Lack of consistency in my head (venting)

I wasn't here for a while. Mostly because I felt, like I don't belong here. Many stories of people here sound so logical and consistent. There seem to be clear an distinct parts with a consistent story.
In my case it is the opposite. There is a lot of weirdness happening in my head, and some phenomena are close to DID symptoms, that's probably why am returning here from time to time. But in general it is just a huge mess in my head and my feelings.

There are some moments in which there seem to be parts, who perceive themselves clearly distinct from the rest of the "me". But for myself it is just a confusing feeling of not knowing who I am and there are also many stories in my head and in my journal which don't add up or even are outright contradicting.

There is for example this "kid part". Sometime I feel myself like a small kid, like 5 years maybe. I start to walk weird, feel like the body is way to big, I feel very anxious and have problem to process complex information (like at a work meeting, which leads to difficult situations). Yesterday I even had an embarrassing high-pigged voice until I noticed it and started to talk normal again. Then it is gone, and I function totally normal for a while.
If that would be the only thing that happens, I could kind of understand and I would interpret it as a kid part, that is co-presence with me and I could maybe even start to work with this part in therapy. But there are like 10 different narratives and perceptions about "a kid part" in my head and journal. There are at least 4 different names. In two stories it is a girl. The one I feel I am from time to time, is a boy. In one story the kid is able to wield magic and was jailed in a tower by it's parents because it was to dangerous for the world. One kid lived in some sort of hell and was constantly screaming in panic, then it was saved by an other part and transformed in a cat (I often heard the screaming inside my head and it did actually stop since then). There are also disturbing stories about abuse of a kid, but luckily they are so fictional they definitely aren't any memories. But they still are piling up on this mess of kid-stories.

Similar inconsistency is happening with teen and adult parts. They all perceive themselves different. Some disappear for month or years, some only say hello once and never again. Some are called by different names by different parts.

How should this s**t add up? It is really difficult to believe myself (not to mention that any outside person could follow in this mess). How should anything of this make sense or even see as something I could take care of? It just seems like my over-productive mind is unconsciously constantly firing new stories, which are piling up and making me less and less functional. But there is nothing consistent I can grab and make some sense out of it.

I'd appreciate but also don't expect any answers here. I guess it is difficult to follow all the frustrated chaos I am writing down here

-NoName... because I really have no clue who I am right now

for a long time, i felt like i didn't belong here because my symptoms felt inconsistent to me. i didn't seem to be losing time, alters appeared very sporadically with no rhyme or reason attached to it, i would have "conversations" with people in my head but not know who i was speaking to, it felt like a sudden thing that had popped up out of nowhere. i thought i was just imagining things, that me being trapped at home all the time had led to me making stuff up out of boredom.

after a literal year of trying to figure things out, i learned that a specific alter - lain - had an ability to put the system in lock-down mode. the sporadic moments where switches happened was due to alters briefly escaping the defenses. according to the others, we had functioned for a very long time under this kind of set-up, where there is an isolated host out front and everyone else is locked away. things had come undone after being retraumatised in 2016, which led to me being more aware of certain things.

after talking things out with lain, we managed to agree to a new set-up, which changed a lot of things. i could speak freely with the others, we switched a lot more often, i had more awareness of things than i did before. it takes a lot of conscious effort on all our parts to maintain it, however. right now, we're in a sort-of lock-down because i'm not well, so i'm finding i'm losing time without expecting it and being stuck at the front for very extended periods of time.

i can't say what is happening to you, because we're different people with different experiences. but i will say that just because something is inconsistent, doesn't mean it isn't real. sometimes things are structured in the way that they are because it "worked" in a previous situation, and it takes time for things to change. it could be that the way things are structured for you right now used to be "helpful", which is why it's structured in that way. i couldn't really say.

i think a good therapist would work through this with you. my therapist having the patience to talk through things with me, even when it was inconsistent and confusing, really helped me get through everything.

i hope things get better for you.

- alice

It could be that there are multiple child parts?

