Anyone's alters only come out at TOTM?

TOTM = Time of the Month

Anyone whose body (IRL) is female who has an alter that only seems to emerge at TOTM in response to increased emotion/change in hormone levels?

I am starting to realise everytime we are just before 'starting' there's 'someone else' who is angry and aggressive and a few times I have found posts made by my account which wasn't written by me and that I initially have no memory of writing until the 'angry voice' connects and is kind of saying 'Ha Ha I wrote that, they think it's you that hates everyone' kind of thing.

I'll just clarify it's not a voice I'm physically hearing thats not existing in the environment. (not an auditory hallucination) Our system (except Bobby who communicates entirely in picture form) mostly communicates by either sending thoughts, or creating a desire for whoever's up front to type then read it back as a message from that alter. But this alter comes across as aggressive, paranoid and angry every time? ...but they only appear to exist in the background sending angry or paranoid messages specifically in the few days before 'that time of the month'

For the rest of the month we seem to be co-existing quite happily together recently, as we feel the system coming back together more then suddenly out of nowhere there's these angry abusive thoughts been sent to everyone just for a couple of days??

Does anyone else have this?

Kit

Yes, hormones seems to have affect on our alters but not always the same.. Just when I think I found something out it seems to change again? And then it makes me wonder if its "just hormones" which clearly they are not when it comes back again.. Like you say, its a change in writing and knowing and thats not something hormones can do to a body. For a few months it can be an angry alter and then a depressive one ore al little thats giving the most "trouble" at TOTM. I find it very hard to deal with.
Alltougether much more "switchy" and losing time in these weeks and more fluid in the others.

It's just really frustrating as we get to a point where we seem to be making real progress and then suddenly we're several steps backwards again and going nowhere. I don't know whether its the effects of the menopause (as the body is now early 50's) or there's 'someone else' in there sabotaging progress??

I wondered.... could it be an alter that's 'deep inside' (as yet undiscovered or one we thought had just 'vanished') that can maybe only get out to the surface when the monthly cycle creates a natural rush of emotion?

I'm always feeling angry and aggressive, but totm hormone definitely enhances the misery.
(night-child)

Well we've had a great day today so far once the monthlies actually 'start' the intense emotion seems to go off and the paranoid messages.

Managed to get the new exercise bike set up decided to try 10 mins with wii fit (if you strap the wii remote to your leg when you pedal it makes the mii 'jog' in the jogging game!

Daisy (6yr old child alter) actually came out to play she was so excited and wanted to pretend to ride her favourite childhood bike round the island! Actually came out for the full 10 mins up front pedalling on the bike! A first for us (she's always only kind of stood in the background watching) The physical body isn't very fast and found it much harder than with the powered pedals but we'll keep trying!

I (as an adult) haven't been on a bike(exercise or real bike) for well over 20 years! The game has options for 10 mins, 20 mins, 30 mins and if we can get set off faster we can follow the cute little dogs instead of another mii!

Gonna try the 10 mins again tomorrow but going a bit faster with the cute puppies!

This is something I've heard of, I know one system had their sexual part out depending on the menstruation cycle.

I had my periods when I was 9, and I found it traumatic then. I don't feel it's traumatic anymore, but there can be someone who feels that way, since these are the kind of questions I never can answer. Every time I have periods, it's like remembering them again after some time. Oh, yeah, this thing, that's normal. I know they exist when they are talked about or when I have them, but otherwise it's something that kind of disappears from my mind. Maybe a year ago I managed to write down the days when I had them, for the first time in my life. I KNOW you should always write it down, so you notice if there's any changes, but no, I just don't. I did it then for couple of months, then realized that writing them on the calendar of my phone was a mistake, they were vanished afterwards, didn't stay there saved.

That's why I also have no clue if it affects our system any way. I'm answering even tho I don't have an answer just because maybe then I can at least try to pay attention if there'll be any changes next time.

To me periods is something I sometimes have and sometimes don't, but I can't connect it with anything really. I feel I'm just pretty care free about it, but I guess that's not the whole system truth about it.

It can even be that we do have someone in our system for it, and that is why it doesn't seem to connect with anything. I don't feel a switch tho, but I haven't felt it in many occasions when it's actually been someone else and not me in other type of situations (for example that it's always Fourteen if we do get hospitalized). I think in our system there isn't that much fronting from others, but there can be really strong passive influences because they are active and come so close to front.

But I'm not so sure if anything really connects with anything else in my mind either. I struggle to understand how some things in private life have happened at the same time than some things in professional life, because there's no connection between those two, it feels like separate times. But then it is also different me taking care of it tho, so it's understandable.

