System in Chaos *Trigger Warning*

Question the last week my son's little state, little Austin, approx age 3, wants to stay out all day and the host age 12 is ok with that. I asked him he says it feels good when the younger one is out and they share co-consciousness so there is no time loss. He will switch back when I ask him too but not for long, he prefers the younger self. He says there is no stress just happiness. We went for about 6 weeks without seeing the little guy at all.

I have noticed more anxiety the last couple weeks and agitation with the older self. He went off the chain today, disassociated into a very aggressive state. There was no reasoning with him, I did manage to get him to take a shower, so I guess there was some reasoning, and then he switched back into the little state. He was scared to death about how aggressive the older one. Later tonight I was talking to the older state and he said he was also scared how aggressive he got. We talked about dissociation and explained it was another state and that we are always here working as a team to help him.

I am feeling his system is getting very unregulated again. He was doing very well for a couple of months and now we are regressing again. I really feel I am fighting a battle of raging hormones from a tween along with it's affect on DID. What should I expect from a 12 yr old with DID and his system. TIA

What to expect with a 12 year old who is not living with an abuser? Well, first, in children even the most aggressive older alters are really young child alters in disguise. So if you are open to using films as psychoeducation then The LEGO Movie (2014) could be helpful. It has a DID character, Good Cop/Bad Cop. I think it may be gentle enough for him at this time. One movie to reserve for later, when he is more stable, is Inside Out (2015).

There are some books that could help. Do you have Dissociation in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Perspective by Frank W. Putnam? I also recommend his book, Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder; I have read it cover to cover several times and it is the book I recommend most often to therapists.

Has there been any amnesia this week?

Inside out I use a lot with my therapy kiddos, it helps them a lot. I have seen the movie Lego, I have to watch it again, it has been a lot time and at the time I was not paying much mind to the theme.

He has had some, he in his little state, did not know who the neighbor was or other things. I ask him, he says it is an old guy. I would then ask him to search his brain he knows who it is, he came up with the answer. Same thing some basic he said he did not know, I again said think about it you know. I figure this is the best way to keep the amnesia barrier down and keep open communication between them.

The little one did tell me why the older one got so upset, I already know, but I like the fact that he can also tell me. It helps self-awareness. It is also good to see him realize that his actions were not acceptable; as much acceptance, taking responsibility, and awareness I am hoping will continue for the different states to talk to one another and if the aggression hits again hopefully another state can help him reason what is going on. Or at least have some sort of co-conscience occurring, I have see co-conscience a lot with the little state and the older one, both out at the same time. Hopefully this can happen while we help the aggression part work through what he is feeling and find validation.

One can hope but that is what I am going to start to suggest while we work through it. When the host was being attacked by the Satan alter I tagged team him using the host and the little guy as the host was completely shut down, I mean like we were going to have an medical emergency. He also has conversion disorder and will start to convulse and stop breathing. It worked at the time, not sure if it was the right thing to do, but I discovered then that they can work together if one is getting overwhelmed.

You are doing great!

Amnesia:

Directing him to look inside is exactly right; doing this is developing his system's ability to achieve co-consciousness. It is so much easier with children than with adults.

As a child myself I was aware, and so was my family, that I had these peculiar spots of amnesia. But no one thought to do anything about it. My family of origin was not healthy; they looked away from a lot of problems. "Nothing to be done so just erase it from your mind." It took me a huge amount of work in therapy and on my own, as an adult, to start to melt the amnesia barriers inside my head. And I do mean melt. There were startling physical sensations of abrupt melting inside my head. This is a hallucination of sorts, sometimes put in a category of other hallucinatory phenomena called cephalic aura. We do not all have the same subjective experience of the barriers going down. More common, possibly because it is suggested by therapists who have read certain books, is imagery of doors opening. Naturally we have a thread about cephalic auras:

DID Forum: Your head sensations

Tag-teaming:

A lot of people with DID experience a tag-teaming style of more or less deliberate switching when under a lot of stress. It is so common that it is one of the signs Richard Kluft says to look for in his 2005 paper Diagnosing Dissociative Identity Disorder in Psychiatric Annals 35:8. See:

DID Forum: Kluft's (2005) "dissociative surface"
Google Search: tag-teaming site:http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity

Related to tag-teaming but not under the person's control is revolving door switching:

DID Forum: Revolving Door

Seizures:

As you may know, ICD-10 still calls DID by its old name MPD and groups it with the conversion disorders. Conversion symptoms are very common. Treating the DID generally eliminates these symptoms; they don't have to be worked on directly. However any symptoms that put life at risk need direct attention. Now that you know DID is involved you have a superpower: you can call other parts of him to step in and handle a crisis and stop the convulsions, and as if by magic the other parts will find they can do that.

You are doing great, Mom.

I met Kluft at the seminar. In person he was very abrupt and not too friendly......But I do have to say he has a great deal of knowledge. I sat in his 8 hr class, I have access to it again as they auto taped the entire 5 days of classes and I have the PP slides. I am started back with DID basic 101. I was thrown into Z and I skipped A-Y......Now I am learning what most signaltons start out with.....