Does the original core being exist?

This thread is very interesting to me as I have never thought about it in that way. I have always thought that my alters because of their ages followed a timeline and they stopped aging at certain times and new ones developed. I have always thought of what I think is my youngest Sammie as being the core person because she is the only one that has ever been able to effectively block us all for any extended period of time. This seems to make alot more sense

But can someone explain to me why my teen has so much trouble with writing and knowledge of simple things like grammar and posting but can function as an adult when she is needed Amanda is our protector yet I notice when she writes is like she didnt even goto English class or really even knows how to type spacing in words is very bad for her she runs them all together making what she writes hard to decipher at times.

Anyway just curious and this may need its own thread

Thanks

Tara (BT)

Schrodinger's cat wrote:I have found this article (proceed carefully there is sexual abuse triggers):
http://www.dissociation.com/2007/docRea ... %26did.txt

Since it is quite ancient (published in 1998) I have found there an interesting ideas. Author discusses a few clinic cases of MPD and DID, trying to separate them.

This is one of Ralph Allison's articles. As far as I know, his argument to retain the term MPD, and make it distinct from DID, has not been taken up by any other investigators. This MPD vs DID topic has been discussed here on the DID forum in the past. See for instance the thread Difference between DID and MPD?

Schrodinger's cat wrote:I can refer only for myself, and I feel like my system have an original personality. And she is not me.

From your story, you are an alter created when your body was 6. And you are the host (?), so you know without a doubt that you are not the original identity. However, that does not mean there exists an original identity. The concept of an original or core identity was popular in the 1980's and 1990's, but not all investigators support the concept. I don't support it myself. Little babies do not yet have an integrated identity. Identity forms by integration of discrete ego states, each ego state created in relationship with an other by the astonishing process of projective identification.

What happens in DID is that these early ego states are created in the usual way but due to trauma they fail to integrate, and often this initial failure is followed by subsequent splitting. Well, we often call it spitting but actually I think it is more accurately a process of encapsulation, of compartmentalization, instead of integration. Perhaps over the course of our lives ego states continue to be created, at which point they can be more or less dissociated (encapsulated, compartmentalized), or denied and repressed, or they can be integrated. We people with DID tend to automatically dissociate these new ego states, and do it so completely that they may exist and function for years entirely outside our awareness behind walls of amnesia.

I am aware of having made two alters: Alter 3 when I was a teenager, and Alter 5 about 2 years ago. Both alters were self-protective responses to relational demands from other people. Alter 3 played an adult role I was not yet ready for. Alter 5 held feelings that overwhelmed me and threatened my marriage. Even if they are not lost fragments of my infant self, but "merely" ego states I created on demand, I still want them. I want their qualities, their assets, their memories of life.

Recovery from DID is simply completing the integration that should have happened when we were little. Think of it is an isolated developmental delay. In elementary schools in North America today many children receive special education services to help them catch up to others: physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. Perhaps some day there will also be available identity integration therapy. For a few years one of my children received sensory integration therapy (part of occupational therapy) to help mind and body connect. This is eerily similar to some aspects of my current therapy for DID!

Normal integration is a developmental process that continues throughout life, for everyone. We are not alone in this. Everyone has ego states and everyone faces the challenge of integrating them to make a more complete self. Much of adult psychotherapy involves identity integration.

Una+ wrote:Recovery from DID is simply completing the integration that should have happened when we were little. Think of it is an isolated developmental delay.

I think this idea becomes a lot more complicated with the complexity of alters. Many of my fiancee's alters have been around for almost 20 years. They have been aware and experiencing reality through a different filter from one another for years. To put them back into one experience of reality would not be as natural as the process of integration from childhood. It would be creating a new person.

Perhaps the integration should've happened, but it did not. And pushing it now will not get back what was lost. It will not make her who she 'should've been'. It will make someone new. Because they have each developed into people separate from each other.

The alters are not the same people as when they were created. They've matured and changed in line with their personalities and their experiences. The memories they hold are not the same and they way they experience the world is not the same and due to this they have grown into very different people.

While I understand that many people do want integration, that isn't the goal of everyone and I don't think that it is any more natural than remaining multiple. The 'natural' state will never be reached because you cannot undo the years of separation.

So question is is a matter of alters and fragments when it comes to integration? What I mean is is it easier to integrate with more fragments then with alters who are full or whole in personalty?

Caecandy wrote:

Una+ wrote:Recovery from DID is simply completing the integration that should have happened when we were little. Think of it is an isolated developmental delay.

I think this idea becomes a lot more complicated with the complexity of alters. Many of my fiancee's alters have been around for almost 20 years. They have been aware and experiencing reality through a different filter from one another for years. To put them back into one experience of reality would not be as natural as the process of integration from childhood. It would be creating a new person.

Perhaps the integration should've happened, but it did not. And pushing it now will not get back what was lost. It will not make her who she 'should've been'. It will make someone new. Because they have each developed into people separate from each other.

The alters are not the same people as when they were created. They've matured and changed in line with their personalities and their experiences. The memories they hold are not the same and they way they experience the world is not the same and due to this they have grown into very different people.

While I understand that many people do want integration, that isn't the goal of everyone and I don't think that it is any more natural than remaining multiple. The 'natural' state will never be reached because you cannot undo the years of separation.

Thanks so much for saying this. I so ######6 agree!

- Fighter

I have not read through all this but here is a and valid and recent article that might help explain things for all of you written by D. Simeon.

Merck Professional site:
http://www.merckmanuals.com/professiona ... order.html
Children are not born with a sense of a unified identity; it develops from many sources and experiences. In overwhelmed children, many parts of what should have blended together remain separate. Chronic and severe abuse (physical, sexual, or emotional) and neglect during childhood are frequently reported by and documented in patients with dissociative identity disorder. Some patients have not been abused but have experienced an important early loss (such as death of a parent), serious medical illness, or other overwhelmingly stressful events.

In contrast to most children who achieve cohesive, complex appreciation of themselves and others, severely mistreated children may go through phases in which different perceptions, memories, and emotions of their life experiences are kept segregated. Such children may over time develop an increasing ability to escape the mistreatment by “going away” or retreating into their own mind. Each developmental phase or traumatic experience may be used to generate a different self-state.

I feel strongly that I have a core--also I theorize that everyone has a core but that they are under different conditions. But I would like to know how to locate this core. This identity seems to be frozen, like stone. I don't know... I'm just having so much trouble, with everything. They come out and talk to me and I have no control over them. I try so much just to help, even in small ways, and I have no influence over any of them. They do what they want and all I can do is communicate--then only sometimes.

My EP, Evll, at least as the term is apparently used, seems to be the only one who can really help in this regard--he analyzes information. He might also be a manager type other...? But he is defenseless against the abuser other, who made him very ill recently, and after he came out to talk with me the abuser held a knife to his throat. I couldn't do anything about it. So if the caretaker-gatekeeping alter is usually gone, and the protector can't control the abuser when I'm trying to communicate with Evll, how am I supposed to learn what I need to know? How am I supposed to gain any sort of control whatsoever? All the ISH says is "look within yourself."