Are "Alters" Real?

TW FOR DENIAL, QUESTIONING, ETC.

I've been seeing a lot of discourse online, and I suppose that's my fault, but needless to say, I'm confused.

Various people online are very against the concept of "multiples in one body," or "plurality," even in the case of DID.
"You are not multiple people, you are one disassociating between states," or something like, "One mind, one individual disassociating."
And that to believe you are multiple people, or to engage in any "separation" between you and your alters is damaging and promoting more disassociation.
This is confusing me a lot. I understand, logically, that the other parts of me are parts of the same being, the same person. But I also recognize how vastly different we can be. Not to mention the intrusions from alters?

I don't know. I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge of this sort of thing. I don't have any doctors or therapists for this, despite my attempts to get one- it's been rough.
Is the distinction harmful?

Hey,

I'm just going to paraphrase a Harry Potter quote here:

"of course it's in your head, but why on earth should that mean it isn't real?"

Alters, fragments, parts, they are real. Normal people have different personality states as well, but they are all inherently the same.

Example time: Someone can be more cheeky, goofy and chatty around others, while being serious and grumpy at work. Ask that person about their hobbies, preferences, and opinions though and they'll remain the same. It's the same person with a different state of mind.
With alters, dissociation has made these different states of mind become separate identities. We don't associate ourselves with them because they have different values and opinions. In my case, I have one alter who trusts no one, is quick to hate a person and enjoys sleeping around. I couldn't be more different as I always want to give people a chance and assume things are my fault. Yet another alter feels like we were born to serve others, which I'm definitely not okay with either.
See how it's not the same?

To heal and find yourself, you may not even have to merge these alters into one personality, but you can't connect with other parts if you don't talk to them and you need to connect to heal or you'll stay disconnected, obviously.

We have someone on the forum who has a nice list of literature you can read up on. That may help you.

Hope I made sense,

~ Grey

Studies have shown that, literally, alters are different neural pathways working in a more or less isolated way in your brain. When alter A is fronting, some areas of the brain work, others don't. When alter A and B are co-conscious, both may or may not have access to more areas of the brain than they usually do, etc.

Alters are your brain turning on and off some part of itself. Each of the neural pathways created this way will react differently to stories, events, etc. because what's creating one's sense of self, it's the memories and experiences they remember having.

So alters are real. But they aren't fully functional people by themselves, since there are always some parts of the brain, some parts of the memories, some resources they can't access. That's a thing a lot of dissociated people struggle to grasp, because they always lived like this.

I really understood how much my system wasn't "separate people" when I healed my PTSD enough and almost stopped to dissociate on a daily basis. Before that, I *thought* we were separate and functional people, but... eh. Nope. Not at all.

Also, engaging in some amount of separation isn't harmful. It helps to identify the different needs of each alter, to take care of them, to regulate their feelings, etc.

Separation stops being helpful when it's not used for healing, but to reassure the alters who tend to be in denial about DID ; when it's used to prove to yourself you do have DID. Because denial is caused by dissociation, so the more you try to separate your alters for anything else than healing, the more you'll dissociate, the more you'll struggle with denial, the more you'll need to prove yourself you have DID...

And some parts of the online community tend to exacerbate this, because they focus a lot on their experiences with their alters, on "how to know if I am faking or not?", to the point they forgot about traumas and healing.

But finding the right balance between "we are different" and "we are the same person" is how healing works (and this balance can be different for each system, and at each stage of said healing).

Answering so you can have the link to the list of ressources in my signature. Dwelt gave you the nice neurological stuff. Have a metaphore on the side:

Alters are pieces of a puzzle named "the system" - that's "dissociation". People who do not dissociate are a whole picture (integrated + fused under one sense of self). People who recover from DID (= integration) are a puzzle neatly put together.

Does not matter if you are a puzzle or a picture, in all cases you can read the image through a grid and focus on some areas specifically, some specific puzzle pieces. That's "separation". Some therapies use the "separation" reading grid such as ego state therapy, inner family system therapy...

Does not matter how many "puzzle pieces" you are, they are all real and they all exist. And it does not matter if, when healing (putting the puzzle pieces together), you want to keep reading yourself by using the shape of the puzzle pieces (= functional multiplicity) or if you prefer to read yourself as one whole identity (= fusion) or anything in between.

