Alter in love was a mystery to me

I like your drawing a lot, Una. It's a nice representation of a system and indicates how you're looking at everyone as part of a whole. And Jack wanted you to know that he sees a baseball.

Way back in 1991, in a chapter of Review of Psychiatry, Volume 10, Richard Kluft wrote "Apart from a patient's manifesting the classic features of MPD, there are a number of findings that suggest a patient merits careful scrutiny for this condition", followed by a list of 14 findings. Here they are, prefixed by how they apply to me:

n/a 1) prior treatment failure
n/a 2) three or more prior diagnoses
yes 3) concurrent psychiatric and somatic symptoms
yes 4) fluctuating symptoms and levels of function
yes 5) severe headaches and/or other pain syndromes
yes 6) time distortion, time lapses, or frank amnesia
yes 7) being told of disremembered behaviors
yes 8) others noting observable changes
no 9) the discovery of objects, productions, or handwriting in one's possession that one cannot account for or recognize
yes 10) the hearing of voices (80% experienced as within the head) that are experienced as separate, urging the patient toward some activity
no* 11) the patient's use of "we" in a collective sense and/or making self-referential statements in the third person
yes** 12) the eliciting of other entities through hypnosis or a drug-facilitated interview
yes 13) a history of child abuse
yes 14) an inability to recall childhood events from the years 6 to 11

* now yes
** hypnosis and drugs not required; well-phrased, gentle direct inquiry is sufficient

Una+ wrote:

carpediem46 wrote:Wow, how did you explain the situation to him?

I said what I knew: I was in love with him and very uncomfortable; I didn't know him and my feelings for him were not in character for me; I was on the verge of a panic attack; I needed help; and I was really sorry for disturbing him with my stuff.

carpediem46 wrote:That's amazing how that came about, and how he's never harmed you but it's triggered you so badly. I'm so sorry.

I wish I knew what about him triggers me. At this point I know of 4 insiders, and I have reason to think all of them are activated by him. If only he would talk to me.

carpediem46 wrote:Has your insider sought help for this yet?

This insider now floods me almost constantly with emotions and intuitions about other people, but has never spoken to me and maybe cannot speak. It is another insider who said yes; that insider's job seems to be to suppress the first insider. No one is talking yet.

Anyway, this is all very new and foreign to me, and I am searching for information and trying to make sense of what is happening to me. I am hoping that anyone reading my story who feels it resonates in some way will share their own story.

FYI -- If you have an alter of about 12 years of age, she may be getting crushes on people that can be highly intense, to your adult mind you may be misunderstanding it a "love feelings." Also, it's not uncommon for insiders to not have emotions for your husband, they may not even know he exists or who he represents. Best wishes to you as you go through this time of discovery.

Professer wrote:If you have an alter of about 12 years of age, she may be getting crushes on people that can be highly intense, to your adult mind you may be misunderstanding it a "love feelings."

Yes that can happen, in fact does happen in many systems, but that isn't what happened in my system.

Three years have passed since I began this thread and much has changed. However that feeling has not changed. The "in love" feeling was utterly specific to this one person, no one else, and it existed for a reason specific to this person. The alter in which the feeling arose has fused with me and the result is a net affect that is well modulated. The feeling is not gone but it no longer overwhelms.

Lately I have been busy offline, so not posting here much nor reading much either. It feels gratifying that some readers here noticed my absence and PMed me.

Just so you know, although I may read PMs as a rule I do not respond. My time and energy are finite and the more I spend discussing in PMs the less I can spend on the DID Forum. I would rather put my efforts into the DID Forum, where it may benefit the most readers, both current and future.

Sometimes I get PMs that mention, among other things, that the writer thinks I don't like them. All I will say about that is I generally am reserved, private. I have enough trouble with attachments, both my own attachments to others and others' attachments to me; I'd rather not be creating more! I'd rather not be breaking anyone's heart. So, I deliberately behave here with high intention and low warmth.

I'm glad to hear that you are okay.

This is a "for the record" type of post.

Rarely do I remember my dreams. I assume I have them, like other people do, but they don't reach my conscious mind. In the past 4 years every dream I have remembered has been about either my DID or my Alter 5's Other Man (OM), or both. Usually both, and these two themes are connected in my waking thoughts as well.

Also in the past 4 years I have had a number of anomalous awake experiences of a "paranormal" nature. Some, the ones about OM, I have no way of checking because he will not speak with me. But some have concerned other persons and those experiences I have been able to check out have all been fully confirmed. I have mentioned some of these experiences before in this thread, but not in full detail.

