Body age and alters ages

Hi

I know its common to have hosts/alters of different genders to the physical body and also to have 'littles' within a system but was wondering how common it is for none of a systems adult alters to identify with the bodies age?

Do all systems usually have at least one that is the same age as the body? ..and feels they have been around for the same amount of years?

Our body is 53 . I guess we're quite limited physically compared to the average 53 year old, we certainly know many NT older people than us a lot physically fitter, but have had mobility impairments for years.

We thought that was partly why most of our alters are much younger (we do have autism too so was behind developmentally for much of our early years too) and often preferring to present at an age BEFORE the physical body needed a wheelchair. Which was why we thought ours prefer the inner world to the outside one, but we wondered if any DID systems that don't have physical/mobility impairments also have much younger alters?

Like..maybe its a 'DID thing' rather than the fact we've been a wheelchair user for years? ..and we would have still had 'young alters' even if the neuro issues hadn't happened?

Just curious really!

Jay

None of us are the age of the body or close. I think the oldest of the 'aged' alters is Beth. Our present and past hosts are Vi (me) who is early twenties; Beth who is late thirties, and Bri who is early teens (she usually says 13).

We break down into Ageless (Queen and Keira); Thirties (Beth, Marcus, and a few others); Twenties (me, Octavia, Angel, etc); Teens (Bri and Pippa) and Littles (Vera, Gia and Marcie). There's several we haven't talked to enough to know their ages yet, but none of the ones we talk to regularly are the body's age. A quarter of our alters are younger than 20 and it seems like the bulk of the rest are between twenty and thirty.

I don't know about other systems, but that's how ours is.

I hope this helps,
Take care
Vi

ViTheta wrote:None of us are the age of the body or close. I think the oldest of the 'aged' alters is Beth. Our present and past hosts are Vi (me) who is early twenties; Beth who is late thirties, and Bri who is early teens (she usually says 13).

We break down into Ageless (Queen and Keira); Thirties (Beth, Marcus, and a few others); Twenties (me, Octavia, Angel, etc); Teens (Bri and Pippa) and Littles (Vera, Gia and Marcie). There's several we haven't talked to enough to know their ages yet, but none of the ones we talk to regularly are the body's age. A quarter of our alters are younger than 20 and it seems like the bulk of the rest are between twenty and thirty.

I don't know about other systems, but that's how ours is.

I hope this helps,
Take care
Vi

Interesting. I'm just curious as when I woke this morning the last thing I remembered (as if I'd had a dream) was a voice saying 'Don't forget ..now we are 23' ... I couldn't work out whose voice it was or whether they meant that 'they' (ie just that alter) was 23 or...'now we are 23' as in..now there are 23 of us (in total)..no-one has come forward to clarify yet and I've spent the day chasing up housing and GP's so didn't get much chance to dwell on it earlier! ..I guess I'll find out eventually but it started me thinking about ages.

I mean I accept that as the host I have to act appropriately for bodies age when in the company of other people as I relaise when I Iook in the mirror that others see the face of a middle aged woman but my 'inner body' is around late twenties. ... we can all 'age-slide' on the inside but all tend to stay within a specific range...which I guess is somehow significant to each of us? eg..Little Susie will sometimes play at being a bit older maybe to play a specific game but always returns to age 6...and although 'Yuna' has played Outside Host and given the bodies biological age when asked (for medical appointments) she is usually 15 inside with Juno as her 'twin'.

I don't think any of us have a 53 year old body 'on the inside!'..nobody see's themself as deaf on the inside or as someone who is mobility impaired. ..even though we've got some cool different coloured crutches to try and encourage them to see we could still present as someone fun even if disabled and found positive role models online for others to read about/watch.

Most find the scooter fun and enjoy going out with the dog and playing on the switch, but beyond that no-one really seems to enjoy 'being in the body' or identify with it as 'them'. I wondered how much of it was due to additional disabilities that none of them have ever accepted? ..so they all choose to be an age before what they see as 'the worst thing' or biggest change' happened?

