Alters: Who Am I?

Oftentimes with DID/OSDD, it can be difficult to tell who you are. Our system kind of has a list of questions we go through, and I thought I might post them to see if anyone else finds them useful. I’ve added some too.

Do I have an accent/speak a different language? If so, what kind?

What gender feeling do I have (masculine, feminine, androgynous)?

What pronouns do I use?

What age do I feel like (adult, middle, little)?

Am I an extrovert or introvert?

What main emotion am I feeling or goal do I have?

What music do I like?

What’s my favorite color?

How long/what style of hair do I have in innerworld?

Do I feel shorter, taller, or around the same height as the body?

Do I have any pseudomemories? If so, what are they?

Do I seem more like an ANP or EP?

Do I feel non-human in any way? If so, what do I feel about me is not human (wings, horns, etc.)?

What hand do I write with easier?

Do I need glasses?

Am I having any functioning issues (motor, vocal, etc.)?

[Insert things specific to one or a few alters in your system that others don’t experience or do.]

Please feel free to add on with other questions you might use to help yourself distinguish who you are, as this is not an exhaustive list!

What does having DID/OSDD look like for you?

People with DID/OSDD, come share your experience! July 4th is the first day of Summer System Education Week. To kick off this week, I want to use my blog to give your voices a platform!

Comment on or reblog this post & express what having DID/OSDD (or any similar dissociative disorder) looks like for you! Do it through writing, poetry, art, or anything that you want! You can be as dark or as positive as you like; share as much or as little as you want. Just remember that there is no “right” or “wrong”. DID/OSDD are very complex disorders.

If you want to share anonymously, my askbox/submission are open!

Ironically, today’s prompt for system education week was “dissociation and memory loss”

And I uh. Forgot what day of the week it was, dissociated most of today, and have little to no memory of what we did!

Lol.

Day One: What is DID/OSDD?

I'm going to be honest, I totally forgot about Summer System Education Week until I saw some other folks posting about it. I'm mostly going to talk about my personal experiences with finding out I had the disorder. Each day when talking about alters, system communication, memory loss, etc, I will mostly talk about personal experience, as I feel there are so many people on this website that are way better at explaining scientific research than me. Not to mention, most of my research I've done personally is pretty bare-bones, as while I did suspect I had DID in 2016, I didn't do extensive research and therefore kind of rescinded my thoughts on having the disorder. (Also thought I was endogenic, which is a whole different issue.) I wasn't diagnosed until March of 2021, at 22 years old, and I was diagnosed by my current therapist who is a trauma specialist (as well as a DID specialist, though I didn't know that she was the latter at all) and was able to tell I did indeed have DID. She actually suspected it pretty early on in our therapeutic relationship (I started seeing her in December of 2019) as I showed a LOT of what she would constitute as DID "red flags" but she did not make the diagnosis until she was absolutely certain, by which this time I was showing a lot of signs that were affecting my quality of life pretty extensively. So pretty much all of my DID research has come from her, and the group therapy she runs for DID systems in her care, which began as a psychoeducation group (to learn about DID and how to cope with it) and then turned more into a support group. All of us in the group are now friends outside of group, and let's just say having these people in my life has changed it for the better.

I actually wrote an article for a website called "The Mighty" about what to do if your partner is diagnosed with DID, which has been approved, but not published yet. In it I explained DID like this:

"DID is a trauma-based disorder, characterized in the DSM-V (diagnostic and statistical manual for mental disorders, fifth edition, published in 2013) as a “Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states.” Part of DID also includes a discontinuity of behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and sensory-motor function. Amnesia for daily events, important personal information, and past traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetfulness is also a criteria for the disorder. For myself, this included forgetting several days at a time, blacking out conversations with people at work and school, and not remembering any of my life before the age of 8-9 years old. 

Something that is not considered a diagnostic criteria of DID, but is required for the disorder to form, is repetitive childhood trauma before the age of around 7-9. In an effort to explain this briefly, prior to that age, children have separate “ego states” that make up their personality. When they are younger, this includes things such as needing to go to the bathroom, being hungry, or wanting attention. When they get older, children start to form personality traits within these ego states, and around that 7-9 age, all of these ego states coalesce and become one solid personality. Children that experience trauma that is often severe and repetitive over a long period of time, will form amnesia barriers between these ego states. For example, if a child is going through a form of abuse, their brain will form amnesia barriers between the normally functioning child and the memories of the abuse. One ego state will have those memories, while the other ego states will be unaware. This allows the child to function normally and allow them to survive what is often extreme trauma that they would not be able to handle if they lived with the trauma memories in daily life. 

