u/Ok-Math2557

My system has a rotating trio of hosts, one of which has a history of physical self harm and addiction. I'm usually the one who takes care of these things, but he took on important insurance related task we've all been putting off because I've been struggling lately. When we realized we missed the due date, he immediately hurt himself and gave up. I'm asking about this here because this means getting professional support is delayed.

I freaked out and we argued. His point of view is that it's his body, so he should be allowed to do whatever he wants with it, and this is how he keeps himself in line so he can be functional. He thinks that because he's not doing anything "dangerous", it shouldn't matter and I should just not front if it bothers me.

My argument is that it's my body too, I don't want to be hurt, and I care about him as both a part of me and as a person. I tried to remind him that he wasn't even conscious at the time of the due date. He has no memory of us doing anything insurance related and couldn't have stopped this. If it's any specific alter's fault it's mine and our other host's I was co-fronting with then, but he won't see it like that. I think he still views himself as the "main" alter. I don't know how to get him to comprehend that there's no such thing when he already understands that our other host and I regularly take over for weeks while he's dormant. I'm guessing it's to avoid feeling like he has no meaningful control over his life, which I do sympathize with.

But I know how to fix the insurance issue and he will not let me do it. He wants to wallow in a mistake "he" made instead of let the part responsible fix it. Forcing him to back off might make his issue with control worse but if we lose access to our medication, it'll hit him the hardest. I'm not really sure what to do here, but I don't want him to feel like this is a major setback because he's made so much progress recently. If you have any advice or insight, I'd love to hear it.

My system is polyfragmented. For as long as I can remember it's been constant internal chaos. I think most of us have finally come to an understanding that things are better now. We've done a lot of healing in the past couple years. Most of our fragments and some dormant alters have slowly condensed down into 3 alters containing their own subsystems. In these past few months, integration and minor fusions seem to happen every day. We have a long way to go still, but this is the most peaceful and coherent our life has ever been.

The challenge now is figuring out how to function as complex autonomous identities. Previously, we were in survival mode and white-knuckling through constant switching between much smaller parts. Now we're fronting for longer periods, very aware of each other, and have our own personal narratives, goals, and preferences. We don't know how to divvy up time between the 3 of us. I'll call us A, B, and C.

To be completely honest, I'm (C) a big part of the problem. I have a hard time giving up control. For years, I've had a managerial role within the system, and was also the main caretaker, "Apparently Normal" part, the only one with direct communication to our gatekeeper, and just overall the one who took care of everything both external and internal. Naturally, I'm a fearful, overachieving, ruminating perfectionist with control issues. The stress of this has made me split several times, and I've spent a lot of this year trying to retrieve those pieces of myself.

We all agree that I need to take a huge step back. I'm burnt out and recently integrated with a huge trauma. The other two think I should temporarily "retire" and are fairly certain they can handle life without me hovering over their shoulders at all times waiting for them to do something I don't like.

I do agree that since we have an equal amount of ANPs and EPs divided between us now, it doesn't make sense for me to be taking on all the burden of responsibility. It actively impedes on our overall happiness actually. Like, A is a big horror fan-- that's an important part of his identity-- and I'm a coward who always ends up begging him to turn off whatever he's watching or listening to even if it's nothing specifically triggering, so he just can't participate in his main hobby because of me. Similarly, B loves fashion, but I'm guaranteed to make him change into something that fits closer to my own self image out of embarrassment. It's not fair for any of us.

My need to control and influence other alters is almost compulsive though. It's how we functioned for so long that I don't know how to exist without one hand on the metaphorical wheel. I was always the functional one. But the other two have already proven that they can take care of things, including me when I'm struggling. They contain the more extreme traumas, which is why I'm so protective of them-- but now that they've processed some of it, they're so much more resilient than I am. I just don't know how to let go.

