Core personality (Trigger warning)

For short: how do you know which one is the core?

I know everyone doesn't have one. It's when traumas have started at so young age, that you never created core personality, but several different ones from the start. Our story is different, there has been something potentially traumatizing going on our whole life, but the real serious traumas started when we were 11 yo. So we had just one or two of us 'till 11, but we were maybe unstable just that much that we split completely at that age, even when it's not usually possible. Many bad things happened then at the same time.

There might be two of us from the beginning or from very young age, but I think maybe just one. And first we split in to two. Then there was me (us) Aleksi, and there was Elias. After that several parts has been split from both of us. We have like two different lines of parts, Aleksi's and Elias's, and some parts I don't know where they've come from. If I try to remember things before 11, I know some stuff, but it's maybe just things I've heard, not that I personally remember them happening, and for sure it doesn't feel it was happening to me. Does that mean it wasn't me back then?

Elias stayed at age 12. He's trapped standing scared in the bathroom in our innerworld, and he comes out sometimes when he thinks we are gonna be beaten up. Not so much lately, now we have many protective parts also, Elias is completely submissive. He's too scared to talk, I know he's close when talking feels hard and we can't pee anymore. But for some reason Elias holds also all our innocence. I have many parts who'd want desperately be innocent, but only Elias truly feels he is. He feels he's purely a victim. He wishes to be saved. So most of our willingness to live lays inside Elias. That's why I think he's the most protected part as well.

His trauma is to be tortured because of how we look like. And he's being accused of having sex with adults. He knows he hasn't. That's why he's innocent and victim and thinks he can be saved. The truth is, we did have sex with adults, but it was us, from Aleksi's line. No one in Elias's line knows about that. And if they will find out, it will kill us. It will kill all our hope.

We are suicidal anyway. Us hosts are suicidal, because we know the whole story. I've understood it's usually the host that's most protected? That the hosts can continue with their life, cause others carry the trauma, and hosts are ignorant about a lot of stuff they couldn't handle. For us it's different, cause we know. And our hope is trapped inside and been protected that way, even if he's not very happy, he's definitely traumatized, and too scared to understand what year we are living and what is happening in real world. When he fronts, he sees everything very twisted way, doesn't understand the facts about our life now.

We Aleksis carry our given name, so that's why I thought for a long time we are the original one. But when I try to draw us all in lines, who's been here first and who's split from who, I always become dizzy and start loosing reality and I need to stop. It's because I panic when starting to realize maybe it wasn't us from the beginning, it was someone else. Then I loose track who am I at all anymore and it freaks me out.

I've started to think maybe Elias is "the real Aleksi", the core. Or maybe it was someone else, who doesn't exist anymore after splitting, or is in hide.

So how do you know who's the original?

This is something I've been wondering for a long time. I always thought I was the original host, but I'm not sure I am. One of the reasons I've questioned it is because my family won't stop pointing out how different I am today than when I was little. When I was little, I was very extroverted. I wanted to be friends with everyone and see my friends happy. As time went on, I became more and more introverted. I felt people couldn't be trusted, so I deliberately isolated myself to protect my sensitive feelings. My family was oblivious to this fact, which is why they think my change to this overly introverted and paranoid person was something that started within the last 5-9 years. It's possible the original doesn't exist anymore in my system, but I have no idea.

Isn't the idea of a core or original based on an outdated theory of how DID occurs? I thought that the current thinking was that it's not a split of an already-formed personality, but the disruption of the natural development of a single identity.

Rather than progressing to a single identity that then continues to develop, different memories/feelings/thoughts that need to be kept separate because they are overwhelming or incompatible with survival start to be carried by different parts.

So no single identity comes together, and the different parts proceed through their own development (or get stuck at a certain point in time). And then more parts might be created when more trauma occurs, since this is now the known mechanism for dealing with trauma or stress.

I'm not sure how having a core or original would even fit in with this theory. Having an original host is a completely different thing. There could certainly be a main host part that handled the everyday life of someone as a child or adult--you could call the first one of these the "original host," but it was just a part, too, like the others.

Thank you for answering.

To us it's even more difficult, coz we have no one who knows us from our past. I was brain damaged by abuse age 13 and then we were taken into custody permanently. Brain damage can cause differences in personality as well, but no one can tell if that has happened, since no one knew me before that. After that I've moved three times and been hospitalized about 8 months, so everyone around us is there just for few months and then gone. So it's just what we can remember ourselves.

From another thread:

PlanetIcarus wrote:I made a thread about this, but no one answered, so just wanted to ask.. How do you know who is the core? That's a new thing for me, and I wish to understand how have people found who is theirs? Are they different somehow, or how do you tell they are something "more" than others.

