Do your littles write?

I read the one article that said they're "stylized ego packets" and was like "Hun. You're an asshat. You know that? It ain't the intellect that makes em kids."

OMG that was hilarious. I felt the same way reading that. Plus insulted for my littles.

I started becoming co-conscious with my alters in April more or less. When they revealed themselves, they were 100% age appropriate about everything. I started journaling about Jack from the first day he broke through so I have a record of most of what he did, what he thought, how he approached everything and how he grew. At first he didn't seem to understand anything beyond what a 10-year-old awaking from a decades-long coma would. As time passed and I shared the body and spent time with him, he started picking up on my physically learned skills like reading, typing, and handwriting. If I were driving now, I'm sure it would be the same.

How-to stuff and memories seem to be accessed differently. He was sometimes able to "mine" my memories or I would offer him one. For example, Jack didn't know an old roommate who is currently living in my condo but to make him comfortable I explained the roommate was like us. I thought back to a night we were driving around during college in the roommate's beat-up truck, two country boys in the big city. Jack grabbed the memory in his mind. In co-consciousness I was flooded with an experience in the present of my roommate just as he was decades ago. At the time I guessed Jack must have been there with us and it was his memory. But he was just accessing one of my memories in real time, in a more vivid way than I believe I could anymore.

Weeks ago the roommate took Jack hiking. For reasons I'm still not sure about, I went deep inside for about 24 hours that overlapped with the hike. I was very far away and Jack was alone, reduced to the 10-year-old he was. It was the first time the two really talked, so it was awkward. He was uncomfortable around this adult, didn't know what to say, couldn't keep up his end of the conversation, and couldn't figure out what was happening like he could when I was inside but nearby. He was able to access some basic knowledge, facts, but it was as if he couldn't use my part of the mind in order to give the information the context he needed to make sense of it.

The two types of long term memory are declarative and procedural. The former include knowledge and life memories. In my system, these require interpretation so the littles need a lot of help and sometimes can't comprehend meaning even if they can access a piece of information. The latter include physical skills like writing and driving. In my system, alters can learn to access procedural memories faster and easier and I suspect that's common.

Johnny-Jack wrote:I thought back to a night we were driving around during college in the roommate's beat-up truck, two country boys in the big city. Jack grabbed the memory in his mind. In co-consciousness I was flooded with an experience in the present of my roommate just as he was decades ago. At the time I guessed Jack must have been there with us and it was his memory. But he was just accessing one of my memories in real time, in a more vivid way than I believe I could anymore.

Yes! That is what my Alter 1 does when I think about the other man. Previously when encountering the man I experienced nothing out of the ordinary, but OMG when I remember those encounters I experience intense longing and sexual arousal, all coming from Alter 1. Right on the edge between pleasure and pain. My therapist says I appeared to be in agony. That phase seems to be over now.

Johnny-Jack wrote:The two types of long term memory are declarative and procedural. The former include knowledge and life memories. [...] The latter include physical skills like writing and driving.

Declarative and procedural are also known as explicit and implicit. And yes, alters can access each other's implicit memories far more easily than they can access explicit memories.

Johnny-Jack wrote:The two types of long term memory are declarative and procedural. The former include knowledge and life memories. [...] The latter include physical skills like writing and driving.

Una wrote:Declarative and procedural are also known as explicit and implicit. And yes, alters can access each other's implicit memories far more easily than they can access explicit memories.

I was just reading in one of my college textbooks today about declarative and procedural memory, so thanks for tying it into this discussion. This is beginning to make more sense to me now. It sounds like the more co-conscious I am with a particular child alter, perhaps the greater will be her access to implicit memory.

First off, thanks for the compliment.

My littles didn't bother. We're way the ###$ too used to invalidation. We just ignore it and let it slide off without getting to us nowadays. [Aside from people we let in "past the wall" so to speak, but that's another matter.]

I think you guys are onto something. It'd make sense, too. DID is about survival, and for survival, it's really only the explicit memories that need to be divided up. Dividing up the implicit memories, to me, seems rather more maladaptive than dividing up the explicit ones, but that's just my feelings on the matter.

None of my alters will write a thing yet. My T and I have decided this is due to fear and we are working on it.


But! Most of them do read along with me.... technical books! Even though they are child alters they are wrapped in adult psyche and have been around almost as long as me. I don't see why they could not write once they get use to doing it.

Does that make sense to everyone? I have been quite curious about this too. Baby Smirk at 9 months old reads those books I do that most of you balk at. I think like most children if we don't hold them back, they are capable of just about anything! My biological children were all reading fluently at 3 years old, but certainly not at before they could walk like Baby Smirk. That little one has been hanging out though for almost half a century!

Eve doesn't really write with pen and paper, but she can type. She's said/visualized/emoted to me (she doesn't always use words/thoughts if that makes sense. She'll use a combination of those three.) that it's because she can 'see' how to do it. I didn't really understand until I figured, hey, we share the same head space and I'm not afraid of letting them in; they're afraid of letting me in. It would make sense that she could type, and type pretty well.

However, when I was trying to let her out with coloring books, she held the crayons funny, as if she wasn't exactly sure how to manuever my hands. Then, when she 'hijacked' control, the colors stayed more in the lines (even if the colors were 'different'!). I'm not sure if she can actually write on her own with me gone completely, but she can color. She gets nervous and EXTREMELY shy when I try to let her out to talk/write...things she hasn't done in a while or thinks she'll get in trouble for.

I had a dream last night that someone inside had typed me a message on green bar form feed paper (the kind that was used in computer centers decades ago) and I was trying to read it but my mind was filled with the words blocked blocked blocked.