I discovered for me, to understand the difference between parts and Dissocaitvie type alters I had to understand what a personality is, ...

In general a personality is who and what you are, how you behave and react, your feelings/ emotions....... are you funny, happy, sad, do you walk with joy in your step or do you tend to walk slow with a purpose, are you shy or out going, do you look at life from a reality, serious, or do you enjoy life as a prankster, do you bounce with lifes ups and downs or do you tend to fall hard, do you wallow in self pity, or are you a kind of person who feels life owes you something or are you a go out there and get it, make life what you want it to be. are you a morning coffee person, or a juice person, are you a skip meals or a full breakfast bacon and eggs person, Are you a famous person or are you an average jane or john doe, are you a good worker or a slacker, or are you somewhere in between all these extremes.

How do you find your personality? its not online, its not in another persons answers. It wasnt in this site or that website forum and wasnt in my therapists willingness or lack there of to answer me or anyone else...

its literally right there in your face. go to a mirror and look. what do you see.... is your eyes brown, blue, green, is there a sparkle or dullness or curiousness in the way you are looking at yourself. is that a smile on your face or did you just stick your tongue out at your self playfully or out or fear or uglyness or somethnig in between,

your personality is literally right there in front of you.. are you wearing formal clothing or are you wearing casual wear, do you enjoy loose fitting clothing or tight show your figure kinds of clothing. was your clothing chosen for a particular reason, maybe you enjoy running and active life style so you choose clothing to fit your active life style.

Your personality is literaly right there at your feet. are you wearing heals, leather, sports wear or maybe you prefer to be barefoot.

your personality is literally right there in your hands, are your hands rough and well used or are they delicate and well cared for, do you wear polish, if so why that polish and color...

your personality is right there in those baby pictures and baby book that your parents took and kept for you of your first year of life. Its right there in all the family get together stories about you... did you walk and talk at a certain age, did you cry when you fell down trying to stand or walk or ride that bike or did you pick yourself back up and have a go at it again, whats that one annoying story about your childhood that family always gets around to when there is a family get together.look at those pictures, books and stories what do they say about what kind of child you were, your likes, dislikes and behaviors...

Its all right there in front of you and inside you, no one else has your personality and no one else can tell you what your personality is. you know your personality because you have lived with it all your lives from the moment of your biological birth.

It didnt take me long to figure out what personality I had one day when I was in therapy talking about dissociation, parts, alters......... there I was a college student, a lesbian with a partner, working at a crisis center as a volunteer, wearing a brown, green, orange, red fall style shirt, jeans, flip flops, talking about my daily life, what joke was funny to me that day, whether I was feeling happy or sad, confused, stressed out over a homework assignment, eating a candy bar and strawberries, drinking a pepsi. planning to have chineese for dinner, it was all right there in our faces the who what and hows of my personality. it was all right there in the questions I asked, in the answers I gave, in the sitting quietness...

Right now if I had to describe myself in terms of personality I would say that I am a wife, mother, I love the summer season, Im a do'er not a complainer do nothing kind of person, Im compassionalte and love helping others, Im outgoing and organized, Im firmly bonded to my children and wife (I will go to no ends to care for and protect my wife and children) Im resilliant (going through a hurricane and work related trauma proved that with a bang) my eyes are blue my hair is indian straight and black, my religion is a variety of beliefs in other words theres something in every religion that i find helpful in my life at one time or another.......I can see my personality in every choice, question and answer from the moment I woke up this mornnig, to present, how I slept last night, what positions I slept in, how I am feeling and wearing and what my daily plans are, right down to what I am writing right now, its all there. what my personality is like.

(now that you all know what a personality is I bet you can read your past posts and discover what your basic every day personality is like, especially if you are a frrequent / daily poster, your every day personality is right there in print for you and others to see and know. )

now that you know what a personality is, I can imagine its much easier to discover what a persons "parts" are...

some of my "parts" are....

Mother (Im a mother of 4 children. thats a part of my whole personality of who and what I am.)

