Introducing My Alters

Dissociative Identity Disorder is described as the presence of two or more distinct personality states, making the presence of these multiple personalities or Alters the most well-known symptom of DID. Alters are created as a defense mechanism, a form of protection for the original personality, which is usually the host. The first alters are usually formed in early childhood, but more alters can be made or become “active” all though a person’s life.

There can be as few as two personality states or as many as hundreds, however, the most common number seems to be 10-12. Personalities can be anything. Any race, ethnicity, age, gender, sex, etc. Some may not even be human. I have heard of people having animals or mythological creatures like fairies as alters. All of mine are at least humanoid I believe. They can come from different time periods or even other planets or fictional places. Each alter has a unique body type and looks. They can have unique jobs (in the headspace) and interests. Alters often do excel at skills and the host and other alters may not possess at all. Alters choose their name. It could be a normal human name or even the name of an object, place, or trait, anything really.

Alters can be triggered to front if something sudden or scary happens that reminds the host of something bad or just scares the host. For example a few months ago I was lying in bed and the biggest thunder clap I have ever heard happened and it sounded like a gun or something. Someone took over for that. It wasn’t real danger, but the sudden fear triggered someone, most likely Cid, to take over. Alters can also be triggered to front of they see or hear something they like such as a Tv show or music or a hobby or something generally interesting to them. Littles, or child alters, can be triggered to the front by seeing toys for example.

Personalities including the host live together in the person’s head. This is called the headspace or the system. I will talk about this often, so it’s important to know what this means. The system is the meeting place for all of the alters. Some people are more connected with their system than others. I am not connected with mine. I have had a couple of faint dreams that supposedly took place in our system, but I don’t remember being their consciously. Usually when I am not in control I have amnesia. I will write more about how the headspace/system works later, but this is basically where all of the personalities “live” while not in control of the body. This helps with organization and helps us know who is in the system even if they don’t take control.

I currently have around 12 that I have heard of, however, not all of them “front” or take control of my body. I only know of 10 that have in the past year, some of them as few as once. There are only 2 or 3 that do so often. I thought I would make this post about them to explain a little more about how it works for me, or us. Each personality is valued as an individual so to include everyone when talking about things concerning everyone it is recommended to say we or us. I have a bad habit of not doing that which stems from years of taking the “Maybe if I ignore it it’ll go away” approach, but it makes the others upset so I will try to be mindful to include everyone when speaking about things that everyone is involved with.

I can’t describe each one in detail even if I were able to. That is for them to do and not my place. If that is something you would be interested in reading, I might be able to arrange for some them to take control and do so if they agree. Right now, I am going to briefly mention the ones I know about and how they came about to the best of my knowledge.

The one I hear about most is called Cid. He fronts so much that he is considered a co-host. Most of the time if I’m not in control he is. As far as I know he was the first alter that was created when I was around five years old. He will not say why even when he speaks to therapists and says it’s better that he doesn’t, so I have no idea why this began. He is a lot more laid back than I am, so he usually takes over for generally stressful situations or just normal bad days.

There is one called hateful. Hateful is, well, hateful. Apparently recently he is also calling himself Connor. I don’t know why. He is aggressive and takes over when he feels that is needed to achieve a goal. Other times he seems to be plain hateful for no reason and is not appreciated during those times.

One is called Torturer. He is not nice. I don’t think anyone in the system likes him. I’m not sure why he even exists but he doesn’t seem to protect me from anything. He used to come out a lot when I was a teen and would cut me and things like that, but he doesn’t seem to come out quite as much anymore which is a good thing.

Toss is very depressed, like super duper depressed. He named himself from the act of tossing oneself off a bridge. He takes over in the worst depressive times. I don’t think he’s been active recently, either, unless it was during my extremely difficult tine over the summer, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t remember a lot of the summer and I don’t know who all was fronting instead.

