Question:
I’ve been reading here for a while, but this is my first post. I have, in fact, read the FAQ, and while I got a lot of my questions answered there, I really seem to have this need to ask a few things, and describe myself (myselves) and how I appear to "work," because it’s not like much else that I’ve read/seen. I’m going to forgo a long detailed description of my past/healing so far (in a nutshell: history of abuse, mostly emotional, some physical, some sexual, recent years spent howling and weeping and dealing with anger and pain as part of the healing process; I’ve worked through tremendous amounts of anger/pain so far). I’m a 32 year old woman, have strong religious convictions (I won’t talk about them in detail in this post 
, divorced once, remarried and now separated, mother of two daughters (ages 11 and 
who live with their father and step-mother. Some years ago I took one of those long, complex personality test things in college. It was my decision to do it. I just wanted to, and my counselor thought it would be fine if I felt like it. Well, it came back with few surprises (some mild neuroses, tendency to histrionics, no shock there , but for the biggie, which was potential Borderline Personality Disorder. At the time… well, nothing ever came of it, and I had sort of forgotten about it until recently, when I was doing research on survivors of abuse, and I read about PTSS and dissociation and BPD, which is related (it’s now thought by some sources). I’m in counseling now for issues dealing with my childhood, and I told my conselor (who deals with abuse survivors almost as a specialty) that I feel I am dissociative, and I described some of the ways I sort of "compartmentalize" my thoughts/emotions/memories. He wasn’t all that concerned, or if he was, he didn’t think this is "bad." I would guess he’s had to deal with this before. He even told me that people take classes(!) to learn how to dissociate for stress management and such! I’d like to describe what I see in my inner self (selves) and how we interact, and I should note that I’m only recently coming to see and understand this. -= SPOILER/WARNING: I’m going to use some strong language (my ‘inner adolescent’ just loves to swear *sigh*) and mention in passing some unusual sexual interests (mild BDSM), so if this is likely to trigger you, please stop reading now. s p o i l e r r i g h t h e r e Very recently, I discovered that there appear to be what I think of as "others" inside myself. They are not always visibly present, but I am coming to recognize them by their attitudes as they affect me. I, the central "self," I’ll just call "The Adult" (I have a name, and it’s my own, but I’m not _quite_ ready to give it out yet). I am always present to some degree (two others, as far as I can tell; we are coming to think of ourselves as "The Trinity" . One of these others is a child of about eight. She’s very frightened sometimes, and is very, very easily hurt, and she has a lot of very unhappy memories (interestingly, I "saw" this child in a dream once some years ago). She has a name that she likes to be called (something Grammy called us), but is hesitant to give it out, because it’s special. We’ll say she’s the Little One. This Little One also holds the most lovely sense of wonder for the world around her. She loves kites, and takes great delight in things like butterflies and caterpillars and animals of all kinds. She has a peculiarly childlike sense of humor, and likes to draw and color (and we were a fine arts major for a while in college, too). The other self is an adolescent girl, no more than 18 (I think she’s about sixteen, and she says she’s older, but she may be fibbing to me 
. We call her Valkyrie, since The Adult has claimed our name, and Val is okay for short. Part of Val’s job is to protect the Little One. Valkyrie is, as the name implies, a warrior maiden. She’s also a rebel, and she holds not only our "attitude" but our sense of individuality and passion and our sarcastic, smart-arsed wit, as well as our rage and anger (which is a lot less than it was before, as previous mentioned). Val is also quite sexual and is sometimes inclined to play at rougher sex (although this taste was not fully developed or allowed until The Adult came into being enough to feel "in control" in a sexual situation that involved mild rough play or spanking — nothing too rough or painful). The Adult, the central "self," is always present, as mentioned. The others are there, also, and communicate sometimes through and TO the adult self (sometimes they’re not much in evidence and are "silent partners"). The Adult has only recently come into full control/existence, probably due to a recent severely traumatic episode that caused a rather bad regression and a period of some very violent PTSS symptoms. When I say "I" I usually mean the central "me," the Adult self (I answer to my own name, by the way, but so do the others, so it can be confusing, as if we’re not already confused enough I like classical music and history and art, and other intellectual, esoteric pursuits, and I’m very rational, reasonable, thoughtful, sensitive, and