Identifying yourself/others inside?

I'm having some trouble with identifying alters. We are co con for the most part, at least I have a lot of communication in my cluster and know others do too, however we are finding difficult it to pinpoint exactly who we are within the system, as well as identifying each other. For example, we had a young sad alter out last week, who was having difficulty with eye contact, speaking, was very quiet and quite upset, and then we went to the park and (as expected) suddenly there was lots of smiles and chatting, willingness to explain what was happening, even some giggles and excitement. My question is, how can I begin to identify if this is one of us going from being sad to happy, or a switch? My only clue is going from not willing to express what was happening to wanting to talk about it and explain, which my mate has suggested to me before is a sign to her that Cora has popped in for a visit.

Does anyone have any tips on finding a bit of internal clarity? I'm keeping a journal but finding it hard to be consistent (shock horror hahaha), and am probably going to start our own thread here to see if that's a bit more effective. Do you guys know any good ways of using a journal to help with identifying, like exercises you've done or things that have worked for you? Or are there other ways you use to tell each other apart when it's all so mushed up in here?

Thanks for reading! Hope today's a good one for you all.

Hmm not sure. Sounds like you suspect there are quite a few of you which we have never been faced with. For years there were just three of us, then we discovered others along the way one by one. When we did first try to talk to these others, it was in the form of a written dialogue.
Example:

Me: hi I'm listening
Them: (shoulders tighten and breathing gets shallow)
Me: would you like to tell me how you're doing?
Them: (feel like crying)

Etc. Until I could get some words or maybe even a name out of them. It took a lot of intense "listening" and noticing before they were able to be fully present and then gradually it became clear what parts of the whole's behavior was attributable to them. Then a character and personality emerge from the chaos.

Not sure if this is good advice, but that's what we did.
Bryony

One of the things I do a lot is ask my internal helper, Rebecca. If you have someone on the inside who's a helper or a gatekeeper, maybe you can ask them if there's been a switch, or who is out, who was out earlier, is someone influencing, that sort of thing.

We don't always get direct or clear answers, but we usually get something.

-Violet (1)

Thanks for your replies ColouredLeaves and VioletFlux

Bryony, I'm really interested in trying out your suggestion because I always get so frustrated with confusing verbal responses that I think I stop paying attention to the way our body feels and other more subtle reactions to the questions I'm asking. I never would have thought of that so thanks so much for leaving your response.

Violet (1), we actually met our gatekeeper for the first time very recently, she lives deep, deep in the inner world (so deep we actually encountered her in a dream), but we feel has not only the visual records of a huge number of us (we got a peek into the first volume of a book filled with ourselves), but also has the ability to see that more than one of us are blended when only one is presenting. When we arrived she looked a little shocked and said to me "Oh, I didn't realise you were bringing others." and then asked if one of the violent ones was safe, to which I replied yes. I could feel the way she sensed us, it was fascinating, and I would love to know more, I just need to figure out a way to contact her! I wouldn't have thought to ask for clarification from her though in times of confusion, so I'm really interested to give your suggestion a go.

Internally, we've received some answers on this too. One of the big things they're seeking is more respect, that they be listened to both when we're looking for answers and when they just want to express themselves. Which I know is something I really need to work on. When someone, or especially when more than one someone at a time, starts talking spontaneously I tend to get overwhelmed very quickly and shut them down, and it's not fair to do that and then still expect them to answer my questions. So that's my goal for the next little bit, patience and respect.