Jay

We haven't figured out how to 'act our age', and most people who interact with us online tend to think I'm anywhere between twenty and thirty. In a way, they respond to the average age of the alters who front. It probably helps that the disconnect between our inner body and the body we inhabit is very different. I actually almost answered the phantom pain thread with the fact that I get phantom pains in the parts of the body that don't exist in the outer world. (When my upper back hurts, it radiates into my 'wings' or if my back and hips are bad it radiates into my tail). So the age difference doesn't seem to be as huge an issue.

When I look in the mirror I know that "I" am not what I see. I accept that the body I see is "ours" but it doesn't make it feel like the person I see is "me". Beth comes closest when it comes to matching the inner and outer selves, but even she is younger.

It might help that we've had certain physical limitations out whole life. The obesity has been a huge issue most of the time, and many of the limitations have meant that we adapted a long time ago. They've gotten worse, but never not been present. We couldn't run fast, we had bad hand/eye coordination (which has actually gotten better the more we game), we've had asthma since we were 11 (but that may be stress/trauma induced and became more COPD as we've gotten older). Basically, we've only had our physical limitations get worse but they've always been there. We've never been able bodied, really.

It's like the autism, the gender dysphoria and the DID...the physical limitations have always been there. But I've never asked any of us why we're the age we are. I can guess that Gia is six because that was the last time we didn't have any level of trauma. It was also when we were forced into being male all the time. Vera may be ten because that's when the trauma she holds happened, but Pippa is older than she was when the trauma she holds happened. So, I don't know.

I do hope you figure things out with regards the the voice and the number.
Take care,
Vi

Until last year, we never had an alter with the same age as the body. We had one older, but he never aged, so he eventually became younger than the body. For a while, we were all younger - then something happened and leaded to more integration, and some of us started to feel more "in tune" with our age.

There are a lot of things that could lead to not feeling in tune with the body age. For us, it was because adult parts were still in that "young adult" mindset, where you know you are an adult, but doesn't feel like it yet - because still living with our mom, not having completed our degree yet, because the body look younger, etc. When we realized we had more autonomy than we thought, we also realized we now had a body's age coherent with the "mature" behaviors our family always expected from us, and everything clicked.

I'm not even sure it's only a DID, disabled or older people thing. Dissociation, physical issues, etc. sure doesn't help and add more reasons to not identify with the body or body's age, but when talking with others, there are a lot of people who experience the same thing. Just "transition phases" (teen, young adult, becoming parents, retirement...) can lead to that feeling of being younger than the body's age.

Maybe it's more a "what is socially expected for someone my age VS what I feel I can do VS what I wish I can do VS what I can really do" thing? And when a parameter isn't coherent with the others, it leads to not being in tune with the physical age.

Dwelt wrote:Maybe it's more a "what is socially expected for someone my age VS what I feel I can do VS what I wish I can do VS what I can really do" thing? And when a parameter isn't coherent with the others, it leads to not being in tune with the physical age.

Maybe! We read posts on regular menopause sites also and many NT non-DID are going through changes of personality or feeling they are no longer the same person or struggling with things like hearing difficulties/tinnitus and physical aches and pains (just from the menopause/drop in estrogen etc not additional conditions) so it makes sense those things would be magnified in those of us with 'multiple selves' and who already have other medical issues going on. Some days our body feels its about 80, though saying that we know of elderly people closer to that age more mobile than us!

I think some of us are stuck in an old mindset too of when video games were 'not age appropriate' and 'only for children' so therefore if we still like them or play them 'at our age' then we are 'not acting our age' .. and people may think we are 'learning disabled or 'mentally ill' ... despite the fact we have a degree and now read frequently of 'older gamers' and people getting into gaming at a much later age to preserve mental skills such as memory and spatial and eye tracking skills. ..so those insiders still feel they are 'doing something they shouldn't be' and 'must keep it a secret so outside people don't realise we're not normal'

..I think some of this has more to do with how we were raised and the intense 'early autism intervention therapy'...(the ultimate goal achieving 'being normal' so no-one would ever suspect we'd ever been that ill in early childhood) and of course the bullying/abuse throughout life for being seen as different/disabled/vulnerable etc. ...nobody ever told us they were still proud of us/who we were after the 'breakdown' and after we became more disabled in later life (our parents had passed by then but brother/in-laws never did)...so our alters remain stuck in the past hiding.


