by Charity, Mary, Rachel, Laura, and Allegra
We responded to a survey posted on DiscussingDissociation on behalf of two eighth-grade girls researching dissociation for a science project:
What is the connection between an individual who has D.I.D. and their alters?
Thank you for your efforts to educate people about dissociation and about life as a multiple system. Our system's answers to your question reflect our own experience and should be taken as such.
We should fist state that our system does not have a host, original person, or main person, and no one who identifies with our legal name. Many multiple systems we know are this way as well. We believe that all members of the system are of equal value and should be allowed to thrive and flourish.
To give you more of an insight on our purpose question, we believe that the aspects of which the individual who has DID doesn’t have are represented through their alters. For example, if a shy child was sexually abused, they could have a rebellious alter.
We disagree. We believe that every member of the system is an aspect of the collective person. People in general have aspects of themselves that they do not necessarily show to others often. The only difference is that multiple systems exhibit aspects as differentiated selves with individual perspectives, experiences, and memories.
Example: In our system, 75 percent of us are introverts. Yet we have an 8.5-year-old extravert who sees himself as the life of the party and acts as such. This does not mean that the collective person has no extraverted qualities; they're just well-hidden.
What if one personality was taking psychotropic medication; would it affect the other personalities?
We don't take psychotropic medications. We believe that doing so would affect the system as a whole even if it doesn't affect specific individuals within the system. If you throw a rock into a pond, the water nearby will move significantly. The water at the other end may move little or not at all. But the pond as a whole is affected.
Do the various alters have different sets of abilities? (e.g. Better athletic skills, neater handwriting, shorter attention span etc.)
In our system, yes. Some have better people skills than others, some are more patient than others, some are more organized than others. But there are limits, just as with a singleton. For example, none of us have any athletic ability.
How are these alters discovered? (e.g. How many there are, their names)
The number of members varies from system to system, depending on the nature of the traumas experienced, the duration of the traumas, and the specific coping skills of the person traumatized. We have known systems of two and systems of hundreds, even thousands. As we tell people, "there are as many as there need to be."
We should also mention our view on the term "splitting," which is relevant here. We do not see system members as splitting; we see ourselves as "individuating." The latter term avoids the messy notion of splits from splits from splits, which can imply that some members are of a lesser status for not individuating directly from the whole.
Say you have a chocolate bar which is scored into twelve sections. You split the whole bar down the middle, and the result is two parts of the whole, each containing six sections. Then you split each of those two pieces into two pieces with three sections each. Do the earlier six-section pieces still exist?
Philosophical questions like these factor heavily into our system's self-concept. We want to feel validated, just as any other person does. So we came up with an individuation metaphor that works better for us. For us, individuation is like a sandbox in which sand castles are formed. New sand castles are formed from sand in the entire box, not by dividing existing castles into parts.
In our system, we discovered members in various ways. Some announced themselves. It depends on the individual.
How do the alters evolve as the individual grows?
Again, it depends on the individual. Generally, in our system, the younger the insider, the less that insider will evolve. The goal for each is always safety, well-being, and happiness, but beyond that, it's up to the individual.
How does the person’s past contribute to the alters’ behaviour pattern?
Our system's main impediment is complex PTSD. As a result, we tend to isolate more than the average person.
What are the circumstances of transition from one personality to another? Are they summoned like a ghost at a séance? Or are there psycho-social stressors or triggers?, (e.g. anxiety)
We interact with each other and with the outside world the same way that we interact with outside people. There is no transition, no summoning, no calling out.
How is the individual impacted by this condition?
This is a very broad question. Our system has chosen not to date, marry, or have children. We come from three generations of dysfunction and have done our best to break the cycle. Abstaining is a rather severe way of doing this, but it's better than perpetuating the problem.
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