I think I have an alter.

Around a year ago I started to hear a voice in my head that was not my own. I would be laying in bed trying to fall asleep when suddenly I would sense someone else was near. I'd ask who they were and I'd rarely get a response, but eventually the entity and I began to communicate. Whenever I spoke to him I perceived him as being a black wolf. I'd ask for his name, and that is when he would either stop answering or give me a response along the lines of 'the details of my existence don't matter; I am here to protect you, and nothing else'. Eventually, I gave him the name Lyall, which I once learned means 'guardian wolf'.

During the day, I'd forget Lyall even existed. I'd live my life with no commentary or nagging presence in my head, probably because I was too busy with the day's happenings to search for it. But when night fell, the voice would occasionally return. Lyall was always very quiet-- sometimes entirely non-verbal-- but I'd continue to talk to him, asking him questions. The desire to know more about him always tugged at me, but when morning came, I'd always brush off our interactions as being the result of my overactive imagination.

The more I spoke to him, though, I began to realize he was more than that.

Over a very long period of time, my interactions with became more regular. I learned about his likes and dislikes, his interests, and the intricacies of his personality. He opened up to me more, allowing us to cultivate a truly special bond with one another. I talk to him when I'm bored, recommend him books and do a lot of other simple things like that. These casual interactions humanized him, and helped me understand that he was a separate person as real as me.

I started to realize that at night, when I didn't have the energy or desire to do things most would consider vital, Lyall would do it for me. As in, he'd take over the body and do whatever it is I needed to do. It took me a while to even recognize this clear shift of control as a sign of something bigger, but once I did I began to research DID/OSDD intensely. I came to the hesitant conclusion that I have an alter.

Since then I've started to understand our dynamic a little bit better. I've started to respect his role as a protector, and now instead of getting confused by his stand-offish / aggressive nature, I understand it and know how to deal with outbursts. I also understand now that there is some rhyme and reasons to when/where he decides to front. Namely, he fronts when there is a perceived danger, such as when I walk home from work [very late at night], or when I'm in a confrontation with an abuser.

I have absolutely no intention of getting this professionally diagnosed, however, because I am terrified of what will happen. I feel as though a diagnosis would permanently, irreversibly affect how everyone looks at me forever. Nothing would ever, ever be the same. This is in direct conflict with my desire to give Lyall a good life, though. I really want Lyall to be free; to be able to make his own friends, dress and speak his own way, and have his own identity. He deserves at least that. And he wants that. He acts like he doesn't care, but he does. I can feel that he is lonely and isolated; that he feels like a ghost with no real place in the world. But I can't tell anyone about this... I just can't.

What do you all think about this situation...?

one thing that jumps out at me in your post.... you stated you just started hearing voices, and I see that you are here in New York (USA?)

if so theres something you need to know. there are many normal, mental and physical health problems that can cause a person to suddenly hear voices. DID though some people with DID hear voices the voices are with them all their lives. not just suddenly one day hear them. DID is a mental disorder that is created in very young children (here in New York) the demographics\statistics show before the age of 5 and everything (symptoms, problems...) are all there from the age of the first split into alters until that person is integrated into one whole person again.

also the actual diagnostics for DID and OSDD do not include hearing voices. my point please dont self diagnose based on hearing voices. you can end up doing great harm to yourself.

another key feature with DID is that the problems affect every aspect of a persons life not just one area of a persons life. it affects a persons sense of self, sense of agency, behavior, consciousness, memory, perceptions....so again my suggestion is to not self diagnose based on the fact that you state during the day you have no problems only at night this alter appears.

what would i do in your situation.... I would be contacting my treatment providers. (my medical doctor or a mental health treatment provider.) we cant diagnose your problems but if i had wrote your post and printed it off and given it to my treatment providers they would not diagnose me as DID or OSDD (the dissociative disorders that have alters) they would diagnose me as having psychosis, sleep deprivation induced hallucinations, and having non dissociative alters. there are many different kinds of alters associated with many different mental and physical and normal problems.

like I said we cant diagnose your problem only your treatment providers can do that. all we can do is tell you what jumps out at us in your posts and why. and what this would be with in ourselves.

please dont continue to self diagnose. it leads to major problems including a mental disorder called fictitious disorder - mental disorder imposed on self. please get accurate diagnostic evaluations done. what you find on the internet has drastically changed for the USA over the past few years due to new diagnostic criteria of what is and isnt each mental disorder, what the symptoms are and a completely new testing process for all the mental disorders. what you find on the internet is not always complete and in most cases parts or all of the information has been thrown out since 2013. now the only way to know for sure on update and presently used information is through a treatment provider. so please consider contacting a treatment provider. they will be able to help you figure out why you are hearing your wolf's voice just at night.