Not sure by the way where some of this is coming from! ..its me(Jay) typing but the words coming out aren't the ones in my mind!

erm..anyway doggy to walk etc and we've finally got sunshine so best get off ..apologies if that ended up too long /off topic!

Well, to paraphrase my favorite time-travelling alien "What's the use of being an adult if you can't act child-like from time to time". Truth is, when it comes to things like video games, they stopped being 'for children' a long time ago. We have a group we game with often once a week and one of the people we game with is in her 60's.

I'm not sure I (or any of us) can add anything else. I hope this gets worked out Jay.

Take care,
Vi

We don't have anyone anywhere close to the body's age. We've started telling people that "I don't identify with my chronological age," because if people's gender preference and pronouns can be respected, I think how young or old you feel can be respected also.

For us, it feels like we were hiding by being in school and then being a mom. We were always scared of the choices and life decisions you have to make and so we just avoided making them (but then life happens anyway and you keep getting older, regardless).

But a few years ago when we started taking community college classes, we started feeling like we could finally handle being in our 20s (now, decades later...). All those things that seemed impossible then, like getting an apartment, having roommates, figuring out what we wanted to do with our life--we finally felt emotionally stable and secure enough that we could imagine that. It's too late to actually do that--we have a house, and a husband, and grown children. But we enjoy and get along with people who are in their late teens and 20s.

We can also get along with people in their 50s and 60s and relate to some of the things they talk about, but more about situations in their lives--not things having to do with age; just things having to do with having been alive for a certain amount of time. There's a big difference.

I think our oldest alters are in their 20s. It's kind of murky and undefined. I think we have an ageless information bank kind of alter, and we know things from the 1960s, 70s, 80s etc because we were around then, but that alter isn't a specific age.

I don't know if it's a DID thing. We've been wondering if we also have autism recently. I know our emotional and social development was very delayed. And we skipped a grade in school, which made things even harder for us. We're also more fit and active than most people our age, on average, although we live in a city where a lot of people like that seem to live.

We took a community college class about a year ago, when some in-person classes resumed. It was a movement class where we learned and practiced a lot of different kinds of dance and other kinds of movement like karate kata and other focused sequences like that. There were about a dozen people in the class and our body was more than 30 years older than the other students and a few years older than the teacher, but energy and ability-wise, we fit right in and had a lot of fun. It felt like where we were meant to be.

Just a couple of days ago we went on a hike, and instead of being with the two people who were about our chronological age, we walked with the people who were 22-30 years old. We had more in common with them, and could relate to the topics they were talking about.

Anyway, I've seen other systems post about having alters that are all much younger than the chronological age, so I don't think it's very unusual. And I agree with Dwelt that it's probably analogous to things that singletons go through, but of course with DID everything is more complicated and things that are more fluid and more easily changed and shifted for a singleton are more separated and rigid for someone with DID, I think.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:We don't have anyone anywhere close to the body's age. We've started telling people that "I don't identify with my chronological age," because if people's gender preference and pronouns can be respected, I think how young or old you feel can be respected also.

That's a good one! I'll have to remember that!

Recently we saw a video on YT about a Japanese lady in her 90's who holds the guinness book of records for oldest gamer, we've been watching her channel and found her inspirational. She plays switch sports and the games on playstation like grand theft auto! ..things you'd never expect someone of that age to enjoy. She feels it keeps her young.

Despite most of us being young we fear other teens cos of the past bullying and go out of our way to not be outside when there will lots of kids about. I guess it must be PTSD or something and we have to remind ourself if we see any that these kids didn't know us when we were that age..if they laugh as they pass they're probably not laughing at us and planning to beat us up or something, cos they see an older woman probably older than their mums! ..some of us forget that sometimes!

I consider myself a teenager mostly. I try to act older sometimes but it doesn't last very long. My soldier is probably the oldest one though but I don't know how old.