New part without new trauma

Aleksi started dating all the sudden two months before our body turned 14, with another boy, 2 years older than him. At first he thought he was just thinking about S. (the boyfriend) in his mind, but soon it started to be clear there was a new part forming.

Alter named himself Jonathan, and he started to have his own opinions and style different from S's. Jonathan is not gay, but he is having like a bromance thing with S. They do like to hang out together, they get along well, which is quite logical as Jonathan was created from the picture of S. in our mind. They have quite weird relationship, because Jonathan is very aware he is living inside the body S. is in love with. It doesn't bother him too much though. And he has some intimate feelings for S. too, but not to the point of actually being gay or bi, just slightly. He does not want to be touched, that is a clear boundary. They share cigarettes though, it's like "a thing" of theirs.

At first Jonathan never fronted in front of anyone else than S. and only outdoors. That's why they created the habit to smoke together. (We are now living in the same youth home with S.) Lately he has grown much more independent, and it is VERY clear he is not just us thinking something, because we have started to loose time when he does his things. He wants to have his own body and his own life, separate from the rest of us. He has also started to sometimes front regardless of other people in there, but he prefers to be alone, or with S. He is introverted, and feels the need to just go outside sometimes away from people.

I do wonder about him sometimes, because shouldn't it be trauma that causes parts to exist?

In a way we can imagine that we maybe needed someone there to make dating possible, after so much trauma towards our body and sexuality and everything. But Jonathan is not the one dating. He started as a kind of introject (or is the word factive?) and then grew. And it can be triggering for many of us to know we are dating boys, but most of them don't know about it. Like anyone in Elias' subsystem, they don't know about things that are happening now in the real world.

Has any of you had anything similar?

Now we are dating another boy also, L. So the three of us are all together, not just me with them. Some of L's features are kind of starting live inside us also. It is just not that clear than it was with Jonathan. And we kind of already had a state of mind for L, we've known him since we were 11. State of mind is not copy of him though, it's a version of Aleksi.

From what we've read, trauma is only 'necessary' at the begining, in order for DID to occur. But later in life, after the mind has 'learned' how to split, new parts can be created without new trauma.

Like if the system needs someone to handle a particular function and none of the existing parts can or want to do it. Or parts can be created for positive (rather than negative) experiences.

We're pretty sure that has happened more than once in our system, eg. at one point we needed a part who could act responsible with money, be an adult, etc, so the system created one. And V2 seems to have come into being as the positive happy teen, compared to the unhappy troubled teen who was actually fronting during those years.

Violet 1

From what I have read, too, the only time trauma is seen as a requirement is for the initial onset of the dissociation. Once that has happened and the mind begins to understand and/or use that as a coping mechanism, it can do so at any time- and worth noting, too, that what is "traumatic" to the mind in a given situation is largely perception-based. Not every person will have the same reaction to the same circumstances. So what may seem trivial to one could be dire to another, and the same could be true of the mind. What we perceive outside as stress but not trauma could, due to underlying mental trauma, be received by the mind in a much more severe manner and dealt with accordingly.

On the trauma can be different for different people one of the definitions of trauma is "An event or situation that causes great disruption or suffering." An event causing great disruption is not necessarily bad, particularly is your normal is bad.

As I've learnt more about our system that instead of adjusting and adapting to changes in our life we create a new self to deal with the change.

I agree with what others have said. Maybe this part is able to fulfill a role that you weren't able to fulfill otherwise. Perhaps you don't have someone who 'defends' not wanting to be touched, etc. It sounds like a protector to me, making sure you are keeping a safe distance.

NyxX wrote:As I've learnt more about our system that instead of adjusting and adapting to changes in our life we create a new self to deal with the change.

We do that too, and I think we've done that our whole life. We have someone for everyone and everything. Usually it's not someone with a whole personality and identity of their own, it's just versions of Aleksi. So there are and have been so many of us, we could never give names to all of them.

I've even noticed that if I like someone or not, it's not so much about the person him-/herself, but if we like to be the one who we are with that person. (But if someone doesn't like us, we get stuck with that, thinking WHY, and trying to please or understand so much, we can't even notice if we feel the same way about them, until afterwards.)

fireheart wrote:Perhaps you don't have someone who 'defends' not wanting to be touched, etc. It sounds like a protector to me, making sure you are keeping a safe distance.

It's true I don't have those kind of boundaries at all. Jonathan doesn't defend my boundaries though, but his own. But we do share a body, so it can be sometimes about the body being not touched.

I've also thought if we needed someone to do the friendship part. We are better with the physical part of the relationships and can't really cope friendships so well. We want to solve all the problems with sex, and not just the ones in the relationship, but all of them.

Sometimes it is like the hardest thing in the world try to understand what should we do when we don't actually do anything, but just ARE together. Can be very confusing sometimes.

VioletFlux wrote:We're pretty sure that has happened more than once in our system, eg. at one point we needed a part who could act responsible with money, be an adult, etc, so the system created one. And V2 seems to have come into being as the positive happy teen, compared to the unhappy troubled teen who was actually fronting during those years.

I think in our system Nooa can be something like that too. When old Aleksi was a host and Elias' subsystem was active, there was too much trauma related to our looks, and we needed someone there to do all grooming for us. Someone to take care of our hair and teeth and so on, who looks like body does but is not guilty because of that. And then we got Nooa, with good self-esteem. He looks almost like the body does, and would want to make the body look like he does. And it would be the healthy way let him do that. But we still have too much trauma and troubles, he is not the only one making the choices.

He has more responsibility than that though. He is kind of a gate keeper, letting parts near the body. He can't stop anyone from fronting if they already are near, but he can keep them from getting near, at least sometimes when he's active. We were kind of a mess when he was away for 6 months at one point, even though he did it for us to maybe survive our next birthday.

Jonathan doesn't like he's being talked about. I'm sorry Jon.