A very confused person

Hello everyone,

I'd like to start off saying I'm not diagnosed with DID, am not currently in therapy, and am not asking to be diagnosed on this forum. What I do want is try to understand what is going on with me and I feel there's nowhere to ask without going into therapy which I'd like to avoid.

I'll try to briefly summarise the situation. When I was very young, I already heard voices that nobody else heard. I assumed later in life these were the usual imaginary friend kind, the problem is they were still there during the truly traumatic event I can partially remember. During this time, I dissociated and due to this most of my high school time is a gap in my memory.
In university I was sent to therapy for different issues. Here I was diagnosed with PTSD as well as Borderline with a tendency to psychosis under high stress. DID was not a thing that you could be "tested" for in my country back then.

During my therapy is the first time I was confronted with what I assume was a switch to an alter. This is because my alter took over and proceeded to talk to people through chat. I was able to read it afterwards and realise that it didn't sound like me and that I had no memory of typing these things.

Since then it's happened a few more times. Always under stressful circumstances and always into either one of two identities. Now recently I've found a friend who is trustworthy and these, well, alters know this too so they seem to seek her out to help me ground myself so I can revert. They actively seek to keep me looking as normal as possible but to my friend they are themselves and I feel like I'm getting to know them for the first time.

But I still know nothing much and I've found that I can't communicate with them like other people seem to be able to. I can only talk to them in a sort of lucid dream like state that only they can seemingly trigger or through chat which only occurs when I dissociate under stress.
I don't know how old my alters are, but I assume they are both adults.
I don't know their genders.
I don't know their names aside from how they call each other and how I named them.

Since they can perfectly mask my abscence (aside from voice alterations people have made remarks about before), I don't experience any issue with them being here aside from personal distress and confusion. I don't think I want them gone but I do want more understanding and perhaps control.

So question: Does anyone experience this dissociating the way I do? How do you handle getting to know them? I'm very afraid of being perceived as crazy so I'm not going to try and talk out loud to them and pray I hear back. They haven't responded to a private pm to self chat I made. I think they are unaware of it and I wouldn't know how to make them aware. Or maybe they are purposely ignoring me. I don't know.

Appreciate any help or advice I can get. Thank you in advance.

The symptoms you list are consistent with dissociative disorders but it's always nice to check for comorbidities just in case.

Triskelion wrote:But I still know nothing much and I've found that I can't communicate with them like other people seem to be able to. I can only talk to them in a sort of lucid dream like state that only they can seemingly trigger or through chat which only occurs when I dissociate under stress.
I don't know how old my alters are, but I assume they are both adults.
I don't know their genders.
I don't know their names aside from how they call each other and how I named them.

It is commonplace for people who are only discovering the depth of their many facets/ dissociated parts/ alters/ identities/ ego states/ whatever. Not all of them have very developed identities. And in the begining it is commonplace to need to un-tangle them to get a better picture of the whole situation. Janina Fisher talks about it in "Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors". See also the ressources thread (link in my signature).

Triskelion wrote:Since they can perfectly mask my abscence (aside from voice alterations people have made remarks about before), I don't experience any issue with them being here aside from personal distress and confusion. I don't think I want them gone but I do want more understanding and perhaps control.

This is exactly what therapy is about: getting to know the different alters, learning to communicate, building trust, helping each-other, healing from trauma, sharing ressources. You do not want them "gone" you want them here with you all the time peacfully pondering like the Jedi Council of your brain.

Triskelion wrote:Does anyone experience this dissociating the way I do?

Been there, done that, got all the Tshirts.

Triskelion wrote:How do you handle getting to know them?

You will find ressources about it in the ressources thread (link in my signature) especially the book "Coping with trauma related dissociation" and thse lists of articles (automatic translation)
https://troublesdissociatifs-wordpress- ... r_pto=wapp (articles pending will come online in the upcoming months)
https://troublesdissociatifs-wordpress- ... r_pto=wapp more about cooperation than communication but still useful to have an idea of where you wanna go

Triskelion wrote:I'm very afraid of being perceived as crazy so I'm not going to try and talk out loud to them and pray I hear back.