Maybe the inconsistencies/chaos serves a function? Like, making you back off? Or keep you in denial?

Do you have a T? Sometimes it helps to have an outside observer. Personally, I've found it very helpful to have another person who can sometimes hold on to things that I tend to forget/deny.
Please feel free to write more on here, too.

Thank you for your replies and sharing your own experience

It could be that there are multiple child parts?

Not sure if I like this thought. That would make... quite a lot of parts Also almost none of them have any relation to actually kid-me or to anything that happened in my biography at all. Which makes it rather unlikely in my opinion, that they all are parts.

i can't say what is happening to you, because we're different people with different experiences. but i will say that just because something is inconsistent, doesn't mean it isn't real. sometimes things are structured in the way that they are because it "worked" in a previous situation, and it takes time for things to change. it could be that the way things are structured for you right now used to be "helpful", which is why it's structured in that way. i couldn't really say.

Maybe the inconsistencies/chaos serves a function? Like, making you back off? Or keep you in denial?

That could actually be something I should consider. Maybe the chaos and inconsistency was something that made me or whoever was "host" never look closer, because it always seemed so way off of any meaningful explanation to my situation. Like "If stuff that appears to be memories at first thought start to look so twisted and far off reality, they can not be true". Or something like that.

To be honest, right this morning I had such a realistic and disturbing nightmare in which I was a little kid in a very nasty situation, that I woke up totally in panic, panting and with ringing ears from the screaming in the dream. But right after I started to write it down (I try to keep a dream diary), the realistic details in my memory started to turn into a surrealistic scene and lost some of it's horror. It was just a dream, but I guess, that similar stuff could happen with real situation which a brain tries to make go away.

Anyways, maybe inconsistency was helpful at some time to cope with situation I couldn't escape easily, but it certainly isn't helpful anymore.
I try to note that down, hoping to find some communication about this with the slightly more consistent "selves"

Do you have a T? Sometimes it helps to have an outside observer. Personally, I've found it very helpful to have another person who can sometimes hold on to things that I tend to forget/deny.

i think a good therapist would work through this with you. my therapist having the patience to talk through things with me, even when it was inconsistent and confusing, really helped me get through everything.

I have a therapist, but he is not that helpful in finding some consistency in my experience. It is usually me who has to remind him about what I have already told him. Sometimes it feels a bit like I am seeing a new therapist every session

after a literal year of trying to figure things out, i learned that a specific alter - lain - had an ability to put the system in lock-down mode. the sporadic moments where switches happened was due to alters briefly escaping the defenses. according to the others, we had functioned for a very long time under this kind of set-up, where there is an isolated host out front and everyone else is locked away.

That is also interesting. There is actually a part who claims to be able to control some of us. And two other parts claim that there is an inside entity who can put parts to sleep and pushing others out. But again...they are contradicting themselves.
But I try again to have a look on this two versions. Maybe I can find something to work with and help in all this confusion I have right now.

Thanks again

Muninn wrote:I have a therapist, but he is not that helpful in finding some consistency in my experience. It is usually me who has to remind him about what I have already told him. Sometimes it feels a bit like I am seeing a new therapist every session

Last time I had that feeling, it was with the last T we saw, a psychiatrist. We're almost certain she was dissociative too, and unaware of it.
Be careful. A dissociative therapist who don't know about it, doesn't work on it and isn't able to control it will do the opposite of the job.

Also, some people here are in therapy and/or works with their system for a long time, and/or have very skilled therapists to help. Don't compare yourself to others. Each person has their own way and pace to heal.
Consistency is a thing that come with time. I know it's frustrating to read, but it came only with time and work with parts. You can think about it as a puzzle : it's messy and doesn't look like something recognizable at first, then a picture appear slowly. If you have a lot of parts, it can take longer than others to start having a picture.