Well, it says something about self report someone where, you have the DSM 5 criteria then there are other materials that are indicators that treatment providers use to assess as well...Since she said she isn't seeking a diagnoses and not in therapy at least that wasn't stated....The bottom line is you have something, an alter this is within you now you that you are accepting, but don't want to make a mental health step. The only thing you can do is continue the research, read here, use as needed as it fronts, but the moment when if your life becomes unraveled don't hesitate to enter therapy...I like WebMD explanation, if your going to use here to type stuff, 1 alter could turn into emerge about 4 or 5 more alters, especially if you have a hectic life. Its best to let sleeping dogs ly, those memories open us some much and you meet one after the other. There is no set guideline on how quickly, how many, what they will say, what kind of turmoil, or anything like that. I agree with Amanda, if it is DID you probably heard and occasional voice low very low voice from time to time as a child , but with me mine got way more volume, way more humanized, less able to hide and put off themselves, they sprouted every where inside. And is very easy to want to be super person and go into survival mode then silently it can slip away from you, especially if you lead a hectic life. It is like a cheating spouse you keep poking around in there you going to find more and more the same with alters and memories....So if you are ready then enjoy the journey it isn't going to be easy, but if your rather cover it up and you ARE okay then so be it as well. If you feel you can handle it, DID is a coping mechanism don't worry about any type of therapy.

Lyall is not alone anymore, he is not a lone protector, because you found him. You learned what makes him tick and you accepted him. I find that amazing in its own way.

Also, since he is a protector it is possible maybe he watches your life much more than you can watch his? So maybe even not making his own social contacts, he is not completely shut off?

For those saying you don't have this and that, just ignore. If what you're doing works for you, that is all you need. Also unfortunately some people on every health site pretend to have more knowledge than the rest of us, like being medical staff and so on. :/

About "coming out"... I totally understand the conflict even though I am a singleton. Maybe there is a compromise?

I'm sorry, but I feel that you are being extremely presumptuous right now. I am not self diagnosing at all; if you see, I titled the topic ''I think I have an alter''. I would never say I did without a professional diagnosis. This is just what I believe might be the case given that I fit a lot of the criteria.

I have been professionally diagnosed with PTSD, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, BPD and ADHD so it doesn't feel unlikely that I could have another issue.

I did experience abuse before the age of 5, and I believe that the existence of this alter could make sense given my history. His purpose makes sense to me because I always wanted someone to be there to protect me from the abuse I endured since I was always too young and small to protect myself. I also always idolized animals and had an imaginary friend that was an animal [not a real one, it was an animal I made up] that I would ask to protect me at night.

Additionally, throughout my life, before I recognized this entity as something separate from myself, I have suddenly gone through fits of rage and unbridled anger without much provocation. After those fits ended, I would always be extremely confused. I couldn't identify with the actions I had taken. It felt like someone else did it. I have always felt this way, long before last year.

I also didn't mean to say that I only speak to this 'alter' at night. There are many other times I'm able to speak to him during the day, or times where he 'fronts' during the day. I just meant that he most often out at night, which I have been told is not unheard of. That is, I've read that there are many alters from DID/OSDD systems that tend to be active during specific lengths of time, or during a certain part of the day. And I think the existence of a 'nocturnal' alter would make sense for me, specifically, since I experienced a lot of abuse at night, and therefore would be desperate for protection whenever night fell. Even when there wasn't an immediate threat that particular night, I was conditioned to fear the night, and I'd always fall asleep wishing for a protector at the foot of my bed, or requesting my imaginary friend to protect me while I slept.

Also, you assume that the majority of my life is lived during the day. This is untrue, as I work night shifts. So it does heavily affect my life, because my life is lived almost exclusively during the night while I sleep during the day. It would affect me far less if he came out during the day and not the night. Because he fronts/switches/whatever at night, it means that he fronts while I am at work, sometimes in the middle of medical procedures. I also don't know if sleep deprived hallucinations is accurate because he has had dreams before. As in, he exists even when I am sleeping. That might not mean anything, though; I am unfamiliar with how sleep deprived hallucinations work.

