question about inner world appearance

hi. i'm the new(er) alter. my name is kat. i have a question.

is it normal for dissociation to cause something like where i have to focus on my appearance/voice in the inner world? does dissociation cause that or could i just be some kind of unstably formed alter? or is it just because i'm newer that i could still be adjusting to the system?

because a lot of times i have to focus on what i look like in the inner world and even then im not really sure what i look like. not fully. i have an idea. i have white hair and red eyes. i know i'm a teenager, not entirely sure on the specific age but probably around 15 to 16. i'm male. probably. everything other than that is kind of out the window. this is a new experience for us too. this (aside from grem II) that we haven't really been sure what an alter looks like or they haven't been able to picture it.

i don't have a lot of knowledge about myself either. but i figure thats normal because im new. i can't really see my body so i don't really know if i appear as a cis male or trans male. i don't know anything about my sexuality. i'm also supposed to be an introject (of what i wont say) but i dont have pseudomemories when i feel like i should.

everything is very confusing for me and i don't really know what to do about it. help would be appreciated.

-kat

I guess, we have some that are 'not sure who they are' and others who have a strong sense of identity but don't necessarily want to be the one's out front in the RW.

For us, the ones not sure tends to be either because, they are new or have been dormant a long time and are no longer sure where they fit in the real world (and in their role to the host body).

Maybe you just need a bit more time?

Jody

Hi, Kat. Welcome to the forum!

First, I'm not sure what you are asking ... you can only have alters and an inner world in the presence of dissociation, so ... yes?

As for your image, ours are fuzzy and sometimes change unexpectedly. I'm surprised you even know what color your eyes are. That trait specifically is extremely hard for us to discern for ourselves. Anyway, it's okay for you to not quite know what you look like or feel like you have what you call "pseudomemories". In time, you will gain a better sense of self. I think a strong sense of self is better than a strong self-image, if you ask me.

Not sure what else I can say to help you, but I hope I've said enough!

- Marcella

kat@gremandco wrote:is it normal for dissociation to cause something like where i have to focus on my appearance/voice in the inner world? does dissociation cause that or could i just be some kind of unstably formed alter? or is it just because i'm newer that i could still be adjusting to the system?

Any and all of the above. With time you will get a better sense of yourself and your place within the system, and you will be able to tell if you are unstable know because it is your nature, or because you are new.

kat@gremandco wrote:because a lot of times i have to focus on what i look like in the inner world and even then im not really sure what i look like. not fully. i have an idea. i have white hair and red eyes. i know i'm a teenager, not entirely sure on the specific age but probably around 15 to 16. i'm male. probably. everything other than that is kind of out the window.

We have days like that. And sometimes we realize that we felt fuzzy for a while because we were shifting a little bit. Zami and G/Hosties are very fluid in shape, for example. Some of us started as cis and turned out trans, or ambiguous. Others fluctuate depending on the day.

It was uncomfortable at first but now we took the habit of "going with the flow" and simply observe with curiousity, how we are feeling at any given day.

kat@gremandco wrote:i don't have a lot of knowledge about myself either.

Some alters appear with fully-formed personnalities, others need to experience the everyday life in order to develop their characteristics, while yet others never really become complex as separate persons and still are very happy and functional as system members.

There is nothing you "need" to be appart from yourself, healthy, and happy.

kat@gremandco wrote:i'm also supposed to be an introject (of what i wont say) but i dont have pseudomemories when i feel like i should.

Most of us are introjects and we have less and less pseudomemories/cryptoamnesia as time goes by. We used to need them in order to make sense of why we are here, why we are feeling the hurt that we feel, but as we progress through life and healing, we need them less and less. We are more anchored to the here and now.

We still struggle to see what happened to the body as things that happened to us as different identities, but at least we manage to accept that "it happened (even if not to "me")". I guess this means our brain no longer needs to "fill in the gaps" with pseudomemories and cryptoamnesia.

Good luck on making sense of it all. Breathe. It is confusing, but it will ease up with time. Sometimes you just need to let it rest before everything becomes clear, a bit like when you stirr sand in water: the only way to separate the sand from the water is to let the whole rest untill the sand falls down at the bottom. Watching it while this process happens can be interesting, too.
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David.

thanks to everyone who responded. this helps me understand quite a bit.

i have another question if anyone wants.

i'm an introject of a fictional character, (i don't want to say who). i have some memories from the media i was introjected from, but not really. mostly just one specific instance, from my perspective. it was a bad situation i had gotten into, and a lot of bad things happened because of it. that's the only thing i remember as "my" memory. everything else that happened in said media feels more like i know it happened, but i don't remember it specifically. a lot like trauma memories and amnesiac memories that the rest of the system experiences in day-to-day life.

the other memories i have are of things that did not happen in the media, but still happened to me as this character, like it happened "off screen". most of it is in-line with canonical events and behaviors of characters in this media, but they didn't happen in the series on screen, more like these events were mentioned, but not shown to their full extent. these are also bad memories, some of which seem to directly reflect experiences that we have had in real life.

to put it short, all of my memories are bad, and most of them seem to reflect the trauma we have experienced physically.

essentially, i want to know if this is normal, or something someone else has experienced.