It's okay, there are many other tools: using a notebook to write back and forth to each-other, using a private Discord server (maybe with bots like PluralKit), talking to each other "telepatically" or by sending back and forth emotions, pictures, somatic pseudo-hallucinations (like a pat on the back or a hug for comfort) etc.

Triskelion wrote:They haven't responded to a private pm to self chat I made. I think they are unaware of it and I wouldn't know how to make them aware.

They cannot know it exists unless you tell them To tell them, just close your eyes, put your hands on your heart and send towards the inside of your self (or brain or whatever works for you) the instructions on how to use it. Including visualizing the tool, how it works, etc. And relax. If you are stressed out about what might happen, it can make the others unable to show up and use your hands to type back.

It also helps to send them love and support and comfort and apologize if you know you are too stressed out to listen right now. It helps if they know that you just need time to be able to listen.

Welcome to the forums! Hope my little advices will be helpful.

Triskelion wrote:Hello everyone,

I'd like to start off saying I'm not diagnosed with DID, am not currently in therapy, and am not asking to be diagnosed on this forum. What I do want is try to understand what is going on with me and I feel there's nowhere to ask without going into therapy which I'd like to avoid.

Hi! I'm Pippa and it's not as if we could diagnose you with DID, but we can, as Arbremonde has already done so, give resources and a hopefully helpful ear.

Triskelion wrote:I'll try to briefly summarise the situation. When I was very young, I already heard voices that nobody else heard. I assumed later in life these were the usual imaginary friend kind, the problem is they were still there during the truly traumatic event I can partially remember. During this time, I dissociated and due to this most of my high school time is a gap in my memory.

Our past hosts kind of just assumed they were talking to characters in their head, so that's also kind of normal for some of us, I guess. However, we still don't have access to each other's memories so, for instance, we don't remember High School either unless the alters who were host or were close to the front are again close to the front. (Apparently most of us just remember empty buildings if we try to remember those time frames.

Triskelion wrote:During my therapy is the first time I was confronted with what I assume was a switch to an alter. This is because my alter took over and proceeded to talk to people through chat. I was able to read it afterwards and realise that it didn't sound like me and that I had no memory of typing these things.

We did similar things. Beth took care of the health issues and that included therapy.

Triskelion wrote:But I still know nothing much and I've found that I can't communicate with them like other people seem to be able to. I can only talk to them in a sort of lucid dream like state that only they can seemingly trigger or through chat which only occurs when I dissociate under stress.
I don't know how old my alters are, but I assume they are both adults.
I don't know their genders.
I don't know their names aside from how they call each other and how I named them.

It takes time to learn to communicate. Originally, we wrote everything down so we could talk to each other more easily. Now...it's a bit easier. In fact, we let notes in places we could not ignore them like in front of our tablet or on the desk. We still have one note left there just to remind us about a few things.

Triskelion wrote:So question: Does anyone experience this dissociating the way I do? How do you handle getting to know them?

I don't know if everyone experiences dissociation the same exact way, but we do experience it and all have large gaps in memory (like almost forty years in my case!) But when we get stressed we dissociate and that causes all kinds of major issues. As for getting used to and knowing each other, that was a long process. We learned about each other by writing things down, 'talking' internally, etc. It's taken more than a year and a half now, but we're doing better.

Hope that the resources Arbremonde has helped and you feel welcome.

Take care,
Pippa

Thank you Abre and Pippa!
You both were immensely helpful.

I read through those resources you shared and some more from your signature link. At first it was a little confronting. I thought trauma always had to be something big or else I was just taking it too hard. I often feel like I'm dramatic anyway as a borderliner. Reading through those sources made me realise that things I had been shrugging off as minor things that hurt were actually quite harmful.
Then there were things like that you can hear voices inside your head that aren't yours and I was minnblown for a moment there cause I thought it was normal to hear different voices in your head!

