A new alter

A new alter has surfaced. It's like, when I feel one of the alters, my face sometimes feels like it has their features. I can look in the mirror and have features that they have and it's like my face feels different. I dunno. Anyway, she has a lot of the features that I saw myself having for years. So, that's interesting. Her name is Lucy and she is thirteen. She acts a lot like I did at thirteen. and she told my friend that she was twelve once. Can alters age?

Yes alters can age sometimes they can go with the years. while others can jump around back and fourth.

Happy to here you are becoming more aware of your system

Congrats on finding and welcoming a new alter. My alters all have their own way of holding the face and the body too. The only confusion I have is that I have so many littles so close together in age, I can't always identify who's out immediately. When I make a guess and it's wrong, they get tickled to have fooled me, like they do when "acting big" to buy something in a store. They pull it off, walk away, then giggle, sometimes within earshot of the store clerk.

Alters definitely can age but there may be rules than don't match the rest of the world. Little John aged a half a year or so over just over 20 years after he'd awakened, but some of that might have been spent sleeping -- not hibernating, which is deeper sleep in my system. Dan aged six years while deceased but apparently aware over roughly the same 20 years. While my alters were active, switching in and out or participating from inside, they aged along with the body, except for Quato who seems to have stopped aging or maturing around 19. Like other systems, mine has its own universe of rules for aging. I don't seem to have any age sliders but that seems really common.

I had only slivers of memory of what I might have been like before roughly age 12-13, so spending time with these little guys gives me a sense of who I was/who we were. That is really quite priceless. I'm not sure anyone without DID can ever have this sublime experience. They might have a flashback, a replay of how a past incident went, but they can't bring a part of themselves as they were into realtime in the present. Since I barely recall anything about being a kid, I have to assume I was at least something like the littles are now. And they make me like myself so much more than I ever did.

our host is a slider. Jess - she switches periodically between 17 and 20-ish. she tends to forget her age, and doesnt really realize that she switches, but on the inside, sometimes she looks 17 and other times she looks the age of the body. but she never remembers her age. she just remembers that she is 20 something.

me and james are sliders too, i think, but im not sure what ages we slide around. same general area, but i think we vary between 13 and 16, so we kinda average it at about late 14 almost 15 area.

none of the rest of us age. Jess ages with the body, but like i said, she periodically reverts back to 17 too. Jen has been 23 (now a year older than the body) since she first woke up, back when the body was 15. she says she often feels more mature than that, but she feels like thats because of all the responsibility she has to carry sometimes. but her age doesnt actually change. i suspect that it will once the body catches up.
no it wont. the body may have to get wrinkled eventually, but inside, i do not.
well, i think it will drive her crazy when Jess is older than she is.
never happen. the body will be, jess will never.
yea, ok. hehe. well, we'll see. were hoping LEll decides to age one day. we suspect that shes stuck there because Jess didnt get accurate care until about that age. when LEll first came out, she was obsessed with all the things that 'werent rite for a little kid'. Jess forgot to wash clothes and LEll had to wear the clothes that were clean yesterday afternoon and got sat in the rest of yesterday? she whined over it all day - how a little kid should have clean clothes to wear. Jess was supposed to walk to the store while it was actually LEll who was out? she called Jess's best friend on the phone and talked almost nonstop about how a kid shouldnt be walking away from the house all alone. shes let up on that lately, and even started to try to push for bending a few rules, like bedtime. we hope the next step is feeling safe to age a little bit, as i think that will mean that she feels like she was finally raised rite. dont think shes near ready for that thou.

This is a pretty good thread that discusses the different ways alters can age if you're interested:

-- Alters & aging?: http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic97811.html



-Cassandra

That is really interesting! Thank you!