This group just keeps growing and growing!

Hello. 12-Shine, Boss and Vorg here.

I haven't seen much people writing in here (or I'm just not aware of it) that have several hundreds of parts! Our group at the moment has 561 individual parts. More and more come around and join the group almost every month/week/day.

I'm sure that it was a misunderstatement but my therapist said something that made us feel ashamed of having such a big group of parts! She didn't seem to believe us that we're so many! This happened maybe a year ago but it's still haunting me. =/ I feel that I SHOULD have less parts and that I SHOULD NOT have so many parts because it's not....right! That I'm not real with my dissociative disorder if I don't have under 10 parts or so. Especially the young parts are easily discouraged if someone doesn't believe their condition or understands it even slightly wrong.

I dont' want to be like everybody else just to be heard...

I really need to talk with my therapist about this issue. Maybe I'll print this post and show the first two pharagraphs to her...we described our thoughts pretty well in them.

Adameil wrote:my therapist said something that made us feel ashamed of having such a big group of parts! She didn't seem to believe us that we're so many!

Wow that sucks. I have never heard of anyone thinking you are only dissociative if you have less than 10 parts..... to be honest.... if anything I feel a bit redundant cause I only have 10 and most people here have lots more !!!

I would definitely raise this with your therapist because that can't be a nice environment to work in for any of you. I hope you do find out it was a misunderstanding!!

Bourbon

You have exactly as many parts as you have.

The average is probably around 10 or so - you are just not in the average.

I have 268, 38 are fragments. It was a shock to me as the numbers grew too. Then I started to ask the parts exactly how many parts I do have. I contacted all of them, and there have been no more.

I think I would tell the T something snarky like "well, you believe I have DID. What is the limit of alters you're prepared to believe in? Please give me an exact number so that I can identify that many alters and we can work with them. Then when they feel better, I'll ask that you disbelieve in that group so that I can cycle in an equal number of new ones and we'll continue in that mode until we're all dealt with. Would that work for you?"

Your T really needs to read something about large systems. I would definitely print out what you wrote and show it. We all hurt badly when someone doesn't believe.

We have several hundreds of parts too although we are not allowed to say the exact number on here... So you are all not alone...

When we started seeing our therapist he asked us for an exact number of how many we had (or knew about or would be told by a more knowledgeable part that we had) but we would not answer him because we could detect that some number over more than some figure in his head would be too much for him to be able to believe. So we refused to answer the question. And eventually we could see him go from believing it was possible only to have around 40 or so parts to gradually believing that there are hundreds of us, without us having to tell him.

But because he would initially not believe some number more that what he had set in his head, we also ended up feeling like we should have less parts and that we should not have so many parts. It made us feel embarrassed and disbelieved and ashamed also. Because even though we hadn't told him the number, we could see that he was questioning that he would believe a number higher than the lower numbers he'd guessed.

So I just wanted to tell you that you are not alone in how you are feeling. None of you should pretend to be like anyone else in order to be heard. For us it got better because our therapist started believing in us of his own accord but I think if you are still having an issue with this with your therapist, you should all bring it up so that you can discuss it with her. Let us know how it goes...

Johnny-Jack wrote:I think I would tell the T something snarky like "well, you believe I have DID. What is the limit of alters you're prepared to believe in? Please give me an exact number so that I can identify that many alters and we can work with them. Then when they feel better, I'll ask that you disbelieve in that group so that I can cycle in an equal number of new ones and we'll continue in that mode until we're all dealt with. Would that work for you?"

Lol. I'm glad you wrote this. It gave me a laugh. It was how I felt when initially dealing with my therapist for sure. That's why I never told him the number...

salted lipstick wrote:We have several hundreds of parts too although we are not allowed to say the exact number on here... So you are all not alone....

That makes at least 4 of the posters here who are polyfragmented. Tell your T's we are slowly taking over the norm in the DID group.

I don't want to seem rude or anything like that, everything i say is well intentioned. Having said that..

I just have no idea how you can handle such big groups O_O
In my gf's case, they are about 20-22, and we already think it's a large group, whenever we decide to recall all of their names, we always forget 1 or 2 ._.
Not that we dont care about them, it's just that it gets complicated without having them around all the time (5-10 are always there, while the rest are usually on "the other side", also called the "dark side")

This "other side" isn't anything bad, its just the way we call the most unconscious (and biggest) part of her inner space... Little is known about that place, but we think that most memories, feelings and functions are stonred and managed there. Only a few are allowed to travel both sides, and they won't talk about it (because it's "confidential").

But, to encourage you, there seemes to exist reports of lots of people, maybe even hundreds, on the other side, working almost as an office company
So, no, you aren't the only one. If a therapist doubts you, just remember that it may be hard to understand, when 1 person with 1 personality is already complicated, 1 person with 2 is really hard to understand, so imagine with tens or hundreds It's just that therapists are humans too, and they can have hard times trying to see and understand extreme or complicated situations...


Best wishes,
~ Secret ~

We have 200+ parts. Initially, when we "came out" on this forum as polyfragmented, we thought we were the only ones on here with such a big system. It felt good to learn that there are others on here with polyfragmented DID.

