u/croissant_fish

not going to go into graphic detail because that's unnecessary but content warning for...well, i think it's pretty obvious what this post is going to discuss.

one of my alters has started to express being very possessive over me, getting jealous when i spend time with other people and wanting me to never leave him because it's "safer" and i "won't get hurt", recently he's been expressing wanting to "eat me" so that we can be "closer", i know that's not physically possible and i've already established with him this wouldn't work out the way he thinks it would so i have zero fears about him harming the body because he's never done that before and is an alter that has kept me safe from situations that were very distressing for me, but recently he constantly expresses the urge to "eat me" and "be closer" whenever he feels affection for me and tries to do this in our headspace.

i would like to find some healthier alternatives for us to feel closer, i have listened to what he wants and asked why he wants this a lot to try and understand and i want to emphasize how it's clear it's coming from a place of wanting to be closer to me and not of harming us so i'm not in a crisis, this is just a very vivid expression of feelings he's having. when i'm able to find small alternatives for stuff we can do together like hobbies i feel like that fufills his need for closeness a bit and for a few days he won't mention the eating stuff anymore, but then it always happens again and comes back stronger. it's not like we aren't functional, we are, but i'm starting to feel stressed out because i get somatic pain whenever this happens in the headspace with him, and while i get this isn't coming from a place of him wanting to harm me it feels like the way he's going about this is a bit misguided.

i will obviously talk about this in therapy too, but thanks for any advice you might have, it's really appreciated.

I'm new to system discovery, it's been maybe 2 months since I've realized I'm a system, my protector helps me out a lot when triggers happen but sometimes it takes me hours to feel better and sometimes overwhelming stress leads to alters becoming two alters and bad headaches in worst cases...I want to find ways to avoid this because it's traumatizing and disruptive each time.

Unfortunately I had to leave my current therapist because it was not a fit anymore shortly after system discovery (they weren't a trauma therapist and it just wasn't working anymore) I'm on waitlists for therapy but it might be a few months before I can get actual care from someone specialized in trauma, what are your best tips for dealing with stress especially when you're a new system? I'm trying to read up on as much as I can until I can get therapy again but until then I've essentially been left with no tools to cope, so any recommendations, books, tools anything is appreciated lots. Thank you!

I discovered I was a system in therapy but my therapist isn't a trauma specialist so until I'm able to find someone who is a specialist they've been supporting me as best as they can supervised by another therapist who has a background in traumatology and is formed in it.

It's been hard to find a specialist since the waitlists are long but I've kept searching and things were going relatively well until an alter became three alters after a therapy session, and the follow-up session I got after that was entirely around how I needed to find a psychiatrist "in the mean time" even if that psychiatrist isn't a specialist or formed in trauma because if not then my current therapist likely can't continue seeing me because they seem to be worried about not being equipped to handle my case currently and need to make sure there's a second opinion because they are responsible for me, they've also encouraged me to interact less with my system (communication is less good since that alter changed and dissociation is higher right now) just to keep things stable, and until then we can work on other stuff together but...I don't know, I feel like I'm expected to behave like a person who doesn't have DID now? And to just put the DID to the side? But I don't really know what I would even work on anymore, discovering I'm a system is the biggest thing going on in my life right now that I want to go to therapy for.

My therapist said it'd also be best for emergencies if there was a psychiatrist involved just so they could help me if I was unstable, but how can a psychiatrist who isn't formed in trauma and dissociative disorders help me? What if they just make things worse or more unstable? I've had terrible experiences in the past where medical professionals who were not specialized to help me with other specific things just made my situation worse and traumatized me, so I'm just very on the fence about this idea... Of course, I don't want to completely not listen to my therapist's advice, maybe they know better than me, but this is also making me want to just not go to therapy anymore until I find a specialist who can support me for my DID, or at least someone who has training in trauma. I ended up crying in the session, I really wanted support on the difficult week I had with my alters changing suddenly like that but now I feel cornered and pressured into making a choice I don't want at all. Of course, my therapist said it was my choice at the end of the day, but at the same time I'm very aware that they'll likely drop me if I don't find a psychiatrist quickly.

I don't think it's bad that my therapist is doing this, I understand that it's good they are admitting there are limitations to what we can do together, but it's more so the idea of seeing another person who also isn't specialized in trauma just seems a bit...unproductive. Any advice would be appreciated, thank you.

My sleep was always bad and I often had one nightmare per night for a long time until recent system discovery one month ago, now my sleep was relatively peaceful with just normal stress dreams since discovery...until today.

