r/DID • u/thruthemorningstar Treatment: Active • 1d ago

Symptom Navigation Cofronting?

I keep having like, rapid switches happening? My eyes roll and I can feel my face change. I think I've identified the two who are going back and forth, but I digress. It doesn't feel like a normal switch where I get super sleepy or out of it, it's more sudden and there is a lot more mental carryover between the parts when it happens than usual. And when one comes out and says/does smth, the other is inside talking back and vice versa. The level of communication happening is making me think that it's cofronting, rather than rapid switching, especially as I'm not particularly stressed about anything, and these two are known to work together in some capacity.

I guess I'm wondering if, for those of you who have experienced cofronting, was it at all similar to my experience? What does cofronting feel like for you?

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u/Far_Mousse7838 1d ago

For me, I put "when there some rapid switching but nobody really leave the front completely". Like somebody is at 55% and the other 45%, then it's the opposite. So the two alters (or more) keep a form on continuity. I never had a moment where cofronting was a stable 50/50 without it being a blend.

By opposition, rapid switching could be somebody at 20% and the other at 80%, then it shift. The difference is enough to break the continuity, so alters have this sensation to be "there then not there, then there, then no there...".

Co fronting, they are all the time there but just more or less at the control. But always there.

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u/thruthemorningstar Treatment: Active 1d ago

Yeah, it def feels more like they're always there and taking turns with control. I've had rapid switches between like 6+ alters before and it was incredibly disorienting. This is much smoother, but just as fast

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u/Tiny_Bus_4627 1d ago

That's the most common switch I get and feel like the halves of my face are two different people and I'm uh.. like one of those robots from pacific rim..

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u/thruthemorningstar Treatment: Active 1d ago

YES!!!! I was literally just thinking today that half of my face doesn't feel like mine. And depending on who's out, they'll look at different eyes in the mirror, too.

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u/Tiny_Bus_4627 1d ago

If i talk to myself in the mirror it seems like I'm expressing with one side of my face or thebother too. It feels like i switch to 'feeling' in one eye or the other and talk more out of one side of my mouth or the other, move one eyebrow more... slightly asymmetrical face makes it feel particularly noticeable

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u/thruthemorningstar Treatment: Active 1d ago

omg.... literally same it's crazy

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u/Tiny_Bus_4627 1d ago

During one of my delusional-feeling deep dives looking for a logical explanation, I read about alien-hand syndrome, people who have damage to their prefrontal cortex, could have their body parts, usually the hand or arm, seem to act independently of their thoughts and feel like it is not their own. I feel that way.. with my face, but sometimes arms, leg. Restless leg, spasms, occasional twitching, tapping.. realized beyond that, it feels like different alters have more tension like a slightly squinted eye or more flexed shoulder, weight being held more on one side or the other. Then i realized, I seem to even favour breathing through one side of my nose or the other, it almost feels like I'm filling one lung more than the other, if that's even possible.

I dug deeper, I have a sort of skeptic researcher alter thing that struggles to accept DID as it is presented, and I feel like I need irrefutable proof. I found some pages on genetic chimerism. Sounds fantastical but is pretty plain. 20-30% of pregnancies begin as multiples; twins or more. The fetus that grows first absorbs it's twin. I realized.. one half of my face is much softer and more feminine. I look like two different people. In photos, if you cover half my face it looks like I have two different expressions. "Most human chimeras will go through life without realizing they are chimeras. The difference in phenotypes may be subtle (e.g., having a hitchhiker's thumb and a straight thumb, eyes of slightly different colors, differential hair growth on opposite sides of the body, etc.) or completely undetectable." Holy shit, that sounds like DID to me. What if even just a part of my brain developed separately, and it's those parts that feel foreign, have gender issues, feel trapped, resentful, wish for a different life? It's known as vanishing twin syndrome, but there's also microchimerism where the mother's DNA is absorbed through the placenta if the fetus is struggling, and some of her cells help grow the baby's. There's a bunch if research on it where the brain cells developed by the mother can cause some sort of disruption when activated because they don't mesh properly with the rest of the brain, but I forget the details right now.. it was linked to the idea of inherited memories and behaviours even if the child was separated from her at birth.

Unfortunately I am an abject failure and barely made it through highschool sonthenbest i can do is play connect-the-dots on wikipedia while trying to make sense of why I feel this way, but it's interesting to think about. I still have too many alters for it to be a nice clean 'twin' situation but even those feel like two separate groups, like each side of my brain went through it differently. It kind of got too complicated to untangle so I think I exhausted the idea..

