I feel "Insane"

Identity change = alter. That's the definition of an alter. An alter is an alternating identity. Other people call it a "kintype" or "theriotype" when the dissociation level is low and the identity is non-human.

They do not always feel like "somebody is inside my head". It really depends on the intensity of the dissociation. They can feel like "I am turning onto somebody else temporarily" when the dissociation is less intense.

The big amnesia you describe are also consistent with DID. (And yes, DID + ADHD makes it all tricky because it results in a lot of micro-amnesia all day long. At least for me. It's annoying.)

I had some periods when I was listing all my DID symptoms and repeating "This is not DID. This has formed because of repeated trauma and dissociation, and because of this the different parts of my mind evolved their own identities and I have a lot of memory issues due to the dissociation, but it is not DID. It's exactly the same but it is not DID. It is treated the same but it is not DID."

So I completely relate to your struggle. I guess Dwelt had a nice advice with the "let's apply DID treatment and see what happens, it cannot get worse anyway". Keep what helps you get better.

I figured I'll turn this post into a little journal to update my experiences.

Trigger warning for talk of sexual abuse and sex in general, as well as ""controversial"" kinks, like CNC (I say ""controversial"" because it is, I'm sick of the judgement I've gotten )

I recently realized that I think what I consider my "daily, normal self" is separate from when I am being sexual with my boyfriend. I've suspected as much for some time now and even my boyfriend thought that we were separate alters too, but I always assumed no because... Well I never felt that that was a separate Entity from me or something.
To be honest, most of my DID (right now I accept I have it, but this always changes haha) doesn't involve a feeling of "that's a separate entity from me" - I've definitely felt this way in the past, but it doesn't feel like I experience it "enough" or "strong" enough for me to think of them as alters.

When I'm sexual with my boyfriend, I use she/her pronouns and am referred to using feminine terms (girl/woman/etc.) - I don't use she/her pronouns at all and I cringe just thinking about it. I figured it was just some kink I had.
But the main thing that made me realize that that's a separate alter is because I've been trying to get myself to stop re-traumatizing myself sexually, but whenever I'm sexual again I take it back and decide it's fine and after it was over I'd say the opposite again.

Re-traumatizing myself how? I have a CNC kink, it's my biggest kink and it's one of the only things that can really turn me on sexually. We've never gone too far with this kink because both of us are our only sex partners, so it's something we had to build up to. And we have been and it's been fine until some nights ago we went more heavy with this kink (please don't put any judgement towards my boyfriend - we both consented to this, we both know our safe word and I've spoken to him about this more) and it kind of really scared me how much it turned me on. I was in and out dissociating from reality, but it was really good, but I was also scared. I was so engaged in this and turned on that I felt like I could reach orgasm at two different points from just penetration - something that has never happened ever in my life, I've only ever been able to reach orgasm from a vibrator or rubbing my clit really hard. I was afraid by it because it made me feel like maybe some of these repressed memories that I've remembered really are true.
I know that people can have these heavy kinks without any kind of trauma, but in the context of my life and what I know now, I can't help but feel like it definitely relates to my trauma.

Identity change = alter. That's the definition of an alter. An alter is an alternating identity. Other people call it a "kintype" or "theriotype" when the dissociation level is low and the identity is non-human.

They do not always feel like "somebody is inside my head". It really depends on the intensity of the dissociation. They can feel like "I am turning onto somebody else temporarily" when the dissociation is less intense.

Just to add a bit of nuance: this is not necessarily an alter, but that kind of thing is 100% a dissociative part. Alters are "just" the end of the spectrum when you look at dissociative parts. They are the most dissociated ones.

You can have a lot of dissociation, and dissociative parts with clear roles, but they don't have a clear, strong sense of self, and not always trigger blackout. Depending on the exact symptoms, it can be OSDD-1 (DSM-V) / partial DID (ICD-11), or DID.