I have a dry wit and fairly subtle sense of humor. I’m actually pretty calm and fairly laid back, believe it or not. The thing is, I don’t lose time, although I sometimes have dizzy spells right before what I USED to think was "a mood swing." I’ve always been described as being "moody," and I have, in fact, suffered from depression (we think now it’s Val or the Little One who suffers from the depression, but that’s another issue entirely). I don’t feel like I "go" anywhere. I’m just ME, and sometimes I feel like a "we" or I feel like one of the others floods me or just gently offers up some of their memories and attitudes and thoughts and ideas. It’s almost like putting a colored lens cap on a camera; everything is just colored by the lens, and when one of the others is "present," her outlooks, thoughts, and perceptions color everything (when we get the Little One’s hopelessness with Valkyrie’s anger, we get suicidal, and that’s NOT good, so we usually try to keep The Adult in the middle or keep the Little One calm when Val’s out, and vice versa; the Little One gets very upset when Val loses her temper). I also see that these others were ME in the past. The Little One was me until Valkyrie was developed enough to take over, and Valkyrie was pretty much the central "me" until The Adult was formed enough to be in control as the central self. It’s almost like I made stages of growth in big LEAPS over walls, leaving some part of me behind in the form of an inner self who is still present and affecting us, but not all the time. Valkyrie and the Little One are not in control of the body, generally, although if they are frightened or angry enough, they CAN flood The Adult with emotions and effectively overwhelm the central self to the point of taking over. However, The Adult is always present, and always more or less cognizant of things, even though she really doesn’t (or hasn’t until recently) understand WHY she would suddenly be enraged or afraid or hopeless or sexually aroused or whatever, and sometimes I feel kinda dizzy and "out of it" for no apparent reason (and we VERY recently saw that when two or more of the others tries to talk at once, we stammer; we never understood that stammer, but this seems to be the root of it). The thing is, sometimes I feel very, VERY integrated, and sometimes I feel EXTREMELY fragmented, like the three of us are splitting apart and no one is in control at all (this only happens under a great deal of stress). We are not whole, none of us, and we know this and accept it. The Adult could not exist without the others, nor could they function independently. Any one of us without the others is incomplete, and we are fully aware of this. We’re interwoven like a Celtic knot (hence the name Trinity). The thing is, thinking of myself as a "we" just FEELS RIGHT. Thinking of myself sometimes as one self is okay, because sometimes I feel like a "me" only (that is, the adult self). Sometimes I really DO feel like a "we" and when one of the other selves is there to give input, I do sometimes say "we feel" or "we want" or whatever. In some ways, I feel almost relieved to find that the reason I sometimes appear to be irrational or self-contradictory is because the other selves do sometimes contradict each other (example: The Little One says "Love me, love me, why don’t you love me?" and Valkyrie screams: "Fuck you, we don’t need you, we don’t need ANYONE!" and this might be at the same person; meanwhile The Adult has been watching perplexed, thinking "What the hell is WRONG with me?!"). I find this all very confusing, to say the least (how’s THAT for an understatement?). I think I can accept this and work from here and organize harmony among the other selves (maybe eventually fully integrate them, since we appear to be already rather well integrated). If we can’t integrate, we might be able to have The Adult filter and monitor and resolve conflicts, now that we know who we are and how we work. Do others experience this kind of dissociation (I KNOW I’m dissociative; there’s just no question of it AT ALL, but the WAY I do it seems to be unlike anything I’ve read and that makes me wonder a lot), where they are always present, but have distinct "other selves" who interact and are partly integrated to the whole? I’m also still partly in denial, and telling myself that I just imagined all this and that it’s just another of my highly dramatic plays for attention (or something). I’m also kind of concerned that I didn’t know about the others until so recently. Is this usual? I mean, there’s evidence that they’ve been there (in some form or another) for a very long time, but I only RECENTLY "saw" them and understood who … read more »
Response:
Trinity, Welcome!! I’m gonna snip huge chunks of your article for bandwidth, but thank you for sharing. I’ve been reading here for a while, but this is my first post. I have, in fact, read the FAQ, and while I got a lot of my questions answered there, I really seem to have this need to ask a few things, and describe myself (myselves) and how I appear to "work," because it’s not like much else that I’ve read/seen.
