Introjections or "shape-shifting" or something else?

oOo There is something I am noticing more and more.

oOo Most of us "completely formed alters" are fictive introjections. But, we also tend to copy / mimick / introject / shift into any fictional character we are fond of. It can last for a few minutes while reading the book / watching the movie. It can last for a few days time to finish reading the book / watching the series. It can last longer (for alters like Ulysses for example, who is the ancien-est introject that I know of).

oOo I wonder why it is so.

oOo Do we have an alter who "shapeshifts"? Are we as a whole, that much sensitive to influence?

oOo Any insight will be helpful.

oOo Thank you,

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van H.

Hi !

It makes me think that, to a smaller extent, we tend to (no counsciously) mimic external people quite easily. We tend to catch accents, body language, oral language specificities of people we spend time with really quick : an afternoon can be more than enough. It's even stronger when we're with people we really, really want to get along well with, or if we admire them a lot.

Not all of us do that, it seems to be a "social alter" thing. Erdian is the best, I'm the second one, Kal and Claude sometime pick things too. We tend to see it better with people really different from us, because we will say specific words or use specific gestures we never use, but those people do.

It happens also with TV shows if we developed a specific interest on this TV show, or on a particular character. The first few days/weeks after we found of the show, there's a lot of things we will "catch" from one or more characters, specially if the show has a lot of episodes... If fades with time, usually when the specific interest lose strength, but can come back if this interest is triggered enough.

Last specific interest in a TV show we had (if you don't count the "Ladybug" interest of our Littles, from which we didn't catch anything as they aren't social alters) was with David Tennant playing the 10th Doctor... we caught a lot of weird things, mostly non-verbal, and even if I love the 10th Doctor and Tennant, I'm glad it didn't last more than few days.

The worst was with Damon from The Vampire Diaries, when we were a teen, because it involved more than one of us (for very different reasons ) and we caught a lot of oral language specificities, to a point it was obvious to my family. Few of them stayed even years later. For example, now all my family casually answers "yep/yop/nope" because of us (back at the time, no one was using them in France).

The funnier was with a character our SO created. Erdian and I love this character a lot and want to know more (everything) about him. We have moments where we read again all that have been written about this character just to find clues about his past (we have a file with all the infos we gathered) and usually, after we did, Erdian will have a bit of the character's mannerisms.

I call it our "social chameleon" thing, and see it as a mix of autistic traits and the necessity to fit in quickly we had growing up, as my parents moved a lot. DID just make it more... interesting You never know which alter will develop an interest into a character, or what they will catch from them.

oOo Thank you for your answer.

oOo Though we experience it more like a shift in the identity perception, rather than simply picking up mannerisms (the way Zami used to pick up southern France accent for a few hours after watching "Don Camillo" movies).

oOo This is why I made this post here: it does not seem linked to how one or another of us is able to pick up mannerism. It really feels like, temporarily, we are having an alter who is this or that character.

oOo Anyway, thanks for your answer. At least it helped us clarify mine.

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van H.

This actually does happen to me. It's something that I just take for granted as it's never caused me any problems and it's happened to me for many years. I like it to be honest.

If I'm watching a box set and I get really involved with it then I can find myself morphing into a character. It's as if I've caught their spirit. I even feel as though I look like them until I see that I don't.

I'm glad you made me feel his thread.

Apart from what we call our original self (the child alter Daisy and the adult self that identifies as growing up under the birth name) the rest seem to all of been influenced by people the OS met before the first full time alter took over life changing the name/identity everything for years.

Rightly or wrongly (as we're not typical of DID in any way) 'we' see a self that was born and up to 7 of which no adult self has any memory. - only Daisy appears at 6 yrs old.

After 7 there were 'many others' either in the form of imaginery friends (at least some are remembered that way) or characters from TV etc. Up to age 16 then we seem to develop a single full alter based on the first deaf student we met whilst visiting a deaf school as part of a course.

The part that remembers being hearing as a teen before we experienced deafness also remembers learning sign language level 1 as part of a course before the body experienced deafness by the time we went to a deaf college 'Deaf Thea' was fully evolved and taking over all classroom and social situations and had changed the birth name legally. What we call the OS disappeared then for many years.

I think our 'original self' and 'secret self' is the same alter.

We have one based on a Vulcan as huge Trekkie fan in childhood. One had an obsession with Data (the android) particuarly the feature film where he got 'an emotion chip', one identifies with the tomboy character 'George' from the Famous Five (70's TV version based on Enid Blyton's books that OS grew up on). One loved Murdock from the A Team especially recreating the episode where he had an invisible dog!

I'm not sure if these are all different alters that liked one fiction character each or one alter liking many I just seem to know all the different TV characters that were liked by someone in the system as I'm typing this.

It doesn't happen as much for most of us now we're older, though one has an obsession with 'The Good Doctor' series at the minute (they might just like Freddie Highmore cos we also have the Bates Motel box set or it could be the fact he's autistic - in the doctor series). Kit is good at 'becoming the character' particuarly if its autistic or Trekkie character.

Daisy likes to pretend - though on the level of a younger child, her fantasies are no where near as complex as Kit's.

yes I have this happen and no idea what that means, I am glad to hear someone else bring it up.