There's a lot of myths and stigma revolving our DID and that made me scared to think I had it too. Maybe that's why I'm not as open to communication with my alters and why deep down I was hoping that maybe one of you would say "oh but that's not DID you can visit a doctor and be cured of this". But after sitting on this for a few hours, I realise that the bigger part of me sort of likes to know that I can be caught when I fall so to speak. To know that if things get too much for me, there's someone there who can take over. So I took your advice and tried to leave a message for the others to read by means of a discord server (great idea, thank you). It was really odd, like trying to introduce myself to myself? I then left a thank you message to them for protecting me and a read me page so they can know how to use the discord. I left it open on my phone as first thing they would see. I asked them to let me know if there were more than just the two of them so I could try and make a space for those people too.
This morning I woke up and I actually had 1 new message there. It's only one and it was a simple "It's just us" but I'm all choked up not knowing whether I'm relieved or scared or happy. I want to say it's a positive first step. So thank you both for helping me start this up.

Is it normal to have a small group (system? That term doesn't feel right somehow)? Cause if this alter is right, that means there's only 3 of us, myself included.
I see in Pippa's signature that there's a lot of people there and all with such pretty names too! Is it rude to ask how you manage? I'm not good with crowds and three already makes a crowd as they say. I tend to get very tense when I hear more than one voice at a time. Is there like a group mediator or something that leads the "Jedi council" as Abre calls it?

This explains so much though. Thanks again!

We're glad we could help.

So...a system can have as few as two alters, and that literally is all that is needed for diagnosis. You have to have at least one other alter state.

As for trauma...well, that all depends on the person. What one person finds traumatic another person might not. If you are at all neurodivergent (ADHD, autism, both), traumas can be amplified.

Regarding names...well, we have to update the signature. There's a total of 27, but not all of us ever front or have full personalities, but they are distinct enough to understand the need for names. Most of us chose names when we first came out because, before that, we had designations. A handful of us have names from before we accepted being a system. So, for instance, I took my name from one of my favorite musicians The others took their names for various reasons.

We sometimes joke about being ruled by Committee as a nod to Princess Leia's retort "I am not a committee!" to Han Solo. Usually, if we have a conflict or a discussion, we try to stay civil. Beth put down a lot of rules a while ago and we do our best to abide by them.

Take care and glad we could help,
Pippa

Triskelion wrote:Is it normal to have a small group (system? That term doesn't feel right somehow)? Cause if this alter is right, that means there's only 3 of us, myself included.

You always have just as many alters as you need. No more, no less.

Though sometimes we can discover new ones who used to hide, when we are ready to discover them and care for them.

Triskelion wrote:I'm not good with crowds and three already makes a crowd as they say. I tend to get very tense when I hear more than one voice at a time. Is there like a group mediator or something that leads the "Jedi council"

The communication is built progressively. There are exercises about this in the book "Coping with trauma related dissociation". It is possible to ask everyone to take turn speaking while reassuring everybody will be heard. Either you can do it, or another alter will have a better ability to organize stuff. Or you can just take turns doing the mediator thing.

After a while, it becomes a habit for everybody to just calmly take turns speaking (unless very excited about something of course - I still get a chaos inside when I need to pick a dessert xD )

The more you built the communication, the easiest it gets, the calmer things get, the more control you have on your life. It's a bit counter intuitive especially if you focus on what the disinformation about DID tells.

The first line on this index lists a series of articles on disinformation (myths and facts) on DID https://troublesdissociatifs-wordpress- ... r_pto=wapp

It might start sounding old but thanks for your help, answers, information and supportive words.

The discord thing is working. Slowly, very slowly. But both of them used it now and it's already helping me get a grasp on the situation.
I think that for whatever magical reason they both like me a lot. I've been denying their existence but neither of them seems to hold it against me.
However, they seem to strongly dislike each other.

