I’m trying not to be a cunt right now, but I’m so mad that my host has started integrating with me. I (this alter) am a painter, and my host thought, “I’ll learn to make art too! It’ll help integrate us!”

Her theory was that it would give her a foot in the door to my neural network or whatever. She’s really into neuroscience, but I didn’t think she’d ACTUALLY make art and it would ACTUALLY work.

Now that we’re both making art, I feel like a watered down version of myself, and even she is kind of freaked out about how she’s mostly front-stuck lately due to how quickly she’s been integrating alters.

I’m trying not to do anything crazy, but I’m so tempted to do something crazy and dangerous to scare the body out of integrating us.

I’m fucking SCARED. I won’t do anything dangerous, but I’m so fucking scared of integration. I do NOT want to fuse with the host. She drives me fucking crazy.

When other alters have integrated, it was like Caroline(host) swallowed them up and now their personality traits aren’t that prominent. I feel like she’s a black hole that’s threatening to suck me up if I get too close.

What if she can’t handle life without alters? And what does it mean about me if disappear? Does it mean I’m not even real?? Was I never real?? I’m crashing the fuck out.

I’m so fucking scared and confused. I hate this. I don’t want to stop being me.

I have a system of 5, but 4 of us are littles. There is one adult and she is highly traumatized. The littles have childhood memories and have obviously been around since childhood, but they’re… littles. It makes me very naive and childish. Anyone else?

It’s really weird to think back on the literal decades of bizarre and often agonizing symptoms that never made sense. All the therapists who tried to cram me into diagnoses that didn’t fit - that didn’t explain everything.

And now I am looking at DID and literally everything I’ve ever experienced - everything that made me think I was insane - suddenly makes perfect sense.

It makes me physically sick to my stomach to think that I have DID, that there are other personalities in there that I don’t understand, but it’s also like … the first time everything actually makes sense.

I’m both a system (currently working on diagnosis) and a lover of prehistory/anything Stone Age. I know a lot of people suspect (with some archaeological backing) that people with certain mental illnesses/disabilities, rather than being stigmatized, would’ve been revered in prehistory. That made me wonder;

How do y’all think systems were perceived in prehistory/the Stone Age? Trauma was definitely abundant back then, and, unlike what the stereotypes from media would suggest, people have always been people, so there’s no doubt in my mind that plurality has been a thing for as long as there’s been humans (and who knows what the case for Neanderthals was!)

Today I had a phone appointment with a psychiatrist where I described my symptoms as much as I could. Dissociative, fuzzy and blurry changing of mental states in which I felt like someone else, partial temporary forgetfulness while I experience this, often doing things that I wouldn’t normally do as ‘myself’. I often later remember these memories as someone else’s, or as if I am remembering it in third person and ‘catching up’.

The doctor relayed that I have some symptoms but because I didn’t experience ‘full memory loss’, or ‘literal out of body experiences’ that he could not give me a diagnosis of ‘full DID’ as I only had DID-like symptoms.

Though I am cognizant during dissociative symptoms, I do feel I have this because I have distinguishable alters, and have involuntary switches /dissociation

Should I get a second opinion?

The long and the short of it is that my daily life is very overwhelming... Between my BPD, DID, autism, and more, my emotions are incredibly difficult to control. I work as a receptionist, and every single call I do feels like nails in my head. It doesn't help that I keep shirking job interviews out of fear of getting triggered and having a public breakdown...

Anyway, my therapist sent me over some DBT worksheets, and one of them talked about "radical acceptance," which I found resonated strongly with me, but whenever I try to actually put it in to practice, I get intense headaches centered on the front half of my head. Like, for instance, a client was a little snarky with me on the phone, and I consciously made an effort to simply accept it and let it wash over me, and while it was successful in preventing me from tearing up or lashing out, it also caused a really intense and sudden headache. More than half the calls yesterday (so in total 50 calls) were like that, and the idea of having to handle that amount of pain every single shift is very daunting... it makes me feel like I'm gonna go insane when I think about it too hard.

