How did you learn details about everyone in your system?

My husband's alters aren't as noticeably different, as most of you alls are. It only just becomes ever questionable if my husband is acting "extreme", i.e. cursing and he doesn't curse or over sexual or crying, or answering with one word answers, etc. , things that just seem different. Anyway, my husband had a lucid dream, a while ago, that he was walking through this hospital/nursing home and when he got to the basement, there were men, women and children all dressed in bright colors, sitting at a picnic table....all ages, male and female. He said that they got up and were all standing in a circle, holding hands and he joined them. Could this be his system? Could everyone live in this hospital/nursing home type of place?

But since then, when my husband was under the influence of a migraine medication, he revealed a "tough guy" alter named Spanky, who was Older, but that was it. He doesn't seem to have much more detail than that...not like many of you. Is this how it begins or did you always know details about the others?

Everyone is different. You must hate me by now for saying that.

The house thing is common. A lot of people experience the system like a building. I experience my system more like a computer running multiple programs that aren't aware of each other. (Web browser, email application, etc.) When you click on a link in a web browser it can sometimes cause your email application to open-- trigger. But the email application and web browser have limited knowledge of each other.

Because I'm a computer programmer by trade, I like this analogy and use it to my benefit by trying to create programming code in my brain to have it function in a way that is more.. what I need. More conducive to therapy, etc. It's slow-moving, because my alters are creative little buggers that use the same analogies to hijack me. They'll "delete" programs that I wrote, or re-write them. Especially my angry 17 year old. Problem is, she's far more of a programmer than I am. Frustrating! And she thinks I'm a moron, which makes it hard to get her to cooperate.

If it's a house, your husband can try to work on the structure of the house. He can try to build a new room or hunt for a door to a new room where everyone meets regularly. It's a process, it's not always very easy and can take years or months to reliably have "that room" where people can meet and talk, and even then alters may refuse to enter the room.

Some of my alters I'm increasingly familiar with, but it's much like having a roommate that you never really see and you're learning about them through notes and through the items they leave in your refrigerator, and through the way they interact with your friends and family while you're out.

Everyone is different. Everyone's experience of DID is different.

Thanks Trixy- I always love to hear what you have to say. Are these rooms places where the others live when another alter is out? For example, when one of my husband's alters came out and slept with my "friend", he said he was someplace dark. That he didn't know where he was. He seems to be very co-conscious with the others almost all of the time, or as he puts it "pushed back". He says that almost all of the time he is aware of what is going on, but like he's in the passenger's seat. But he/they, aside from the one time I mentioned, doesn't speak of the others living in rooms or meeting or anything like that. Does this take years to establish? Will it all come clear? Because at this point, it's very difficult to tell when he's in the "passenger's seat" or if he's just having a bad day or hard time. And, asking doesn't help. I understand that it is different for everyone, but I'd still like to know what your experience is. Thanks!

You might find this interesting, if not helpful. And may want to print it out for your husband so that he can make a place inside, preventing him from having to go to that dark place:
http://astraeasweb.net/plural/bk_inside.html

For us, everything was dark inside until we made a home there. And going inside ended up being very scary until we made a place that feels safe.

I'll have to agree that every system is different. I didn't really know anyone in mine for the first 10 years. It's been two years now (it doesn't seem that long!) and I'm still getting to know many of them, some I don't know beyond a name, and there are still some making themselves known to me. We are very co-conscious, but this doesn't mean we are ALWAYS co-conscious, and it's when we're not that they're usually up to something they know could be damaging to my life, my relationship, this body, etc. If I were co-conscious, I'd do my best to stop their actions. I think they know this. Likewise, your husband may have the same thing going on. As much as we may think we're always aware, we're not. And that, in itself, can cause a lot of guilty feelings for us. Especially when actions we have no knowledge of until after the fact, seriously impact people we love.