So what happens with these ego states that are separated by amnesia? As a child experiences more abuse or more of the world and its dangers, these other ego states will “switch in” and handle those difficult moments. These ego states that experience trauma are often referred to as “EP’s” or “Emotional Parts.” This does not necessarily mean they only hold emotion, this just means that they hold trauma memories. Ego states that (generally) do not hold traumatic memories are called “ANP’s” or “Apparently Normal Parts.” They function in the day-to-day life such as going to school, going to work, doing chores and homework, etc, that the EP’s would not be able to handle. They often are unaware of the system existing and therefore unaware of the trauma, but not always. The ANP that is “out” most often is generally considered the “host” alter. In a statistically large portion of systems, all other alters will pretend to be the host (often referred to as “masking”). This can make it difficult for outside people to know that a person is a system. This is called remaining “covert” and is sometimes considered essential for a system’s survival in the real world, where a majority of people are not a system. 

(Side note: a system is a group of alters, also known as a “system of parts.” I plan to write another article talking about DID vocabulary and the different alter types in a system.)

When these ego states experience the world, they will form personality traits that encompass their experiences. They will have different names, ages, appearances, tastes in food and clothing, and even different allergies or vital signs to other alters. Some systems even document having alters with different eyeglasses prescriptions or reaction to medication." (Quoted from the rough draft of my article "My Partner Has DID! What do I do?" published for "The Mighty," which may later have edits or be shortened, but keep the same topic and writing style. This article is not published at the time of this post, which means the title may also change in this publishing process. I post every so often on this website, but have focused most of my attention on creating articles to help people learn about DID/OSDD from someone with this disorder. If you want to see more of my stuff on The Mighty, here's the link to my profile, Many But One.)

The discovery of our system (I use "our" system because I am not the owner of the system, and it feels weird to say "my" system. Other systems do this and that's totally fine, but our preference is to use "our." Same with "our" alters) was pretty rocky and I'm learning more pretty much every day. I've been pretty open about sharing my diagnostic story on here. Essentially I've shown signs of being a system for a very long time, as early as middle school, according to my mother after telling her the symptoms of being a system and her telling me things she noticed about me growing up. Even as early as being a young child she noticed shifts in behavior that seemed unexplainable at the time. She didn't have access to resources that explained any of my bizarre behavior, so she just did her best to raise me the way I was. When things started really rearing their ugly head was around 16-17 years old, when I was living with my father primarily and he was being very abusive to me. It caused a lot of splits, including folks like Alice, April, and Aeron--and an abuser introject of my father who will remain unnamed. As I've gotten to understanding the system, I realized that the person I thought was me, [legal name], split as well. [Legal name] split into Aeron and the person I know as myself, Jules. I had always thought I was [legal name] but never felt any association with that person. She had been a cis female, had a lot of memories and stuff I don't have anymore, and many other likes/dislikes that I don't have either. I didn't identify with our legal name or being cis female at all. After discussing with Aeron after she came out of dormancy, she holds all of the stuff that I thought I had lost in some kind of brain injury during that time. (Spoiler alert! There was no brain injury.) I was splitting and doctors had no idea what the fuck to do with me. I was having such excruciating head pains that I couldn't see, and was often passing out from the pain. I grew so weak that I literally fell out of my car when I arrived home from school one day and my mother rushed out to take me to the hospital. She essentially had to carry me into the hospital because I was practically brain dead at that point. Not literally, just had no idea what was happening. I was dissociating very very heavily and NOT having a good time. I don't remember a lot of the details during that time period, but I was sleeping almost non-stop for 2 weeks straight, had the most excruciating headaches I've ever had in my life, and had several other incidents that made my mother get a lot of brain tests done. CT scans, MRIs, I even saw a neurologist that wondered if I had MS (multiple sclerosis). Lol nope. Just splitting from trauma. I actually missed so much school that the courts were threatening to court order me to go to school. It was hell.

