the Age of Alters ...

I have two age related questions really;

Firstly, are all alters formed in child hood? What I mean really is to ask if it's possible for new
alters to form in our adult lives during traumatic circumstances or are they all a product of some
childhood traumas?

Secondly, what determines the age of an alter? Would it be that the child wishes he/she was a
certain age to combat the trauma? Or are alters ages determined by the age the trauma happened?

I hope my questions are clear enough as I found them difficult to word properly as today my mind is racing quite a lot.

Dave.

Dave, Richard Kluft has written that in most DID systems all the alters are created in childhood or adolescence. In some systems however, alters are created in adulthood. This happens especially in women who experience significant trauma during labor and delivery, or postpartum. A new alter is created who takes on the role of mother.

Alters often are the same age as the body at the time they are created. If these alters experience little or no time in executive control of the body, they tend not to age at all. My alter Teen Girl was an example of this; she was created when I was 15 and surfaced this year, still 15. Alters who spend a lot of time in executive control can age along with the body or even in advance of it. Lastly, some alters are created as introjects of an actual older person such as a parent or a grandparent. This older person can be either an abuser or a caregiver, and the alter modeled on this person will play a similar role.

The DID system can deliberately accelerate the maturation of an alter, or even change an "animal" alter into a human.

Alters who spend a lot of time in executive control can age along with the body or even in advance of it.

cool, I was wondering why some alters 'grew up'

Secondly, what determines the age of an alter? Would it be that the child wishes he/she was a
certain age to combat the trauma? Or are alters ages determined by the age the trauma happened?

I think age issues are entirely particular to a system. When an alter is created, that alter can be virtually anything, human or non-human, alive or not, and either have or not have age which doesn't or doesn't relate to the age when created.

If an alter stays in the body, that alter can age right along with the body. Sometimes they stay but remain their age. I had a two-year-old alter who returned about twenty years ago. He visited me periodically since then and I don't know if he was awake the whole time or not. When DID became obvious this spring, he corrected me to tell me he was three. In fact he did seem older than when he first came. We created an alter when the body was age nine, he was "killed" soon after, then revived recently, and now we seems roughly 17 but we have no idea why.

Una+ wrote:Dave, Richard Kluft has written that in most DID systems all the alters are created in childhood or adolescence. In some systems however, alters are created in adulthood. This happens especially in women who experience significant trauma during labor and delivery, or postpartum. A new alter is created who takes on the role of mother.

I wonder if witnessing a long, traumatic death could bring about the creation of an alter? Or would
this 'blocking' be more closely linked with PTSD? Or if DID was already present, could this bring an aging/older alter to the fore as a coping mechanism?

Una+ wrote:Alters often are the same age as the body at the time they are created. If these alters experience little or no time in executive control of the body, they tend not to age at all. Alters who spend a lot of time in executive control can age along with the body or even in advance of it.

This is fascinating information Una, I didn't realise alters could age and this throws a whole new
light over my current thinking towards my own situation.

Una+ wrote:Lastly, some alters are created as introjects of an actual older person such as a parent or a grandparent. This older person can be either an abuser or a caregiver, and the alter modeled on this person will play a similar role.

Again, I never understood the term 'introject' and now it is clear, interesting.

Una+ wrote:The DID system can deliberately accelerate the maturation of an alter, or even change an "animal" alter into a human.

I see, so as far as DID systems exist, nothing is set in stone and they can be ever evolving?

Thanks for the information Una, i've got some thinking to do!

Johnny-Jack wrote:I think age issues are entirely particular to a system. When an alter is created, that alter can be virtually anything, human or non-human, alive or not, and either have or not have age which doesn't or doesn't relate to the age when created.

If an alter stays in the body, that alter can age right along with the body. Sometimes they stay but remain their age.

Ah, I see now! I did wonder how non-human alters originated. I did also wonder about alters of the
opposite sex. So an alter may take any form, so long as that form provides a means of escape from
a particular traumatic experience.

Thanks, Dave.

middle-man wrote:as far as DID systems exist, nothing is set in stone and they can be ever evolving?

Yes. It is all magical, literally. It is the magical thinking of a child, enacted. Once you know that, you can become a magician, wielding incredible powers. You can magically endow your alters with special powers or qualities they need to feel safe. You can rescue them from their frozen trauma. You can help them change in profound ways. You can grant them wishes.

Una, I think this works for many systems, perhaps most, and I wish it worked for ours. For the child's mind, magic is real. My system is uncomfortable with telling magical stories or pretending things are other than how they are for us. It's almost a trigger to bring in magic. I know this is definitely my thing as an alter but I think it's also how the body is wired, or maybe based purely on our circumstances. The young ones realize they're in a body that is way bigger that theirs, they're under no illusion about that. They will not look in a mirror or reflection because they know what they'll see from hazy images in my mind of what we look like. So they live in reality but they're kind of incompatible with it by virtue of their age. They don't understand the mismatch, so they choose to ignore it, to put it aside and not think about it, virtually all of them, so they can continue to be who they are. But they don't go to the point of pretending the incompatibilies are something else.

We sense that magical thinking can be dangerous for our world, even though it was built with magic I guess. We're open to the possibility of ghosts and spirits and all sorts of things we don't understand. We're okay with mysticism and magic in the world and believe anything is possible, but just not magic near or about us. I think this comes from being forced to live among people who pretended bad things didn't happen, who pushed a bogus reality on us until we didn't trust ourselves, who punished or ignored us continually for not latching on to whatever the current projected reality was. It was so difficult but important for us to identify what was real and what wasn't, what was a story and what actually happened. I mention this in case it's similar for anyone else.

Wow, what everyone has said has beeen so informative!


I have alters ages 3 to24. Some of these parts grew along with the body, buy many stayed the same age. Also I have 3 parts who have no ages, I am not quite sure why they don't have ages. All I know is Autumn was created to come out in the fall, and deal with the holdiays (I have SRA/RA history), and January deals with winter. And Winter was c*lt created and I dont know much about her.
But everyone's system can be quite different, I have realized that because I have 3 freinds with DID and we are all different, but also the same in many ways.

I don't know if this helps. Just wanted to share

avery

DID has to be formed when you're a child. However, once you learn how to create alters, it's possible to keep creating them throughout your life. For some, it even becomes a habbit.

The age of an alter depends on the system. For some, alters are frozen in time for the age they were created at. Or they may be created as a child but age with the body. They might start off aging with the body, but refuse to pass a certain age. For others, they're created to be older than the body. Maybe they're supposed to be a strong protector or a parental part. But to do so, they're created to be older than the other alters. These parts may or may not continue to grow older. Some alters might be a certain age because it seems the most appropriate for how they act. Some alters may even be ageless or slide between different ages!

We have alters aging 0 to ageless. Of those, I know ones aged 2 to 38. We have a child for every age under 12. We have adults who identify with the ab*sers, adults who are parental, adults who are there to keep us in line. We have crazy teens, normal teens, teens with PTSD... it's all so crazy, really!
~Rage