Thanks for your real story.... we hope that you are doing well sweetie....the holidays are almost over thank God.

Our system is different in a way that we are co-present, co-conscience and co-hosting. We function as a group like a crew on a ship....most decisions are done in vote, compromise, or advisement...of course we have our rogues. How did we get like this? A lifetime of trying to stay incognito and “normal”- so we learned to work together to pass.

To be able to co-operate...one must be able to openly communicate with the other members of the system....trust needs to be achieved through honesty and desire to be complicit. Not everyone has to be on board, but enough to maintain assemblance of a timeline....like we go to work, do life and people GOOD ENUFF to not be TOO embarrassing (still them moments lol)....

We also have like a ‘life theme”- a character with likes and dislikes borrowed from here and there: a public image.

Can your Others be afraid of being rejected, mocked, belittled, dismissed, or anything that would make them hide? They have feelings too and wish to not be invalidated also.

In our mind, it’s so active with so many thoughts and ideas that are off topic and others working in conjunction with each other.... I actually thought that I was supersmart...lol...but I eventually began to realize that the voices were all different sounding in dialect, gender, age, tone, tenor, and intensity...like a classroom of people. We fell apart for years but have managed to reground ourselves again in the know.

My understanding that their is no real trick to this...but therapy. For us it was natural that we worked on it for years because in the beginning (40 years) it was quiet and lonely in here.

About calling up an alter specifically...it’s a lot to name calling in here. Since ittakes many of us to deal with just a day....triggers, situations, events, people, needs require certain parts to step up to do their job for the moment.

I seriously can’t see us integrating (a bunchoftheothers are scared) due to the amount of alters and fragmented pieces of memory....so co-operation is the best that we are going to get out of us.

Welcome to this forum and glad to read about yourselves.