I asked my counselor about this today when I saw her. She told me that the two things - alters and the inner child are two different things and that everyone even people who are not DID have an inner child. She said it has nothing to do with dissociation. that its more like a feeling of having experienced something before, like my hiking and Im out in the woods and suddenly I get to feeling scared because I can't find the traIL. As an inner child thing I would know that I was scared and it is because as a child I got lost. the two feelings in the present that I experience is the same as the feeling in the past. kind of de ja vu thing. But if itwas an alter dissociation thing she said it would be me hiking in the woods today, get scares and dissociate into an alter and result would be my losing track by having a time loss where one minute Im hiking in the woods and the next Im safely home. She said some people who have DID have learned to remain semi aware thats called being co conscious. But that is still different from the inner child because a co conscious person is watching from a distance far binoculars way where as inner child its not feeling separate and far away from the experience.