I don't dream about specific alters, but I do have nightmares which incorporate places that abuse has ocurred, i,e. childhood homes, images. I do frequently awake to the alters talking, who when realize I am awake, will go silent, or make comments addressing me now as awake..

My Trauma therapist explained it this way to me. The right brain houses the EP (Emotional parts) and really does not sleep, my left brain awakens, and as I become conscious leads to a "freaky wake up call"..(my terminology not his), as I get to hear subconscious ramblings of alters. He explained it where it made more sense to me on a empirical level.

I dont see my alters, I do have a sense of seperate identities, ages, personality, beliefs, behaviors...I do have visual hallucinations projected from those parts, I am told this can happen and he termed it.."Dissociative Pyschosis"..some of the images are pieces of trauma videos stored at the subconscious level which will be projected when I am triggered, others are just wierd images of violence, contorted some how.

After my recent surgery, I had a dream about injured children, laying in rows, bandaged, moaning, like they had been in a war. I was walking past them on a stairway, going down, which suddenly abruptly gave way into a dark abyss, as I grabbed a hold of rail..trying not to fall into the abyss...my Trauma therapist helped me when I asked what this could represent... the altered states, not actual alters, but representative images of the injured child parts..and the abyss was literally the level of subconscious warzone they exist in..but again...I dont know much about dream states and what things represent...he was much better at helping me understand representations of specific items in the dream, like the stairway..etc..

Everyone's dissociative experiences can be different, I am just sharing my own as it relates to dreaming, and seeing alters..thanks for sharing your experience Confused43, and letting me share mine.