I've noticed one other thing now, looking back on my life. The voices I heard outside my head, they are similar yet different from the ones inside my head. Like, so, my own voice when I talk sounds similar but different, yet I know it belongs to me in both cases. The other voices... one of them is very "hollow" on the outside and tends to sound close but in a whisper. Inside it sounds far less empty/hollow but like a deep voice that teases. Yet, despite them being different, I can tell they belong to the same person. A confident person, something I don't see myself as.
I thought it was interesting. It's like when you hear your own voice on the radio and you're like "do I sound like that?". That's what their voices are like outside my head. A clear "I didn't know you sounded like that."

I think I'll sign off using the name they call me by. Feels like acknowledgement in a way.

Thanks again and take care!

~ Grey/Knight

Reviving my own post as I arrive at a new question about my alters and myself.

So ever since getting to this forum, I've been doing more research and reading into things, recognizing things about myself and trying to get as far as I can to "healing" without the need for a therapist.
Currently I've hit a bit of a roadblock. Well, multiple ones to be fair and they can all be summed up as: "Wow, we really are different people with our own opinions and luggage."

I believe that my alters (named by me as a child) are both protectors of a type and their ways of "protecting" clashes severely. I've experienced them both in a trance like state in which I'm not entirely blacked out but rather just ... being controlled, I guess? Rather than spacing out entirely it's as if I'm just disconnected from myself. I can see and even feel what my body does and feels, but they aren't my actions or emotions. I can find myself thinking at times "that's not how I'd respond", but I can't really do anything to change it. An out of body experience, but then inside your body. I hope I'm doing a decent job at explaining it.

Well, in these trance like states, I've experienced both of my alters.

One of them (Sword) is very aggressive, impatient yet calculating, and... flirty? These are all problematic behaviours in my line of work. She has the tendency to make people say things that she can be angry about. This alter is also more likely to get mad about things that concern me that don't actually make me mad but she will take over to be mad in my stead. I've felt that she enjoys scaring people. Luckily people don't usually say things that are trigger either of us so she tends to hang back more.
Question here is: Do any of you know what a good way is to get an alter like this to open up so I can figure out what her triggers are so I can avoid them and keep her from being angry? Maybe also a way to persuade her from purposely looking for fights?
The only clue I have is that she wrote on my server "You asked for a way to fight, so we became your weapon".

The other (Shield) is the polar opposite almost. She (also they) is very distant, overly compliant, and numb. The first couple of times, I thought I was just entirely disconnected from myself so I couldn't feel anything. Not my own feelings, nor hers. Until I felt something very mild. There was a brief moment in which she saw someone and my stomach tensed the way it does when I'm afraid or nervous, but there was no outward physical response. A perfect poker-face so to speak. It's then that I realised that this alter has dulled emotions. She has told my friend that she simply has none.
I suspect that this is also the part of me that holds many trauma memories as she has confirmed to me that she was the host during most of my time in high school (explaining the huge lapse of memory I have from that time period).

I've been in therapy earlier in my life and I heard about many (personality) disorders. My therapy discussed these thoroughly when I was given my own diagnosis. I can have moments in which I feel emotionally numb when I am fully myself. My therapist attributed this to PTSD and Borderline. What my alter seems to experience feels more "permanent" than that and she can't recognise her own feelings, while simultaneously being perfectly capable of correctly identifying the emotions of others.
This got me thinking: Is it possible for your alters to have their own physiological and/or psychological problems? I initially thought maybe it could also be that she was "created" purely to help me cope with my own emotional intenseness because of my borderline, but since it turns out she does feel something and because she can perfectly identify the emotions of others, I think that's not the case after all.

If I can manage to understand both of my alters better, I think I can mediate better between them and grant myself more peace so any insight is more than welcome.

I suppose this post is also becoming a bit of a journey thread, so I'll probably post more updates here in the future. Fingers crossed for more positive things to share as well!

~ Grey / Knight

Triskelion wrote:Reviving my own post as I arrive at a new question about my alters and myself.

We do that all the time, or also just to update people. It's understandable.