Things were messy and without consistency for me/us for two years before I was able to accept this situation and to understand how all of this worked. And even now, even if we're more stable and structured than ever, some part of the story are still missing and there's still things we don't understand. We can give you a clear big picture of our life, but if you ask us the detail, it will be harder to keep it clear. We splitted, merged and switched so many times during our childhood and early teenage years that creating a clear detailed picture of what happened during our first 14 years of life is nearly impossible.

And how could it be ? Our memories are divided between us twelve, without any sense of time because of trauma.
And we're only 12 in our system... we can't imagine how confusing it might be for larger system...

Last time I had that feeling, it was with the last T we saw, a psychiatrist. We're almost certain she was dissociative too, and unaware of it.
Be careful. A dissociative therapist who don't know about it, doesn't work on it and isn't able to control it will do the opposite of the job.

Yeah, that would be quite unfortunate, but I guess he is just a not very attentive type and more focused on looking at the most pressing topics than an overall picture. It still helps to have a person to which I can talk about what I experienced in the week before and who sometimes can ground me a little bit.

Also, some people here are in therapy and/or works with their system for a long time, and/or have very skilled therapists to help. Don't compare yourself to others. Each person has their own way and pace to heal.
Consistency is a thing that come with time. I know it's frustrating to read, but it came only with time and work with parts. You can think about it as a puzzle : it's messy and doesn't look like something recognizable at first, then a picture appear slowly. If you have a lot of parts, it can take longer than others to start having a picture.

Thanks for this reminder. I have a tendency to wish for instant solutions for everything and if it is not happening I lose focus, patience or interest. Not helpful of course if your head is a big puzzle which needs a lot of time to solve.

We can give you a clear big picture of our life, but if you ask us the detail, it will be harder to keep it clear. We splitted, merged and switched so many times during our childhood and early teenage years that creating a clear detailed picture of what happened during our first 14 years of life is nearly impossible.

That sounds very familiar. Giving a rough overview of my life is not a problem. But if i start to look closer there are not only missing details but like missing years. Sometimes this is so creepy that I just stop looking.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience and thoughts it really helps to calm a bit down and be less doubtful and also less angry at myself, for being having such an inconsistent mess in my head.

I am starting to realize, that inconsistency of perception is quite a core symptom of us. It does not speak against multiplicity, it rather seems to be something that goes hand in hand with it. Each part of us has their own perception of our life, maybe we even exist to keep a view on certain events or believes.

It would make sense considering that we crew up in a family in which diverging narratives were kind of cultivated. If a small child is allowed to exist in some of these "stories" of my mother and in some not, it is no surprise, that our brain started to cope by not fusing to one stable personality but rather developing different senses of a self, which fit the different narratives.
And later in life in difficult situations Mr. brain continued to cope by creating new stories for us.

It might have been helpful some time ago. At the moment is is mostly creepy, because it is really difficult for me to see what is real and what is just stuff my brain made up. For some stuff I have evidence, like... documents, photos or like a monthly income, so my job probably is real.
But even there we have different stories. Some are sure that I am successful. Some say, that I totally suck and all coworkers are surpassing me. In one story my direct supervisor tells me that he totally would hire me, if he would launch a company on his own. And in an other story he is all the time nagging and hinting or even openly saying that I am not suitable for the current company. What story should I trust?

It gets worse in the past. There are years without almost any trace. There is a period between 10 to 5 years ago with no digital documents, no photos and according to family almost no contact to them either, just very very foggy memories. It's like I ceased to exist for some time.

And childhood is a mystery in itself. If someone would ask me about my childhood first answer would be "I had a happy childhood" and maybe "I was good at school", but I couldn't tell anything more about it. Then the contradicting story lines are starting to popping up. Most of them are not really possible, but they are there and probably just masking what ever actually was my childhood.

Maybe the past isn't that important. It is still a daily struggle to grasp reality... to even grasp a sense of self. Who am I really? Who are WE? What is my purpose among all this identity-shards?

That was a lot of babbling, and I know, that no one here can answer all these questions. But I guess sometimes I just have to write all this stuff down in some place.