Hello! From A Newly Discovered System

Hi everyone!

I'm pretty new to all of this, so I'm still going to be using language that's pretty singular in nature, as I'm still navigating having a system, comfortably presenting myself as such, and the like.

Anyway, I've struggled a great deal with mental health throughout my life, I've been diagnosed with about a dozen mental illnesses (pretty much none of them were accurate or helpful, especially not in conjunction with each other). After many years of questioning what I've heard from external sources, I spent a solid year invested in research, introspection, and self-discovery. I spent a big part of my time looking through the lens of C-PTSD in relation to my mental health, as that seemed closest to my experience. Recently (as in the past few months), I've spent time investigating the "fragmented sense of self" associated with it. I looked into my past very intently, as well as observing my behavior and actions throughout this year or so, and I found a lot of things I couldn't explain with the knowledge that I had. I had lapses in memory, clear times when I'd dissociated into amnesic states and come back into consciousness to find things changed in ways that I thought I could never change them. The more I looked into my past, the more I found that I didn't have an explanation for that resonated with me, but it made me more curious.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, I started really getting interested in DID and learning about it, as an ex of mine in the past had it. I got into researching it, and as soon as I looked into the different types of alters, I realized that I could connect many of those archetypes to different experiences I'd had (on account of other people, or after switching back as a host). There were tons of symptoms that were previously explained by other diagnoses I had that never felt quite right before. But it all made sense, and I started crying. Of course, I wasn't in contact with alters at this point, past the recollection of these distinct times and memories I had of immediately before or immediately after not being present (or of accounts of others of those times that I had in my memory).

But I found something that made sense to me! And so I kept digging, researching. I found some resources on contacting suspected alters or interacting with potential systems. I utilized some of them, and since, I've had some very clear accounts of meeting several alters of mine. The first is a little (that funnily enough was known by my family for 2 years when I was younger, because I called myself by his name when I was around 4-6 years old). Then, there was a night where about 10 more wrote notes to me and told me about my system, gave me a look into a part of my inner world (not all of it, which I assume is because there are things that my system wants to wait to let me know). But they made it VERY clear that I wasn't imagining all of this and that it's all real.

Anyway, I don't know a lot of things about my system yet, like for example, what type of system I am (DID, OSDD1b, etc.), what my system wants to be called, how I want to go about pronouns, specific things about alters, etc.. Eventually I'd like to seek a diagnosis, but for the time being, I'm spending my time being with what I know and holding space so that more will be revealed (and for my alters to feel safe presenting themselves).

I just wanted to check in, but for now, signing off.
- Tyler (Host) (with input from Tyson (Protector), and an unidentified alter)

ItsJustUs wrote:
I must say, you seem pretty calm like "Okay, it is what it is," about all of this. So kuddos for that. It's a step that takes some people a long time to get to.

K[/color]

I've been in the process of understanding myself and coming to terms with my existence through the lens of mental health for a long time, and it's been a strenuous process (especially with the grocery list of misdiagnoses I've had), but doing this work as much as I already have in terms of working with trauma and understanding myself has made adjusting and accepting this as a part of myself and my life much easier. Of course, it's a series of big adjustments to make to learn to accept dissociative identity as a part of my life, but it's much easier at this point in my process to understand and be willing to accept it all, and so far it's been really positive. Being exposed to the communities of people with DID online (and also having an ex and an old friend with DID) really helped me, as well.

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Also, thank you to all of you who have commented (and will likely comment in the future) for the support and kindness. It feels wonderful to feel so welcome and understood. I'll probably be off of the internet in the near future, so I may not be able to respond to all of you soon. With that being said, I want to thank you all.

Hello, welcome to the forum!