Triskelion wrote:I believe that my alters (named by me as a child) are both protectors of a type and their ways of "protecting" clashes severely. I've experienced them both in a trance like state in which I'm not entirely blacked out but rather just ... being controlled, I guess? Rather than spacing out entirely it's as if I'm just disconnected from myself. I can see and even feel what my body does and feels, but they aren't my actions or emotions. I can find myself thinking at times "that's not how I'd respond", but I can't really do anything to change it. An out of body experience, but then inside your body. I hope I'm doing a decent job at explaining it.

Well, in these trance like states, I've experienced both of my alters.

What you described sounds like a dissociative state. Our system has a good level of co-consciousness, and that's how things are for me when we switch. I (Violette) am aware of what's going on even if I don't have control. Sometimes I can influence matters by talking to who is fronting, though.

Triskelion wrote:Question here is: Do any of you know what a good way is to get an alter like this to open up so I can figure out what her triggers are so I can avoid them and keep her from being angry? Maybe also a way to persuade her from purposely looking for fights?

The only clue I have is that she wrote on my server "You asked for a way to fight, so we became your weapon".

The only way we can come up with is talking to her. Some of our alters have done/said some awful things in order to push people away because they have strong reasons to protect the system even if their actions were unwarranted or unnecessary.

Triskelion wrote:I can have moments in which I feel emotionally numb when I am fully myself. My therapist attributed this to PTSD and Borderline.

As host, I've experienced this myself, but usually when another alter is suppressing our emotions. Our gatekeeper Queen does a lot to dampen emotions so that we don't have panic attacks in public.

I also wanted to say that Borderline Personality Disorder gets a little over diagnosed from what we've researched. That isn't to say it doesn't exist or that it isn't a legitimate diagnosis, but we have a friend who was diagnosed as BPD only for it to be obvious that she has DID. We've also known some autistic people who were misdiagnosed as having BPD. We just thought we'd pass that along.

Take care,
Violette

ViTheta wrote:What you described sounds like a dissociative state. Our system has a good level of co-consciousness, and that's how things are for me when we switch. I (Violette) am aware of what's going on even if I don't have control. Sometimes I can influence matters by talking to who is fronting, though.

Oh! I should try talking to them when this happens then. Maybe that will help. I'm still not much good trying to talk to them in my head. I can only hear them clearly when I'm either very anxious or very sleepy (to the point that I feel like I might faint). Others times I sort of know they are there and I can hear some muffled noises, as if they're just whispering in the back and I'm drowning it out reflexively. I've tried meditating, but I've never been good at meditating cause I can't get my mind to quiet down.

ViTheta wrote:The only way we can come up with is talking to her. Some of our alters have done/said some awful things in order to push people away because they have strong reasons to protect the system even if their actions were unwarranted or unnecessary.

Was afraid talking to her is the only way. Slow and steady is the way to go here I guess.

ViTheta wrote:As host, I've experienced this myself, but usually when another alter is suppressing our emotions. Our gatekeeper Queen does a lot to dampen emotions so that we don't have panic attacks in public.

I also wanted to say that Borderline Personality Disorder gets a little over diagnosed from what we've researched. That isn't to say it doesn't exist or that it isn't a legitimate diagnosis, but we have a friend who was diagnosed as BPD only for it to be obvious that she has DID. We've also known some autistic people who were misdiagnosed as having BPD. We just thought we'd pass that along.

Hmm... I don't know about this. I see where you're coming from, especially with your experience of Queen dampening your emotions. I don't know if my alters can do that. As far as I know, when I'm on the verge of a panic attack, I either have to sit through the panic attack or Shield takes over entirely which results in the body feeling numb because Shield appears to be numb herself.
Other than that, I feel that I personally fit pretty well on the Borderline symptoms, but I guess there's a lot of things that overlap there as well. All I can say is that, especially now that I can compare it to Shield, I feel very intensely. Little things can make me very angry or sad. I've been called dramatic and too sensitive a whole lot because of it.
I guess I won't know unless I ask a specialist and that's not going to happen any time soon.

Thank you for your input. This gives me things to look into and work with. Right now that helps me cope so your answers mean a lot to me.

~ Grey / Knight