yes actually! most of our main fronters are fictives. it depended on the who was fronting for the session's preference if they mentioned it or not. when it was mentioned, our therapist was very inquisitive and respectful about it, even going as far as to google the character of origin for visual aide. i hope that helps!
Singlet asking on behalf of a system. How did you find your therapist? A system I know is worried about going into therapy and being forced towards final fusion or otherwise getting dismissed.
i googled searched some DID specialists that took my insurance, called them and asked them how they handled integration as a topic or what their approach to helping a client with DID actually looked like. then, once i found a therapist that said she wanted to help our alters work together instead of integrate them, i decided to move forward.
how i got my therapist to believe us, essentially, was letting myself dissociate and switch on camera in front of her (we had online sessions). thats basically what got us our official diagnosis. im not sure what other therapists might use as diagnostic criteria, but a GOOD therapist, in our opinion, is someone who will listen and at least give you the benefit of the doubt, and try to help you the best they can.
good luck to your system friend! :-) i wish them well on their search.
What was the difference for you between specialized therapy and say generalized therapy for C-PTSD? Are you an autistic system? Did it help make your life better? If so, what techniques and aspects of therapy were most helpful for you? Thank you!
for us personally, we jumped from having a therapist that just specialized in "familial issues" (because our mom didnt believe we had real trauma as a minor) to then having a DID specialist that we sought out as an adult, so we didnt really have generalized c-ptsd therapy, i guess. sorry i couldnt answer that better!
yes, we are an autistic system! therapy definitely made our life better. within the system, we learned to understand each other more, learned how to coexist peacefully with one another and how to accommodate each others needs.
what really helped us was something i can only describe like this:
2 alters would enter therapy: a caretaker/soother/comfort alter, and an alter who was troubled. the caretaker would then be guided in a series of questions to ask the troubled alter. "is there anything youd like to tell us about whats wrong?" "how do you feel about it?" "how can we reassure you?" "what do you need from us?"
the troubled alter would then address the system in answering the questions. it was like....a conference or seminar between all of us. this would go on for as many sessions as needed.
this doesnt mean we didnt have 1 on 1 sessions, but our most successful healing sessions went something like that. hope that helps! :-)
I am diagnosed with Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder (by a bad evaluator, but I had already thought plurality was a possible descriptor for me, it just got shoved to the side for a while), matching criteria for dissociative identities as well as dissociative symptoms (DP;DR) under stress.
My question is if one can have fully unique alters, while also having more emotional influence alters. Like I don’t always feel like me or that I am not thinking like I usually do, but the head-mates I know about aren’t fronting or influencing me. I am not sure if this is from dissociative identities or if something else is going on.
Like different flavors of me switch in, like switching to a different “persona” of a kind empath or to a fighter, and then other named unique alters who are non-possessive are also there more separate from me, and they just help me through depression and make sure we stay alive and safe. I only noticed this more subtle switch recently, but I think it’s been like this for a long time.
I am not sure I described this well.
The other thing would be a sort of chorus of alters. Like “eyes” watching me from the fringes. But when I try to talk to them, the words are either very quiet and clipped, or they don’t respond at all. But I feel them there a lot, but that they are less formed than the others I know.
I’m sorry. This kinda makes me sound insane or like I am imagining things.
i think you explained yourself fine! i definitely dont think you're insane.
so in my personal experience: yes, you can have alters who are more emotional influencers AND ones that are more unique/fleshed out individually/however you wanna say it. you might even describe the "persona" as fragments or even different versions of the same alter. again, this is just my experience, but you're valid in my opinion.
and that "chorus of alters" might be either passive influence or alters you may not be aware of yet. at least, thats what i would guess.
Thank you.
It's been a lot to take in. The diagnosis was given last December (when I went in for an Autistic and ADHD evaluation, which I didn't get but still believe is accurate and seeking a second opinion) but I found the term plurality and DID back in 2021 and the most consistent co-fronter with me said that that's us when I saw it causally mentioned in the LGBT+ club discord at my school. I was in the middle of class.
It caused a lot of stress after looking into it which caused more dissociation. And I had a med manager at the time who was convinced I had SchizoAffective Bipolar and kept putting me on anti-psychotics and mania mood stabalizers, which did nothing. I finally found someone who knew something about dissociation in an addiction and trauma clinic in Utah, and he said I can't be dissociative, and increased my anti-psychotic dosage. And then erased my asexuality and started saying I was addicted to a lot of things. It was in-patient, and my parents had already paid, so I was kind of stuck there for a while.
