Mourning An Alter

I thought I'd post this here.

It has been a rough couple months, but one of the things that happened is that Marcus dispersed and is no longer there. It finally dawned on us that we hadn't known how to handle his loss. Yes, there are parts of him that are now parts of other alters, but they aren't him.

For all that he could be horrible and hurt us, he was still part of our system, and we're struggling to actually understand how to mourn for him. If anyone has advice, it would be helpful.

Thank you,
Violette

Actually, I do have input on this, and I'm quite surprised by how relevant it may be for you.

If memory serves, Marcus was a 'persecutor' type of alter for you, correct?

A while back, Shield/Kay told my friend that we used to have a persecutor of sorts too. Real mean to everyone in the system, tried to keep us from connecting to people because people are mean to us by showing us what people had been like to us. We called him 'Omen' and according to Shield/Kay, his memories went to her, his anger to Sword/Raven, and his self-hatred towards me.

I don't personally remember him very well because he was active during high school and left with therapy. I knew him as the voice that was mean to me all the time, which I thought was just my negative self-esteem. When that voice vanished, I thought that was therapy doing its job, but it did make me feel scared and empty because who was I without that voice in my head?

I've dealt with it in the same manner as you'd grief losing a toxic friend or ambiguous friend/family member:
- Validate what you're feeling. Maybe he was mean, maybe you didn't like him, maybe you hated him but respected him for what he wanted to do etc. Whichever emotion you feel, make note of it and express it. Anything you feel is correct to feel.
- Allow yourself to feel the loss and give yourself time. You've lost a bit of yourself, you've changed. You can try and force yourself to see it as growth, but then you don't allow yourself to mourn and right now you're technically in mourning.
- Try and talk about it with your alters or a trusted person. Your T can help you out too. The more you describe something and talk about it, the more you can give it a place. Once it has a place, you can start letting go of it.
- Most importantly, take care of yourself and be patient with yourself.

Hope that helps a bit and good luck to you.

All best,

~ Grey

Thank you,

We'll definitely try to work on this. Marcus was our persecutor for so long, but before that, he was our protector. We had to lock him away so he wouldn't hurt us, but we still miss him.

We'll talk to our T about it.

Thank you again,
Violette

Dunno how helpful it can be but >> this thesis << talks about mourning the loss of alters. It focuses on integration/fusion but I guess the same can apply to an alter who "dissipates". It is called "ambiguous loss" because there is something to mourn (the loss of an alter) but also other things to celebrate (like healing from trauma). Hope it helps to know you're not alone and it's so "common" that there is a thesis about it.

Thank you.

We've started to read it.

Last night, I sat on the edge of my bed crying because the loss finally hit. Yes, parts of what made up Marcus are now part of Alice, but Alice is so very different from Marcus.

Take care,
Violette

ArbreMonde wrote:Dunno how helpful it can be but >> this thesis << talks about mourning the loss of alters. It focuses on integration/fusion but I guess the same can apply to an alter who "dissipates". It is called "ambiguous loss" because there is something to mourn (the loss of an alter) but also other things to celebrate (like healing from trauma). Hope it helps to know you're not alone and it's so "common" that there is a thesis about it.

This thesis is interesting... as though they don't specifically mention 'medical trauma' as a cause of DID on the bottom of page 14...on p15 they mention 4 things that as an autistic child we had everyone of!!! ..

1) the capacity for dissociation - which has been shown to be high amongs persons with autism in other studies also
2) experiences that overwhelm the child - the entire daily life overwhelmed us in the early years!
3) a combination of inherent mechanisms and imagination and dissociation - same as 1... we lived 'in our own world' often described as 'away with the fairies' etc
4) took little comfort from people around us in the earliest years (the self seen as 'child Bobby' within our system). ..possibly because they feel they spent alot of it being moved around against their will or pinned down (though again more due to medical need than an abusive parent situation).

Given our 'Little Susie is 6yo thats possibly the age she first appeared and 'we' first showed awareness of others in our environment and started to 'bond' with our mother...LS seems to be the earliest most bonded with 'her parents' LS, Teen S and Sue seem to have been the ones most impacted by her death in real life. Others did not seem to have the same levels of attachment to either parents or sibling. ..I don't know whether this would have been considered a Attachment disorder (as an whole) as it would depend who was at the front at the time! ..at the time of an assessment to whether or how much we appeared 'detached'?

There seems also not have been a 'universal love' between ALL alters only specific ones bonded with specific others. How we feel about any one depends who is at the front and how they feel and whether they'd even miss them.

-- Sat Dec 30, 2023 10:35 am --

ViTheta wrote:Thank you,

We'll definitely try to work on this. Marcus was our persecutor for so long, but before that, he was our protector. We had to lock him away so he wouldn't hurt us, but we still miss him.

We'll talk to our T about it.

Thank you again,
Violette

We hope your T can help you through this. We have some more sensitive alters who struggle more when things change in the system. it can be tough!

Levi

TheTriForce wrote:We hope your T can help you through this. We have some more sensitive alters who struggle more when things change in the system. it can be tough!

Levi

Thank you. Last night we broke down and cried a lot. Our friends helped us with some of the grief. We did read through the thesis and found a bit of it helpful.

Violette