That was during my junior year of high school (around 2014-2015) and I have only just learned what that was all about, and that Aeron is actually the parts of [legal name] that I had thought I'd lost in that brain incident. Things only escalated from there, and in 2016 I believed I was a system, as I could hear distinct voices and had all the symptoms. Extreme amnesia, dissociation, identity confusion, etc. Except I was certain I didn't have trauma, so I thought I was endogenic. After quickly realizing that wasn't possible, I decided there was no way I was a DID system and that was when we essentially had a "system reset." Not literally, in the endogenic way of thinking, but our gatekeeper essentially threw up very strong amnesia walls, yeeted any thoughts of systemhood out of my mind, and became a permanent co-conscious observer. This was shortly after a su*cide attempt that was stopped by him. You can imagine my confusion when in the middle of the attempt, someone else takes control of my body and fixes everything and literally saves my life. Didn't really know how to explain that one for a really long time. That was in late 2016.

In 2017 I transferred colleges and James, our gatekeeper, was a permanent part of my life. I started thinking I was transgender since I always felt male. (James is a cis male.) But I'd randomly not feel male, so I was confused. Also identified with several different names, one coincidentally being the name of one of my abusers, which I didn't know was an abuser at the time because I didn't know I had been abused.

I got through several years of college under the guise that I had rapid cycling bipolar type one with psychotic features. I didn't. Medication never worked. The voices never went away, they were only slightly muffled. I'd still dissociate and lose time. I started at this college wanting a pre-med degree and promptly switched to teaching after my first semester despite loving science and doing amazing in all of my medical related classes. Not really sure why I did this and I regret it all the time. I love art to pieces, but making myself an art teacher was not a good decision in the slightest!

In mid 2019, I started seeing my school counselor primarily for my anxiety and negative thinking patterns. As in, never feeling like I was good enough. She was absolutely amazing, but she was not equipped with the complexity of my issues. We never got into childhood trauma, but I did talk about my issues with dissociation and PTSD symptoms. When I ran out of sessions with her, she gave me a list of therapists in my town. A couple months ago I realized every single one she gave me was a trauma specialist. She clearly knew, but didn't know what to do, so handed me off to someone more qualified. Which was amazing and literally changed my life. Late 2019 I started seeing my trauma specialist and things continued on. I look back at old journal entries and it pains me to see how confused I was all the time. Losing time, losing control over myself, dissociating, struggling to finish my degree when all of my colleagues seemed to find their work easy. I almost didn't make it past my senior year, but I did by the grace of my professors. I ended up having to take a fifth year.

Then in 2021, I was student teaching and two months before I graduated I was diagnosed with DID. It was...shocking, to say the least. At that point, I knew I heard voices but that seemed so out of the blue. My sister later told me (after I came out as a system...she was one of the first to know other than my wife--then fiancé) that she tried showing me Anthony Padilla's documentary about DID and someone literally told her "DID is fake and anyone who has it is faking, do not EVER show me this again." like VERY rudely. She had been stunned because she knew I had interest in mental health stuff, but vowed to never mention DID again. Turns out this was James still trying to cover it up. Smart man. He did an incredible job, truly, and there were times when we were doing Telehealth during COVID that he would literally MUTE our therapist when she started talking about the possibility of trauma or a dissociative disorder and PRETEND he couldn't hear her or that the signal was out. It was so funny to realize he was behind our "connection issues" later on. (I mean, the fact that it just so happened to "go out" RIGHT when she started mentioning trauma was a little sus, so she wondered if someone was purposely hijacking our conversation to keep things quiet. At this point she was very certain DID was on the table and was pretty much just waiting for the right time to say it, as she was positive she had talked to other parts before who had tried to pretend to be me.)

In the very beginning all I knew was Alice. Then Brett and a child part came out. Then Foster, and finally, James. I thought that was it!! HAHA! I met one trauma holder a couple months later and figured she was our only trauma holder. Oh, if only. Almost a year and a half later and we know of around 29 parts, and James and Valentine have said there are more.

The diagnosis was so hard. It took a very long time to get off the denial train. I still have denial, but not so much for the alters existing anymore. There's so much evidence that they are real, but the hardest thing to accept is the trauma. How horrible it really was and how it essentially ruined us. It's fucked with my head ever since the reality of it began to unfold, and I know that it's only going to get worse, unfortunately. However, as hard as it is to know that this happened, the system existing saved my life. We are very helpful to each other and most of us care very much for one another. We are a good team on most days. While I would rather have never been traumatized and would rather be a non-system, I wouldn't trade our system for the world. We are many, but one, and I will love every part of myself. No matter how scary they seem. There was a line that my officiant in my wedding said that sticks out to me. (She knew about the DID). It goes like this:

"May you honor the complex dimensions of one another in ways that reflect your commitment to loving every part of one another, even the parts that may seem scary or unrecognized."

