Hello, The expereinces I read about -that are being posted here among those who have DID - I am have a really hard time understanding. They are so unlike anything Ive expereinced. One thing is that some members here are talking as if they function and do activities as a group of alters that she "(the poster) is aware of. The poster writes as if she is aware of what one or the other alters wants to do and it seems as if there is this control going on, as if this was a choice. That is the part -the choice part- that makes no sense to me. I read about you go on walks together and how you know each other and reference each other as being there together and aware of each other--not at differnt times but in the same time. Your alters have names which you refer to them by--and you even know the desires of the alters. ( in one case, a little alter wants to post a poem)

Such clear awareness that these individual named alters are there is aprt of what I find so upsetting. I believe, and maybe I am completely wrong on this, that encouraging separation makes this a real circus in which the patient almost creates more trouble for herself than anything else. Isnt it difficult enough having to hope nothing sets off your dissociation so that you find you are again lost? Even when I was in flux and changing whose eyes I was seeing through frequently it was nothing I would want to encourage or indulge. To lose my sense of self and connection to the world around me and my past was the most awful, lonely, isolating and alienating of expereinces.

Also, my dissociation was always just something that happened with me and that I later become aware of. I did have those few occasions where I stood outself myself seeing myself --and in one case I remember-saw someone sitting there new whose place I was just stepping into. I remember this new lady was the person I had planned on being and had been at a pervious time in life, and I remember how good it felt that she was back because she had waited and been shut away for so long.