**This answer may be very triggering to some. I was born with Asperger Syndrome, so I can at times be too straight forward. I've tried to be as thoughtful and gentle as I can be.**

I know from experience and from college that alters are emotionally and mentally as human as any corporeal human being. And they also have coping mechanisms and survival mechanisms that are separate and apart from each other.

I also know from experience of my own abuse that alters or hosts can be damaged by mind control or psychological programming done when you are very, very young. My system's original host was so damaged by severe mind control and torture that she no longer exists. She was ordered, through extreme abuse, to not exist. And she chose to not exist to stop the extremity of abuse. It was my brain's way of coping with the severity of what was happening to me. It was survival. So the rest of me would survive, personality intact, and not kill myself like they wanted me to. Abusers all, ultimately, want their victim to kill themselves and for the victim to be blamed for their own depression. I'm sorry to be so blunt. I really don't mean to trigger you to even mention the A-word.

But I don't know what you recently went through that may have affected you. So I don't know how part of you might respond. I also don't know if you had a history as a child of part of your system choosing to not exist to help the rest of you survive. Sometimes, under severe duress, alters or hosts will cease to exist to allow the rest of your brain to survive as is. Because your beautiful brain chose to create this system as a means to survive - it could be described as your brain artistically self expressing. I was taught in college that systems changing, in any way, is your brain's artistic way of expressing your pain. The worst possible pain a child who never gets to live has to experience.

Dying is a part of the life cycle. Children who are abused never get to live. They only know birth and abuse. Each abuse representing another death. Children who are abused never get to live, only experience death of their childhood over and over again. The death of alters or hosts is a survival mechanism, so we don't kill ourselves. But so that we understand the severity of pain caused to us. Because we never got to or get to live. What we know is abuse. The death of our own system members is an act of survival and coping. We better understand the severity of pain of each act committed on each member, so that we never do anything close to that to anyone else.

And if part of you feels dead, then they may well be. Death is a natural part of life and I don't think anyone can tell you that death isn't a part of a DID system. No therapist can also tell you when you love or don't love. There is no measurement tool for love, but we all still freely do it. Once upon a time, love wasn't a valued emotion in human society. But we homo sapiens fought for that right. To love and be loved. To love openly. To express love. And to not be ashamed of having emotions. Love isn't quantifiable. Pain isn't quantifiable. Pain is perception to each personality. And that one inside of you that feels dead, if you need to mourn, I hope you give yourself time to do that.