This hits home not only for our wife honoring us or us honoring our wife, but also us honoring and committing to ourselves, to achieve wellness.

That's all I've got for day one. That was a lot! Sorry for the ramble, I just think that sharing how my experience with diagnosis went might be able to help other questioning systems. If you have any questions about anything, please let us know! We would be happy to answer. And thank you to @system-of-a-dumbass for hosting the Summer System Education Week!

-Jules

What is DID?

To me, it has always just been life, but as I grow and realize my struggles due to this disorder arent what life looks like to those without it, I guess I can explain what I've recognized this disorder to be.

DID is forgetting all basic life skills and having to build yourself back from the ground up with no help.

DID is knowing you've struggled but not truly believing your own experiences or feeling like you deserve a place in trauma spaces.

DID is not being able to make plans with friends because you dont know who you will be in front of them, what you will remember, or how you will act.

DID is not having time to do anything you love because you cant get through the fog for long enough.

DID is hating your body and wanting to change it to make yourself more comfortable, but not being able to make those decisions without damaging your internal trust and the comfort of the others.

DID is not knowing who you are, what you like, what you're capable of, or even why you're alive 90% of the time.

DID is forgetting plans until its too late.

DID is unbearable pain from a seemingly mundane yet very miserable upbringing.

DID is disorienting.

DID is just wanting to be able to go back to when you were happy, but not being able to remember a time that you were.

DID is no one believing how much you're struggling because they only see the happy parts that you can't even remember.

DID is forgetting the things that trigger you and hurting yourself over and over and over because you didn't know.

DID is miserable. My life has been miserable. The trauma that led me here set me up for a tough time recovering with this disorder. Every journey is different, but these have been my experiences. I will say that there are also some good experiences had because I have DID, I cant ignore that. I love learning about what the human mind can do and this has given me an opportunity to do so. My headmates are my biggest support system and I do feel lucky to have them. However that does not in any way negate the pain and suffering we have endured both that caused this disorder and that have been caused by it.

Written for the alters day - this didn't turn out how it was originally meant to. The actual thing is under the cut, hidden mostly so people don't have to scroll past if they don't want to.

You know, I'm known as the asshole. The one that blows up and leaves a mess for others to clean up. I'm so bad that we made an entirely separate account for me to have my own blog. Satan is more civil than me.

All this sounds pretty persecutory, doesn't it? In all actuality, I'm a protector.

I'm the one who snaps when we get pushed too far. I'm the one who breaks off abusive or neglectful friendships or relationships. I'm the one who goes maybe a little too far just to make sure that they won't mess with us again.

After all, if it's not me, who is it? Not the littles. One can't stand conflict and another is so caught up in the trauma she holds that she refuses to front for fear of it happening again. It won't be our host - they're too afraid of having nobody that they'd rather be used and neglected and abused then told they're overreacting when they try to speak up for themselves.

So if not me, who else?

I've gained a little reputation among the system, and some people outside who've gotten the joy of being on the bad side of my temper, and you know what?

I'm okay with being told I'm "the closest thing to an evil alter that we have" (thanks, asshole, for sending our host through that loop). I'm okay with being known as the asshole. I'm okay with being pushed away for fear of me screwing something up.

Why am I okay with this? With being, what others would call, mistreated?

Because I'm doing my job. A job nobody else up here wants to do.

So I'm okay with being pushed away. I'm okay with it all. Because eventually, inevitably, they always come back to me and I do what I can to make life better. Whether that means dropping assholes like hot potatoes, or snapping at someone who's intentionally triggering our psychosis. I'm okay with it.

Because I have a job to do. And I will do it.

One of my proudest moments? It actually came recently. Our host stood up for themself, all on their own. I wasn't there to back them up, I wasn't there to take over when it got too much. They did it themself.

When I don't have to do my job? Sure, I may not front much for those times, but that's good. It brings the collective far less stress, especially the host. I don't like being triggered to the front often, so when I am, it means we're in some deep shit that the host can't handle alone. And I don't like that. Because they're strong. And if they can't handle it, it means someone beat them down until they were weak again and I had to be strong for them.