I'm an "in between" : depending on the day I read myself as one whole identity including all of my parts/alters, and sometimes I need to shift the focus and "separate" into a few identities in order to better understand what's going on. Given my state of healing it's a bit like opening the car hood to check specific parts of the engine without disassembling the engine. Dissociation is a disassembled engine. No matter how well put together the pieces are, they are all real and they all exist! But past a point of "assembing the engine together" you stop listing the pieces as separate and start to just call it "the engine" as a whole, and you forget most of the time how many pieces there are.

Hope the metaphores help!

Personally, I see this as a philosophical matter,

Basically, while inherently we are the same being, and the same legal entity, it would be hard for me to personally say that for instance I and my littles are the same person, even as dissociative barriers decrease. While you could call her a different mental state, Bridie very much sees the world as a little girl does and has trouble understanding things like sex or politics or even money from any perspective other than that of a traumatised little girl. She is stuck in a developmental state where the choice to do things is based on rewards and punishment and sees rules as absolute, something that most children grow out of at by about the age of 10. In addition, unless she is blendy with me which often only happens due to large amounts of stress, or a switch having been recent, she just cannot spell very well, often spelling words based on how they sound in our accent i.e. proberly for probably, and coll instead of call.

In addition, Bridie has different interests than me, different memories to me, and different PTSD triggers to me, with Bridie often getting scared at TV shows with too much violence, even cartoon violence. Bridie often interprets our psychosis differently, often believing it to be voices of angels or ghosts haunting her, while I often believe it to be persecutory gnomes or headmates being out to get me. While there is an amount of shared knowledge, she knows how video games works, she can play Pathfinder though finds how our GM runs it to be kind of boring, and she knows several Japanese words we learned in high school, as well as knowing about movies one of us watched, these are often devoid of context, and the memories are vague. It's like she's reporting things friends told her as opposed to actual first hand knowledge.

Personally, as far as I'm concerned, people who insist on "biological realities" of DID are similar in function to people who insist that trans women are biologically male, which while not devoid of basis in reality, ignores a lot of practical and real life information about how the people operate and function day to day. I am a woman, I have cultural experiences similar to cis women, though uniquely shaped by my femininity being derided and rejected and denied until reclaimed. If people choose to see themselves as one person that's ok, and if people choose to see themselves as separate that's ok too.

We're with Prime Possum on this as we also have Tulpa's in our system. we also have a little Susie (LS) who stays 6 and is just like a little girl..she finds Star Trek scary but Bobby, Kit and I all love it.

Yuna is overly submissive sometimes and extremely anxious about whether anyone likes her or if she's NT enough to be 'accepted for normal' by the outside world..Bobby doesn't give a ****. (insert expletive of choice), they feel they've been surpressed for long enough but also recognises due to their autism being more severe than the rest of us they do better blended with someone else when out front.

A few days ago I (Lily) felt like I'd emerged from a coma that had been years long..all I remembered was I had last been around 12 .... now I have Bobby blended with me (for short periods by choice they have still retained the ability to seperate and return inside when they want) I have all their memories and also have Yuna integrated (last night). Yuna held many fragment memories plus another alter (Jay) who had previously integrated with her, so now I have almost a full lifetime of memories. Yuna and Jay are no longer seperate alters. It's quite surreal!

However their personality traits have not overtaken that of mine or Bobby's (when they blend with me) but I now have their experience of 'learning to be host' and can now age-slide. I also find I now know who people are on here!

But some are still seperate inside LS wishes to remain 6 and with 'her family' as she still finds the outside world really scary. Four have been left inside with her as her caretakers. They all actively and independently chose that role knowing they will remain insiders for as long as LS wishes to remain a child.

We each were created from the thoughts, experiences, emotions and memories of the time period when they were triggered out originally. How does that make them any less real than the one seen as the 'legal owner' of the body? 'I think, therefore I am'

Even for people seen to have only one personality they are more than the sum of their physical parts... The combination of bones, skin, organs etc that form the physical human body do not explain how a person develops consciousness in the first place.. even from the viewpoint of all us being singletons ..how do we all end up so different from each other personality wise and physical appearance when we are all basically made up of the exact same physical parts? (not talking about gender specific parts here..I mean as humans we all basically have 2 legs, 2 arms, 1 head etc that distinguish us from say... being a giraffe or a crocadile!)

Who are we to say that one body can or should only contain one consciousness, soul or spirit??

What if people with plural systems are the 'normal ones' and singletons are the 'disabled ones' as they were only born with a single personality that has to cope with everything? (like a person born with only one arm or leg being seen as 'less able' than one born with both?