I'm officially diagnosed with partial DID (even if my T agree I had a DID presentation until my early 20, but it's too young for it to count for the diagnosis tool), I have clearly defined alters with a strong sense of self, but no amnesia on a daily basis (other than the memory issues caused by ADHD). Right now, my amnesia is occasional, linked to the moments when my window of tolerance is overwhelmed (in DID by the ICD-11, amnesia happens on a daily basis, and is primarily linked to the identity changes/switches).

I totally relate to the "it's like becoming someone else" when another alter front. For me, that's how a switch started to feel 10 years ago, when the dissociative barriers started lowering because I was officially out of the reach of my abuser ; and it became our norm 7 years ago, when we totally stopped having blackout. This is how a switch with enough communication and without amnesia feels for us.

When this happens, one alter can be "stronger" than the others and their emotion "overcome" the whole body and mind. You can feel like you're becoming that alter, but if you pay attention, your emotions and own reactions are still there. Sometimes, two alters are equally affecting the body, and their emotions are all felt and expressed by the body. It can be very confusing when it happens, specially if it happens while you're triggered.

I know that people can have these heavy kinks without any kind of trauma, but in the context of my life and what I know now, I can't help but feel like it definitely relates to my trauma.

I would say: trust your instinct, protect yourself, take your time to sort this out before doing anything.

I had kind of the same issue, but I didn't take the time to sort this out, I went with denial and the idea that everything is fine for months/years, and now I regret it.

When I'm physically intimate with someone, I don't feel anything between the waist and the knees - and I'm hypersensitive to touch, so this is very much not normal. My first experience was with someone very respectful and understanding, and it went well. Actually, it's our only positive memory with being physically intimate with someone else, the only time no one was triggered.

Then I met my ex. 5 years ago, I was still amnesiac and in denial of my sexual traumas, and since everything went okay the first time with the other person, I never questioned my lack of sensibility. My ex didn't question anything too, but make it a personal goal to find a way to make me feel something. We never had to explore anything outside vanilla sex to find something that was making me receptive, but I discovered years later that it was 1) what my abuser did to me, and 2) retraumatizing my young alters.

Finally, even if I was enjoying what happened on the moment, I started to dissociate more and more during intimate time, to have amnesia about those times (but it was super-precise, so I didn't notice it at first), and ultimately, even "this thing" she found stopped working. After that, I started to have freeze responses every time my ex tried to initiate intimate moments. She wasn't smart about it, and the level of frustration she expressed was the icing on the trauma cake.

Now, in your case, I can't say anything since I'm not in your head. But I know it's hard to face the probability those things are real, and even more to take the time to find out what is really going on. You have all my support in this journey.

It does sound like you dissociate and switch during intimate relationships. Now it's up to you if you call it a kink, what kink name you give it, or if you name the phenomenon with a dissociative vocabulary - or both! Or something else!

Just like Dwelt I advise anyway to take it slow and double-check if it is a tendency to re-traumatization or not. Some of my own kinks started as a trauma-repetition thing, until I switched my perception of it on consent, power-exchange, and control. In a healthy situation, the most vulnerable participant is the one who is most in control of the situation - they say stop and they say go, they set the limits, and so on. But it took a lot of time and the kindness of my present boyfriend to pull me out of the toxic way of behaving/thinking and push me into a healthier way of behaving/thinking.

It can be very beautiful to allow oneself to be vulnerable with someone we trust! And it can feel really nasty when we merely engage into pre-programmed (conditionned, triggered...) traumatic submission behaviors. They can look the same but they are polar opposite.

Good luck sorting things out!

I can't add much to the discussion other than to hope things get sorted out.

You are also not alone when it comes to having alters who retraumatize. We've been working with our alter Lilith a lot to try and get her to stop retraumatizing the system and herself.

Take care,
Vi

Thanks for all the responses on this thread, I'm glad there's a space I can open up about this vulnerable stuff without judgement. Of course I have friends I can be open with, but it's nice for there to be a larger community available.


