and just keep getting sent new hairstyles in the mail.

my personal observation is that we worry about continuity more than people actually care about it.
we have had a couple of host changes. Even Asti doing the job for a while and she is obviously not me.
people sometimes noticed the extremes, like me telling them that I don't like cleaning dishes when Asti had told them that she thinks its a soothing meditation. but otherwise, people didn't notice or didn't think much about what they might have noticed. they just accept that people change sometimes.
they too change their preferences. like a year ago their favorite meal was steak and fries but now they thought about it and their new favorite meal is a green smoothy.
we ourselves are the ones who notice the changes the most. other people mostly take them without questioning them.

'Hair of the month club' made me laugh!

I think L is right, people either don't notice that things change, or if they do, they just roll with it.

Like, since our previous host went away and V2 and I took over, we've definitely made a lot of big changes to appearance. There's not as many differences between her and I, than there were between us and our previous host, but there are some.

For people who haven't seen us since last year, most don't even recognize us. I've lost count how many times we've heard people say something like "Oh I didn't recognize you! You look so different!" But nobody assumes that we really actually are a 'different person', if you know what I mean? Like once they know it's us, then they're just impressed at how much we've changed.

At worst people will probably just think you're 'going through a phase', or you're a bit 'moody' or whatever.

Violet (1)

Yeah, I agree also with birgsong87 and VioletFlux. People go thru different phases, are moody and have different roles and they grow and change, show different sides of themselves. They do not know for us it is not just that but a whole personality that has changed, most people concentrate on themselves and not others.

If someone asks something, just say so, "It's kind of phase I am in just now, trying new stuff / old stuff again".

Only the ones who know something about DID for some reason, can really see it in other people. The closest ones are of course different case. Others can even make a joke about someone having multiple personalities and still they don't really think it is that. Don't panic, play along and join "the joke" as a joke.

About having different opinions, more intelligent you are, more different kind of views you can relate to. You can just say it depends on your mood if you like doing dishes or not, or that you can look at that from many perspectives, things are not black and white.

Being somehow secretive is more suspicious. There is a lot you can be very open about, and people will not think you are crazy. I think we have a bigger need to have that continuity than singletons do, cause we know we are "not normal" and that is why we observe ourselves carefully.

There is nothing suspicious about using sometimes your nickname and sometimes the whole name. Only for you it has a meaning of being someone else. It doesn't mean that to outsiders. It is common that you use the whole name in more official situations, but your family can have their own name for you and every friend can have one for you from each of them. In Finland there is a proverb "a beloved child has many names". It refers to giving nicknames to the ones who are closest to you.

Don't lie, it can lead to problems in the future, but you can explain things the way other people will understand, and leave hard parts away. The parts they don't understand anyway. You can tell that you have been sober since long ago, but for a while you had different phase in your life when it was easier, you can even say you haven't been out so much back then, but more separately in your own little world so to speak, and now you are back in same lifestyle you were before, and sadly the old triggers are still there too. I can promise you no-one would think "oh, she must be the alternative personality, who has been in the inner world for a long time and is now fronting". It is WAY too random to come to anyone's mind as an explanation. If they ask you more about the phase you were not out a lot, you can say you really don't care so much talking about it now, it's not important, it's in the past anyway. There is no way back living so separate from the existing world right now, it wouldn't be good for you now. You know, you are allowed to have privacy. And people understand your explanations in their own ways, the ways they can relate to.

Don't worry too much. If you are suddenly left there alone, no-one can blame you for ruining their life. Just don't make any permanent changes on your own.

If some wine at home can trigger you to drink, I think it is less of a problem to throw it away. If you drink it, they will not have it anyway, but things are also taking turn to the worse. I don't think it is even fair to keep alcohol in a home where there is someone living with drinking problems. So just get rid of that stuff. It is a safety thing, that is why I think you can just make the decision on your own. If they complain about it later on, you can blame me. I am willing to defend my opinion as an advice I gave, so I can also stand behind that.

It's not an easy task to do, start to live life of someone else's all the sudden. So you do what you can, and what you can not, well, it wasn't a choice.

Let us know how are you doing.

Thank you all for your insight. It is hard to remember that DID is not on everyone's radar like it is on mine. I was at a sobriety meeting tonight and someone was describing how suddenly he took a backseat in his head and just watched as his body was doing other things, and he wasn't controlling it. My first thought of course is, Oh, well that sounds familiar - wonder if he has some DID or OSDD? But you're right, I'm sure no one else thought that.

I think my sobriety is such an intense topic for me right now, and the thought of someone else (another front person of me) drinking and people thinking I'm lying about my sobriety is very upsetting to me. And also...the idea that I'm not telling the truth if I say that I've been sober since 94. Like...that's somehow a huge deal to me.

Claiming to be sober when you're not almost feels like a stolen valor type of thing in a weird way (that's when someone who isn't a veteran of war pretends to be, or wears medals they haven't earned.) So I guess it's a pretty charged topic that I still am not sure how to navigate. It's definitely not the same level of intensity as hair style or food preferences.

Interestingly though, there must be someone else who has a drinking problem because I found a prescription for Antibuse in our glove box of the car from 2 years ago! It was never filled, but it was written out to us, and I was not here 2 years ago. So that oddly makes me feel a bit better.

I talked to the T today and she said that the person who has been in the front the most over the last 5 months was also very depressed and confused when she came to the front. She didn't even have a name! And she's ended up functioning great, despite being chronically exhausted. So maybe there's hope for me yet.

I know its abit late to change what you told the group but maybe it would help your own sense continuity or help the sense of guilt I think you are implying (sorry if I'm reading in something your not saying or feeling) but if you think of yourself as having been sober for 6 years instead on the date because for your awareness that's been the time frame

Why not speak the truth? For example: As far as you can remember you have stayed sober since 1994, but you have a problem with amnesia and you have found evidence that points to not being sober. Own the inconsistency and the consequent emotional pain.

Many alcoholics can relate because, whether they ever admit it or not, they have amnesia around the drinking. Some may even have amnesia about having amnesia. I have seen reports that among persons in treatment for alcoholism, prevalence of DID is 10-15%. Prevalence of DID is high also among alcoholism treatment counselors. I interviewed one therapist who told me how he hit rock bottom then got clean and sober and became an addictions counselor. And then he told me how he planned to binge drink beer on the weekend.

Menagerie wrote:I talked to the T today and she said that the person who has been in the front the most over the last 5 months was also very depressed and confused when she came to the front. She didn't even have a name! And she's ended up functioning great, despite being chronically exhausted. So maybe there's hope for me yet.

Congratudolences...?

For me, it is problems like this that are the suckiest part of DID. And this is why so many therapists who work with DID clients say they feel it is an honor to work with us. In DID we have an absolutely objective, legitimate mental health problem, it is one that is absolutely not of our own making, not a result of any poor choice made by us in our life, but something that was done to us by others, and it is one a savvy therapist can help us with. Many other conditions are highly resistant to treatment so working with those clients is an exercise in frustration if not futility. But we can get better, and many of us get dramatically better.

Hold onto that thought, you.