Lily

For us to be "one person" (fully fussed) we would actually become very ill. We've tried a number of times both on our own and with trained therapists but the reality is that we are physically disabled and autistic and the only reason we are able to function is because the chronic pain and triggering stimulation is divided and handled by different alters. If more than 3 of us are front then we suffer from extream brain fog, migrane, constant nausea, we loose our verbal skills due to over stimulation, we constantly stim and we end up guarding so many historicaly and chronically injured areas that we become incapable of bending to tie our shoes or walking without a cane.

We also have a reincarnated soal who is our caretaker not sure what would happen to him but he is definitely a different person with exomemories that occasionally hit us like a brick wall when he recognises something from his past.

What makes a person real? At what point does a baby/todler/child gain person hood? There is no consent on age or stage for this however the main symptoms of personhood are: the ability to form desires separate from the influence of others and the understanding that your care giver continues to exist when they are separated from you.

On that basis a baby who continues to reject food despite its caregivers enthusiastic miming of enjoying said baby food and who upon finding and interesting thing crawls through the house to.give their caregiver the interesting thing is demonstrating personhood.

Does it have a fully developed personality or skills for survival? No, yet it is still arguably a person.

Alters are not fully functioning individuals in the sence that if they had to run solo for the rest of their lives they would find they have major skills deficits and potentially the part of the brain required for learning those skills permanently off limits yet i say despite this they are still real individual people. after all we don't deny personhood to folk who have learning disabilities who would also have major skills defects and areas of the brain that they cannot use.

Eliseahorse wrote:For us to be "one person" (fully fussed) we would actually become very ill. We've tried a number of times both on our own and with trained therapists but the reality is that we are physically disabled and autistic and the only reason we are able to function is because the chronic pain and triggering stimulation is divided and handled by different alters. If more than 3 of us are front then we suffer from extream brain fog, migrane, constant nausea, we loose our verbal skills due to over stimulation, we constantly stim and we end up guarding so many historicaly and chronically injured areas that we become incapable of bending to tie our shoes or walking without a cane.

We also have a reincarnated soal who is our caretaker not sure what would happen to him but he is definitely a different person .

WOW! You've just basically described us in that first paragraph! Now we realise why 'Maddie' was so physically disabled ...she existed at a time we had no understanding we were multiple ..so did Thea who was deaf/mute (though not physically disabled..well not wheelchair user though we never did master learning to swim or drive ...maybe Dyspraxia?) maybe there were not so many blended in that mix I'm not sure?? There was always some kind of genuine medical incident that triggered the disability to start with though.

I think us taking turns to host also helps divide the constant Tinnitus, chronic fatigue and pain between us.

When we have to work together alot of us to get through an external appointment or social event the body becomes more disabled than it is when only one of us is out home alone. We never made the connection! ..it may also explain why some can co-host together better than others? ...whether they are most closely alike (interests/beliefs etc)?

We also have 2 'reincarnated souls' that we consider 'walk-ins' They consider themselves as Spirit Guardians and prefer the term Tulpa to alter. Neither are a 'version of me', one is not even human.

Some of us have noticed on other DID forums the move towards only allowing one alter to speak ..mainly the one who created the account has to be the one who posts at all times. we hope this forum doesn't go the same way. we've found Tulpa forums more accepting of 'walk-ins' and non-human alters. Alot on there are also autistic and DID.

Lily

We have the inner structure we need and the identities we need, no more no less. And sometimes it means that there are different and dissociated senses of self inside the same brain. And it's okay as long as it helps. When it stops being helpful that's the issue.

Being many selves is not a problem as long as the integration processes run smoothly enough so that we can form secure attachments and integrate the difficult events of life without traumatizing. Who cares how many identities and what they look like? The important is to feel safe and to be able to protect onself and keep onself safe and have a satisfying life.

Dissociation is an adaptative reaction to a hostile environment. It becomes a disorder when we keep dissociating in situations that are safe, when the dissociation keeps us from adapting to a non-hostile, non-stressful environment.

That's why it's so difficult to heal. Because dissociating = staying safe, according to our past. So it's very difficult to switch gears when, later on, we encounter situations where the dissociation makes us blind to danger and keeps us from protecting ourselves.

Aaaand I think I lost my train of thoughts. Byebye thought train! I liked you.

Thank you everyone for your replies! For some reason, I wasn't getting emails about the replies on this topic, and it slipped my mind...

I really do appreciate it. I get worried and frightened about all of this a lot. I recognize my separation and disassociation within myself on the days it happens. When I try to look back on what happened, I can't draw anything. It's all very hard to explain my experience.

But thank you all. Wishing you all the best in your journeys.