first I want to give huge hugs to those in this board. when I first joined here about 8-9
years ago any attempt to discuss what I was going through in regards to integration was not a very welcome topic. this topic can be very scary and triggering for many. there were not many openly integrating people on the boards. I felt I had to keep this
journey to myself and to more private places here on psych central and other places on the internet to protect those who were not ready for this step,

dont get me wrong, those that have helped me through the last 8 years or so of this integration process are very much appreciated and un replace able. what I am saying is it feels great to have others here now at this level of healing.

this thread isnt just for me its for all of you too. if you have been integrated or going through integration your posts are welcome here.

my alters creation and what treatment providers in my location believe happens to create alternate personalities....

One of the reasons I started this thread with explaining the mechanics of how dissociation happens in the brain physically was so that you all would understand what my location, my treatment providers and I believe happens to create alters and what happened to me.

lets take a step back for a moment to the 1980's when I was a very small girl under the age of 5. Im not going to go into graphic details of what the abuses were. that could trigger others.

I was neither physically nor mentally mature enough to handle fully grown men and their adult issues. mentally and physically I went through the dissociation process already explained above. when this happened because of the severity of the abuse and my brains reactions to that something amazing happened.

Because I was now in a physical and mental dissociative state of mind everything that the senses, nerves were telling the spine and going through to the thalamus got redirected. Instead of moving on for more processing in the various parts of the brain, all this information was send directly on past the process and into storage for long term unconscious memories. I no longer would have those memories, emotions, trauma events, senses information consciously available to me. in mental term this is called dissociative amnesia.

now we had a problem. normally when the brain is physically working correctly everything is passed through the routine and we are able to associate things by our memories emotions and senses...

example walking down the street a person is able to remember the last time they walked down that street and how it felt to them, what they did, who they talked to. and if you are in a store and you see a shirt with any thing on it that reminds your brain of something on that walk your brain automatically puts all the right information together reintegrating the memory of the walk because the shirt decal reminded you of it.

lets say I was triggered in the store by a shirt decal. my brain goes through its process but theres no conscious memories to match that to, but there is the unconscious memories. after entering the dissociative state of mind my brain routes to the unconscious.

now Im standing in a store in a foggy, numb kind of state of mind where the unconscious long term memories are stored. someone walks up to me and asks if Im alright.

my brain is in its physical dissociated functions so what I say and do is based on what is stored in the unconscious. I look at the store clerk and say something like yes Im looking for the way out of here and walk away.

I am now functioning as an alternate personality, in other words instead of mentally and physically functioning with how and who I am when I am not dissociated, my body and mind are functioning on the unconsciousness level. kind of like someone who walks in their sleep can do and say things that they wouldnt ordinarily say and do when they are awake. I have the sense of agency of what is stored in the brains unconscious long term memories.)

As I functioned more and more in this mental and physical way called dissociation that the brain does, the more information from the senses nerves events get passed on through into the unconscious storage tanks.

any time I entered that process of dissociation more information was built up so that now my brain had enough so that when I physically and mentally entered a dissociative state of mind it was able to know and put together matching sense of agency personalities / characteristics and differentiate between whether I was dissociating because of the sexual trigger or fear of heights or anger or depression or well you get the picture. which ever the trigger for my dissociating was the result of what information I needed access to, in order to handle the situation. therefore my brain "switched" me to the unconscious alternate personality states that matched. just like if someone thinks about an orange their brain switches to recalling the memories, of oranges.

Sometimes this process of switching is called alters taking control or in some cultures taking possession.

mind you this is not what all treatment providers around the world believes happens to create alternate personalities. to find out what your own treatment providers believe and those treatment providers in your location believes you will need to contact them your selves.