I don't want to be strong for them. I want them to be able to be strong on their own. I don't want them to need me, but they do, so... I'm here. I've been here since the beginning. And I'll be here forever. Because nobody else will do what I do, will take over those hard decisions and moments of "is this worth it"

I have a job to do. Nobody else will do it. So I have to. And I'm okay with that - I'll do it. I'll do anything they need.

Even if they hate me afterward.

Not being able to make any more education week posts bc I work weekends has made me significantly bummed out.

But I hope everyone is having a good week, and I hope you got a lot of wonderful information out if it!

July 5th: Alters

been working on this piece so long and its still no where near done, but i thought it fit todays topic so i wanted to try and get it out today. We've got over half our family in these pictures,

Hey, so for the Human Au, how do think Julie would go about her life? Considering her personality in the website, I would think that he takes up different part-time jobs, but mainly likes working at the community center, mainly for the summer/after school programs where they can come up with and host fun activities for the kids!

no yeah that's pretty much what i was thinking! she bounces from job to job - she probably has a roster of seasonal ones that she rotates between. Julie really does seem like an every-gal yk? doing just one thing all the time would be soooo boring

i like the idea of summer / after school programs a lot actually! since canon Julie is big on games and fun, i'm sure she'd be a great choice for those sorts of things. i bet she works a seasonal summer camp in their county!

Listen, I could be wrong, but this push for shortening or getting rid of summer vacation for students altogether that I’m seeing online is like... idk pretty fucking disturbing? Apparently summer breaks used to be longer so that kids could help their parents on their farms (cough capitalism, produce produce produce until you’re dead) and now that huge swathes of the population have moved to urbanized areas, summer breaks are getting shorter. I KNOW that as a kid in the 90s and 2000s I got out of school for summer before the goddamn 30th of June?! And we didn’t go back until September. Y’all are going back to school in August?

That’s some bullshit.

What is DID/OSDD?

DID is dissociation

DID is never being in the moment

DID is seeing life through a fog

DID is feeling like you’re living life in third person

DID is living life in a dream where reality doesn’t even feel real

DID is feeling so disconnected from your body, like it’s not yours

DID is confusion and fear when you look in the mirror

DID is amnesia

DID is not knowing half your life

DID is questioning every picture thinking how could that be me?

DID is thinking you’ve slept through the day, missing important events and deadlines

DID is not knowing what you did today, or even five minutes ago

DID is forgetting who you are, your name, birthday, address, what you like

DID is being bewildered about what life you’ve lived and what life you haven’t

DID is alters

DID is never knowing who you are, just that you’re “you”

DID is confusion about your identity, in a million different ways

DID is not having control over what you do or what you did

DID is never being alone yet still feeling incredibly lonely

DID is denial

DID is questioning if you had trauma

DID is questioning if it was bad enough

DID is questioning if your own memories are hiding something from you

DID is wanting to know what’s hiding but being terrified of the answer

DID is spiraling into doubt because you must be fake, this isn’t real

DID is locking yourself out from spaces and people who could help because of this fear

DID is being worried you actually don’t have it, but just as worried that you do

DID is trauma

DID is having been through so much and wondering if it will ever stop

DID is hating yourself and treating yourself like trash because you were taught to believe it’s what you deserve

DID is having no one to turn to for support

DID is wishing there was someone who would give you unconditional love

DID is never feeling safe

DID is falling into another trauma right after getting out

DID is convos between alters and inside jokes and taking a break from life sometimes or getting to be the happy version of you that never got to exist growing up

DID is terrifying, horrible, sad and angry and hating, confusing, stuck in the bad parts of life you’ve always had to deal with and never knowing anything about anything

DID is meeting others with OSDDID and crying, because oh my god, there is finally someone out there I can talk to, someone who understands what I’m going through

DID is being grateful for this community, even if there are some cracks or flaws, because for once, you don’t feel so alone

I would compare our experience with DID to being in a classroom, except we aren’t learning math or english; we’re learning how to survive our trauma and exist as we are. Like a class, there’s cliques, gossip, collaboration, the occasional argument; but in the end, we’re all in this together.

Ohh, I like this metaphor a lot! It really does fit. Thank you for sharing what having DID/OSDD looks like for you!