After hearing that we were the same person from our therapist one of my alters didn't take this very well then got very sad disappeared/tried to force a merge with me (it failed), and in the end returned as three different alters that I all recognized as facts of this first alter I got to know, I accepted this and just wanted to give them time, but my sleep ever since is worse than before, it feels deeper and like a constant cycle of nightmares, I don't just have one nightmare per night like before, it's like one nightmare ends and I get thrown into another nightmare immediately, like an endless nightmare loop, and it's very hard to wake up too, what is going on? Is this normal?😭 Usually I'll try to resolve any discomfort in the system by trying to communicate with the part experienceing it, but these new three parts have for the most part retreated, so communication is very difficult now, it's even hard to hear them sometimes and feels very faint even though the alter they came from was almost always present in the front and acted as a protector, too.

I will obviously talk about this in therapy, but I'm still waiting to see a trauma specialized therapist as well because of long waitlists (my current one is coordinating with a trauma therapist until I can find one), so any insight I can have would be super appreciated thank you so much

My sleep was always bad and I often had one nightmare per night for a long time until recent system discovery one month ago, now my sleep was relatively peaceful with just normal stress dreams since discovery...until today.

After hearing that we were the same person from our therapist one of my alters didn't take this very well then got very sad disappeared/tried to force a merge with me (it failed), and in the end returned as three different alters that I all recognized as facts of this first alter I got to know, I accepted this and just wanted to give them time, but my sleep ever since is worse than before, it feels deeper and like a constant cycle of nightmares, I don't just have one nightmare per night like before, it's like one nightmare ends and I get thrown into another nightmare immediately, like an endless nightmare loop, and it's very hard to wake up too, what is going on? Is this normal?😭 Usually I'll try to resolve any discomfort in the system by trying to communicate with the part experienceing it, but these new three parts have for the most part retreated, so communication is very difficult now, it's even hard to hear them sometimes and feels very faint even though the alter they came from was almost always present in the front and acted as a protector, too.

I will obviously talk about this in therapy, but I'm still waiting to see a trauma specialized therapist as well because of long waitlists (my current one is coordinating with a trauma therapist until I can find one), so any insight I can have would be super appreciated thank you so much

I'm still very new to discovering my system, it's been a month.

I was starting to get along very well with one of my parts and he was starting front a lot and interacted with my friends, and we were working through his feelings together, but everything was so nice for him he began to feel existential dread at possibly disappearing one day or merging with me, and my therapist told me in response to that we are the same people so technically he can't really disappear and in the moment I felt okay.

But after the session this alter and me, I don't know we started feeling a bit embarassed, like "are we just one person talking to ourselves, this is kind of...embarassing and awkward, we feel a bit crazy..." and then my alter said "what is even the point of this..." a bit sadly and I don't know, I felt him kind of retreat within me, it felt like dissociative barriers got lowered so quickly in that moment, and now I feel way less dissociated but very sad and I keep crying. I can't hear him very well anymore, when I try to reach out he either doesn't reply or he sounds like a different distant person almost, I don't know if part of us merged, I don't really know what to think. I'm just worried because this part had become a protector from other persecutory parts and was helping me a lot, and now it feels like communication is very difficult suddenly or like he's just retreated in me even though he was constantly around before.

I know logically yeah we are parts of the same person, but I don't know, this just feels weird now for us, I will talk about this in my next session but if anyone has been through something similar what did you do? Is this bad? It feels sad but is it actually a sign of healing? I'm just worried because I was still working through stuff with this part, I feel he was just starting to heal a little bit but there was still a lot of work to do and now it just feels like he's almost gone, this feels too soon to feel like we are the same people in a way? I don't know, sorry I'm just confused, thanks in advance for any advice you might have.

I'm still very new to discovering my system, it's been a month.

I was starting to get along very well with one of my parts and he was starting front a lot and interacted with my friends, and we were working through his feelings together, but everything was so nice for him he began to feel existential dread at possibly disappearing one day or merging with me, and my therapist told me in response to that we are the same people so technically he can't really disappear and in the moment I felt okay.

But after the session this alter and me, I don't know we started feeling a bit embarassed, like "are we just one person talking to ourselves, this is kind of...embarassing and awkward, we feel a bit crazy..." and then my alter said "what is even the point of this..." a bit sadly and I don't know, I felt him kind of retreat within me, it felt like dissociative barriers got lowered so quickly in that moment, and now I feel way less dissociated but very sad and I keep crying. I can't hear him very well anymore, when I try to reach out he either doesn't reply or he sounds like a different distant person almost, I don't know if part of us merged, I don't really know what to think. I'm just worried because this part had become a protector from other persecutory parts and was helping me a lot, and now it feels like communication is very difficult suddenly or like he's just retreated in me even though he was constantly around before.

I know logically yeah we are parts of the same person, but I don't know, this just feels weird now for us, I will talk about this in my next session but if anyone has been through something similar what did you do? Is this bad? It feels sad but is it actually a sign of healing? I'm just worried because I was still working through stuff with this part, I feel he was just starting to heal a little bit but there was still a lot of work to do and now it just feels like he's almost gone, this feels too soon to feel like we are the same people in a way? I don't know, sorry I'm just confused, thanks in advance for any advice you might have.