Lying soab

Do you have any alters that lie about who they are when they're out and you're asking? If so how can you catch the lie and reveal their true identity? Preferably before they cause any damage. It happened yesterday and only now are we figuring this out. It should have been obvious but really it's so confusing. It would explain a lot.
Eric Jess and Jennifer

I would try to figure out why they are lying first and avoid calling my parts names. We only have Z who lies really the rest of us hate lying. Z lies to keep secrets sometimes we agree with and want to keep them and sometimes not so much. Z keeps secrets because she thinks she needs to, to keep us and those we view as important safe.

That’s a tough one. Sunflower has only had it happen a few times that I’ve been aware of. It is even harder to catch as she also has occasional short term amnesia (and Meg has verified that Sunflower was “driving” when this happened).

One of them tried to impersonate Sunflower and did a pretty darn good job of it except for a few quirks here and there. I wasn’t even sure who it was for a while, but questioned them and they offered to answer any question that "only my wife would know" to prove it. I realized quickly, that was a rigged game. Eventually I asked to talk to Meg. When she came out she explained how she was blocked and what happened that was backed up by other evidence. She also may have lied to her T and when called on it just winked. I think it was a kind of protection method.

What to do? I don’t have "the" answer. I’ve talked to them and told them it is okay to be themselves. Told them I accept them as they are and that it is safe and they won’t get in trouble. We aren’t on good terms yet, but we are at least occasionally speaking and I haven’t seen the impersonation since.

We have had a handful of times where someone was fronting who seemed to be V1 or myself, but after-the-fact we realized it was not either of us. Eg. if I thought V1 was fronting then later V1 appeared and we realized it hadn't been her who had been out.

We don't know who it is that does this, or if it's more than one. When they impersonate, the one they're impersonating is usually in the void and unaware of what is happening.

Fortunately they haven't done anything bad, at least not that we're aware of. TBH we don't know if they even know they're not who they say they are, like we don't know if it's impersonation because of deception, or if it's impersonation because of confusion or whatever.

No idea how to detect it or identify who's doing it... but if you have the opportunity to communicate with them, directly or through someone else, we'd always go with communication as the first step. Try and talk with them, find out what they want, what they need. They're probably doing what they think is best, even if it seems bad at first.

V2

Thanks guys. And sorry for the name calling NyxX.
We experience this situation the same as you do violetflux. And I suspect the same dynamics as in sunflowergals' system. We think it's Chris. Impersonating Eric. Truly terrifying. But it might very well be someone else. And I am indeed far trom sure that he even realizes he's not Eric. We think it's Chris because he was triggered on Sunday.

Since you mention it, ours was also shortly after a triggering event.

The closest thing we've had to that is someone writing in the journal without wanting to say who they are. They'll just use the black pen as if they're someone new. It's always because they are saying something they're afraid one of us will be angry or upset at them about. So they're "hiding" by using the general "host" color instead of their usual color.

I'm just mentioning this to kind of reframe it--I never think of it as lying but more as if a scared young person is afraid of making someone angry and then somehow being punished. When I want to know what's going on when something is confusing, I need to do a lot of reassuring that "no one is in trouble--I just want to understand what's going on." It's something I learned from my T, because there are parts that get scared sometimes when he asks questions.

There is no need to apologise to us, I mentioned it because we feel like if we called anyone inside names it would make them less likely to cooperate with us and more likely to do whatever made us want to call them names. In this case make them lie more because they are thinking ###$ you.

Things spiral out of control for us very quickly. Negative thoughts feed more negative thoughts etc. So we try to be careful about trying to defuse situations and not escalating them.

Sentinel and Tdae both act as proxies for other alters. Sentinel in particular might be like, "I am Sentinel and I think xyz." But when I reflect I realize she is speaking for someone else or on their behalf. She speaks for Tdae, and she can mimic the Fronts to a point. These are skills Sentinel has learned she has since she became self-aware of her role as protector. Tdae is another subsystem, and anyone in the system can call themselves Tdae even if they have their own name. It is not intended to be deceptive but protective.

So how could I try to communicate without risking a switch again? Really all I know about him is what I remember from our journal communications (they are gone so I can't review) and the rare times he does talk to us instead of (scream) at us from his own protected space. We used to have some communication a long time ago. I know he doesn't like my t.. He keeps screaming the moron should go F herself. Which is not surprising since this t (we have 2 therapists) won't even one bit acknowledge us or him (it happened partially during session).