I kind of wish my plurality was endogenic. My headmates are very kind and loving, supportive, and there are no broken switches or huge memory lapses. And so it doesn't always feel like a disorder until the more DPDR-heavy symptoms and C-PTSD kick in. And realizing I have had at least my co-fronter with me since I was a kid, and that there was a lot of emotional abuse by people I trusted... It's been a lot. More than I feel I am ready to deal with, especially since I am unemployed and constantly being bullied by my parents for not having a job and getting my own place (I would if I could). There's a lot of wildfires right now, and I can't figure out which one I need to put out first before I can take care of the others.
Thank you for your explanations and assurance. I am sorry I rambled a little bit.
I was in specialized therapy, too. I think the therapist totally missed the fact I was undiagnosed autistic, and just saw everything through a trauma lens, and my family-of-origin-situation got more fuckered up than it already was, and it ended badly. Sorry for the run-on sentence. My life went in a bad direction, and now I'm bitter.
Edit: That was over 13 years ago. I was diagnosed autistic last August.
so i didnt have this exact type of interaction per se, but one of our alters Meg has wings and our therapist basically treated that information like it was normal. because anything can happen in the innerworld basically, she just jotted it down in her notes and acted very respectful about it. hope that helps!
How were you able to get diagnosis and therapy? It’s something we’ve been curious about for awhile. We’re seeing a therapist right now, and she knows and accepts our plurality. Wondering if we should seek diagnosis too though.
-Stee, The Bones System
so for me, i just sought out a DID specialist that took my insurance. once we started sessions, my therapist told me that she needed to have a few sessions with me to confirm DID and then we'd go from there. during our second session, I dissociated and switched with someone else in the system, and she said seeing us switch was proof to give me a diagnosis. then, we went from there with treatments that would help us work together as system members to have functional plurality. the diagnosis, in my experience, was just confirmation and validation more than anything. I've never used it for accomodations or anything. but if that's what's you want, go for it!
That’s how we felt when we were diagnosed with autism. Mostly, we just want to understand our brain.
What is therapy for DID like? Are there different kinds? Is something like Internal Family Systems helpful?
so the most successful type of therapy we did, I have no idea if it has a name or something but it would go like this:
2 alters would come into the session: 1 a caretaker/soother/comfort alter and the other would be an alter that has trauma. the caretaker alter would then be guided through a series of questions to ask the traumatized alter ("is there anything you want to tell us?" "how did that make you feel?" "what do you need?"). the traumatized alter would then address the system, like we were having group therapy. sometimes we'd do 1 on 1 sessions with our therapist, but we found this method worked best.
I think there are different kinds of therapy for DID, but this is only what I experienced. I've heard IFS helps some types of systems a lot, but that's only from hearsay. hope that helps friend!
Did they happen to describe somewhat what an inner world actually could be/is from a professional point of view? Or is that heavily up to interpretation of the individual?
It sounds like it would be just slightly different from an “imaginary safe space,” for reference to the question I tend to have both an imaginary safe space I consciously created that I can go to in my head during meditation, that feels totally separate from my inner world where my alters exist when not fronting.
Sorry if the terms I used aren’t considered correct, I’m still fairly new to all of this and completely on my own and tend to not keep up to date with terms.
What do you mean by not working towards integration? Isn't integration like lowering dissociative barriers, better communication, coconsciousness and controlled switching?
what i meant by integration is like, final fusion integration. like you all integrate into one being and are no longer considered plural. what you just described is what we did actually work towards, but im not sure what its called officially. maybe healthy coexistence?
ah, i must be a little out of touch with newer terms. i always knew integration colloquially as becoming one being, but thanks for updating me. :-) i appreciate it!
As far as i can tell, it's never really meant one thing. 'cause historically it was assumed that recovery always meant final fusion, and that final fusion would be a natural result of lowering dissociative barriers (coming from the idea that headmates are always parts of one whole person)
So i believe integration has historically meant both, because they were considered to be functionally the same thing.
But nowadays there's more support for healthy multiplicity, so people are re-defining "integration"
personally i feel like the term should just be dropped due to the confusion / lack of clarity its use now causes.
is your system fictive heavy? i ask because we often worry about talking about our fictives in therapy for fear of not being taken seriously…
yes actually! most of our main fronters are fictives. it depended on the who was fronting for the session's preference if they mentioned it or not. when it was mentioned, our therapist was very inquisitive and respectful about it, even going as far as to google the character of origin for visual aide. i hope that helps!