[bunches of stuff about your system snipped, but we pause here to say...] Congratulations on your good boundaries! re not giving out names for adult because you’re not ready and child becuase it is special. We can totally relate to this. And a big STBA WELCOME!!! to Valkyrie from our teens! STBA stands for Sullent Teenage Bitch Alters <g which is a phrase that someone in this group posted once, and I’m really sorry we don’t remember who because it has become like this awesome phrase for us! The Adult, the central "self," is always present, as mentioned. The others are there, also, and communicate sometimes through and TO the adult self (sometimes they’re not much in evidence and are "silent partners"). The Adult has only recently come into full control/existence, probably due to a recent severely traumatic episode that caused a rather bad regression and a period of some very violent PTSS symptoms.
:nod: Our Adult only came into existence when we started doing all this recovery stuff. Tho we didn’t realize this till fairly recently. And she is currently dormant or something (!!) which we had no idea could happen… but anyways… proceeding… [more snippage] I don’t feel like I "go" anywhere. I’m just ME, and sometimes I feel like a "we" or I feel like one of the others floods me or just gently offers up some of their memories and attitudes and thoughts and ideas. It’s almost like putting a colored lens cap on a camera; everything is just colored by the lens, and when one of the others is "present," her outlooks, thoughts, and perceptions color everything…
[snip] Yup, yup, yup, yup. Now _sometimes_ the adult goes somewhere (where? We dunno.) but, number one, this doesn’t make us lose time or anything, and number two, we don’t always _see_ it. Our therp has pointed it out to us, that we have no adult functioning going on, and after she does, we’re like, "Damn, where’d she go? How’d we lose her?" I also see that these others were ME in the past. The Little One was me until Valkyrie was developed enough to take over, and Valkyrie was pretty much the central "me" until The Adult was formed enough to be in control as the central self. It’s almost like I made stages of growth in big LEAPS over walls, leaving some part of me behind in the form of an inner self who is still present and affecting us, but not all the time.
Yup, yup, yup, yup, yup, yup. The way we perceive it is that after things changed enough that a given coping style didn’t work anymore, whoever had been the "main person" kinda curled up and went dormant, and someone new with a new and different (and older) coping style took over as the "main person". Valkyrie and the Little One are not in control of the body, generally, although if they are frightened or angry enough, they CAN flood The Adult with emotions and effectively overwhelm the central self to the point of taking over.
[snip] Yup. Before we started all this, the littles were never in control of the body. As part of our healing process, we have worked to deliberately and conciously let insiders come "all the way out" and take control of the body. This has been cool. Also, if an "insider" is sufficiently upset, it is almost like they "take over the whole stage" or are "so loud" or "take up so much space" that they "push everyone else aside". This was often a problem because the most important job the Adult had was to reparent the kids when they were upset, but when they were _that_ upset, she couldn’t get a thought/word/feeling in edgewise. [snip] The thing is, thinking of myself as a "we" just FEELS RIGHT. Thinking of myself sometimes as one self is okay, because sometimes I feel like a "me" only (that is, the adult self). Sometimes I really DO feel like a "we" and when one of the other selves is there to give input, I do sometimes say "we feel" or "we want" or whatever. In some ways, I feel almost relieved to find that the reason I sometimes appear to be irrational or self-contradictory is because the other selves do sometimes contradict each other (example: The Little One says "Love me, love me, why don’t you love me?" and Valkyrie screams: "Fuck you, we don’t need you, we don’t need ANYONE!" and this might be at the same person; meanwhile The Adult has been watching perplexed, thinking "What the hell is WRONG with me?!").
