personal histories

The difference between those with BPD who have "created" roles that can be mistaken for alters, I have read this evening, seems to be with the alters in DID being more 3D - be able to have emotions of their own, thoughts of their own about the world, and a personal history.

But what is a personal history for an alter? As far as I am aware when my alters are not out front, they lie dormant. Unlike some systems there is no inner castle or field where they all go and "hang out" and experience things inside. They do not come out in therapy full with stories of things they have got up to inside.

I am fiercely fighting my diagnosis at the moment. Even though I have been diagnosed by a specialist. I am co-conscious for the majority of the time and when the alters come forward they do not bring with them mounds of memories for me to access. They behave independent to themselves, they think independent to themselves, but memories for all of us seem to be lacking.

Personal history - what?

Bourbon

I don't seem to have an inner world either, or at least I cannot yet go there. It is clear however that when not in executive control some of my alters are not dormant. It seems Alter 3 (Teen Girl) was almost entirely dormant, and Alter 1 has been the least dormant, followed by Alter 2. Increasingly they are watching, thinking, and responding to what is going on outside.

Bourbon, your post rings resonates for us. Our system doesn't have a place where we hang out either. John is normally out, in fact he continues to hog most of the time in the body. We know we don't go all hang out together in a constructed home when we're not in control of the body. Sometimes we're pretty close to the surface when we like what's going on or if we really don't like it. If any of us while out merely thinks of another alter, that alter come forward immediately. But we've discovered when we're inside, our memory of the world inside isn't fully recoverable when outside. So I can't tell you what's it's like to have been inside other than knowing I am sometimes aware of what others are doing in control of the body, other times I don't seem to be paying attention.

In our brain, it's clear an alter must use some part of the brain that controls/creates consciousness to really process anything like normal thinking. We know we've had conversations in the background inside when highly motivated if the person fronting isn't doing any heavy use of consciousness, like conversing with someone in the world, but we cannot remember the content once we're out, just the gist of the interaction. I think all systems are different here.

bourbon wrote:I am fiercely fighting my diagnosis at the moment. Even though I have been diagnosed by a specialist. I am co-conscious for the majority of the time and when the alters come forward they do not bring with them mounds of memories for me to access. They behave independent to themselves, they think independent to themselves, but memories for all of us seem to be lacking.

We continue to challenge the meaning of the diagnosis though we accept there's something called DID and we have it. But when any one of us is in the body, it feels like we're really, down deep, the person in the body at the moment. So I'm an alter but I don't feel unreal at all, not a bit. I'm part of our mind just as any one of us is. And I think very differently from the others, though there's overlap. For instance, I by choice went into hibernation a couple decades ago so now by default I tend to do what John would be doing for lack of habits to do anything else. I often wish I'd stuck around and developed different, more productive habits for us.

Our personal histories are all inaccessible to us. Few of us have any memory of our pasts other than what we've had flashbacks on or what we've journaled about. But we know that memory is still blocked and we're working on unblocking it. Sphinx believes he did it when he feared flooding the host in April '11 as John was having flashbacks pretty much anywhere and we all feared total mental breakdown. We know who we are as personalities, we know our own likes and dislikes, but we don't know how they arose based on memory. Very frustrating, so we're left taking it for granted we have DID. If we hadn't journaled like crazy earlier and have a lot of stuff recorded, we could easily find ourselves writing this all off.

If your alters don't come with tons of things all ready to share, I don't think that's standard in most cases from what I've read.

One thing that makes it impossible for us to dismiss the DID is the reactions and emotions of the littles. They remain quite raw and simple and sometimes are understandable only to themselves. They react to adult thoughts or adult emotions with grand upsets. The daily crying outbursts because, for example, a little just wants to play and feels someone wanting to shove them aside, make it impossible for us to dismiss this as anything else but DID.

I don't think our alters have grand personal histories, either. We do have an inner world and they DO do stuff...I'm not saying they don't...but they don't really confide much in me, either... Like I know some of them play around and stuff, it seems the closer they are to the front world, so to speak, the more they do inside, like playing and reading and things like that. The ones in the tunnel pretty much just cry, though. And I really don't know what those below do, that level is just black to me.

And as far as a personal history before being in our system, I think only three or four actually do, and it's not a very fleshed-out history, really, it's just that they know, for example, that they're British and that there's something to do with British things in their past, but not why or how.

I don't really have much to add to all this, other than I can really relate to everything you said bourbon. When my parts aren't close or out front, it is almost like they don't exist. They also have no memories that I don't have.

I must say however that you've shared with me memories others have shared that you had no knowledge of before (ie what Kerry shared recently). I'm wondering if this couldn't be part of her personal history?

Question: What is meant by personal history? Or how do you know it's theirs not yours? Personally, the whole personal history thing is rather confusing. DID is confusing. I guess I'm just in a state of confusion right now.

That being said it does feel that if they aren't in my face so to speak It's as if they don't exist. There are alot of Yeah, But. Yeah, it could be DID, but it could be ...., Yeah, it could be you, BUT, I could just be making it all up.

Even though it may seem we don't exist, we are in the background passive influencing you. Some things, memories, abilities, you think may be yours, isn't. We can give and take.

Just because you don't know it's there or what is going on there, doesn't mean it doesn't exsist. -Jackie