Dealing With Alters
Having alters is a hallmark of living with dissociative identity disorder diagnosis. However, there seems to be a massive lack of understanding regarding the roles that alters play. There also seems to be a lack of understanding that you can form new ones throughout your life.
That’s what this article is about: what to expect and how to handle the formation of new alters.
What are Alters?
Alters (alternate personalities) are parts of yourself that have not coalesced as one complete persona. This does not mean that you are strange, as all people have alters; it is just that amnesic barriers separate your memories and behaviors while singletons do not.
You have alters because, at some time in your childhood, you faced repeated situations where you did not have control and felt trapped. Such emotions are usually a response to severe abuse like sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect.
Alters form in response to the abuse, often remaining at the age they were when it occurred. For instance, I was brutally abused at the age of three, and I have an alter who is three and holds the memories with their corresponding emotions for me.
Forming alters was the only ingenious method we had to hide from what was happening to us. As children, we did not have the ability to run away physically, so we hid inside where no one could hurt us.
The Number and Type of Alters
According to the DSM-T, people with DID have more than two alternate states. Typically, people with DID have around seventeen alters; however, one can have less, and some are polyfragmented, meaning there are more than one hundred.
Switching from one alter to another is common among those who have DID. Some people switch often and have the corresponding switching headache, while others switch much less often.
Alters can seem like real people, but they are not separate from the host (the alter that fronts the most) but are different shadows of the events that occurred in childhood.
Alters are very different, and to make things even more confusing, they have different genders, interests, sexual orientations, and ages.
The alters often fulfill parts of the person’s life to cause them to have access to their talents. A partial list of types of alters in a DID system is below.
The child: (littles) are the most common type of alter
Persecutor: can cause harm from their actions, but protection is its intention
Protector: created to save the original child from the abuse
Fictive: an alter that is based on fictional people or characters
Host: the alter who most often fronts in the body
The list is much longer and encompasses as many different types of alters as there are multiples. Most DID systems have alters that fit these categories.
What About Destructive Alters?
Sometimes we have alters that destroy our relationships with ourselves and others. You do not have to give in to this behavior, as you are always in control.
I know it doesn’t feel like you are in control, but you are. The alters in your system are you, and you are them. That means that with some practice and a lot of love, you can learn to have control of your body 90% or more of the time.
Sounds incredulous? I am living proof that alters can be controlled, even those that are destructive to your healing journey. I have an alter who is 18ish and once spent copious amounts of money on clothing and god knows what. She is now my ally and partner in crime. The way I conquered her behavior was to ask her why she was spending money like she was, and she answered that she didn’t have any money to spend on clothes. From that point to now, I have given her an allowance to spend as she wishes.
To earn the trust of your alters, you first need to gain their trust, which may not be easy. Form a safe place in your mind, like a warm sandy beach, where you and the alters can meet. Go there and wait patiently. It may take some time, but one by one or even in groups, they will come to be with you, and then you can learn what they need and want.
The Formation of New Alters
Integration, aka final fusion, is not forever because it cannot be. Your brain has learned to form new alters from early childhood if you are overstressed or afraid. Although you have pulled yourself into one cooperative and respectful unit does not mean that you will never form a new alter.
First, do not panic. The alter is an understandable reaction. It is impossible to completely cure DID; it can only be arrested. Once you have pulled together your alters, things can become routine and quiet.
However, given enough stress or fear, you will once again form an alter to help you handle the situation.
Dissociation into a new alter is your go-to response to stress and fear and has served you well most of your life. Your brain will not see that dissociating is no longer necessary.
What You Can Do to Deal With Alters
Most of us who live with DID are unable at first to control switching to an alternate self. Alters taking over the body are likely responding to triggers where their amygdala has sensed danger, even if the danger isn’t real anymore.
Common triggers that can activate alters include stress, strong emotions such as grief, special events, emerging memories, or in some cases, the use of substances. Sometimes the triggering event is not known.
Dealing with alters takes practice and working with an excellent trauma-informed therapist. The best advice I can give you to help you deal with your alters is to stop being afraid of them. Your alters are not aliens that live in your head; they are all parts of you and deserve love, attention, dignity, and respect.
Give the alters what they need, and you will see a remarkable change occur as they become less reactive and more docile.
Ending Our Time Together
This blog intends to spread the realities of living with DID and help remove the stigma surrounding the diagnosis. I hope I have achieved that goal these seven years I’ve been writing here.
I wish to impart as much information as I can to help you and myself understand DID better. These past seven years have been a time of enormous growth for me and my system. We have reached final fusion and are cooperating most of the time with each other.
Teaching about alters is one of the most important things I write about here. I hope you grow as a result of what you read here.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor E. Frankl
“The journey is never-ending. There’s always gonna be growth, improvement, adversity; you just gotta take it all in and do what’s right, continue to grow, continue to live in the moment.” Antonio Brown
Comment
Two things. Doesn’t polyfragmentation ALSO mean alters that have alters? It isn’t solely about numbers? I have seen it used both ways. If you believe this is not accurate than what are the “words”
or terms that say this is what i experience? alters having their own system?
Second – probably can’t answer here.. but you used “final fusion” as something you have successfully “completed” (for lack of a better word). Then you said you and your alters work cohesively. This sounds more a description of functional multiplicity than fusion.. to my understanding in fusion the alter that remains/results has all the memories, experiences and feeling accessible. There are no dissociated states so how can alters work together after fusion if there is only one? Your staement conflicts with “popular” (not necessarily correct, just common) understanding of fusion. People often use “integration” to mean either “fusion” or functional multiplicity. Which adds to the confusion and misunderstanding.
Polyfragmented DID can indeed mean both having over 100 alters or alters with systems of their own. Sorry for the confusion. I’ll have to remember to include both in my writing.
As for final fusion, Integration (final fusion) isn’t what popular culture believes it to be. In my experience, final fusion has meant functional DID where all my alters are going in the same direction I am.
You see, I don’t believe that multiples can become one whole cohesive person, which is the popular way of looking at integration. Our brains have been forever altered, and it is not possible for us to become the whole person we were meant to be. DID is a permanent condition that can only be controlled and not cured. Integration, the big “I” word, is something some multiples fear because they feel they would be killing their alters or something like that. That is simply not true. The alters are them, and they are the alters. One cannot die or go away without the others doing so.
I know this has been a long answer, but integration or final fusion are difficult subjects to broach.
Thanks for commenting and starting a great conversation! Shirley
Thanks for the reply and clarification. I too feel our brains have been altered too significantly to ever comprehend sigular experience.
Just one additional niggling thing. The majority of systems I have talked with in any depth indicate that child alters are – seem to be, the majority of alters. (I need more adults!) I am not sure why you feel this isn’t the case. Yes I do see I am setting up my experiences in opposition to yours – i am certainly not saying what you wrote is wrong or whatever cuz it’s yours but I also think that many people who may read this might take that as fact when it is only your experience.
I enjoy reading these as they do help clarify how I see things more clearly!!
I might be wrong as I was speaking from my experience. Thanks for pointing that out. I appreciate that. Shirley