Yup. We just relatively recently realized that the reason we DITHER so much and can’t make decisions is, well, geeze, we don’t exactly have unanimity of opinion in here! – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -I find this all very confusing, to say the least (how’s THAT for an understatement?). I think I can accept this and work from here and organize harmony among the other selves (maybe eventually fully integrate them, since we appear to be already rather well integrated). If we can’t integrate, we might be able to have The Adult filter and monitor and resolve conflicts, now that we know who we are and how we work. Do others experience this kind of dissociation (I KNOW I’m dissociative; there’s just no question of it AT ALL, but the WAY I do it seems to be unlike anything I’ve read and that makes me wonder a lot), where they are always present, but have distinct "other selves" who interact and are partly integrated to the whole? I’m also still partly in denial, and telling myself that I just imagined all this and that it’s just another of my highly dramatic plays for attention (or something). I’m also kind of concerned that I didn’t know about the others until so recently. Is this usual? I mean, there’s evidence that they’ve been there (in some form or another) for a very long time, but I only RECENTLY "saw" them and understood who they are (possibly because the central adult self hasn’t been in existance fully for all that long). Is this common? Am I making sense? *laugh* Talk about a plea for affirmation and reassurance… !
Oh, hey, don’t worry about it, that’s part of what the NG is for. We’ve posted plenty of pleas in our day… OK, so, we would not say "partly integrated" but we would say "no time loss, distinct other selves who are all somehow still _connected_ to each other". We describe ourselves most often as "not-quite-multiple". Also definitely, we only began to see this 5 yrs ago or less maybe, but like you we can look back and see that they have always been present; that this explains a great deal of our behavior that we never understood before. Also… let me just gently suggest that you not get TOO attached to the name "Trinity". Because our Adult started out doing inner child work, and was fairly surprised at how "real" that child seemed; and then was fairly astonished one day to find a _second_, older, child; and then she figured out that that "teenaged rebellious attitude" she got into sometimes wasn’t actually just an "attitude" at all but a whole other part; and, well, if you count fragments too we’re up to 17 or something by now. Now this may not happen to you, but then again it may… How it works for us is that as we explore our history and deal with our issues we find or recognize different parts that hold different traumas and the emotions that go with different memories. Not all of these parts are as "fleshed out" as the others, some are only fragments, but for us it is helpful to identify them as parts because then we can talk to them and they can talk to us and communication is always a good thing. So – your "style" of dissociation sounds almost exactly like how we would have described ourselves a couple of years ago. Welcome to the wonderful world of the mid-continuum! 
The dissociative continuum, that is. Denial comes at "discount prices" here because, after all, it’s not like we actually lose time/can’t communicate/lose control of the body/have amnesia/etc etc etc. But "If it works, you get to do it". If your experience is like ours, you’ll have certain moments or feelings or experiences where, just as sometimes you go "oh, I’m just being melodramatic, I’m just imagining all this", you’ll also have times where you go, ":boggle: I CAN’T be making this up!" So just be sure to pay particular attention to those moments so you can pull em out when needed. They really do all sort of balance out in the end. A few more thoughts on the mid-continuum and on the "style" of dissociation we share: My/our theory is, that because our level or style of dissociation is not as extreme and does not have as severe an impact on our ability to function, that it has gone unnoticed by the therapeutic and research community until extremely recently. That’s why there’s nothing much written about our experience yet. What is way cool about being dissociative _now_ in the mid 1990s, is that we the dissociative community are starting to define ourselves, rather than simply looking to the "experts" to tell us who we are and what our experience is. It is also beginning to become safe, at least in some places, to come out as dissociative. The tabloid stereotypes are at least _beginning_ to break down. And thus you and I have access to a great deal of information that wasn’t previously available, and furthermore a lot of the stigma has been removed from the information, so we are much more likely to be willing to see ourselves or identify with bits and pieces of what is described in the … read more »