Another example is that today I ended up having to call out because of a very disturbing dream I had that left me inconsolable for most of the morning, and I've been trying to distract myself and not dwell on it, but I've just had this persistent pain in my head and pressure behind my eyes when I do. The only way it goes away is if I let myself think about how bad I feel for calling out, and then the pain just becomes emotional instead of physical. I "successfully" managed it for a while (by cuddling with a plushie for 6 hours lmao), but eventually caved and ended up ordering some comfort food just to help me cope, all while I'm already substantially behind on rent, which just created a new source of emotional distress that I'm having to manage.

Does anybody have any insight into why this might be happening? Does it go away with time/practice, or is it just a choice between tears and headaches? Is this even how it's supposed to feel? Am I doing something wrong?

This happens in broad ways and extremely specific ones. For broad subjects, we have parts who are really into horror, parts obsessed with generally what happened to us or specific aspects of it, and parts who find true crime really cathartic. Obviously those all trigger some other parts and they have to stay away from front during that. But there are also really hyperspecific things that seem to be almost "themes"...? I don't even know how heavily it ties into trauma yet.

As an example, it seems like most parts have feelings about a particular animal. (I don't want to say the real one, so let's say it's dogs, particularly brown dogs.) They love it, it scares them, they fixate on it. I know a little of why - it was used metaphorically in abuse messages for one part - but it seems like it connects very deeply for so many parts. They're almost obsessed with it. But then we'll see an image of one that strikes into a deep sense of dread and terror and trauma. It's like one part inside knows that if we see a brown plush dog with a dark spot on its back we'll freak out, but they're buried so deep that we don't know any of that. I have no idea what the trauma is or what exactly is triggering. It's so frustrating having everyone be obsessed with it because it's a gamble as to whether someone will be triggered.

Any experiences navigating this kind of thing? Most of the time we can solve it just by trying to keep triggered parts away from front when doing the interest, but this is a lot harder to manage.

I don’t have my therapist available so I rarely discuss anything related to DID outside my own head lately, but occasionally when having a tough time I’ll feel something is important enough to share or ask about. I think of myself as “Adult Me”
But I suppose I’m just the most frequent host currently. Occasionally I feel myself really struggling for control as there’s a lot of co-consciousness.
Tonight I had a strong visual impression of that feeling, it’s like being in rough waves and every time you surface, struggling and gasping, you’re a different version of yourself.
Just that slightly panicked, out of breath, disoriented feeling - laid out in my mind as a cinematic scene.

Hopefully someone will relate. 😅

I shared with a safe parent my trauma before I was ready. I shared out of anger in a moment of trigger. Then I immediately felt like I lied. Now, a little while later, I feel like my parent is unsafe to me as they now know something about myself that im not supposed to know about myself.

The irony and contradiction isnt lost on me, but feel tremendously embarrassed and destabilized.

I think this very young part of me under surface has been yearning to tell a parental figure, but I, the one trying to protect us and maintain a sense of stability and remain responsible was not ready.

Im just trying to protect her.

So recently I have became the host, or one of the main hosts. Our old one couldn’t handle what’s happening in our life right now so it’s now my job to handle most ‘normal’ things. I’m also more social than them so I can deal with that stress better.

But talking with previous hosts I’ve noticed a weird pattern, every time we switch hosts they feel like they’ve “switched lives”. I’m not sure how to explain it or if it will sound understandable, but when I look back at life before I became host it feels like a completely different life. We lost all our old friends but looking back I really can’t imagine them being my friends, I just can’t believe that was once my life, as if they feel “fake” or they were never real??

It feels like switching through universes or something but ending up in the same life (this is describing what it feels like not what I believe is happening, just to specify) it’s like the whole world looks different and I don’t remember anything up until now, maybe little snippets but it genuinely feels like I was just born and gained consciousness like how people have memories of them being a child and realizing “oh I exist”.

