@amandalouise

>>>>"question you don't have to answer just a curiosity for me since I didn't have any internal lands, is your 7 lands like this where its based on what your dissociative symptoms are or is it something more complex and how does your system keep these 7 lands straight from one another."

My reply to the above: At first, the lands were connected, but the alters were scared of the gatekeepers protecting each land. The lands were on a grid, but would turn when needed to allow alters to go out from one land when the other alters weren't able to handle what was going on anymore. Some of the alters, themselves, dissociated.

During co-consciousness, I got to know my protectors and persecutor-turned-protectors. It was then I got to know their internal worlds, but I didn't know them all at first, and they didn't know them all either. Only Casper, a ghost, knew all of them. I think they adopted the name from a 70's or 80's cartoon named Casper (the original cartoon series). I suppose they were that young when the trauma happened, and somehow there was someone there to help protect us from being accused of lying or for not paying attention in school. There used to be two alters to handle school - a girl and a boy. I was bullied in school for having acne at a very young age (age 7) and for starting my period at age 9. An alter named Gloworm would handle the periods, and her internal and external helper named Gloria would help with homework - mostly creative stuff. Gloria was funny, too. Gloworm was always scared of baths, but she took over when the periods came. They lived in the meadow, a rather peaceful land. The dark forest contained the persecutors-turned-protectors, Delilah and Damion, the mastermind, and some other fragments. They represented our internalized anger from the abusive people in our lives. There were many others I could name and describe, but we eventually all learned to work with one another, and I (the host) was able to fuse with them once I realized that they weren't harmful to me, there wasn't any good need to self-stigmatize, and that I wasn't a "bad" person because I had these alters. They were there to protect me, and to contain the anger. The protector alters from the persecutors within and outside remain with me now, and they are very helpful and wise. They live in the meadows, but they visited the underground and the forest (the non-dark one) often. Echo and Tabitha lived underground, and many littles lived in the Meadow with other teens, adults, and fragments. The evil queen and evil king, along with Princess lived in a castle in the forest (the non-dark one), as did Fantasy. The evil king and evil king represented my mother and father as internalized alters who held onto the betrayal wounds they had experienced, and the Princess received the brunt of those traumas. Fantasy was there to be close to people on the outside, or to handle sex with a significant other. The maze led to the core, and the maze was filled with different alters, including animals and shapeshifters and many fragments to protect the baby in the core. No one was to ever harm baby. Never. The baby was pure, innocent, never harmed. When I sleep well, I knew that the baby in the core slept well. When things felt unsafe and when insomnia got the better of me, I knew the protectors were guarding the baby, and the caregivers inside comforted and protected the baby when the baby cried. The baby held my preverbal wounds, and sometimes my emotions that I was too afraid to express. Sometimes, in treatment, I would weep so much like a baby, and it was then that I knew that I met the baby when I envisioned that part inside during times I would cry in treatment or at home by myself. The baby is still with me; we never truly fused or integrated. Sadly, I have a hard time expressing emotions, so I imagine them inside. Only once in a while I feel safe enough to cry, but most times I fear crying because I remember getting hurt for crying on different occasions in real life.

Every part of my inner world was a safe place for the alters, and was there because the alters themselves could not handle all the traumas on the outside; they needed to dissociate, too. They also needed to hide more and more secrets. They also, at times, felt like they failed, so they needed others to help them, so they found neighbors, I guess, and learned to travel.

As a host, I felt like I was going crazy. I felt like I was living in a fantasy world as a schizophrenic with voices and hallucinations on the inside. I had no idea for many years - since I was very young - why I would fantasize. At first, I thought I would be a writer or something, but there's so much inside me that wanted to fight the bad guys. I chose to try to fight the bad guys, but I always reserved my love for writing. I was about 5 or 6 years old when I started having these thoughts after having kept my "imaginary friend" Michelle from the age of 3. I don't think Michelle was intended to be an alter; I think she was initially an imaginary friend, but then she stayed, and she remains with me still. There's a teen Michelle as well, but they barely got to know each other a decade ago. Little Michelle was there to keep me company. When I was about 5 or 6, I had a very creative imagination, and I remembered in real life - me as the host - wanting so bad to escape from my home, run away, and find a really happy place. I remember imagining it, and then feeling depressed when reality and trauma kicked back in as usual. I was gritty though, and knew I would survive this, because I watched He-Man and She-Ra and thought that one day I could be as strong as them for some reason. I don't have alters named He-Man or She-Ra, but they are old-fashioned cartoons from the 80s or 70s, I think. I believe, on a psychological level, that I must have dissociated a lot as a child, and that my creative mind unconsciously created alters to protect me. I don't know how or why, but I know enough from the painful things the poor littles would say happened to them. And then some of the memories I could remember in real life (not recalled) made sense, even though I dissociated and only remembered very little.

I'm not sure how else to answer your question, but that's the best I can do for now. If you have specific questions, you can ask me and I'll try to answer.

>>>>"your not knowing if integration is a goal for you... for me there wasn't a choice. it wasn't a goal or something that I could choose to do or not to do. it was just a normal process that my brain did called flight or fight / dissociation due to extreme trauma before age 5 that caused my alters to come into being. so the integration was just a normal part of the healing process for me"

My reply to the above: Integration was a choice for healing and wholeness, for me, but it didn't happen on a conscious level, I think. It took time, and it happened after much inner dialogue with my alters. Initially, I didn't think integration was possible, and initially, my alters thought that the therapist wanted them to die. It took a while for us all to figure out what that means, and it's such a relatively new treatment method that I don't think any of us knows what that means still. For me to choose whether or not to integrate the last alters - it's me, the host, who is now afraid. It's almost like a role-reversal of sorts. It's almost as if I am afraid of feeling full-on PTSD run amok. I'm afraid of having a nervous breakdown and never coming out of it, or of going completely insane from fear. I fear so much now after having been integrated with some of the other alters. I learned so much about what had happened to me, or about the perceptions of child alters and my mind trying to fill in the blanks. I tell myself that I'm not in harm's way anymore, but then something in today's time would reinforce old fears, such as when I heard gunshots nearly every week where I used to live. Thankfully, I moved to a safer location - out of state - quite recently.

>>>>>"you can read the whole thing in my integration thread but please take care when reading that thread of mine. it contains some basic medical / mental health terms and definitions and answers how my dissociative alters were created and more I marked the thread with the trigger because many are not ready for such terms, honesty and topic of integration since you are integrated some of your alters Im assuming you already know some of whats in this thread of mine because you have gone through it yourself...here is the link to my integration thread...…"

My response to the above: Thank you for sharing your link and your story with me. I will read it soon (probably not tonight, but very soon - like this weekend).

I'm also open to any advice you have to offer, or how well life has been for you since integration, or how much you've had to struggle initially when you integrated and then found out how much better life is. Anything. It helps to know that there's a light at the end of this tunnel, that I won't suffer like this every day, almost every hour.

Lillib