I guess my answer is that I probably have someone who takes care of TOTM, but I know nothing about them, because I just realized that kind of part probably exists. Just because of the not-connecting to other areas of life.

ok, In my case I don't think I have an alter specifically for TOTM as until my late forties I haven't had that sudden rush of intense emotion only at that specific time for no reason that felt like it was coming from somewhere else and the paranoia and nasty messages.

I figured it was either a new alter that I hadn't met yet as some others have only come out recently too or could it be Thea who I thought had just vanished and who hasn't appeared 'up front' for many years.(since before Maddie first appeared about 15 yrs ago now)

I guess I was wondering if going through the peri-menopause was triggering all the alters to come forward more? (usually one was just the 'public face' for many years). Now we can switch several times a day and child alters who had never emerged at all until recently, now frequently want to come out to play.

I thought about it more, and it can be that we dissociate periods a bit, because majority of us are males. That would be another explanation for our forgetting. Most of us don't have periods.

Could it be that you have more inner communication now than before, and that causes parts to come closer to front? Do you feel you are more aware of having DID, have you thought about them different ways than before?

Everything connects to everything in a body, kind of. Not literally. But changing hormones do affect behavior, and maybe some parts feel more "home" in the body the way it's now..? This is just guessing, I don't know if that's likely at all. Or they don't like body changing and it triggers them.

Cycling on the Wii sounds like a lot of fun!!
Floralie, what you describe sounds familiar to me. I had a lot of trouble with my period when I was young, then I became pregnant and "changed" had a life and three children and TOMT was almost never a problem besides the normal things most women have. Then I had my second major crisis in life and since then its traumatic every month ( not just the hormones). Thats why I decided to get a hysterectomy in the near future. I opened a topic about surgery and anesthesia about it. Its a big desicion and I have talked about it for over a year with my psychiatrist before going to the hospital to see of there was any other way to handle the problem every month, but for several of us, mostly littles is just to much.
It could well be your decociating and detaching yourself from it like I did al those years.

Floralie wrote:I thought about it more, and it can be that we dissociate periods a bit, because majority of us are males. That would be another explanation for our forgetting. Most of us don't have periods.

Could it be that you have more inner communication now than before, and that causes parts to come closer to front? Do you feel you are more aware of having DID, have you thought about them different ways than before?

Everything connects to everything in a body, kind of. Not literally. But changing hormones do affect behavior, and maybe some parts feel more "home" in the body the way it's now..? This is just guessing, I don't know if that's likely at all. Or they don't like body changing and it triggers them.

I guess I do have more inner communication since I have more of an understanding of the purpose of an alter. I grew up not even knowing that I had autism, just that I had this ability to fantasize which my parents saw as 'imaginery friends' that I was 'talking to' and been told not to do it outside. My 'imaginery friends' had to stay in my bedroom!

Until mid teens when I actually quite by chance experienced some hearing loss and realised I could cope much better outside, then meeting some deaf kids who signed, so I got obsessed with sign langauge, as having a phobia of speaking in public I relaised if people thought I'd been born deaf and signed they would no longer expect me to speak! It seemed perfectly logical to me but at that stage I still l had no idea I had autism either.

The fantasies then switched to the deliberate creation of a 'deaf persona', when I got an opportunity to go to a residential deaf college and would be away from home where no one knew me Thea started to exist full time in the real world. That was the beginning of the first fully developed alter with their own identity I guess. She became more than just a 'mask' for when I had to deal with people. 'I' became Thea at college but at home I had to switch back to myself as my parents wouldn't learn to sign I had to speak properly and 'in my own voice', not in Thea's copy of a 'deaf voice'. I guess this was my first experience of having to deliberately and consciously switch from one full identity to another. But still I had no idea I had autism or that such a thing as DID even existed. (I was 19 by this time and we were still in the 80's long before the internet existed or was available to most!).

Maddie wasn't a deliberate creation (not consciously by me anyway) but almost a by-product of a 'major life incident' in my 30's. She just kind of 'emerged' and took over, first of social media accounts then real life. She didn't know DID existed, denied there was an 'autistic part of her' at all and lived as if she was a normal neurotypical person that happened to need a wheelchair.

So until these last years when I (Kit) returned and started reading more on autism and if there were any links between that and other 'mental illnesses' I would say if we do have a system 'it' didn't know it had DID until then either until I made the connection! We have no official diagnosis of DID only Autism.

Regarding the Autism, it had not been causing any major problems for Maddie in her 'reign'. The symptoms began to increase towards our late 40's,that maybe what triggered me to 'come back'? (studies have shown sensory issues can return to childhood levels ie sound and touch phobias, reaching 'sensory overload' much quicker) My theory is this has triggered the dissociation back to childhood levels resulting in more alters appearing and that maybe the peri-menopause actually started this back when the body was in it's 40's?