Alters with different birthdays?

Hello everyone,

Recently the subject of birthdays has been something we've been discussing. Two of us used to have birthdays but have been without them for several years now and instead have all been using our body's birthday. We're considering declaring different birthdays for each of us, but would like to hear from some systems who have separate birthdays about how they have handled it?

- Anime

Hello there.

Some of us have no birthday. Ulysses has a canonic birthday (one appearing in his original media ((he is a fictive introjeciton)) ). Pride decided over his own birthday.

We are not very keen on celebrating big but we make sure to allow for one special day, treats... On a birthday date. Most of us try to keep the habit of celebrating the body one in a way that is not too triggering for us. If we don't we tend to forget the birthday date which can be awkward in some situations.

I hope that This short message is the kind of reply you were hoping for.

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Aragorn.

We have one alter who has a different birthday. Only our boyfriend officially knows the date and always wish him a happy birthday, sometimes with a gift. I guess some of our close friends might know about it too ? We don't talk much about it, but we don't hide it either, not from the closest ones.
This alter doesn't like the idea of being that "separate" or "different" than the rest of the system, that's why we don't drag attention upon his birthday.

There's also Claude, who considers his birthday to be around mid-January, mainly because he sees himself as a Capricorn (our ascendant sign), and also because he was primarily an introject of our father. Our father was born in January, and Claude feels connected to this month.

Many of us don't relate to the body's birthday and doesn't have their own. I think it's because the body's birthday is a trigger : our father always tries to contact us around that date, using our birthday as an excuse + the body aging is a trigger for some of our Littles.


So yeah, we really celebrate only the body's birthday with family and friends. But we don't really like it. What we like to do is to set a "spacial day" before it, during which we will do some activities we don't often have time to do, eat special things, etc. (we do the same for Christmas). It's way less triggering that way, and it's more about celebrating being together than aging.

Thank you all for the replies! That is the kind of input we were looking for. We have issues with the body's birthday, and frankly most of us hate it. We hate celebrating it, we hate even acknowledging it. We actually try our best to not remind friends it exists. But we were thinking maybe if each of us had a chosen bday then we could have more control over our feelings towards it? Having just us in the system do something as a 'this is your day' like a small gift or something feels like a nice middle ground.

For those who chose their birthday, was there any reasoning/method or did you just pick what felt right?
-Alex

Hello there!

Pride, who is the one in here who picked his own Bday, picked what felt right. He picked Easter. Because, chocolate, stuff for children, and all that. Plus, it's way less triggering thant Xmas who is also another date with tons of stuff for kids! It helps to replace one unpleasant date with something more pleasant!

Maybe as time goes, Xmas will also be replaced with somebody's Bday? And also other celebrations that we dislike? Who knows!

So now, we're buying a lot of children's chocolates for Pride's Bday Coming soon coming soon!

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Envy.

Oh wow, I like the thinking there! It also makes us feel more comfortable with those who chose bdays based on similar reasons (example, Neko's brimg 6/6).
-Alex

That helps give a nice viewpoint on how we could go about treating birthdays. Thank you.
- Anime

We have different birthdays for every part too. Never celebrate them tho, I guess we just don't like parties and the social ones who might like (Lucas and Leon), don't, because that's when they'd just see there's no one celebrating them, other than us, but it doesn't count. We don't have friends.

For me and Fourteen b-days are triggering, although he doesn't grow older than 14 (that's why he's called Fourteen, his inner body is permanently 14 year old), he doesn't know it in the inner world. And 15 is the oldest he can get and turning 16.. well he wouldn't, and that's why b-day gets him suicidal. He refuses to grow, there's reasons why he can't.

I don't know where the dates for everyone's b-days came from, but Sami has his b-day 6/6 too. When he was chatting online years ago and still talked with people like that, in positive way too, had online friends and was still trying to have a life of his own and all that, when things were really different than they are now, he linked his b-day with the number 666. He isn't religious for real and doesn't believe in anything supernatural for real either, it was just kind of a "joke". Not funny one for laughs, just something he says. He's always said he doesn't have parents, never have had, he wasn't born, he came to be from unholy spirit and his b-day is kind of a proof of that. He used to call himself a poltergeist back then too. In a way it was like joking but there's always half true in every joke. He thinks and feels he's bad, so that's why. I don't know is that the reason for when his b-day is or is it just co-incident.

Sorry if this was more depressing than helpful. I didn't mean it to be, but realized it came out like that.

Flor

Cutting and pasting from what we posted on another site:

Since some of us are into Astrology, we consulted one of our books that describes the personality traits of the 144 possible Sun-Moon combinations. Our theory was/is that since each system member is unique, only one person could have any given combination.

Before proceeding further, we eliminated our two ageless non-corporeals from the process; being ageless, they don't have a chronological point of origin. We also eliminated our six-month-old and our 18-month-old, whom we believe are too young to have measurable personality traits.

Once we determined the appropriate combination for a specific system member, we went to the chart for our body's birth year and looked for when that particular Sun-Moon combination was in effect. This usually results in a two-to-three-day window from which we would choose whichever date feels better.

Fun fact: No individual in the system has the body's birthday. It wasn't intentional--merely a fringe benefit. It illustrates the notion that the whole may be different from the sum of its parts.

PS: We've never had the time or the energy to observe individual birthdays. Our system is too large for that. We see the individual birthdays as a combination of data points and individual validation. But for practical purposes, we only really observe the body's birthday--it's just plain easier. And it's become less and less of a priority as the body's gotten older.

MDs