Response:
Trinity asked about whether what Trinity is experiencing is a type of dissociation others have experienced. We have more recently come into this "type" of dissociation, although we remain much more fragmented. However, the combining together like a Celtic knot is a useful metaphor. Ariadne/Raven/Ruth Do others experience this kind of dissociation (I KNOW I’m dissociative;
there’s just no question of it AT ALL, but the WAY I do it seems to be unlike anything I’ve read and that makes me wonder a lot), where they are always present, but have distinct "other selves" who interact and are partly integrated to the whole? I’m also still partly in denial, and telling myself that I just imagined all this and that it’s just another of my highly dramatic plays for attention (or something). I’m also kind of concerned that I didn’t know about the others until so recently. Is this usual? I mean, there’s evidence that they’ve been there (in some form or another) for a very long time, but I only RECENTLY "saw" them and understood who they are (possibly because the central adult self hasn’t been in existance fully for all that long). Is this common? Am I making sense? *laugh* Talk about a plea for affirmation and reassurance… ! Thanks for reading; sorry it got so long. Trinity — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:
Response:
Sounds like ‘garden variety’ dissociation to me. I’m sure you’ve read that dissociation is on a continuum and that lots of it is ‘normal’ (like daydreaming). In talking to therapists about this over time I’ve learned that it is common for otherwise ‘normal’ people to feel that they have internal parts or selves. Some forms of therapy actually encourage an awareness of this and then a better functioning with all parts as a goal. I’d guess an example would be a person who is indecisive about something and then learns to get both sides of the arguement together to make better/faster decisions. Most of my therapists are pretty good (for singletons:) at using dissociation for things like listening to me talk about my past and not getting upset around me or being able to talk to me about something and still be processing the situation in a therapeutic way internally. They talk about having a ‘therapist’ part and a ‘husband’ part (or friend, uncle, etc. depending on the relationship) and can describe how they are different in one vs the other. I like this because it makes some of my more bizarre concerns about being fragmented seem relatively normal. Maybe you are less in touch with your other selves or maybe you have ignored them for a time. This could be why you are just now learning that they exist. But it sure sounds ‘normal’ to me in the sense that dissociation is just one of many ways a person uses to function. Some are better at it than others, some use it in healthier ways than others, and some are more aware of it in themselves. As with all parts of therapy and healing, I’d suggest you spend time getting to know this aspect of yourself better, learn to interact with it more closely, and figure out how to modify anything about it that feels dysfunctional to you. In the end you may realize that it is more or less separate than you think now and can work from there. I hope this helps abit. Rainbow Colors (Jill) — I choose to post non-anon because my abusers are afraid. They would have to admit something happened in order to confront me; this they will never do. They are the only people who will be upset if they know who I am, and they are too afraid to admit to what they did. Black of Rainbow Colors
Response:
Hi Trinity I’ve snipped most of your post, as I am going to try to reply to your questions at the end. First thing I’d like to say: We are all unique and different, and no survivor coped exactly like the other. For me, the concept of dissociation and multiplicity is no more than a concept, a pattern where we somehow fit. Like there are different ways of painting and we found the medium our picture is drawn with. The picture itself is very, very individual. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Do others experience this kind of dissociation (I KNOW I’m dissociative; there’s just no question of it AT ALL, but the WAY I do it seems to be unlike anything I’ve read and that makes me wonder a lot), where they are always present, but have distinct "other selves" who interact and are partly integrated to the whole? I’m also still partly in denial, and telling myself that I just imagined all this and that it’s just another of my highly dramatic plays for attention (or something). I’m also kind of concerned that I didn’t know about the others until so recently. Is this usual? I mean, there’s evidence that they’ve been there (in some form or another) for a very long time, but I only RECENTLY "saw" them and understood who they are (possibly because the central adult self hasn’t been in existance fully for all that long). Is this common? Am I making sense? *laugh* Talk about a plea for affirmation and reassurance… ! Thanks for reading; sorry it got so long. Trinity
