If you didn't always know about alters, how'd you find out?

Hi. This is my first post here. I have no idea if I have DID. I found out my dissociation issues aren't just a 'every few months' thing and are actually a constant issue much worse than I thought. I'm going to talk to my therapist more about it tomorrow. He thinks I have a dissociative disorder but up in the air about that still... But I have been reading a lot.

What I'm curious about is this: a lot of people with DID or DDNOS report always being aware of alters, as far as they can remember into their childhood, even if they didn't have language for them beyond "imaginary friend" or "voices."

But I have seen others say they only became aware of their alters later in life. So what was that experience like, if anyone would be OK sharing? Was it like just sudden realization they were there after years of them hiding/amnesia around them? Or did it take work to unravel everything?

Hi harebell. I can't understand why no one replied to this yet, or why I didn't catch it. No one that I've ever read about finds every alter at once. It's more a process over time, though there can definitely be periods of discovering several alters in a short period of time.

For me personally, I had evidence of two alters many years ago. In trying to figure out things about our life and by trying to interpret some dreams in therapy, Johnny (we think it was him) had a sudden awareness of a little boy inside, who was him and not him. Words can't really describe the experience. Because he was so shocked, another alter took over for us for a couple days. We remember watching him. Jonathan felt familiar but some of his thought we caught indicated he was there to help and he would pretend "to be John" as best he could.

This is our experience and everyone's will be unique. Some multiples always sort of knew or definitely knew. We didn't know, though as we got older and did therapy we suspected we might have DID. In hindsight we had a lot of clues and we were closer to knowing at times. Denial in DID can be very strong and the quality of my therapy was sometimes poor. I was looking for evidence and I just didn't have enough. But I was looking for signs of multiplicity that were more cliches or common but by no means universal experiences, like finding things you don't remember buying.

It has taken work to unravel it but as for many, once I acknowledged that, okay, this must be DID, the floodgates opened and awareness came more easily and quickly. Some of it was destabilizing, much of it produced both pain and relief that I finally might just understand my life and get better.

This has been very slow process for me and difficult to answer. Hindsight it also an issue. My first conscious awareness of another happened in my late 20's (body ow 51) but once I was a ware of her then I could backtrack a and sort of realised I had been aware of her for a lot longer - just not consciously. Don't know if that makes sense. There followed an awareness of some internal dialogue and an internal little. There have been periods of relative quiet and some stability then over the years emergence of more usually after some crisis - at each stage of crisis there would be a similar hind site thing going on where I would become conscious of someone else and then realise that they had been there for many years. We have a mixed system now with several fairly dormant alters who still exist internally but have little outside influence. We also have a mix of what appear to be alters that have some executive control, some who have internal dialogue and other entities that serve a function but don't seem to speak. there is also a mixture of awareness between themselves.

I became aware of some of the alters in our system when I was a teenager, maybe 15. Then after a couple years everything sort of 'went dark,' and I completely forgot about the whole period of mental health crisis. I remembered that period of my life, just none of the mental health stuff. I have started to suspect that there was a complete host change. Anyway, over a decade later I suddenly recalled the whole multiple year long episode, doubted my memory about it, and eventually confirmed it with a friend from that time. Then after more time I became aware of one alter after another. Some of them in bursts and some more spaced out. Like LittleMie we also have been able to then look back and recognize times when other alters were out.

Johnny-Jack wrote:Hi harebell. I can't understand why no one replied to this yet, or why I didn't catch it.

Administrivia: this was harebell's first post, and on this site all first posts are held for a moderator to come by and approve before anyone else can see it. The wait can be days.

I encountered 2 of my alters decades before my diagnosis but did not realize they were alters and their presence signified DID. I shared my career with one alter, my "other self", without ever realizing he was an alter. And I had episodes of lost time from which I came to and also amnesias that I was unaware of at the time but discovered long after the fact. It never occurred to me to ask who was in executive control of my body when I lost time. At the time of my diagnosis there were 6 of us. I am embarrassed to say that although I had so many clues, so many unambiguous signs and symptoms, and I had even made a list of them all, the diagnosis came as a complete surprise to me. I had in the past made a very deliberate choice not to learn anything about so-called abnormal psychology. SIgh.

when i was at school i lost about 3 months of time and came to with purple hair and obviously knowing a lot of punks. but i didnt know then.
friends reported back that i had been acting very childish but i didnt know then.
someone wrote an article in the students magazine, hating on a teacher, in my name. it was all confusing but i didnt get it.
it wasnt until Asti stepped forward and addressed me directly that i understood that there is someone else.

my first suspicion of sharing my life with others was at age 19. I remained unaware, but kind of wondering, until age 33. I was drinking coffee in my morning chair. I told myself to go look at the inside front cover of a spiral notebook in another room. it had a roll call.

and I have been going down the rabbit hole ever since.

I was diagnosed 2012 by a licensed clinical social worker. No, never had no one take a liking to us in this way. Never had any psychological knowledge to agree, not that I didn't disagree with her. Just didn't want no dx's but that is the name of the game when you go to talk with some candidly! It is been incredibly painful and few rewards depends on what I get later in life will i answer to that fully. Most things in life are driven by what you gain money great family etc. Keeping it real! Not necessarily how superior your brain is unless you got a career specially for that. I'll probably stay around for the next 10 years or so then I will concisely tell you if I got what I actually needed. I wanted to discuss someone's else's cheating ways and sadness in a marriage. I got way more than I can bargain for.

years ago, we learned about the concept of being nonbinary (gender.) we had at times felt like we are a trans man, a transmasculine person, but then nonbinary fit.

this brought to light the concept of androgyny as a gender. having a male half and a female half. while none of any of us are cisgender, we felt kinship in the idea of duality as a gender identity; if not in otuward presentation, then, in inward identity. before knowing about DID or alters, we felt teo-halved, with a central third (core) of self that was genderless.

now, we realize: those two halves were formations of what was, is and will be Lindsey and Ish. we don't get invasive with gender/sex definitions in a public manner/with typing things, but suffice to say that it is about so much more than a binary gender definition with us.

our original term for our internal selves was aspects, and we still don't mind taht term at all. it's virtually the same as multiples, or alters; just diff word.

we 'officially' identify as nonbinary; it feels as if this appeases us all and is not uncomfortable. none of us are male or female in identity; we all feel nonbinary. outwardly, we could be said to be transfeminine, since female-themed clothing was NOT something that we could wear for most of our lives; it was triggering, it made us hate ourself, it caused the most dysphoria and tears and when we tried wearing a skirt, it would be changed-out-of in hours into pants. now, we can wear skirts; we like them for their comfortability, and actually wore one in public to some events last year and this year.

in short, we found out about alters online through reading about DID. we got to that reading in a manner that we don't remember clearly, but we got here, and we are GLAD beyond WORDS.