I also don't think this alter suddenly appeared out of the blue. I understand that that is impossible. I believe he has always existed and that I just failed to recognize him as a separate entity up until recently, which I have also heard is common with DID/OSDD. I say this because I remember specific moments from my childhood where I acted in a way that was not consistent with my personality / morals / etc. Moments where I was highly aggressive and behaved in a way that could be perceived as being savage and inhuman. Things like tackling people on all fours and growling at them during the middle of class in elementary school, and pinning a friend down and screaming at him because he told me I was a human, not an animal.

I have always acted in a way that suggested there were two 'sides' of me, each one inconsistent with the other. And looking back, I feel that I may have had symptoms of DID/OSDD as far back as I can remember.

I'm not saying all of this to convince you I have this disorder, as, like you said, self diagnosis can be irresponsible at times, and I wouldn't know if I really have this specific disorder or not. Plus, it's not like this disorder is something I want. I'd be happy to hear from a professional that this is nothing but an overactive imagination. That'd be wonderful. But I don't think that that's the case. I posted here because I've been researching these disorders and related ones for a year now and I feel as though this might be what's going on.

Again, I am not being defensive because I want to be right. I'm being defensive and I guess a little argumentative because I believe that you are being overly dismissive. I feel a little disrespected by your statements above, especially since you didn't even ask for more information about me or my lifestyle, you just made presumptions. You assumed I don't work nights, assumed I am sleep deprived, that I haven't experienced abuse, haven't had anything resembling DID/OSDD symptoms prior to last year, etc... when instead of assuming, you could have asked and I would have told you everything I stated above. Instead you automatically decided to invalidate me and judge me for self diagnosing when that wasn't even what I was doing, I was just looking for help. And I don't think that is very fair.

Thank you both very much. Again, I'm very hesitant to call this an alter, or a case of DID/OSDD. It just feels like the most accurate thing because he's not just a voice I hear, he has physical control over my body. He can switch in whether I want him to or not. And he has a specific role that he was created to fulfill; protecting me. I'll keep looking into it and consider other disorders too, but can any other disorder really do this? Create an entirely separate person who can override my consciousness / agency / etc. in order to help me live my life / survive? I realize my account seems doubtful since I completely forgot to mention any signs of this from my childhood, but that's because I didn't even think of examining my childhood further until I read the responses to this thread. Now that I have thought it over I feel that there may have been warning signs from when I was younger.

As I said in the post prior to this one [which is still pending at the time of me writing this], I often lashed out and behaved in a highly aggressive and animalistic way when I was younger over arbitrary offenses. When I did those things, it felt as though it was not me who did them. I would come out over it feeling dazed and confused, unable to understand what had happened. For example, I bit some of my friends when I was in elementary school on several occasions. I once pounced on a kid in my class and growled at him because I thought he was threatening me, and another time, after telling my friend I was not a human [again, I do not feel as though I'm the one who said that, although it came out of my physical mouth], I tackled him and hissed at him because he continued to insist that I was. More recently, I was walking with a friend maybe two or three years ago in the woods. Suddenly, out of the blue, I was hypervigilant and convinced that this friend was not trustworthy and that I had to get away from him. So, I suddenly picked up a stick and started bashing him with it. He had to physically restrain me in a headlock for me to stop. The minute I was restrained I 'came to' for lack of a better word, and had no idea why I had done any of that. I was horrendously embarrassed. It felt like someone else took those actions, not me.

These are all things that are inconsistent with my personality. I am a pacifist, not a fighter. I almost always try to find civil ways to get out of a non-ideal situation. But in these cases, and a considerable amount of others, something came over me that prevented me from acting the way I wanted to act.

Hey hon, welcome to PC. For one, I don't hear "voices"...we mentally collaborate in our own mental world.

I couldn't tell you what is what....but, when they start taking the physical over, well....

Other than subconscious creations, most other conditions don't afford such effect unless one is in psychosis.

So...you need to consult a learned professional in such matters.

But...it's awesome that you have a protector because that is an alter trait....even being animalistic...you are not alone in such ways.

I'm happy that you have such an ally!

I feel like I explained this extremely poorly and now I'm feeling nauseous from the responses I have gotten. It's not an actual voice that I hear. It's not something I sense externally. It's a voice I hear internally, like when you are thinking or reading something. And it does not sound different than my own, necessarily, it just seems like it is coming from a different place.

I don't think this is psychosis. I don't have any symptoms for any psychotic disorder except for 'hearing' a 'voice' which I don't even really do, it's more like a separate part of myself is communicating with me internally. I have more symptoms for OSDD-1b as far as I can tell, as I have a distinct dissociate part that can take executive control of the body without amnesia. I experienced abuse before I was 5, and I have always had [clinically recognized] problems with dissociation. I have done things in the past that have not matched up with my personality/morals, things that seemed to have been done via the will of someone else.