As far as the dream, I have these types of dreams from time to time. While I know what most of my alters looks like, so I can know that's who is in the lucid dreams, even if I didn't know what they look like inside, I'd know it's them. That's most likely what happened; he did see his system in the dream. Sometimes I can ask them to do this again if there hasn't been very good communication for a while. I wonder if he can't ask them to continue to do this for him so that he (and you) can get to know them...

-Leigh

With us, it all started with a labyrinth-like forest.. from there on came the mountains, the treehouses, the valleys, the lake, the brooks.. by perpetrator's influence a church and graveyard.. our inner landscape was very structured and full and visualized to begin with, but there weren't safe places and everyone was on their own and out in the wild. We made a home where everyone could come when they needed a safe place or wanted to meet in therapy. There are are lot of people with DID who start out with a dark place and/or a house though.. we just aren't one of them.

Learning details about others in your system, some take years and years and still hardly know anything, some know about various parts that operate in a certain aspect of their lives in a week..
He could try to think of names or of emotions, and see where his associations take him.. he could try to make up a history of his life, and see where there are gaps or try to actually go into experiences and see if, while he's named them, he really knows all that much about them and maybe 'walks into something'..

You can think you're very co-conscious because you know (most of) the facts of events that occur in your life, and turn out not to be that aware or knowledgeable as you thought you were. This has happened to me thousands of times and even happened to me today.. DID can easily trick you.

Good luck!
Nindy

Twighlight- Thanks for your response, it truly was helpful. It's not easy to present my husband and/or the others with information about DID. I can only talk about it, safely, when he brings it up and even then, I can't say too much. It is very difficult. He swears that he isn't still in denial, and that he accepts that he has it, but he doesn't want to give any more attention to the learning about the others. So, I'll have to find the right time to present this to him. I have decided to take what I learn and continue to figure it out for myself....as best as I can. It help me to understand everyone that shares this body and makes it easier for me to stick it out with him if I know who is responsible for what and how to separate the two. Thank you so much for pointing me to this link, it was really insightful.

Dimensional- Thanks for you response!- I had no idea that it took so long to learn about the system and the others to reveal themselves, or details about themselves. I know that it has been a slow process, a few have revealed themselves in their actions, or way of speaking, but no one, has given detailed information about themselves, except for one...Spanky, the tough guy, who's older. But that's it. So many of you all seem so specific and no many details about the others in your system.

So, it really can take years to know details about each one?

Well I've always talked to D, cuz he was the seperate spirit I shared a body with and talked to. So when Frank came back, he kinda had to fill me in on the details, and that's how I learned about the rest of my (now dormant) system, and of course a thing or two about Frank before actually getting to meet Frank

mine feels like it began in a terrifying place with a long corridor , very red velvet , rooms locked with only one open that being the one of an abusive fat man. Then a walk to the tower, from this tower has grown, battlements , a castle , a walkway between it and another house. More recently my dreams have centred on defending it all from my therapist. He is ground level and we are now in ww1 uniforms firing at him and guarding against an ascent. I know it sound dramatic but in my place there is not much room for my younger ones, writing this makes me realise how much they have been pushed down and kept safe by silence. No wonder we struggle so much in therapy. As for a system evolving , it is still a huge learning curve for me, with some named other parts, some who are not co conscious at all, and the small ones struggling for air but each with names. Maybe in time this will improve and hope thats things do so for your husband.

jorja

We like to think of our inside safe place as an island. This we created together, and we decided onwhat rooms we would have together and what areas we would have that sort of thing. But it takes a lot of patience and time, and we still find little ones in the universe or dark spaces, that are yet to be discovered. The littles who are there create their own rooms and have access to the common rooms like the quiet room, the first aid room, the meeting room, the tree house / club house, and the game room.
Its a way for everyone to have a place to go...
I have a hard time getting there everyt ime I want to because I am not co-conscious all the time, but i sometimes draw where I want to be and journal why I want to be there and sometimes I just close my eyes and think of where I want to be, just to tyr to communicate more. But I often dream of our inside place, and I oftne have alters interject my dreams. It gets interesting!