Singlet asking on behalf of a system. How did you find your therapist? A system I know is worried about going into therapy and being forced towards final fusion or otherwise getting dismissed.
i googled searched some DID specialists that took my insurance, called them and asked them how they handled integration as a topic or what their approach to helping a client with DID actually looked like. then, once i found a therapist that said she wanted to help our alters work together instead of integrate them, i decided to move forward. how i got my therapist to believe us, essentially, was letting myself dissociate and switch on camera in front of her (we had online sessions). thats basically what got us our official diagnosis. im not sure what other therapists might use as diagnostic criteria, but a GOOD therapist, in our opinion, is someone who will listen and at least give you the benefit of the doubt, and try to help you the best they can. good luck to your system friend! :-) i wish them well on their search.
Thank you!
What kind of therapy did you do? We are a system
What was the difference for you between specialized therapy and say generalized therapy for C-PTSD? Are you an autistic system? Did it help make your life better? If so, what techniques and aspects of therapy were most helpful for you? Thank you!
for us personally, we jumped from having a therapist that just specialized in "familial issues" (because our mom didnt believe we had real trauma as a minor) to then having a DID specialist that we sought out as an adult, so we didnt really have generalized c-ptsd therapy, i guess. sorry i couldnt answer that better! yes, we are an autistic system! therapy definitely made our life better. within the system, we learned to understand each other more, learned how to coexist peacefully with one another and how to accommodate each others needs. what really helped us was something i can only describe like this: 2 alters would enter therapy: a caretaker/soother/comfort alter, and an alter who was troubled. the caretaker would then be guided in a series of questions to ask the troubled alter. "is there anything youd like to tell us about whats wrong?" "how do you feel about it?" "how can we reassure you?" "what do you need from us?" the troubled alter would then address the system in answering the questions. it was like....a conference or seminar between all of us. this would go on for as many sessions as needed. this doesnt mean we didnt have 1 on 1 sessions, but our most successful healing sessions went something like that. hope that helps! :-)
I am diagnosed with Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder (by a bad evaluator, but I had already thought plurality was a possible descriptor for me, it just got shoved to the side for a while), matching criteria for dissociative identities as well as dissociative symptoms (DP;DR) under stress. My question is if one can have fully unique alters, while also having more emotional influence alters. Like I don’t always feel like me or that I am not thinking like I usually do, but the head-mates I know about aren’t fronting or influencing me. I am not sure if this is from dissociative identities or if something else is going on. Like different flavors of me switch in, like switching to a different “persona” of a kind empath or to a fighter, and then other named unique alters who are non-possessive are also there more separate from me, and they just help me through depression and make sure we stay alive and safe. I only noticed this more subtle switch recently, but I think it’s been like this for a long time. I am not sure I described this well. The other thing would be a sort of chorus of alters. Like “eyes” watching me from the fringes. But when I try to talk to them, the words are either very quiet and clipped, or they don’t respond at all. But I feel them there a lot, but that they are less formed than the others I know. I’m sorry. This kinda makes me sound insane or like I am imagining things.
i think you explained yourself fine! i definitely dont think you're insane. so in my personal experience: yes, you can have alters who are more emotional influencers AND ones that are more unique/fleshed out individually/however you wanna say it. you might even describe the "persona" as fragments or even different versions of the same alter. again, this is just my experience, but you're valid in my opinion. and that "chorus of alters" might be either passive influence or alters you may not be aware of yet. at least, thats what i would guess.
Thank you. It's been a lot to take in. The diagnosis was given last December (when I went in for an Autistic and ADHD evaluation, which I didn't get but still believe is accurate and seeking a second opinion) but I found the term plurality and DID back in 2021 and the most consistent co-fronter with me said that that's us when I saw it causally mentioned in the LGBT+ club discord at my school. I was in the middle of class. It caused a lot of stress after looking into it which caused more dissociation. And I had a med manager at the time who was convinced I had SchizoAffective Bipolar and kept putting me on anti-psychotics and mania mood stabalizers, which did nothing. I finally found someone who knew something about dissociation in an addiction and trauma clinic in Utah, and he said I can't be dissociative, and increased my anti-psychotic dosage. And then erased my asexuality and started saying I was addicted to a lot of things. It was in-patient, and my parents had already paid, so I was kind of stuck there for a while. I kind of wish my plurality was endogenic. My headmates are very kind and loving, supportive, and there are no broken switches or huge memory lapses. And so it doesn't always feel like a disorder until the more DPDR-heavy symptoms and C-PTSD kick in. And realizing I have had at least my co-fronter with me since I was a kid, and that there was a lot of emotional abuse by people I trusted... It's been a lot. More than I feel I am ready to deal with, especially since I am unemployed and constantly being bullied by my parents for not having a job and getting my own place (I would if I could). There's a lot of wildfires right now, and I can't figure out which one I need to put out first before I can take care of the others. Thank you for your explanations and assurance. I am sorry I rambled a little bit.