Lesbian( I am a lesbian, thats a part of my whole personality of who and what I am)

Comedian (I love telling jokes, thats a part of my whole personality of who and what I am.)

Simple right? you take your basic every day personality that you are and instead of looking at every one of those things together that make up who and what you are, how you are feeling, how you ask and reply to questions, posts, react to life situations, you select only one of those things and that's one of your "parts"

these normal every day parts can become a problem sometimes.

Im cooking dinner and my wife walks up to me and asks for my help, instead of treating to her as an adult and wife I turn off the stove and approach the situation like I would my children, I have suddenly switched into the mother part of myself.

or how about this one, Im in a vehicle, my wife is driving and she has to stop fast, suddenly her arn goes out in front of me to prevent me from lerching forwards in the fast stop. yup she has suddenly slipped into parent/ mother mode ( apart of herself). every parent out there can connect with this one

my point is "parts" are completely normal and as human beings we tend to slip in and out of them many times a day. even here if you read your posts I bet you can now pick out when you have slipped into your "Parts" The "Composer" that composes a post/ thread vs that "motherly" part of you when replying to someone, or that "antagonizing" part of you when posting, or that "questioning/ inquizitive " part of you, or that "informative" part of you, keep in mind I am not talking yet about my alters of any disorder yet, these are completely normal parts that every human being has.

for me and my therapist this description of personality and parts came in handy for just about every therapy technique and understanding my dissociaiton problems. it was the first step to recognizing when I was in a normal part of my self vs when I have switched into one of my alternate personalities. in order to work on my dissociation problems I had to stabilize my present life, in order to do that I needed to understand what my triggers were and why I kept slipping into parts of myself, being reactive instead of from a grounded state of mind.

Some of you may recognize this as SDM or IFS ...

Structural Dissociation Model. please kep in mind that structural dissociation is not a disorder, it is a therapy model that sometimes helps people to understand their self, its a way to chart your normal parts and alters if you know enough about what a personality is, what a part is, ewhich is your alters versus your normal parts, what your triggers are, how and when you dissociate, and if you have the type of system that has a definite order and pattern called heirarchy, this therapy model is rarely used now because of the reclassification and diagnostics of dissociative disorders rendered it useless to .....most if not all ......with dissociative disorders.

The new structured therapy model being used today is called IFS.

IFS is Internal Family Systems therapy model. please keep in mind this is not a disorder. its a therapy. it combines CBT, DBT, Meditation, Structural Dissociation model, REBT, and other therapies into one therapy technique. It is taught in a structured way, meaning you cant just jump into the middle or end of it. you have a definite order and way to do it. it includes things like wording that is different than any other treatment model (example problems are not called problems, they are called trailheads) each therapy session begins with doing a Meditation (this is not hypnosis nor is it someone hypnotizing you. you are just following a IFS relaxation, like if you are sitting here and you close your eyes and think about something happy, it will relax you, the meditations with IFS are structured to relax you, body scans and focused to get you to think about how you are feeling so that you can notice parts of your normal personality. this therapy is not for causing one to dissociate or expect you to become your alters, its specifically for teaching you to stay focused, aware, not dissociated. IFS is ..........not........... strictly a dissociative treatment. it is used with every single mental disorder in the books and with physical health problems too. its for everything. so please do not take the fact that you and your therapist are doing IFS as being you have a specific disorder or problem. the reason why treatment providers are using this is because it works for everything, its got a bit of every popular therapy model built into it.

I did not do the SDM/ IFS therapy models as they were meant to be. my own therapist and I used parts of those models in different way then the structured way because the structured way did not take into consideration that I had no knowledge of most of my Dissociative type alters. instead we worked the more natural approaches and incorporated various treatments that happened to fit what I needed at that moment.

So how are my parts different than my alters and how did I find them.... thats for another post in this thread this post is long enough. I will be giving it a few days between this post and the next one so as to not confise everyone with my posts jumping in the middle of things.