Decided to start a thread so we don't keep posting new threads that probably no one is interested in.
Our situation: we finally found treatment directions and therapists that inspire confidence and are catching up after a couple of years with the wrong kind of support.
There's a lot to say about that, but I actually want to talk about one of my alters and how he seems like a key to so much, but also elusive and hard to understand. This alter, Alex, had a personal crisis and weakening when became aware he couldn't have his own life the way he had imagined he'd had in the past. (When we were physically 18-20, he was a main work alter and I was the home alter. After that, things were more complicated, mostly due to the fact that he is a strong masculine presence and somehow this was determined not to be good.) He also seems to have picked up some unfortunate beliefs about his role in the system.
Anyway, he went underground after hearing from a therapist that the road to integration was to influence other alters rather than switch. He put all his energy into transferring his traits to me and others, hoping to disappear and stop the problems he thought he was causing. This kind of worked. I'm more Alex-like than I was before in my abilities, but I'm still not Alex. (Hmm. My "me" in this post is totally confused. It's as if more than one is writing this. My POV keeps shifting.)
Alex is on the one hand this easy-going, calming, friendly engineer in the outside world. He likes challenges and doesn't take things personally. On the other hand, he loves all intellectual pursuits in every area and is very sensitive and insecure when it comes to his role in the system. I'm not sure whether he may be two different alters (or maybe the same alter, heavily influenced by specific others?). I haven't asked him yet.
Anyway, not having Alex around has been difficult but has forced different alters to step in and find different solutions to problems. While he has been gone, he seems to have changed a lot, including by getting more connections in the inner words, but most of the system seems to want him to come back in some capacity. He is not so sure about it, in large part because of the gender thing. At our request, he came back today (but I didn't notice that I was co-present but not in control for some time--it's not as though he announced himself) for a while. I hope he enjoyed it. Definitely made my day better.
At the same time, I think my system may be having some kind of consolidation or new organization or changing of the guard. This isn't the first time it's happened, but it's the first time when I've been aware. I hope it's a sign of healing and not just a routine thing. My system has been very hard to pin down. There are still sections I have no idea about it, but at least there are signs of interest in open communication.
And somehow this is all supposed to have something to do with being able to approach my PTSD...