Non-human alters, Foreign alters

At first, I actually believed her!
But since, I don't have DID, a lot of the concepts of it... I guess, don't really make a lot of sense.

And again, it hurts to know that my friends are feeling invalidated!
I'm sure, coming from a singleton, though, it may be silly, and useless for me to try to understand, anyway...

I think your friends are lucky to have someone as dedicated to learning about the condition as you are. Also just wanted to add that the non-humans in our system aren't just littles pretending. They're mostly very strong adults who are protectors. Five are children though who are trauma-free

I would also like to chime in on the animal alter topic.

Now that more memories are coming back, I'm getting some of the good memories from my childhood. I went through a stage when I was somewhere between the ages of 4 - 8 where I pretended to be a cat every second I could. I would even eat my cereal in a bowl like a my dog and it had to be placed right besides the dog's food bowl.

I of course have a kitty cat running around in my inner world. Whatever part of my system it is, when it went inside, it took the form it wanted.

.

I haven't been diagnosed with DID, but I seem to suffer from a lot of things that the awesome people on here do. The one in our system who looks after us all mainly portrays herself as a dragon. There are rare occasions that she shows as human, but it's normally a dragon. This seemed strange to me to begin with, but from my point of view all my life I've seen dragons as the big bad protectors of the fantasy universe (which I've always been really interested in) so it makes perfect sense that the one who looks after us shows herself as one.

Dark xx

Well, think of it this way. There are psychiatrists out there who specialize in DID but believe it's extremely rare. Or don't believe in RA at all. Or, hell, they might even think integration is the only option! Psychiatrists aren't always right.

Having animal alters seems pretty common. After all, when you're a child with DID, you want protectors as strong as possible. Why stop with just humans?

And as for the language thing, maybe they had a baby sitter or teacher or family member fluent in said langauge? For a newly created alter, they might have absorbed said language instead of English. With no other language to get in the way, they could have learned very rapidly, if still a child.

And as for each alter only knowing as much info as the host, that's BS. Even singletons don't remember or can't understand everything they know. It's in the brain somewhere, just inaccesable to them. When you have DID, certain alters might just be able to access and remember what you can't.

And obviously, co-con is real. So I agree with Bourbon there.

A personal message to you, Lily; stop being so harsh on yourself! You're doing your best to understand, which is GREAT! Your friends are lucky to know you.

@Tylas: Haha, same here. The only non-d*mon on the Control Group Layer is Helena, the introject of the female ab*ser. And she could take on half the system, no sweat.
~Rage

DarkenedAngel wrote:The one in our system who looks after us all mainly portrays herself as a dragon. There are rare occasions that she shows as human, but it's normally a dragon. This seemed strange to me to begin with, but from my point of view all my life I've seen dragons as the big bad protectors of the fantasy universe (which I've always been really interested in) so it makes perfect sense that the one who looks after us shows herself as one.

That's a cool one. I just have a bear and a cat. I am envious of your dragon. lol

ashesoflife - Hehe thanks, she laughed at your comment and all I can hear in my head is her going "Well we always did like dragons when we read and they're all big and firey and stuff" XD

DarkenedAngel wrote:ashesoflife - Hehe thanks, she laughed at your comment and all I can hear in my head is her going "Well we always did like dragons when we read and they're all big and firey and stuff" XD

LMAO. That's awesome. You have a dragon with a sense of humor and it talks. My cat doesn't even meow in my head. Yet more envy. I should talk the cat into growing wings or something cool.

I have a very young alter who was tortured like an animal and believes himself to be and acts like a wolfdog (part wolf, part dog). I have another alter who doesn't speak another language but a non-standard dialect of American English. I had to do research on his accent and grammar because I'd never come across it before and as I journaled it and looked at it, I thought it was just made up. He uses phrases like "we's goin" and "I might could be" plus odd vocabulary like "plum" as an intensifier. I discovered he speaks an authentic Appalachian dialect, eastern Kentucky version. That he speaks like that now makes sense as we're fairly certain he spent up to a third of our early childhood in another family's home, a family my parents referred to unkindly as hillbillies. So he learned his language the way any child does, by listening to the people around him and imitating them. And he describes himself without shame as a hillbilly. When I visited eastern Kentucky for him in June because he felt so "homesick" (we grew up in Illinois), I discovered that every single person there talked just like him. I was the one who talked funny!