Sherri: Omg....ouch!

Of course, every system is different. In our system though...we have no leader, a principal owner of our life, the one who is the main host, the one who is the One, there isn't a Robert present. Nobody here goes by that birth given name.

I don't know if anyone can understand that...but I'm sure there is. We can't walk into to a T spot and claim that "I'm the one" because the fight is on after that.

We fight for control...literally. Nobody rules anybody here. We are mainly triggered or assuming total control out of bounds depending on the tide of our preferences as the system elects.

So, all I have to say is....don't be surprised if you are just a fragment, or a part. In our system, we are all equal and just as strong as the Other because we are made that way.

So to understand that is to understand us. We are as random as it gets. With over hundreds of us to react....life can and has gotten like really interesting. I hope and pray that nobody ever is like us.

Just saying. Love and pieces!

[Luce]

I don't know if this is as uncommon as you think. We too did not have any one 'real' or original person. We had a bunch of front runners that cope with different aspects of daily life. In the structural model of dissociation, this is fairly typical. And, contrary to what some posters might think, the structural model of dissociation isn't all that different to the general understandings of DID... it is simply a way of describing how and why DID develops and a way of classifying dissociative (system) structures.

In a very real sense *everyone* is the original. Not a single one was created out of nothing, or was surplus to the original born child.
Not having one main host just means that the day to day tasks were split up amongst different front runners. The greater the ability to dissociate is, the more splits there will be.
That doesn't necessarily imply that the abuse was more severe, either... according to the structural theory of dissociation, dissociation occurs when there the normal course of developmental integration is disrupted... and the extent of the dissociation may depend on the developmental stage of the child when the disruptions occur. (As an analogy, fetal alcohol syndrome is now known to occur when the pregnant mother has ANY amount of alcohol at a very specific stage in fetal development - around the 21st day, I believe. So the embryo of a mother who consumes excessive amounts of alcohol throughout her pregnancy but - by chance - doesn't happen to have a drink on that very specific day will not develop FAS, but the embryo of a mother who has ONE glass of wine during her whole pregnancy but it's on that critical 21st day may develop FAS). I use this analogy simply to illustrate the fact that it is believed when disruption to the normal course of personality development (trauma) occurs at a certain stage the effects may be much more profound than if the same trauma occurred at a different stage of development.

It would be interesting to understand if the timing of trauma in relation to typical personality development resulted in different types of dissociation, too. (I am thinking more of the clear cut full amnesia type of dissociation vs the more blended, hidden type of dissociation with less clear-cut time loss that some people experience).

I do understand the structural dissociation theory, and it very well applies to our fragmentation...an Other part to perform an "at that moment" task, job, function.

By the degree at which we are fragmented, my best say would be a physical abnormality in the brain because we are very, very prone to dissociation while living a horrendous first 18 years of cruelty and abuse.

So far we've written 3 posts by 3 different Others (I being the third) just now, with each a different approach, level of understanding, and p.o.v..

Of course we are of the co-conscience variety, but by our own individuality, we experience extreme memory problems (which is time lost)- but not complete separation of conscience.

We have just enough to function. It would be interesting to know the why between total amnesia versus the blended variety. And of course, no two co-conscienceness is ever quite the same, each different in level and experience.

[Maxsi]

I'm pretty sure that our original "person" never considered herself a real person, and the second person who took over from her feels like he broke into the two of us that are here now. I think I'm close to being a host, since I do most of the body-controlling, but I feel like I'm more of a piece of a person than a real, whole someone.

We're more of the blended type of system that Luce mentioned, where everyone is always sort-of here but sometimes the amount of control I have slides up or down. I think that makes it easier to be a fragment for me, because there's a more whole person who can do the things that I can't waiting to help me.