You're all one person

My system sees itself as seperate people with different personalities, different goals, different physical make-up and different temperments. We try to work together for the common good of the entire system but lately our daily communication is spotty at best. As far as I know I'm out front a majority of the time, but I can easily lose hours in a day and when stressed I tend to lose entire days in the week. We are a long way from even thinking about intergration, right now we're more into the present and mastering simple things like keeping the car keys in a place I can find them and making sure the body gets atleast a few hours of sleep each night so I can show up at work and cover the bills on time.

Kero

We are most certainly completely different people. We have had DID since we were two years old. Therefore, we never experieneced life as one person. We all developed and grew individually. There are those of us here who are simply parts of the whole system. But many of us would be capable of surviving on our own if we had a seperate body. I believe that makes us slightly more dimensional than simple parts.

As you noted, while we do not have seperate backgrounds, we do maintain different names, appearances, and ages from the body. We have different opinions, sexualities, sensitivies to the outside world, mental disorders, allergies, accents, and speach patterns. The body reacts to different alters differently. The manner in which we carry ourselves differ. We are not simple characters, parts of a whole. We are people.

Of course, we are not like outside people. Because of the way our system works, it is quite possible influence the memories, thoughts, or emotions of others. However, this does not make us any more or less developed.

Of course, we do provide housing to fragments, as well, who are kept as connected to the system as a whole as possible. But exceptions to the rule does not negate said rule.
~Helena

Helena, your description also fits our experience well. I'm glad to hear it put into words like that. Especially about the many differences and about those who are full enough to exist in the outside world on their own if there were more than one body.

mosaicmonkey wrote:

Una wrote:We are parts of one person. We have different attitudes, different emotions, different experiences, but we are all parts of one person. We want to be whole.

Do you mind me asking, is your ultimate goal integration then? Do you know you're the first multies I think I've met who've said that. Thank you for sharing

My system is flooded with desire for integration. Apparently I am such a strong host that the others have spent most of their lives in stasis. I rarely lose time. They lose time in huge blocks. They feel intense grief and rage over their lost years and their powerlessness, and an absolute horror at the idea of experiencing any more lost time.

In my view, we are all fragments of the same person. Integration is what will happen.

Others in me are fighting integration and would tell you we are all our own person that just happen to share a body.

ashesoflife wrote:In my view, we are all fragments of the same person. Integration is what will happen.

Others in me are fighting integration and would tell you we are all our own person that just happen to share a body.

Do you mind me asking (hope this doesn't sound mean, I'm just curious), for those who don't want to integrate are you going to make them? Like force the ones who don't? I'm not criticising just wondered and you don't have to answer if you don't want to.

I have no idea. My ISH is pushing for us all to be one and I'm the one that has to make that happen. I've integrated one already. The next one is the most stubborn one among us.

I don't have a clue how to get through to her or if she will ever come around. I talked to my ISH about getting some of the other ones (ones that would be easier) to integrate first. He said no. That the main protector HAS to be next. It make take a year or more for the next integration to happen.

So good question and I'm not at all offended. I just don't know.

mosaicmonkey wrote:for those who don't want to integrate are you going to make them? Like force the ones who don't?

That's not going to happen in my system. No ######6 way. That is just another form of abuse and invalidation.

Some people do try to force integration or else force suppression of "unwanted" alters. It generally does not work for long and it certainly is not healthy.

Una+ wrote:That's not going to happen in my system. No ######6 way. That is just another form of abuse and invalidation.

Some people do try to force integration or else force suppression of "unwanted" alters. It generally does not work for long and it certainly is not healthy.

From the little I know about DID, I get the feeling that it is up to the individual systems.

Intergration is not something that has to happen. It is an option. From my limited knowledge, and sorry if I step on toes but I really don't know much, the only thing that should happen is cooperation between all of the people that share a body. I think that means that all the parts get to know each other and work together to make the life they share go smoothly.

Whether in the end you remain one body with many people or many people that come together into one is your choice. A decision to be reached among every person that shares the body.

Forced integration sounds messy and scary. Understanding, accepting everyone, and getting along is a lot better.

Forced can definitely be messy, I know Mr Bates who used to be on here had a really bad experience with integration.

I really like reading other people's opinions on integration, and their reasons behind wanting/not wanting it.