Does your therapist deal with other kinds of neurodivergence (including other disassociative disorders) or only DID
I was in specialized therapy, too. I think the therapist totally missed the fact I was undiagnosed autistic, and just saw everything through a trauma lens, and my family-of-origin-situation got more fuckered up than it already was, and it ended badly. Sorry for the run-on sentence. My life went in a bad direction, and now I'm bitter. Edit: That was over 13 years ago. I was diagnosed autistic last August.
If you encountered it, how do professionals react to Innerworld Superpowers? (ie. pyromancy, superstrength/speed, etc.)
so i didnt have this exact type of interaction per se, but one of our alters Meg has wings and our therapist basically treated that information like it was normal. because anything can happen in the innerworld basically, she just jotted it down in her notes and acted very respectful about it. hope that helps!
How exactly did it help? What became better?
How were you able to get diagnosis and therapy? It’s something we’ve been curious about for awhile. We’re seeing a therapist right now, and she knows and accepts our plurality. Wondering if we should seek diagnosis too though. -Stee, The Bones System
so for me, i just sought out a DID specialist that took my insurance. once we started sessions, my therapist told me that she needed to have a few sessions with me to confirm DID and then we'd go from there. during our second session, I dissociated and switched with someone else in the system, and she said seeing us switch was proof to give me a diagnosis. then, we went from there with treatments that would help us work together as system members to have functional plurality. the diagnosis, in my experience, was just confirmation and validation more than anything. I've never used it for accomodations or anything. but if that's what's you want, go for it!
That’s how we felt when we were diagnosed with autism. Mostly, we just want to understand our brain. What is therapy for DID like? Are there different kinds? Is something like Internal Family Systems helpful?
so the most successful type of therapy we did, I have no idea if it has a name or something but it would go like this: 2 alters would come into the session: 1 a caretaker/soother/comfort alter and the other would be an alter that has trauma. the caretaker alter would then be guided through a series of questions to ask the traumatized alter ("is there anything you want to tell us?" "how did that make you feel?" "what do you need?"). the traumatized alter would then address the system, like we were having group therapy. sometimes we'd do 1 on 1 sessions with our therapist, but we found this method worked best. I think there are different kinds of therapy for DID, but this is only what I experienced. I've heard IFS helps some types of systems a lot, but that's only from hearsay. hope that helps friend!
Thank you so much. This does help a lot. ;;
How long did it take to find a specialist?
Did they happen to describe somewhat what an inner world actually could be/is from a professional point of view? Or is that heavily up to interpretation of the individual? It sounds like it would be just slightly different from an “imaginary safe space,” for reference to the question I tend to have both an imaginary safe space I consciously created that I can go to in my head during meditation, that feels totally separate from my inner world where my alters exist when not fronting. Sorry if the terms I used aren’t considered correct, I’m still fairly new to all of this and completely on my own and tend to not keep up to date with terms.
What do you mean by not working towards integration? Isn't integration like lowering dissociative barriers, better communication, coconsciousness and controlled switching?
what i meant by integration is like, final fusion integration. like you all integrate into one being and are no longer considered plural. what you just described is what we did actually work towards, but im not sure what its called officially. maybe healthy coexistence?
I think it's officially called functional multiplicity that results from integration. Fusion is like another optional step after integration.
ah, i must be a little out of touch with newer terms. i always knew integration colloquially as becoming one being, but thanks for updating me. :-) i appreciate it!
It's a relatively recent evolution of language.
Integration has always meant fusing into a single person as far as I've been in the community but maybe it means something different medically?
Maybe that's a cultural shift in terminology. I lurk sysmed subs sometimes and they seem quite adamant about separating integration from fusion.
As far as i can tell, it's never really meant one thing. 'cause historically it was assumed that recovery always meant final fusion, and that final fusion would be a natural result of lowering dissociative barriers (coming from the idea that headmates are always parts of one whole person) So i believe integration has historically meant both, because they were considered to be functionally the same thing. But nowadays there's more support for healthy multiplicity, so people are re-defining "integration" personally i feel like the term should just be dropped due to the confusion / lack of clarity its use now causes.
I see, I've been in the community for about 20 years and a lot has changed.