It’s taken years to figure out parts of our inner structure, and I hope I’m not going to add to your confusion. It’s just an example that might show you, that everything is possible We have a multidimensional system with different sub-systems and hosts of each system. Looking at the development, there are years of big fragmentation followed by years where there were two "main persons" who gathered all the fragments inside them. Then again fragmentation, then again two "main persons" who gathered the new fragments as well as the former "main persons". Doreen, who came at age 19 and stayed until age 25 has a system of her own, and inside her system everyone can be there and loses his/her identity. She’s got kind of an auto pilot and is very high functioning, and she never questions anything. So if Doreen is "in the middle", as we call it, everyone can be there through the filter of Doreen, and she makes the last decision what to do and what better not to do. She feels that everyone inside is part of herself and she accepts them all without judgement. Our other grownup Viktoria is sometimes very amnestic, but she doesn’t know, and sometimes she’s completely co-conscious. In times with less stress, we feel co-conscious, although we aren’t. In times of bigger stress, we feel and act very seperated from each other. We once listened to an interview tape from a multiple woman who had int*gra*ed, and we just thought: she feels like we do. Like, to have 10 different points of view inside her head instead of only one attitude in a certain situation. We are very used to have lots of attitudes simultaneously, but only if one of our grownup system is "in the middle". When younger ones are out, like e.g. in therapy, there is only this single person with her perception of the world, and almost no one else listens. When we leave the office, we still don’t lose time as we switch to a grownup system, where this child person belongs to, and though we don’t remember what he/she said, we remember having been there and talked and felt this and that. Obviously we have given up the idea of mapping our system and most of the time we have given up trying to understand it all (though Viktoria tries from time to time, and though she’s quite clever, she ends up very frustrated.) Most of the terms and words don’t quite fit for us, and still we feel that DID fits the most. Most of the therapy approaches don’t fit for us either, and yet we have a wonderful therapist experienced with DID, who is working with us like WE personally need it. Hope I could clarify or help a little. Trust your own perceptions, your process, you are unique, you made it and you will make it. Virginia — If we only have love, we can reach those in pain we can heal all our wounds, we can use our own name Olivia Newton-John — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:
Response:
Hello Trinity, reading your post, I didn’t think you sound that "uncommon". However, I think there exist lot’s of ideas how a "real" multiple should feel and behave like. When I heard the diagnosis I kept telling my therp, "I’m sure, I’m not a multiple, I’m not a bit like "Sybil"!" Diagnostic manuals can describe common symptoms, but I think the borders between the single "disorders" aren’t as sharply set as those manuals seem to tell us. I think people can be " a bit of everything". If I look at the singletons I know, they are pretty different from each other, too and I think the same goes for mp. Hope that this helps you (and I hope I managed to express what I mean.) Starfleet – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I’ve been reading here for a while, but this is my first post. I have, in fact, read the FAQ, and while I got a lot of my questions answered there, I really seem to have this need to ask a few things, and describe myself (myselves) and how I appear to "work," because it’s not like much else that I’ve read/seen. I’m going to forgo a long detailed description of my past/healing so far (in a nutshell: history of abuse, mostly emotional, some physical, some sexual, recent years spent howling and weeping and dealing with anger and pain as part of the healing process; I’ve worked through tremendous amounts of anger/pain so far). I’m a 32 year old woman, have strong religious convictions (I won’t talk about them in detail in this post , divorced once, remarried and now separated, mother of two daughters (ages 11 and who live with their father and step-mother. Some years ago I took one of those long, complex personality test things in college. It was my decision to do it. I just wanted to, and my counselor thought it would be fine if I felt like it. Well, it came back with few surprises (some mild neuroses, tendency to histrionics, no shock there , but for the biggie, which was potential Borderline Personality Disorder. At