I'm especially scared of losing the relationships we have. A's pretty asocial. B has a personality that can be problematic and doesn't feel connected to most of the people in our life. I fawn hard. Part of my role was masking and figuring out how to attune to other people's needs, but A and B just don't do that in the way I do. Which is obviously for the better; I know for a fact that I'm keeping us in a precarious position socially, but I'm terrified of the consequences when I do stop. Whatever happens, we'll probably be fine, we've survived worse.

I didn't expect this to turn into an anxiety rant lol. If you read it, thank you. I don't have anyone to talk to about this, so any advice or insight is always welcome.

We don't have an individual host, but we do have subsystems that cycle with varying frequency. Last year's dominant subsystem is obsessed with history, collecting antiques, and can only feel comfortable in a dark, Victorian-inspired home. They moved us into a place that matches their preference, styled it like an old house, and accumulated a bunch of clothes nobody else would wear on a regular basis.

They've gone mostly dormant and now I'm living in a home that doesn't feel like my own, just like they were when my subsystem previously hosted. And before that, the exact same thing happened where my subsystem was scrambling trying to get modern things into our space because it felt l like we were staying in some random elderly person's apartment.

I didn't mind the look as much when they were hosting because I felt like I was just dropping in whenever I fronted, but now that I'm actually living in it it's genuinely worsening my depression. There's a few alters in my subsystem that like the dark and cozy look, so I definitely don't want to get rid of everything, but I'm personally aiming for a bright modern interior.

Compromise is hard. It's a little frustrating to think that I might live the rest of my life going back and forth like this. I guess it's kind of funny in an absurd way. I'm starting to accept that we're just going to have to keep building up and breaking down our life because stagnation is worse than moving on.

My problem is that I really want to grow up but I have no idea how or where to start. I was most active when we were around 8-10 so I'm sort of stuck around that age. I don't know how to cook or clean and neither do most of the other common alters because when we were learning how to do those things there was various trauma involved, so those memories are gone for now.

It's starting to get a little scary because we don't really have a main host, we just cycle through subsystems, and the past two cycles have been dysfunctional ones so things are piling up and I'm really overwhelmed with all the things we have to do on top of our actual jobs. Food is also a really big struggle because we don't always have access to a real kitchen, so we can usually only cook things with a microwave and a toaster oven. The fact that we're hungry a lot of the time is probably why it's hard to figure things out.

All of the older parts in my system are only in their late teens/early twenties too so they don't really know what they're doing either or they just don't want to because they don't care about being alive. None of them will help me either and it's really hard to communicate with anybody else in the system. I'm thinking of calling my mom for help which is probably risky but she at least knows I have DID.

But before I do that I wanted to ask if there's anywhere good online that has straightforward information on how to take care of yourself as an adult. I know how to do laundry and basic hygiene but I don't know what I should be doing around the house to keep it clean most of the time. I have no idea where to even start with grocery shopping, budgeting, and food. I'll probably be hosting for at least another week until we cycle again so I want to make the best of it and learn.

I've noticed lately that genuinely acknowledging, documenting, and embracing differences has made a noticeable improvement in my functioning. I've been diagnosed since I was 16, but we've spent the past few years in a haze of constant system conflict trying to force healing and a coherent identity, which has lead to a severely dissociated, dysfunctional life. We usually feel soupy and actually more incoherent because of this. I know noticing and accepting alters is basically DID 101 but we kind of went at this whole thing backwards due to poor guidance from therapy and family as a teenager.

When we feel blurry, we can search through the notes that alters have written about themselves and their identities and see what clicks, or try leaning into one so they can fully switch. So far this has been positive. Having complete switches and not forcing co-consciousness every time has lessened some of the constant distress we've been feeling. Integration also feels more natural when we're not intellectualizing everything.

It scares me a lot as a "manager" alter. It feels weird to acknowledge who I am as an individual in my system, not just a function. There's so many innocuous things I'm learning about myself, like food preferences, interests, etc.

But I'm especially scared of other alters being just as much of a person as I am. There's some that I don't want to give total control to, but it got to the point where one of our more persecutory alters directly told me that he only acts the way he does because I'm too controlling and critical of who he is outside of the trauma he holds. I've been reducing him to the role of "EP" and stifling his development outside of that box. I kind of already knew this, but having him write it out made me want to trust him more.