Cassiel was created recently as a mediator personality. I think he might be an angel or something? I don’t know for sure. He is attempting to organize the system and get everyone, including myself, to communicate better. He was created out of the frustration of never knowing what is going on, so he’s here to oversee everything. He is conscious with almost everyone, I think. I hear his voice sometimes, but he’s the only one I hear most of the time. Some people can hear most or all of their alters all of the time. I am cut off from mine for the most part unless he needs to tell me something important. He helped me figure out what day it was an when I worked again earlier today when I was confused.

Cassiel started a journal for everyone to write their name down and some things about themselves. I have names but the rest is blank for most of them. Here are names of alters I know nothing about: Ryan, Hayden, Orion, Cyrus, Saros, an unnamed female, and a little (child). I don’t think these front often if at all.

Right now the way we communicate is through their journal and through notes either on the computer or written on the refrigerator. Whenever I realize I’ve lost time and feel confused the first thing I do is look for notes. For example, today I had a note from hateful telling me tasks he got done that I have struggled with for months. This is just the first step in some sort of normalcy. Before I had no idea what was going on 90% of the time because everything seemed so fractured. Everything still feels fractured, but it helps when notes make it easier to catch up on what I missed.

I hope this gives some sort of idea of the function of alters. I am open to questions. In the next post, which will hopefully come sooner than this one did, I will talk more about systems and how the headspace works for me. I know this has been a long post so thank you for sticking with me.

My DID Diagnosis

Part 2 from yesterday’s post about growing up with DID.

After finishing high school early I joined the Navy directly after my 17^th birthday and I mentally skipped through most of boot camp, but I’m told I did well. By this time, I thought the memory loss was weird but it worked to my advantage, so I just kept it to myself. After I joined the fleet, I was either not myself or I was confused depressed. Working 16-20 hour shifts I was not myself more than myself so I didn’t understand most of what was happening around me or even who people were because I didn’t get a chance to know them. If people asked me about myself I didn’t know what to tell them. I didn’t know what hobbies or interests I had. Life had become so stretched that I forgot what I had been like before. Life was a long stretch of fog with no real direction. I kept a list of the most generic interests possible ready to go to make me look less strange when asked. I tried to focus on music a lot just to have something to ground me and it helped some and satisfied people’s curiosity. During this time people commented to me that I was a lot different during work than after hours. I was told I was more fun at work. I told them work just made me too tired for fun. Truthfully, I thought the constant brain fog I felt was caused by being tired from work coupled with my depression and I avoided seeing a therapist at fear of being discharged. This went on for the 2 or so years I stayed in, worst during deployments, but it happened most all the time.

A couple of years into my Navy career I had an accident while on leave that resulted in a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). I was immediately discharged from the Military and it took months of physical rehabilitation before I could leave the hospital. I had to heal enough to fully breathe normally again. I had to get glasses because my 20/10 vision was ruined. I had to relearn walking, practice speaking, reading, eating and everything else again. It’s still an ongoing process, but intense rehab helped to get me on track at that time.

When I was well enough near the end of my rehabilitation, they started me on intense psychotherapy to help sort out my thoughts and control depression related to the TBI. I absolutely did not feel like a counselor coming into my room asking me all kinds of questions that I didn’t remember the answers to. It was the worst part of my day every time. It became a major point of stress and frustration to the point that Cid began taking the appointments for me. After a few appointments he grew frustrated with the questions as well and stopped pretending to be me. At that point I was tested for disorders such as Schizophrenia, but after looking back at my medical history they determined the symptoms most closely matched DID. They determined the DID was not caused by the TBI because he had so much information about my life as a child, a lot more than I can even remember now. That coupled with the symptoms reported throughout the years proves it was not a new phenomenon, just a well hidden one. However, the counselor thinks the TBI did make them more prevalent either due to the injury itself or as a new protection mechanism and they started coming out a lot more often and more openly than they had before. I’m not sure if that is true, but it’s a good of a guess as any.

After I was released from the hospital I moved back in with my Mom so she could care for me and there would be days that Cid or another alter would come out and just tell my family who they were then continue on without trying to hide it at all. My immediate family was, and I think still is, a little unsettled by it but puts up with it. They have even developed somewhat of a relationship with Cid. A lot of my extended family does not talk to me much anymore.

