Number of Alters

My T has told me that having 15 alters is considered having a large system, but based on what I've seen here at least 30 seems closer to average. I know my T has been in practice nearly 20 years , so I wonder if this is dated information or just based on her own experiences. If the information were old could the basis be that there are more cases of DID now being diagnosed given the growing belief that dissociative disorders are more common than previously thought, or are cultural changes such that children are fracturing more severely now?

For the record,I have 9 alters and 1 fragment that we know of, but we do know that there were more of us when we were younger.

This was just buzzing around and I thought it might be interesting to discuss despite much of what was said being conjecture.

I think this board isn't your average subset of people with DID. There's an element of self-selection to the people who post here though maybe not as much with those who visit here. There seem to be way more lurkers than posters and that's okay. Biographies of people with DID isn't a statistically valid sampling either but I've read a lot and the majority had systems below my 16 (so far?). I believe somewhere on this board it was mentioned that males with DID have an average of 7 or 8 (I'm recalling here) and females nearly double that. I don't think that is probably all that final either. Someone please quote better stats that aren't based on my bad memory.

Considering how many people out there have undiagnosed DID, those who are treated and known about by those gathering data are probably just the tip of the iceberg. It wouldn't surprise me if people who have more alters would tend to have more instability and seek treatment. I guess that only because for me, most of my alters have issues I need to deal with and I can't imagine having to deal with double this amount. But I thought that at eight and I'm now double that.

I do think the number of alters depends on what type of abuse or neglect happens, at what stage of development the first dissociated part occurs, and probably on how your system determines the need for new alters. My system has had more evolutionary development of alters, sort of a slow shift into a different ego states to deal with situations which then begins to take on individual characteristics and identity. All of these happened in relation to me, the host, and half our alters escaped the detection of the gatekeeper, who assumed these new fellows were me or sides of me. It's unclear except that he knows he didn't create them or know about them.

My system has also simply created new alters in a matter of moments. The pressure from a new crisis (abuse or not) creates an overwhelming need for new abilities and that person is imagined and shows up, created by the gatekeeper. We have the spawning event for several of us, including me. (Note I said spawning rather than splitting because the latter word just doesn't apply). Two were created not in real crisis but more in reverie by me. In truth, we are going on several clear memories, some foggy impressions, and deductions for the rest. Sphinx has confirmed whether something is valid, or not, or probably valid. He's not as much of a perfect database as I'd wish, but he's had information all along that I just don't have and can't access.

LittleRedDogToo wrote:My T has told me that having 15 alters is considered having a large system, but based on what I've seen here at least 30 seems closer to average. I know my T has been in practice nearly 20 years , so I wonder if this is dated information or just based on her own experiences. If the information were old could the basis be that there are more cases of DID now being diagnosed given the growing belief that dissociative disorders are more common than previously thought, or are cultural changes such that children are fracturing more severely now?

For the record,I have 9 alters and 1 fragment that we know of, but we do know that there were more of us when we were younger.

This was just buzzing around and I thought it might be interesting to discuss despite much of what was said being conjecture.

*Great post from Johnny.

Regarding what your therapist said: 15 alters is a large system. It's important to keep in mind that "fragments," while they are parts of the personality, are not fully alters. They have simple motivation and may only contain a singular emotion, desire, or memory. They are fused more easily than fully developed alters and are often weaker.

Given that your therapist has had 20 years of experience, their opinion is professional and should be taken primarily. At first glance, it does seem like many members on these forums seem to have far more alters than commonly thought elsewhere, but deeper investigation raises many questions as to what that means exactly, and how, and why.

Some multiples are documented to have hundreds, and in rare cases, thousands of parts. But it is important to note that the vast majority of these parts are not full alters, but fragments created in dissociation. In systems or subsystems of a hundred alters, the likelihood remains that the vast majority are just fragments. Fragments can come and go more easily, as they integrate and split amongst the parts in their system. Also, fragments can continue to appear and build up exponentially over time, pushing the number of alters into the dozens or hundreds.