Content warning for masturbation

Last night before going to sleep I was masturbating and I don't remember specifics or even a lot of what happened, but I know I was drifting in and out of trying to convince myself to stop re-enacting rape scenarios in my head, but my "sexual self" just not being convinced to actually stop. I remember I was actively trying to stop, but nothing was getting me turned on so I didn't feel like stopping, I guess. I tried to figure out a way to cooperate and find a solution with "myself" and I couldn't.
I don't remember know what happened fully; looking at it, I'm in a lot of denial because I'm starting to realize that this doesn't sound like an alter at all - this could've just been me in too much pleasure to want to stop.

There was a lot of back and forth inability to cooperate and get myself to stop while trying to (very poorly) ground myself. I remember that I was dissociated, but I can't remember any specific feelings except knowing that I was going through this feeling of "I'm being delusional somehow." I remember a feeling of struggling to believe this all is actually my reality. I can't remember specifics still, but that's about as close I can remember what I was feeling and what was going on.

I was trying to simply calm down by telling myself that this isn't me having some daydream that I'm deluding myself into believing is DID; I'm experiencing my DID, I'm experiencing a symptom that, when combined with all the other symptoms I'm experiencing, this is a symptom and I am not just delusional or daydreaming or faking. It kind of helped, but not really, I think I vaguely remember that being the boiling point where I went "wait, this stuff is actually really real, this is my real life, this is all real" and then I remember having a moment where I looked around at my surroundings in a way of suddenly "coming to" - I didn't like blink and then find myself in my room because of a black out or something, I just have feelings where it feels like I'm "coming to"- and I realized my vibrator that I was using had been turned off, but that I didn't remember turning it off. In hindsight, it could be that the battery died, I've no way of knowing since I can't rewind time, and this isn't exactly indicative of a blackout at all nor is it indicative of an alter having turned it off. But, from my understanding of what happened, some part was masturbating trying to cooperate with sexual part and a different part took over to intervene. At least that's how it felt.

Just like Dwelt I advise anyway to take it slow and double-check if it is a tendency to re-traumatization or not. Some of my own kinks started as a trauma-repetition thing, until I switched my perception of it on consent, power-exchange, and control. In a healthy situation, the most vulnerable participant is the one who is most in control of the situation - they say stop and they say go, they set the limits, and so on. But it took a lot of time and the kindness of my present boyfriend to pull me out of the toxic way of behaving/thinking and push me into a healthier way of behaving/thinking.

Do you know how I could tell the difference? Or if there's something I can look into to figure it out?

Trigger Warning For Sexual Assault

Until I understood that many of the 'pleasurable' fantasies involving rape were originating from Marcus, it was easy to think that they originated with me, and until I now know Queen, Beth, Keira and Bonnie pushed him back into the Asylum so that he couldn't get to any of us I didn't realize how it was hurtful and damaging.

I've talked a bit about having to work with Lilith on helping her problems and her attempts to 'help' by retraumatizing and triggering.

It's going to take time to sort things out, but it seems like you are on your way.

I also remember the day I looked around my room and realized 'wow, there's something from most of my alters if I had just looked.'

I wish I was better at pointing to helpful information. I just hope you knowing your not alone in some of this will help.

Vi

My own rule of thumb for myself that I use to see if I really want to do something or if it is some "pre-programmed" (conditionned) behavior is: how much in control I feel intellectually in this situation, and how much enthusiast I feel emotionnally.

When I catch myself doing something "automatically" or because I feel like I "have to" do it, chances are, it's not healthy and I am following a pre-determined pattern. I then take out my handy-dandy book of "Coping with trauma related dissociation" to have a look at what exercises they have that I could do to better understand what is going on inside me. I also take notes to bring to my DID therapist - or to the forums, or both - in order to get advice on the situation.

Simply stopping and asking myself "Why am I doing this?" looking for honest answers, helped me a lot.

I hope that my experiences can help you too!