the time… well, nothing ever came of it, and I had sort of forgotten about it until recently, when I was doing research on survivors of abuse, and I read about PTSS and dissociation and BPD, which is related (it’s now thought by some sources). I’m in counseling now for issues dealing with my childhood, and I told my conselor (who deals with abuse survivors almost as a specialty) that I feel I am dissociative, and I described some of the ways I sort of "compartmentalize" my thoughts/emotions/memories. He wasn’t all that concerned, or if he was, he didn’t think this is "bad." I would guess he’s had to deal with this before. He even told me that people take classes(!) to learn how to dissociate for stress management and such! I’d like to describe what I see in my inner self (selves) and how we interact, and I should note that I’m only recently coming to see and understand this. -= SPOILER/WARNING: I’m going to use some strong language (my ‘inner adolescent’ just loves to swear *sigh*) and mention in passing some unusual sexual interests (mild BDSM), so if this is likely to trigger you, please stop reading now. s p o i l e r r i g h t h e r e Very recently, I discovered that there appear to be what I think of as "others" inside myself. They are not always visibly present, but I am coming to recognize them by their attitudes as they affect me. I, the central "self," I’ll just call "The Adult" (I have a name, and it’s my own, but I’m not _quite_ ready to give it out yet). I am always present to some degree (two others, as far as I can tell; we are coming to think of ourselves as "The Trinity" . One of these others is a child of about eight. She’s very frightened sometimes, and is very, very easily hurt, and she has a lot of very unhappy memories (interestingly, I "saw" this child in a dream once some years ago). She has a name that she likes to be called (something Grammy called us), but is hesitant to give it out, because it’s special. We’ll say she’s the Little One. This Little One also holds the most lovely sense of wonder for the world around her. She loves kites, and takes great delight in things like butterflies and caterpillars and animals of all kinds. She has a peculiarly childlike sense of humor, and likes to draw and color (and we were a fine arts major for a while in college, too). The other self is an adolescent girl, no more than 18 (I think she’s about sixteen, and she says she’s older, but she may be fibbing to me . We call her Valkyrie, since The Adult has claimed our name, and Val is okay for short. Part of Val’s job is to protect the Little One. Valkyrie is, as the name implies, a warrior maiden. She’s also a rebel, and she holds not only our "attitude" but our sense of individuality and passion and our sarcastic, smart-arsed wit, as well as our rage and anger (which is a lot less than it was before, as previous mentioned). Val is also quite sexual and is sometimes inclined to play at rougher sex (although this taste was not fully developed or allowed until The Adult came into being enough to feel "in control" in a sexual situation that involved mild rough play or spanking — nothing too rough or painful). The Adult, the central "self," is always present, as mentioned. The others are there, also, and communicate sometimes through and TO the adult self (sometimes they’re not much in evidence and are "silent partners"). The Adult has only recently come into full control/existence, probably due to a recent severely traumatic episode that caused a rather bad regression and a period of some very violent PTSS symptoms. When I say "I" I usually mean the central "me," the Adult self (I answer to my own name, by the way, but so do the others, so it can be confusing, as if we’re not already confused enough I like classical music and history and art, and other intellectual, esoteric pursuits, and I’m very rational, reasonable, thoughtful, sensitive, and I have a dry wit and fairly subtle sense of humor. I’m actually pretty calm and fairly laid back, believe it or not. The thing is, I don’t lose time, although I sometimes have dizzy spells right before what I USED to think was "a mood swing." I’ve always been described as being "moody," and I have, in fact, suffered from depression (we think now it’s Val or the Little One who suffers from the depression, but that’s another issue entirely). I don’t feel like I "go" anywhere. I’m just ME, and sometimes I feel like a "we" or I feel like one of the others floods me or just gently offers up some of their memories and attitudes and thoughts and ideas. It’s almost like putting a colored lens cap on a camera; everything is just colored by the lens, and when one of the others is "present," her outlooks, thoughts, and perceptions color everything (when we get the Little One’s hopelessness with Valkyrie’s anger, we get suicidal, and that’s NOT good, so we usually try to keep The Adult in the middle or keep the Little One calm when Val’s out, and vice