On another note, whilst new alters can be created in multiples, they do not just "appear" out of thin air. They appear by splitting from other parts, and it may seem like no alter has split them off, but this simply means that the MAIN ALTER or one of several host alters have split them off. An alter does not have to completely diffuse in order to split off other alters.

I have 7 alters, including myself, and the ISH. Beyond that, there are perhaps 3 or 4 fragments that we know of, but they are vastly different in nature from the full alter parts.

I have 7 alters (including me), an introject which has also sometimes been split (as far as our current theory implies), and we are debating a fragment. I heard that research indicates between 7 and 12, I think. But that's from the internet and not necessarily as reliable as a T that has been working with DID for 20 years. ^^

I think Johnny-Jack's description was a pretty good one. I have no idea how my system works and I'm only just discovering that there is even secrecy going on at all inside. So I have no idea how my system works, but his description makes sense, anyway. ^^

Supposedly, I'm on the low end of average, but my best friend suspects that I won't stay that way - we'll discover more. I have seen 20 being the average among the posts on this site. I don't think I'll ever reach that point, since my situation isn't really very bad, and my denial tells me that I'll be discovered as a fraud before I reach that point, because my situation wasn't bad enough to need that many alters. : / People say that the level of abuse doesn't matter all that much. Small amount of abuse doesn't mean small amount of alters; I guess it's based more on how your brain handles other situations in your life. But my denial doesn't seem to believe it.

I managed to pare my full alters down to three, not including myself. They're pretty easy to read, one for each evolutionary layer of the human brain (lizard, mammal, and primate). Any identify that was just a schism of personality either melded with another or suffered an ego death and now exists only as one of the fragments. This makes my DID experience pretty easy, since I know where all the opinions are coming from.

I remember my boyfriend Mike bringing up this fact, that on average, the number of alters people have has gone up compared to the average number people used to have. This is my thinking on it:

-- DID is becoming a bit more accepted (in the sense that there's more information about it if you can find it, there's better therapy treatments and therapists for it now, etc), and so people in general are feeling a bit better about pulling out all the stops and letting everyone be known once they get to that point. I think alters and fragments are also feeling better/safer to the point where they will ALL surface, and back then, perhaps some fragments didn't surface, or maybe some alters hid behind others or acted through others (kinda like a two-in-one type of thing), or something like that.

-- It could be that with things like this support forum, people are having alters that normally would've stayed deep, deep down or hidden behind other alters, come forward and even "out". I know that I actually might have stayed at only being aware of 6 alters had it not been for this site and having a place where all my alters are free to speak, express, be understood, are safe to be known, etc. I mean, sh*t, before I came on here, I knew that I had 5 alters. Then I found Lynn, and that made 6. Now, thanks to this site, I'm up to 20+ alters that I know about and that have come forward, and I'm fairly certain that many of them would not have come forward for a while, probably a long while, even with therapy!

-- With all the technology and TV shows and movies that are out now, I wouldn't be surprised if all this stuff was helping some children's imaginations to take off much earlier and think of things/know of things they wouldn't normally know (like vampires and other creatures), and that might be helping towards expanding the types of alters and how many that are developed.

-- It could be that in some cases, alters are being more "one need focused", in the sense of like with me, where I have Kat, my angry protector, Marie, my more level-headed protector, Dallas, who can be either my angry protector or my more level-headed protector depending on what triggered him out, and each of them are for handling certain situations mainly (Kat handles my dad, Marie handles people that don't know I have DID, Dallas handles males in general for the most part, stuff like that). So people could be doing that more now as children, developing alters for specific needs and having that be their main focus, and when that happens, there's going to be more alters depending on how many variations of needs you have and "who" you want handling those needs as a child.

-- In some cases, it could be that children are getting more abused than in the past, but highly unlikely. Instead, I think there's more serious abuse cases coming to light, getting reported, and going down in the records. Which would increase the amount of average for the number of alters (which I believe is actually 20-30 now, if I remember correctly, so 15 isn't considered a "large" system anymore, though can be to some people of course).


-Cassandra