I don't know how one would know. We don't have one. Maybe Claire, but that's pure speculation based on her being the earliest split we can identify.

We learned that we have DID because Stephanie vanished and V1 took over as host. Before that day we had no idea. Stephanie thought (or wanted to believe) she was alone. So, V1 basically emerged and knew from the start she was new, and we knew Stephanie wasn't the original either.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:Isn't the idea of a core or original based on an outdated theory of how DID occurs? I thought that the current thinking was that it's not a split of an already-formed personality, but the disruption of the natural development of a single identity.

V1 and I have a theory that basically says it depends on when the trauma / abuse started, compared to when the personality is coalescing.

Like, maybe if you get to age 2 or 3 before the $#%^ hits the fan, then maybe a personality is starting to form, but that process gets interrupted. Then you have a 'core' or an 'original', with other parts forming adjacent to it.

OTOH if the trauma / abuse begins right from the start, then a single personality never even starts to form, and instead you get a system where there is no core, and no singular original, just a collection of parts.

It sort of splits the difference I think, in terms of the structural dissociation theory, and the older theory.

But I'm no expert and neither is V1 lol. I'm not even sure this theory is ours, or maybe we read it somewhere and just really liked it?

Anyways, as a part of a system with no core, no original, I am curious as to why it actually matters? Who cares who was first, what matters is who's here now. IMHO.

-V2

All theories are just theories, I know it's kinda stupid try to fit in any of those.

I just think we could have someone original, since we've been traumatized at so late age. Or maybe we weren't, and I just don't know it all. But it drives me crazy not knowing who am I. Maybe I haven't even been here then. Well, of course I have in a way, we don't come here from plain air, but still. It makes me feel nothing is real, cause I don't know who I am.

I don't want to be just an other alter, I want to be a person.

(I once said this to one counselor, and she said it's normal not to know who you are when going thru your puberty. I could've killed her for that. IT'S NOT NORMAL IF YOU DON'T KNOW ARE YOU AN ALTER OR A PERSON! Just didn't say a word to her after that.)

Well, at least I look like our body does, have same age (at least about) and gender. So things could be lot worse I ques.. Doesn't really comfort though.

PlanetIcarus wrote:I don't want to be just an other alter, I want to be a person.

Well, to me an alter isn't different than a person. It's a different kind of person, a kind who works in team with other alters to survive into an hostil environment.

An alter isn't less than a "single-minded" people, 'cause if you think about it, singletons who do things all alone all the time are really rare. Most of them have friends, family, co-workers etc. It's a kind of a system too.
They just don't share the same body.

If it can help, I tend to think about a system like a wolf pack (animal alter here ).
Each wolf is an individual with a mind of his own, but he has to cooperate with the rest of the pack in order to survive. Each wolf has a role to play and they have to become one entity to face the forest. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.
But at the end, that doesn't mean they aren't a "person" of their own.

PlanetIcarus wrote:For short: how do you know which one is the core?

well, dont bother too much..
Its usually the youngest one, and that one is asleep deep into the black, a long way from everything. your ISH may know who that is, but usually the ISH would recommend not to wake that one up until everything else is in order.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:Isn't the idea of a core or original based on an outdated theory of how DID occurs? I thought that the current thinking was that it's not a split of an already-formed personality, but the disruption of the natural development of a single identity.

Rather than progressing to a single identity that then continues to develop, different memories/feelings/thoughts that need to be kept separate because they are overwhelming or incompatible with survival start to be carried by different parts.

So no single identity comes together, and the different parts proceed through their own development (or get stuck at a certain point in time). And then more parts might be created when more trauma occurs, since this is now the known mechanism for dealing with trauma or stress.

I'm not sure how having a core or original would even fit in with this theory. Having an original host is a completely different thing. There could certainly be a main host part that handled the everyday life of someone as a child or adult--you could call the first one of these the "original host," but it was just a part, too, like the others.

Sorry to quote the whole post, but we strongly agree with all of the above.

MDs

Dwelt wrote:Well, to me an alter isn't different than a person. It's a different kind of person, a kind who works in team with other alters to survive into an hostil environment.

To me as an outsider and singleton, then i dont see any difference between an alter and a person. fragments may have a very limited life-experience , but they are still a person too.
-however, how much of what is shared in the group, and what is individual, may be different for different systems. some systems may share the whole languagesetup (so that when one learns a new language, all of the others knows it too) while other systems has alters who speaks different languages and dont understand eachother at all.