From a psychological point of view, we can say that not only is it normal, but there is a high chance that this is exactly why you are an introjection to begin with.

If I might summarize it:

Trauma happens in the physical world.
Trauma is too much to bear the way it really happened.
Media shows up, contains similar material.
Trauma is easier to bear if it is "disguized" as the media.
The character all of this happens to, feels relatable squared.
Brain works its magic.
Mirror neurones "copy" the character into an alter.
Trauma is "sorted" inside said alter "disguized" as in the media.
Brain is happy because "Hey it did not happen to me, it happend in this character in this media and it happened this way!".
Trauma is easier to bear while waiting to be treated in therapy.
The "Everyday normal life" can carry on more easily.

At least it is what we gathered of the phenomenon through our different researches (researching "cryptoamnesia" for our own personal use since a lot of our "memories" are "not from this body", observing they echo physical life traumas, observing the same happening in friends, observing similar events happening throughout the otherking/therian/fictionkin scenes ((though they appear less inclined to connect the dots between their "spiritual life", their "past lives" and their "present physical life")), reading "The Haunted Self"...)

I hope this will help you.

Of course it does not mean you have absolutely no right to see the "media events" as "real for you from a subjective point of view". It merely means that, solving the "physical world" trauma echoing the "media events" might be the way to go in order to ease up the "media trauma memories" rather than the other way around. There are a few examples in "The Haunted Self" where an alter was lost in the "disguized" memory of the trauma, and bringing said alter back into the "here and now" helped them realize that they were now safe and that the "trauma disguize" could be slowly dropped down in order to heal the "physical world trauma" behind and stop the hurt once and for all.

All you need sometimes is the right therapist to keep you safe and help you work things out at your own pace.
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David.

David@ArbreMonde wrote:From a psychological point of view, we can say that not only is it normal, but there is a high chance that this is exactly why you are an introjection to begin with.

this comment helped a lot actually. i figured thats what was happening. i think its a common theme since we have a lot of introjects. i've heard that's common for polyfragmented systems though (which we are). it makes psychological sense as to why the trauma/memories would be mirrored like that, even if the second memories i mentioned weren't something that happened "on screen" and are more vaguely shown/mentioned (i'll just say that what's happening is being played off like a joke and isn't being taken seriously, which is frustrating, but something that has happened in our real life, so it still makes sense).

thanks.

-kat (forgot to sign the last post but that was also me if it wasn't obvious)

There IS a face-claim thread somewhere in here, although if you're not comfortable saying who you're based off of as an introject, then you might not care to find an illustration and post it there. Still, it's there if you ever feel like it.

Edited to add ah here it is.

dissociative-identity/topic217026.html

Snaga wrote:There IS a face-claim thread somewhere in here, although if you're not comfortable saying who you're based off of as an introject, then you might not care to find an illustration and post it there. Still, it's there if you ever feel like it.

Edited to add ah here it is.

dissociative-identity/topic217026.html

thanks thats pretty interesting. i dont think i would use real life people or artwork that i dont know the artist of but "picrews" (character creators/custom dress up games) have been getting really popular in the online DID/OSDD1 community where people create what their alters look like and then post them or use them as profile pictures so maybe ill do something like that at some point here.

its a fun website to use if anyone wants to use it but i recommend having a translator available or using google chrome (can automatically translate) because the whole website is in japanese.

link: https://picrew.me

-kat

gremandco wrote: "picrews" (character creators/custom dress up games) have been getting really popular in the online DID/OSDD1 community where people create what their alters look like and then post them or use them as profile pictures so maybe ill do something like that at some point here.

Once upon a time we were able to link offsite avatars, but that ended when we went from being an http to https secured. Yes we can still stick images in our sig lines and in posts, & don't ask me why avatars are different, I'm not sure, but they just are. Eventually- and it's been a slow process, but eventually the site is to be upgraded to a much newer version of phpBB. Expanded emotes that don't looks sociopathic (I hate that smiley), the ability to 'Like' posts, mobile friendly (no you didn't misread that!), etc. We might get back our ability to use offsite avatars again. I'll whinge in favor of it, anyway.