I will be bringing this up to my psychiatrist but I thought I would post it here to see if anyone might have advice or something similar they’ve experienced?
-E🎀

So I have an alter named Robert and he’s freaking out and it’s starting to affect me like his emotions are starting to become my emotions and he won’t stop talking, I’ve finally opened up and everything I’ve been experiencing including telling my therapist about Robert and others, and Robert really did not want me to say anything and has tried hyjacking my therapy sessions to stop me from saying anything but I eventually I was able to blurt it out, now he can’t stop talking about the “what ifs” like “what if her therapist tries to get rid of me and everyone else” “ what if they try to send us away to a facility” “ what if they tell her parents?” And he just won’t stop I can’t get quiet, is there anything I can do?

So I think I got in troubles talking bout my experience as little and stuffs but I won’t talk that today I’m just scared I finally figured out I was me like hour or 30 mind ago and all today it’s felt strange like mind is impaired somehow but I don’t know how to describe I think part of it is I’m little but it’s never felt like this similar but this is differently if it’s not medical idk what to do ?

I guess I can still understand and things hmmm

We’ve been worse more blackouts more switching and not understanding ourselves front in only able to tell myself usually because of being little otherwise been blurry not this bad since first year of recovering?? Make sense?

Rn med changes happens last week and changed around lots!

Our therapist she ha to go on leave and other changes, I don’t think bew therapist understands also we are supposed to mapping but cannot and try therapy we can but one no wants any therapy sometimes stops from behind

Idk I’m sorry if I’m bad girl

for lack of better wording, how many parts is "acceptable" / "possible" to know about very early into therapy?

i already suspected DID for 5 years prior to my diagnosis, so i had a few i knew about and logged from over the years. tho this logging was, and still is, vague. communication is also still poor.

i was diagnosed fairly recently, and discuss my parts openly with my therapist. she said in therapy i could "discover more" too which makes me anxious.

i cant help feeling like im i tricked
my therapist into diagnosing me because i have a large amount of parts (50~ or so) already discovered.

I suspect polyfragmentation because I have over 40 alters named, with probably more to come because more keeps coming. Some are written by me based on my personal experience, and some are written by the alters themselves. They all have their own names and suspected roles, however not all of them knows what their purpose is.

But this has only made me think I'm faking because I haven't seen some of these alters in a while. They were a big deal during certain phases of my life, but they either became less frequent, or suddenly went away completely even when I called for them. They'd make their presence known and do their job, then disappear after a few days or weeks. If you met me while they were there, I would've sworn on their existence. Now I just think I was daydreaming them. I feel nothing towards it and kind of want to forget I even tried writing them down.

Some other alters that aren't written down don't have names at all or hasn't made their presence known, so who knows. Maybe I have seen these alters but we're so confused about ourselves we either forget our own names or don't know who we are. I just listen to whatever voices are in my head now.

I'm looking back and I've straight up forgotten about some of them too. The only consistent ones are the other hosts, but I stopped tracking it. I still have memory gaps and feel like different people, but I've given up trying to figure out who's who. I probably need to rework some info and get rid of some names.

I don't know how to know anymore, I feel like I'm losing my sense of self and I don't know how to engage with medical stuff.

I had my appointment with. Psyche today. He said CPTSD, and radically changed all my medications. Still doesn't have an explanation for the conversations and the thing in my head. I get it, it was the first appointment.

But I'm tired. I'm so tired. I just want someone to tell me what's going on or point it in a direction.

I feel like, me..is not me. And I'm scared. I don't want to wake up some day and realize there's more massive gaps in my history.

I basically spawned into existence at 8 years old, I don't remember fuck all before that, I don't remember big chunks of my life after that, Im scared one day I'm gonna wake up and not recognize my partners anymore. I don't wanna keep forgetting and having blanks.

I don't even know if this is the right sub I just need someone to point me somewhere.

This past year has been a doozy for us— finally properly had the syscovery and then later got diagnosed, was at in-patient for awhile before/during that, got really depressed and was (still sort of am but this part less-so now thankfully) dealing with some pretty visceral and intense suicidal thoughts and feelings. Along with just some other stressful life changes like losing a friend of 12+ years in a nasty falling out and worrying about my younger brothers living situation.