Switching has stayed steady since then. Sometimes I go months without one coming out and other times they stay out for days at a time. In public, like when I was in the hospital for chemo, they would pretend to be me when they were out just to make things less confusing for nurses and doctors. Sometimes they might post a meme or something on my Facebook, but they aren’t crazy about it, so they don’t often. If there are stretches of days you don’t hear from me then they’re probably out instead. That is a big concern for people so I wanted to address that right away. People feel like they can’t trust me because they never know if I’m me. You can. It’s not a trick to mess with people like the people who fake show online. Mostly just a trauma thing so they’d have no reason to bother my friends. However if people are comfortable with it and curious about them they could write something. Definitely is not as fast as they show online, though. It would take a few days.

Growing Up with DID

This is part One of my DID diagnosis. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

I was asked earlier about the first time I experienced a DID episode. That is difficult to pinpoint, but I can talk about when it became apparent enough that a psychiatrist finally diagnosed it and what life was like up to that point.
I was a “sensitive” child. Prone to stress easily and often on edge, usually for no reason. I would sit and stress out about everything to the point that I detached from myself. One of the few memories I still have from childhood are these vivid out-of-body experiences beginning at about 7 years old. At the time I thought I must be a super psychic or something. I would be sitting and literally feel like I floated out of myself and looked around the room from above it, once even seeing myself in the room. (I’m not sure how to explain that part unless it was my mind constructing what the room must look like). Things were foggy like there was a cloud around me and I couldn’t control myself anymore, so I just watched instead. It would fix itself eventually and I would soon forget about it. I never told anyone about it because even as a child I knew it sounded insane.
That happened a less as I aged and was replaced by amnesia or missing time as I called it. As I went into my adolescence, I started losing small chunks of time like entire school days for example. At that point I just thought I was good at daydreaming because I hated school. I felt that I didn’t fit in and I didn’t keep many friends. The amnesia was great during the day, but awful at night because I never got any work finished in class and after missing the lecture I didn’t understand the homework. I didn’t know how to explain it to my parents, so they thought I was just lazy or unmotivated to do my work. I even had a teacher tell me once that other teachers warned them about how I would sit and refuse to work in class, to which I was totally confused because I felt I was trying my best. I made decent grades and passed except for one year, but things only got worse as I aged.
By high school it got so bad that I transitioned to homeschooling due to a diagnosis of anxiety and depression by a psychiatrist. At home my head stayed clearer and I obsessively did school work, finishing all 4 years of high school in a year and a half, by myself other than some math tutoring, and finishing with a 4.9 GPA and proving that whatever my problem was, it was not academic.
Skipping ahead for a minute, this may seem like it has nothing to do with my DID diagnosis, but each of these problems that cropped up over the years was a different symptom of DID making itself known as it progressed. At first, they thought I was just too sensitive. As I aged, they assumed I became lazy and then it was assumed to be caused by depression.
During this time, I had at least one altar, Cid, that came out though I was unknown to everyone, even me. In later counseling sessions it was discovered that he first came to be when I was 5 years old. I don’t know why. It’s usually caused by something extremely traumatic, but if something happened, I can’t remember whatever it was. That’s what they’re for, to hide the bad things. He has never told what it was or why he came to be. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it; he just is and that’s good enough. He or another went to school for me all those times I couldn’t remember the day. He is good at pretending to be me when he needs to be, so if it was him at school the teachers assumed it was me. He still comes out when I’m stressed and is the most active other than myself, the host though as an adult he has more distinctive personality traits from me. It was he who finally told a counselor who he was and began the path to diagnosis, which I will talk about in the next post.

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Why?

Last night I came out of the proverbial mental health closet by announcing that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). A radio show I dearly love compared DID to government programming and demon possession. They have done this multiple times in the past and it’s finally time to set the record straight as much as I am able to.

This is such a big deal because throughout the years I have to hide it in most all aspects of my life due to the intense stigma surrounding it. All mental health disorders face stigma, but thanks to misconceptions DID is one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized mental health disorders of all.

I hope though this blog I can share what it is really like to live with DID and help prove that it is a regular psychological disorder that deserves patience and support rather than something to be feared.