versa; the Little One gets very upset when Val loses her temper). I also see that these others were ME in the past. The Little One was me until Valkyrie was developed enough to take over, and Valkyrie was pretty much the central "me" until The Adult was formed enough to be in control as the central self. It’s almost like I made stages of growth in big LEAPS over walls, leaving some part of me behind in the form of an inner self who is still present and affecting us, but not all the time. Valkyrie and the Little One are not in control of the body, generally, although if they are frightened or angry enough, they CAN flood The Adult with emotions and effectively overwhelm the central self to the point of taking over. However, The Adult is always present, and always more or less cognizant of things, even though she really doesn’t (or hasn’t until recently) understand WHY she would suddenly be enraged or afraid or hopeless or sexually aroused or whatever, and sometimes I feel kinda dizzy and "out of it" for no apparent reason (and we VERY recently saw that when two or more of the others tries to talk at once, we stammer; we never understood that stammer, but this seems to be the root of it). The thing is, sometimes I feel very, VERY integrated, and sometimes I feel EXTREMELY fragmented, like the three of us are splitting apart and no one is in control at all (this only happens under a great deal of stress). We are not whole, none of us, and we know this and accept it. The Adult could not exist without the others, nor could they function independently. Any one of us without the others is incomplete, and we are fully aware of this. We’re interwoven like a Celtic knot (hence the name Trinity). The thing is, thinking of myself as a "we" just FEELS RIGHT. Thinking of myself sometimes as one self is okay, because sometimes I feel like a "me" only (that is, the adult self). Sometimes I really DO feel like a "we" and when one of the other selves is there to give input, I do sometimes say "we feel" or "we want" or whatever. In some ways, I feel almost relieved to find that the reason I sometimes appear to be irrational or self-contradictory is because the other selves do sometimes contradict each other (example: The Little One says "Love me, love me, why don’t you love me?" and Valkyrie screams: "Fuck you, we don’t need you, we don’t need ANYONE!" and this might be at the same person; meanwhile The Adult has been watching perplexed, thinking "What the hell is WRONG with me?!"). I find this all very confusing, to say the least (how’s THAT for an understatement?). I think I can accept this and work from here and organize harmony among the other selves (maybe eventually fully integrate them, since we appear to be already rather well
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Response:
BTW, who was it on this ng who coined the phrase: "Sullen Teenage Bitch Alters Rule"?? It’s been driving me nuts sw
Response:
Hi Trinity ( Hi to adult, Val, and Little one), A lot of people describe DID as being on a continuum, and the farther along you are on that continum, the more dissociated you are. There are people like you who do not lose time, that is generally called co-conciousness. The System of Angels (thats the name of our system) is co-concious sometimes and working towards that as a goal. What you descibed with the coloured lens sounds a lot like blending to us, we have described in insimilar terms of Kitti(the host) being a white cloth and another alter being say a red cloth and somebody pour water over both and the white cloth becomes tinged pink. Kitti, the host, does not lose huge blocks of time any more, because she is fairly safe now, she still loses some, but not like when we were younger. Mostly what happens is she feels the strong presence of other alters at all times. You seem very lucky in that you guys are already in this sort of space, we are working hard to achieve co-conciousness all the time, but we keep running into new alters all the time who want the time for themselves. And no there is nothing wrong with you; you are not weird, at all. From the way you descibed your system you just seem closer together and able to work either togther or somewhat separately, so we envy you, actually!!! Glad you posted here Trinity, hope you find the answers you seek. Cassie
Response:
BTW, who was it on this ng who coined the phrase: "Sullen Teenage Bitch Alters Rule"?? It’s been driving me nuts sw
I think it was pwyll who started it, joked that if alters were interchangeable "parts" then he could trade his STBA which I only just figured out what that acronym is! Me and changes had just asked what that is, I wrote it tonight. fwiw I have none. I have some right bastards tho:) and P.S. to all, eventually this term will offend. Maybe not today, maybe not tommorow but soon, and …well you know the quote:) Nation of Jackie this account borrowed from jcash
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