Feel free to skip on past this, I’ve just gotta ramble for a minute bc i cant stop thinking about this kid from work last week. They were so much like me at that age (5-6th grade) that I didn’t know how to interact with them? I didn’t know what to say to them bc I don’t know what I needed to hear back then, what I would’ve WANTED to hear? What would I have even listened to? They were almost entirely silent and looked out at the world with a hesitant curiosity, but would pull back so fast as soon as you tried to interact w them. Little to no eye contact, face hidden in hair, always looking down, following others until they could strike off on their own and just quietly explore. Intently focusing on drawing any chance they got. We did an art project and they hunched over their piece the entire time and wouldn’t let any of us see it in progress, refusing to look up or acknowledge us if we asked to see it or to know what it was. Idk. I barely interacted w them while they were with us for those few days bc I didn’t know how? It almost hurt to try? It was like looking back into a time machine and i didn’t know how to tell them that it does get better,,, I still don’t even know if where I am is better, some days feel so unsure that I don’t think I’ve made any progress at all. But seeing that kid, idk. I’ve come pretty far. And it DOES get better. Maybe it’s not the best now, or even that great at all, but it’s better. I wish I could’ve told them but I don’t think they’d have wanted to hear it anyway

Summer System Education Week!

Today’s Prompt: Alters

The experience of having alters is… odd, to say the least - especially as an avid RPer and writer. I’ll keep the ramble under a cut, since it’s so long!

Tw for sui ideation mentions.

When I was in high school, we conceptualized ourselves as “characters who took over for Rice when she got too stressed out from life.” It was just me (Wade) and Sierra back then, and we thought of ourselves as two halves that made up who “the body” (or, Rice, in our minds) was. We would switch between home and school - Sierra got school, because she could be a badass bitch there, and I got home, cause I was everything I felt my parents wanted.

But then new alters formed. It was slow - sometimes we didn’t notice at first, and sometimes we did. When Sie formed, it was when our “friend” (quit ions meant for sarcasm) was threatening to leave our friend group because “nobody loves her anymore.” Sierra had started fronting at home more, which confused us, but I started just. Fading back. She was the host now - she could do whatever she wanted. (Not healthy I know now). And suddenly, Sierra was just so stressed out that… Sie was there. It felt like Sierra was just gone for a few minutes, and in her place was this child, crying, just begging for the friend not to leave because we craved that love so much.

Sie was sudden. Numb, who came not long after, was not. He formed because we were suicidal. I really struggled the most with wanting to lull myself - but it was all just passive ideation. Over the course of a few months, my depression started getting worse. We felt… so dead. And one night, when I was just sitting in bed, crying without really feeling it, the emotions suddenly hit again and I couldn’t handle it - and then Numb was there. And the feeling was completely gone.

We’ve gotten a LOT more splits since then. All of them have one thing in common; they came when we were even the slightest bit stressed. Debra split when we were at our most suicidal. LED split when Debra was harassing us night and day, to help handle the persecutor thoughts. Curtis split when we were so tied up in our sexuality and how “it was an abomination” (my parents words) that we let ourselves get hurt more than we could understand, at the time - we were just about 15 or 16. Ve split when our switching became unmanageable as we had it, and she switched when nobody else could. Roy split in the shower one day, when we were caught in a flashback. Octavian split when triggered by social media. And Avery split when I finally, finally came out as who I really am.

I’ve never written it all out before, especially for people to see. But I am happy to share it now. Nobody is EVER obligated to share (this is highly personal, after all). But I’m sharing this for a reason: I keep seeing lately that alters can form for any reason. But I feel as though that’s not true; I think alters form due to stressors in life, and adapting to handle them. That’s not “for any reason” - that’s a specific one!

Now, after we’ve done a lot more therapy and thinking about our splits and why we formed, it’s a lot easier to figure out “is this an OC or is this an alter.” OCs, we create on the spot. We “step into” those characters for RP. It impacts our behavior, before and after RP, when we RP those characters. But it’s so fundamentally different from how alters form and front. Alters aren’t created on the spot - we don’t “purposely” create them. They are created during stressful events, unlike OCs. And rather than “stepping into” a character, we would describe fronting as “someone stepping into me.” Switches feel like a dance (though sometimes it’s more of a yank than a waltz!). They’re very physical - moving between two things, rather than becoming one thing.

I hope… ANY of that makes sense. We’re going to be posting more individual stuff today from each of us, with folks permission of course. 💙 This is just my big post describing EVERYTHING. Have a wonderful day!

in retrospect getting an ambiguous score on the main autism tests but getting a wayy above average score on the cat-q is kinda funny... like im clearly masking Something. not sure what tho

got a week before term starts again so will probably be winding down into a hiatus in preparation for that.