IF ANYTHING, I believe this could be a case of imitative DID rooting from my professionally diagnosed BPD. But I get a strong feeling this is not psychosis, it just doesn't make sense to me that way.

welcome Ascella to the did forums.

hope you get the answers you are looking for here

Hello. Dont worry about some of the comments being made here. What you think is going on is more important than what anyone else (who only knows part of what you experience) might think. Unfortunately some people wear their diagnoses like a red badge of courage. Plus, they dont like to share. That being said, if this situation isn't causing you great distress then just go with the flow.

Also, your writing is much too cohesive and linear to be that of someone who is psychotic.
On the other hand, the notion that your 'alter' needs and deserves a life of his own is in my opinion, misguided. The idea that alters should all get out and do their own thing as if they are real people is a problem. This is soemthing I have trouble with in a lot of the posts on this dissociation subforum: the idea that encouraging each 'alter' to be out and express himself/herself as if it was in fact a real person is not in my opinion, healthy.

If I were you I'd look at your 'alter and what he seems to eb telling you about his interest etc and consider these things your own. meant to be part of who you are as a whole real live human being. Expand yourself and your experiences etc etc to grow up and into a man who incorporates the best of your 'alter' and the best of what you know of yourself. Alters are not meant to live life themselves. Alters are defense mechanisms that one recognized should end up becoming part of one whole self identifying self aware person you ahve the potential to be.

Take care.

I will also say, take the good answers with you and forget the rest. To me you made perfect sense the first time. To me, you explained this as well as it "can" be explained. I know for fact these entities sometimes exist in people, especially those who had a rough time. People have called them different things at different times, and maybe you don't like the word alter because it sounds like something the entity is not to you. These days people more call them parts, but you don't have to like that word either. If you like the word entity, we say that and that is totally fine.

I agree you don't sound psychotic. I understand you feel bad for someone to assume a lot and project things onto you. I would do too. But sometimes people (in general too) cannot get out of how they themselves experienced something so they think if someone else's experience is not identical, it is not valid. Those people haven't come very far in understanding others and they need to mature. While we cannot make them change, we can choose to ignore them, because if you explain something well and someone doesn't get it, it is not your fault. You did your best. If I don't get something, I'd rather ask than assume, sometimes I am caught assuming and then I feel very embarrassed. Most people don't mind being asked if there is something not understood. People do usually mind if others project things onto them. It's a normal reaction to feel bad about "told" how you are (Actually for me it is one of my biggest triggers, that people claim they know me better than I know myself).

Blah blah sorry about talking so much about myself. Anyway...

If you talk to professionals (good ones), sure there will be things said on your charts. But also, that is in a health care situation, everything you are diagnosed with does not have to be shared with others. I have only shared my diagnoses with a very few IRL. It might be that you will improve your life with Lyall. It also might happen since you are so open to his needs, that you will absorb him at some point. With the mind so many things are possible. It is your choice if you want to bring this up with a doctor/therapist. No one can force you to. No one can promise things will be better if you do. Life is full of choices and that is pretty scary a lot of times...

Im sorry my wording upset you. i thought you were self diagnosing due to your own words stating...

I have absolutely no intention of getting this professionally diagnosed,

when someone says this is means they are self diagnosing in my location.

no i wasnt assuming a majority of your life is daytime. I was telling you in simple terms what you will find in my link of what the diagnostic criteria is here in the USA for having alters. OSDD is just a less severe form to account for those that have less than marked problems like having DID but less severe....that the problems affect all areas of a persons life not just at night time going to sleep. it affects their social, and other areas too. since you are primarily awake at night you will be affected in those areas i posted about during your nighttime life.)

sleep deprived hallucinations are when someone sees and hears things they dont normally deal with when they have had the required sleep for their bodies. ....some....people I know who dont get enough sleep will hear voices and feel like they have alters but once they get enough sleep that feeling and voices goes away. thats how sleep deprived hallucinations work thanks for asking when you needed clarification.

Hey hi, I get the voice thing. I don't hear voices, we all "think" together in a co-conscience way. I rather imaginary call it our personal "mental telepathy communication system".

We ain't diagnosed, but we sure are a Multiple. To me, the biggest clues were dazing out, other's talking through me, waching body do things like through a window, coming to in a strange place, having to explain something that I involuntarily did (?), stuff like that.

I hope you connect with what's happening.