Well, this past Sunday I had a dream that may have been a paranormal experience as well. Here goes. On Sunday, August 17, 2014, I was uncharacteristically sleepy. I went to bed at 8pm, fell asleep immediately, had a lucid dream (I knew I was dreaming), and woke at 8:30pm. The dream was about me having a conversation with a work supervisor, mostly about OM. I tried to explain, without sharing too-personal details, why I am sure (a) OM has DID and (b) OM has aware insiders who are trapped inside and seek help. I told supervisor that sometimes with OM I hear people screaming and my alters think the screamers are OM's insiders. As I said this I heard the screams again and I told the supervisor this. At that moment I woke but I still heard the screams. I got up and told my husband, crying. Then I stopped hearing the screaming but I had an extremely painful headache. A few minutes later it passed and for 10 minutes or so my head felt like a helium balloon, hollow and floating. Then I drank some alcohol to sedate myself and hopefully blunt my senses, and went back to bed.

I desperately want to tell someone else about this, because these screamers need help. But who? Who can help them? Are they OM's insiders? They sure aren't mine!

When I first began hearing the screams clearly, in December 2010 when OM showed me a video clip of a man talking about little boxes in the brain, my insiders joined in and screamed too. There was a "jailbreak" in my head as they all came awake together and broke out of their inner void prisons. At the time I had no clue about DID and was very disturbed by this. Naturally. Now I/we are not yet fully integrated but we have traveled far toward integration and there do not appear to be any more prisoners in my mind. We are a "no alter left behind" kind of system.

The last command hallucination I experienced, telling me to help OM, specifically to talk to OM, to tell OM (tell him what?) was about a year ago. So I guess I am due for another one soon...

The ''paranormal'' part of DID doesn't cease to amaze me. I've had similar experiences in a way, at least the lucid dreaming and telepathic messages with who i perceive to be another multiple.

Four months ago I posted in this thread that...

Una wrote:Recently I had my first personal experience of something that is reported a lot here on the DID Forum. I was undergoing a minor surgical procedure when Alter 4, the one behind the amnesia wall, woke up. As usual I felt her presence manifest in the right side of my body, most strongly in my right arm. She was terrified by what was happening. I was overwhelmed with her feelings about the procedure, first fear and then grief. We began to cry. I held her hand and subvocalized an explanation of what was going on and comforting words. After a few minutes she went back inside, and I returned to normal.

This month I had another surgery with the same surgeon and again she was present and scared. This time she arrived during the clean field preparations and I was able to explain to the surgeon what was happening. I think during the previous surgery he triggered her by patting my right upper arm. He did that again during this surgery, several times. He says this patting is a bad habit he has; his intention is to be comforting and calming but for some patients it has the opposite effect. Indeed! His patting borders on fondling, and he does it in a casual almost mindless way, like someone fondling a pet while their attention is elsewhere. For many abuse survivors that manner of touch may feel far more intrusive and objectifying than I think he intends. Perhaps if he were more intentional it would go over better.

During the surgery I held her hand and talked to her, and she was able to stay much calmer than the previous time. Our right arm was partially numb, though. Recall that I have frequent conversion symptoms involving that arm, including complete anesthesia and paralysis. Other times I have experienced an "alien limb" phenomenon; some neurologists consider this is to be a dissociative phenomenon.

Wikipedia: Conversion disorder
Wikipedia: Alien hand syndrome

This post is about polyamory. Many of us married persons with DID find out about our DID in the course of dealing with a major life crisis: discovering suddenly that we want a romantic and/or sexual relationship with someone other than our spouse. Usually we want this new lover in addition to our spouse. Perhaps we discover a dissociated part of us, an alter, is already in such a relationship. It is difficult to call this an extramarital relationship when the alter in question denies being in any way involved in the marriage!

So, here are my two favorite books on navigating the relationship minefields of loving more than we "should'. Of having our cake and eating it too.

Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino (Cleis Press, May 2008). Read this first.

More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert (Thorntree Press, Sept. 2, 2014).

This second book is just out and I have not finished reading my copy but it is stirring things up for me inside. For example, in the chapter about communication I could barely read the advice about telling your partner what you want because all the while in my head I was hearing a voice yelling over and over again I want [Alter 5's love object]! and my entire body was flooded with longing for him. This is so frustrating for me! Alter 5 and I have been fused for over a year now but, as I have mentioned in this thread before, at times we are able to somehow step apart from each other and face off and communicate with each other as if we were separate. Previously she was "not me" but now post fusion I experience her as very much a part of me even when we are standing apart talking to one another. If I understand the literature accurately, she now is an ordinary ego state.

My husband found me crying. So I told him exactly why, including how much we were wanting the other man in that moment. I know the feeling will pass. So does he, and he gave me a sympathetic hug. What a lovely man he is.