It's hurting all of us living like this. I've seen how much smoother things go when I just let alters be whoever they feel like they are. At least for now, I think I have to accept that things are going to be a little uncomfortable and other alters might make poor decisions occasionally, but we need to figure out who are, what we want in life, and how to work together before we get into the deeper work again. I know I can be helpful for the system, both as a part of a whole and as a person who loves the people that I am, without constantly smothering us all. It's intimidating though.

Not sure if this is something else or if it's the DID, but I'm leaning toward it being dissociative in nature these days. We keep finding parts that fill in certain information/skill gaps that we initially thought were just fundamental developmental delays.

The earliest I remember very basic information not being retained was in preschool. I remember walking home with those paper left/right chains in my hand and being disappointed because "I" wasn't there in class to learn my left from right... but obviously I had been to class that day because I had the chains in my hand and was walking home from school. Early memory is unreliable, but I'm pretty sure this was real because it was such a distinct blackout and I had those paper chains in my closet until I cleaned it out as a teenager. It took me until my teens to consistently remember my left/right. A similar thing happened with bike riding-- we had a whole PE course on it in middle school and I know I'd spent hours riding, but as soon as it was over I'd forgotten I even owned a bike.

Language has been a big frustration for me my whole life. From the very start I was getting a lot of mixed singles about how to talk, what language to use, and who was safe to speak around at all. My upbringing was such a mess in this regard I feel like all the information about speech and social skills got strewn all around the system to the point that I can't actually use it all at once in my daily life. A lot of us struggle with intonation and often mix up speech patterns between languages to this day. We have a lot of moments of "I know this word/phrase in the literary sense but not how you'd actually say it". But some of us have no problem in this area and get frustrated by other parts struggling, which is the weird thing.

And oh my god I feel like I'm having to relearn how to take care of myself/manage my time every month. I'll feel like I understand my routine and needs, and how to meet them, then we switch and I'm starting over with fresh eyes. Then we switch again and have to clean up after the parts that didn't know what they were doing which is so demoralizing.

Idk I'm trying not to be too negative about it because it does seem like there's progress happening, but it's taking so incredibly long. I hate feeling like I've wasted years of my life dissociating when I should have been picking up on extremely basic life stuff. Does this sound familiar?

We're so used to managing fragments and parts that feel more like characters than people that it's really difficult for some of us to handle the idea of genuinely multifaceted alters. I think it's partially because it's easier to conceive of us being "parts of a whole" when those parts clearly have a singular theme or role. There's just something unsettling about alters that can pass as complete individuals in the real world without being puppeted by fragments like most parts in my system are.

The fact that these alters exist now is a huge sign of progress, as our current goal is to integrate fragments into more complex parts like these. I think some of us didn't understand what this would actually look like though. It's kind of funny that we've been diagnosed for years and are only now experiencing the weirdness of feeling like there's actually multiple people in your head. Having just a few alters with the complexities of "whole" identities sounds like a completely different challenge than managing hundreds of fragments, but I still hope we can get there some day.

I'm assuming this has something to do with being polyfragmented. Most of the time it seems like we run on separate parts fronting at once with little awareness of each other. It's such a weird and confusing way of functioning that I need to just rant about it for a minute.

For example, we often have an enthusiastic, creative, or highly social part thinking and aware of their surroundings; naturally whoever's thinking assumes they're the one fronting. But when we open our mouth, it's like a roll of the dice on what comes out. Sometimes it's related to whatever the other part is thinking, sometimes it feels like we're being puppeted by someone else entirely. Moving also feels like it's being done by another part a lot of the time. Nobody feels in the body so to speak. It's been like this on and off for almost as long as I can remember.