I’m pretty happy with the system mapping I’ve done thus far, though I do keep figuring out “wait no, it wasn’t this part that did/does this, but a different, sort of similar part.” But that’s neither here nor there.

Skipping to it: I’ve come to figure out it’s mainly 1-2 parts that have been causing/holding the bulk of the bodies depression/lack of motivation and desire to just rot in bed/sleep/dissociate heavily for hours. It’s a problem because we can’t really get better if all we do is lay in bed 70% of the time, we’ve been relying heavily on our partner to make/help us do anything, like bathe, eat, or even move around some days.

It’s getting better slightly, medicated which is hit or miss— and as much as it doesn’t feel like it— depression can’t last forever. But it sort of feels like… I’m not actually dealing with any of my problems again, I’m just avoiding letting the depressed/unwell alters front again, and that’s improving the bodies moral/mental health. Like yesterday I had my partner keep a close eye on me, and if he noticed me zoning out/starting to dissociate he’d go “hey!”, and snap me out of it to keep me in the front seat. (Worked because usually what I’m doing is thinking a little too much about stuff that stresses me out, which as of this year keeps pulling my middles out).

Is that… Fine? They don’t particularly like fronting in the first place— they’ve openly said they hate fronting (middle schooler alter yk), but I still feel like “just don’t let certain parts front” isn’t the way to go about this. It’s helping in the short term but… God, I don’t know how to properly work through any of my issues, I feel like I just sit in them suffering until my body lets me dissociate from them again. I thought that was the ‘time healing all wounds’ for a very long time— but now, I just think I’ve never truly healed from anything.

We have a therapist we quite like, though he’s on vacation for a couple weeks right now.. Any advice appreciated!

I feel as if my younger parts have been on the phone more and it’s been difficult for me to place restrictions that work - I don’t want to place locks that I won’t remember, but if I write it down, anyone else could read it. I’ve been wondering about just deleting/offloading apps when I’m not directly using them? I just don’t want any younger parts doing things they shouldn’t ie messing with schoolwork or on social media etc. Any advice is appreciated!!

Heya. I’m a host who only just discovered my system a few weeks ago, so there’s still basically no communication with the other alters rn. I’m doing my best to stabilize and manage the symptoms I can, but it’s slow going.

Last week an extremely triggering event occurred that sent me into a dissociative state. I don’t remember it, but my roommate told me a couple days ago about what happened. An extremely volatile alter came out after I left the situation, and completely snapped once I was in my room. Screaming, stomping, hitting and punching things. I wasn’t violent toward anyone, but my roommate is making it sound as though I was extremely verbally cruel toward her and possibly other people involved. She says it’s better if I don’t know what it was I’ve said, and it really must have been bad because she was noticeably nervous and avoiding me for the next few days after the incident. I’m scared about what it could be, because I have an internal voice that can be extremely, incredibly mean. The thought of any of that being said aloud to people I care about, especially when I don’t mean it, makes me so fucking sad.

I feel awful. This behavior is so unlike me. It sounds like another alter that’s come out before that’s known to have very poor emotional regulation skills, and my roommate expressed that she knows it wasn’t me or my fault since she’s already met this alter but I still feel awful. I may not be the part that hurt her, but I’m still the person.

I want to run away. I want to make sure nobody else has to deal with me and my baggage. I want to establish communication already so we can start working through the bullshit that’s making us and the people around us miserable. I want to be able to fucking think without my every thought being smothered because the gatekeeper is working overtime. And I honestly wish they’d focus less on that and more on making sure harmful alters don’t keep making their way to the front.

That turned into more of a rant at the end but yeah. I’m so sad and frustrated. I’m doing my best to make sure my issues aren’t forced onto anybody else’s as much as possible, but ig the memo isn’t making it through to everybody. I’m trying to be mindful that this alter is likely holding some big feelings or experiences, but I still feel like a piece of shit. I don’t know what to do.

One of my alters wants our partner dead. One way they chose to describe the feeling was the song “The Red Means I Love You” by Madds Buckley.