It helped us to chart them all as the parts came forward. Many of our parts are fragments, but there are many others that are fully-formed ego states/ people.

Please talk to your therapist about being hesitant to share "your number", and why. As for pretty much every issue in therapy, you need to feel safe and able to talk about the things that are on your mind(s).

Toast alone says: As for managing my system, I don't know how I do it. I don't think I lose a ton of time or do too much I don't remember, but the evidence is there that there is a "life inside" beyond my own.

Woah...so many replies. I feel so overwhelmed!

Okay...so we went to therapy yesterday and carefully explained our feelings and thoughts to her regarding to our problem. She told me that she hasn't seen as big systems before and that she was surprised and confused - but not in disbelief nor did she believe that we should have less parts. =3 And then she apologized for not being worth our trust at that time. And she also told us that even therapists make mistakes.

Phew! Basically certain parts lost all their trust towards our therapist because of those stupid words... One part hates to make mistakes and s/he doesn't accept mistakes done by anyone else either. S/he is so STRICT it makes me sick!!

I really think that when we are finally able to figure out what is going on behind this behavior, we can learn to trust people even more. So they say that rough times make friendships even stronger. Well it's a therapy-relationship in this case but it's trust issue all the same. This is an old, old, old problem I've had! Someone makes a mistake and these certain parts can't stand it and they cut all the connections to those people. I've lost some friends in the process - yet my parts don't think that those people were worth a friend because of their mistakes.

So we're making progress in therapy. We just need to ride this rocky wave and see it through - for the first time in our lives! Before it's been all running away but this time we face the problem behind even though it might shock me badly. These issues run so deep...

To Bourbon:
Yeah, about 10 or so parts seems so...AVERAGE! It's tough to be different or non-average.

To Tylas:
Well said! And our therapist said to my boss that the more she has given her information about my parts, the more she has understood why there's so many. Afterall we went through years of a***e! You need plenty of help to endure all that. Yeah, its seems so that people with hundreds of parts are becoming more and more "average." Take that you stupid doctors who didn't believe us before! Our therapist is very nice but she needs to open up her mind more. And also we need to teach this one part of ours that everyone makes mistakes!

To Johnny-Jack:
(Might trigger!)
She is starting to understand. We wouldn't use the exact same words as you did with her. Most of this anger is coming from the past when were treated so wrong that it caused a need to make new parts! There was this extremely obnoxius and smug senior physician who directly said to our face that we were lying...and that he doesn't believe us. Just...f**k!! This was before I knew that I have DID.

To Salted lipstick:
Wow, you have a big group too! ^^ Nice to meet you all! Yup, we did make progress with our therapist. I wonder if it would be too tough for her to understand that our system has parts that have DID! DID inside DID! xD I have 10 parts that I take care of because it would be too tough for my boss to handle these ones. We have about...5-6 parts with DID. I'm so proud of our team!

Toast:
For me it's somehow easy to take care of this big group. But I wouldn't be able to do it without my "right hand men/women". Being humble and open are the most important things.

-- Thu Mar 08, 2012 11:04 am --

Secret wrote:I don't want to seem rude or anything like that, everything i say is well intentioned. Having said that..

I just have no idea how you can handle such big groups O_O
In my gf's case, they are about 20-22, and we already think it's a large group, whenever we decide to recall all of their names, we always forget 1 or 2 ._.
Not that we dont care about them, it's just that it gets complicated without having them around all the time (5-10 are always there, while the rest are usually on "the other side", also called the "dark side")

This "other side" isn't anything bad, its just the way we call the most unconscious (and biggest) part of her inner space... Little is known about that place, but we think that most memories, feelings and functions are stonred and managed there. Only a few are allowed to travel both sides, and they won't talk about it (because it's "confidential").

But, to encourage you, there seemes to exist reports of lots of people, maybe even hundreds, on the other side, working almost as an office company
So, no, you aren't the only one. If a therapist doubts you, just remember that it may be hard to understand, when 1 person with 1 personality is already complicated, 1 person with 2 is really hard to understand, so imagine with tens or hundreds It's just that therapists are humans too, and they can have hard times trying to see and understand extreme or complicated situations...


Best wishes,
~ Secret ~

Hi Secret. I forgot to reply to you before! x3 Doh!

Hehee, I was actually thinking yesterday: "poor therapist for having to deal with all this!" She's probably at times so confused with us! I just hope that she keeps on trying to understand and help us instead of giving up. I wonder where those thoughts came from...?

It's the same with us. It's 10 active parts at a time and that "TOP 10", as I call it, changes over time. All the other parts are around and close but not as active as the TOP 10.

We "only" have 169 alters, but I've hard of groups with thousands! It's just amazing to see what people can do, sometimes.

I'm glad your therapist is more or less accepting.

@Jonnhy-Jack: That's awesome. I should keep that response in mind.

@Secret: Usually, for larger systems, only certain alters are active most of the time. There may be 5-15 alters who are usually active and trading off front, while the others specialize more.
~Rage