Post diagnosis we've had moments where an alter has complete control but this has gotten increasingly rare. Many of us are constantly chasing that feeling and are constantly disappointed by our inability to front "completely". It's caused a lot of pain and frustration and made it extremely difficult to feel connected to anyone or anything. I'm so sick of feeling like I'm banging on glass trying to get out but we can't find a therapist that's willing to take us.

I mean like how do you figure out your personality, what stuff you enjoy and what you want to do with your life. I know what my role is in the system but I don't know how to be a person in the outside world if that makes sense? Right now the only thing I can confidently say about myself is what music I like. I fronted a lot when we were in our early teens and it seems like I might end up taking over as a host for a while, but I feel sort of unelaborated and inexperienced in comparison to other alters.

Like, when I talk to people I never have anything to say and I don't know how to cook or what I should even be eating. I know I'm an adult now but I have no idea what I should be trying to do outside of work. When I'm not doing my role, I just end up listening to music and doomscrolling because I don't know what else I can do. Any advice would be helpful. The main hosts are burnt out so I can't really go to them for help with this stuff.

This is one of the few ways we can tell who's actually fronting. I'm not sure if it's obvious to the people around me but sometimes it feels very apparent.

Even if I can't always accurately hear what my voice sounds like, I can physically feel the difference in how I'm talking. Some parts talk from their throat, some have a more resonant sound, some talk in this nasally whine that really annoys certain other alters. Accent and dialect changes are at least somewhat explainable in my system because I grew up in a multicultural family within a multicultural community, so it usually functions more like regular codeswitching, but it often feels embarrassing anyway. Many of us really struggle to speak at all from lack of experience and it leads to a lot of odd word pronunciations and choices.

Anyway, just curious-- how do you experience this symptom, if at all?

This isn't inherently a DID thing but the DID complicates it. Genuinely don't understand how, besides going through the everyday necessities in life, people can identify something frivolous or a long-term commitment they want to do, form a plan to do it, and then follow through. Like people can just choose on a whim to start taking guitar lessons or travel and it's not a hypothetical thing they ruminate on and argue with themselves about for years.

I'm realizing in my early adulthood that this isn't a skill set I ever really practiced growing up. My parents had me try a lot of different things sporadically for a few years as a kid but inevitably I'd either have a bad time and want to quit or forget the skill, get frustrated, and give up. Once that happened, they'd get upset but never supported or pushed me to keep trying.

It was weird though because they'd freak out or discourage me whenever I tried out new things on my own accord, so I never got to learn perseverance through activities I actually wanted to do either. Everything I ever did was just sort of half-heartedly forced on me. Terrible way to raise a kid in retrospect.

So now I don't know how to form long-term plans or use my own free will outside my little bubble of proven safe activities, and a lot of my younger alters are terrified to even try. Our adult alters have so many ideas of what they want to do and be, but it's like those younger parts have them on a tight lead. I talk about doing a lot of different things but there's a fundamental disconnect between who I am when I'm talking to others and who I am when I'm making real choices. The kids can't even fathom normal stuff like going to bars or community college and it's so frustrating. I don't know how to convince them that they, A) are allowed to and B) shouldn't be the ones making decisions on what the adults do in the first place. I've tried just telling them directly, but their passive influence is still strong.

[CW: Neglect and OCSA vaguely implied, not in detail.]

A younger alter has been surfacing more often lately. She carries the trauma of being abandoned and isolated as a depressed teenager. All of her memories were formed online.

Despite integrating into a more multi-faceted alter recently, she's still just as dissociated, depressed, and dysphoric as we were when we were actually 15. Like we did then, she still seeks out attention from older men online. The only part of our adult life she's willing to claim is our age to use as an excuse to not listen to other alters. She has no concrete memories of friends, family, or really anything outside of our childhood bedrooms, so social media remains her main point of contact with the world. This worries me, especially with how awful the social media landscape is these days. She's very easily influenced and will spend hours just making herself miserable looking at all the things she can't have.

As my system's main caregiver, I've been suddenly thrust into a paternalistic role without getting to bond with her first. Neither of us are happy with this, but I can't just let her self destruct.