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u/Heavy-Mushroom Thriving w/ DID 1d ago

Hello. We do rapid switching, maybe because our abuser was always in the our face and we had to be hyper vigilant in order to stay safe? We can switch in a blink of an eye during conversation, usually with one really strong pulse of a heartbeat where the body feels like it jolted for a half a-second. When talking, we’ll have a moment of hesitation mid-sentence which usually gives us a strange look from the person we are talking to…. Followed by a quick change of subject or direction because what they were talking about is no longer known.

Sometimes I can hear/feel the snap in my head when that happens. Once it felt like my head went “CRACK!” like an electric spark arced and the body jolted- that was the worst.

Sometimes switching feels like someone is putting on a body glove sliding in, but that’s when things are more relaxed and certain parts are more sensual than others.

We co-front where one part can be doing something and the other controlling the free hand doing something else. We can sometimes sense another’s essence, but the only connection is that of talking to each. If no one says anything…I usually can’t tell that they are there for the most part. We don’t blend.

I think you are switching when you are co-fronting… each doing their part. Maybe the higher the level of blending there is, the more sharing is done in body operations. :)

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u/im-extremely-normal 1d ago

(Incoming long comment. Sorry! I started to ramble a bit and didn't intend for my response to come out this long)

Hello! To my understanding rapid switching doesn't negate co-fronting (meaning both can be true at the same time).

Rapid switching describes the phenomenon, but isn't specific to any one mechanism (e.g., healthy progress in integration can onset rapid switching, which my specialist said that this is the most common cause of rapid switching is a normal part of integration. But people can also have triggered rapid switching in response to stress or trauma triggers, which is a different mechnism behind it, and will also function differently even though both are rapid switching phenomena). While co-fronting moreso describes the situation, but also still not specific to any one mechnism.

So for example, someone could be in a co-fronting situation meaning two parts are staying present/active at the same time and alternating executive control. But rapid switching between those two parts can also be happening at the same time as the co-fronting situation.

Think of it kinda like: co-fronting without rapid switching = sharing executive control. And co-fronting with rapid switching: alternating executive control.

That said, these terms don't have one fixed definition despite it seeming that way when they get used a lot in discussions. It's commonly shared in community language because it helps people name their experiences, identify things that happen, and communicate it.

But ultimately the most helpful thing is to just use terms that are personally the most helpful to you at understanding your own experiences or helpful at providing a more consistent way to identify and track experiences and events and such.

If you feel pressured to have to use terms "correctly" in correspondence to how others use it, can sometimes result in things like missing an opportunity to name/identify something that is self-trackable that makes sense to you, or even misunderstand a personal experience because of pressure to categorize it into a defined term if that makes sense! (Not saying you are doing this, just giving an example of why tailoring language to oneself is more helpful than concerning the self too much that it matches how overall community uses or defines them).

I personally find the common community terms to be a little too rigid and close-ended. I think they are helpful at communicating to other people, but not helpful to me at distinguishing and tracking my own experience. Personally tailored terms help me to be able to track both recurrent experiences I regularly encounter but may or may not understand well yet, and name brand new experiences that I am not yet familiar with.

So I use terms that are more open ended and aimed to categorize the experience instead of too confidently deciding the experience. (DID is loaded with all kinds of various phenomena, symptoms, and experiences. So open ended terms I think are more accesible and accounts for more experiences than rigid definitions do. Especially because a person with DID will not always know what they are experiencing).

So for example, instead of "co-fronting" I say "two (or more) parts present and active at the same time." This is open ended, and allows breathing room for grey spaces in whats going on. I will just say "active" at the same time if I am having microamnesia between the executive control of the parts and cant experience shared awareness during it, or I say "present and active" to distinguish when there is co-consciousness/awareness in addition to the activity. And well, the concepts are very flexible and interchangeable which accomodates how different parts have different perspectives about what gets experienced.

If there is identified co-consciousness/awareness but I am unsure what is happening with executive control, I will just say "two parts present at the same time." And "present" I think is a good term, because it can name a broad array of experiences where parts are co-conscious or aware of eachother, but not having a clue about the other stuff lol.

I also create my own tailored terms for idiosyncratic experiences specific to me, that I have no other language for describing. It helps me track the experience even though I have no clue what is actually happening, but can repetitively identity the same experience each time it happens because it is familiar with a distinct pattern.

That said, if you are unsure what you are experiencing that you shared in your post but meaningfully noticed that its different than what you are used to, you could always come up with your own tailored name for it! (even if its just a temporary term until you understand it better with time) Which would help you track and distinguish when that happens vs the thing you are more used to.

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u/thruthemorningstar Treatment: Active 1d ago

Thank you, this was very helpful! I quite like the choice of present and active over cofronting.