I've tried gently explaining what's going on, why she shouldn't do these things, how much better our life is now, and I've tried pushing her toward more tangible hobbies, but she's extremely resistant. She claims she "hates everything" and refuses to try new things outside of her bubble. She won't even try watching movies/TV shows or playing video games, but this might be because her attention span is shot. The things she does seem to want are mostly inaccessible-- we can't go back to high school, we can't afford to buy makeup that she's only maybe going to use every other month, and other parts aren't comfortable dating others or dressing the way she wants.

What's seemed to help somewhat is setting hard boundaries about time spent on the screen and what content she can look at, but she resents this and feels patronized/stifled. It's also only enforceable when I'm metaphorically watching over her shoulder. It's like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place; if I loosen the reigns she'll keep doing nothing but upsetting herself, if I'm too hard on her she'll never want to try to get better. There must be a middle spot but I have no idea what that looks like.

Because there's often no singular host in my system, my brain utilizes a system of fragments to get things done regularly. This gets out of hand easily though. I end up running on a dissociated autopilot that can't seem to get much done outside of routine sometimes for days or weeks. Trying to get these fragments to practice coping skills is near impossible because no one is actually feeling anything, only the parts stuck in the "backseat" are. Alters often feel stifled or like they can't front to do what they want/need. It's to the point where it feels like fully fronting is more rare than being in the backseat trying to influence this autopilot mode.

It sucks too because on the surface, besides being noticeably spaced out and awkward, I seem a lot more "whole" than when individual alters front. It's technically easier to mask like this, but only because every other facet of my identity is trapped behind a metaphorical glass wall. People in my life who know I have DID seem to think I've gotten more integrated when I'm really just living in a blur. I even managed to trick myself into thinking I was making progress because I wasn't blacking out as much, but it's astounding how much communication and groundedness we've lost.

Is there any way to stop this from happening as much? We're not in active danger anymore and it's doing more harm than good now, so it feels like time to learn how to live without the autopilot. I'm thinking of setting alarms to remind me to ground throughout the day, but any other ideas are welcome.

For context, my system is polyfragmented. One of our oldest alters is our gatekeeper. She's supposedly the only one who sees the full picture of our life. She doesn't communicate much at all, but when she does it's usually to say something kind of sobering about our reality. So far most of what she's claimed has been proven true, so we tend to believe her.

During a rough patch she mentioned offhandedly how she has to reform every alter as they front. As in, she manually take pieces of memory and concepts, and builds them into a new alter every time based on whatever is needed at the moment. When we stop fronting, those parts melt down into some kind of general memory soup.

Supposedly this is why our alters are extremely fluid and why we always feel especially fragmented when we're exhausted/stressed. I understand why this could be more efficient in extreme situations, but it seems kind of outlandish that every known "alter" is actually just a bunch of fragments temporarily smashed together. If it is true, it's proven to be dysfunctional in our adulthood. Alters that are otherwise very aware of themselves often feel like we have pieces noticeably missing when fronting, which makes it harder to do important tasks. This feels like more of a waste of energy than just having formed alters ready at hand.

That being said, is this backed by any proof at all? Do some systems work like this or was she just giving us a random explanation of something she doesn't actually understand?

Edit: Thanks for the responses! As was pointed out, I think this is definitely her describing a metaphorical interpretation of her role. I'll have to show her these comments and see if it helps her feel a little less pressured to know that it's not really what's happening.

I am so disoriented all the time. This is the thing that makes me feel actually insane, not the alters themselves.

Nothing makes sense for longer than a few hours. My system is polyfragmented and the more self aware I get the more it feels like my perception of reality is literally split into a hundred different pieces that just don't quite fit together. Every day feels like its own puzzle. I have to dissociate to enjoy things in the moment but the more I dissociate the harder it is to enjoy things in the moment. The way I handle any interaction at all feels like a dice roll. I know why my brain works like this but it seems so counterproductive and convoluted in practice. I wish I could just condense myself down into something coherent.