System maps anyone?

Any of you ever do that? Make a system map? I've been toying with the idea of this. I think I want to incorporate music. We've done that in the past, designate different songs to different system members. It seems to give us a more well rounded idea of who is who in here and what we are about to not only use more than names and titles, but to have multiple takes on how everyone sees each other. I think I would like to do one serious song to take on the task they excel at, and another to represent something about whoever that makes them unique and flat out delightful to me. One heavy, one light song, yeah? I think so.

I know full well it will be a horribly incomplete system map as I can only speak on who I know up in here, but it should be fun.

-Tay

Yeah! We did several system maps over the previous years in therapy. They were always revealing.
Now we don't do a map, but we have movable objects that represent each one of us (that we are connected with, at least - we have lost contact with many that are still active as evidenced by lost time). We like th movable objects more because - well, they can move. So we can explore relationships and connections between them. It works well for our current purposes.
But yeah, i reckon maps a re a good tool. I like your idea on incorporating music. Would love to hear more about it as it evolves, if you're willing!

We tried....but we are so many and fleeting...and not really having a name to our Others makes it hard....also being hypomanic makes the head spin even faster.

our system is like an office/castle

the reception area has a computer in it

then the big coridor has rooms, and each person has their own room

their is a dungeon (which is 1 of the odd exceptions) and out back a play area for the littles themed to kangaroos

we're thinking of adding some stuff to do with ducks

alicia's become obsessed with ducks lately

my location doesnt do System mapping (my locations term making a family tree of ones alters) as in who sprung from who and focus on the alters type of activities. Just the way my location works with dissociative's so as to not cause a problem called false alters and false memory syndrome, fictitious disorder imposed by others.

Instead what my location does is called "charting alters" similar to for example if you went to a doctor and the medical doctor keeps a chart (file) on your overall health and problems and good points or when you go to a mental health treatment provider and they keep files on you and your sessions.

example if I dissociated during therapy my therapist would "chart" that alter by keeping track of what triggered the dissociating into that alter, what their sense of agency is (by sense of agency I mean things like what the alters job, purpose, reason for being created was, what makes them take control, how much control that they have...)

the treatment providers "chart" would be kept in the files.

if the person\ alter that the alter resides with in knows they have DID the treatment provider in my location makes a photocopy of the "chart" and gives the one the alter resides with in their copy of the "chart"

because calling them out or requesting to talk with a specific alter which would be a violation of ethics for treatment providers in my location, it may take a long time to chart the alters. the treatment provider and client (me when I was doing this with my treatment provider before I was integrated) has to just continue on with their normal way of doing things.

the one good thing about this was that there was never a question of what if no alters take control. therapy is talking about hard and triggering things and dissociation in my location is the natural reaction to anything triggering. which means every session I went to there was an opportunity to "chart" my alters.

for those who would like to try the "charting" style talk with your treatment providers. they can help you keep accurate "charts" of you and your alters.

question to LP... Im not sure what you mean by incorporating music, could you explain more about that...

I have been reading through your posts amandalouise and you always talk about the new way things are done.As I was reading through them it made me start thinking about how my therapy changed throughout the years.

In the very beginning of DID therapy my T would 'try' to get me to do system mapping,even tried to get me to draw a tree and write down when and why each insider was created on the branches.And asked for names all the time.And the automatic writing stuff...all the things you call 'outdated'.

On thinking about it,I realize the way he did therapy with me completely changed and progress was really made after the focus changed to working on the past and the traumas,triggers,learning to sit with feelings,etc. instead of focusing on the insiders like he did in the very beginning.He stopped asking names,stopped saying things like "everyone inside listen to what I am saying",stopped asking for ages,it all changed.I asked him at the time why he stopped doing all that,forget exactly what he said though.

He's a very good T but I can see now that at first he really was doing things the old way but as things changed,the ways of doing things changed,so did he.

Trying to do a system map didn't work anyway.It was frustrating and I felt like I had to get it right but couldn't because I simply didn't know who was inside.What worked best was just allowing things to flow on their own,insiders presenting themselves while working through the traumas.

Some insiders knew about other ones,some thought they were the only ones.Some didn't believe in DID,one thought they weren't DID but the others were,one knew the entire system and everything about it,etc. So no way would doing a system map work anyway.

Funny how you can read things,think back and then have an aha moment.

Was not expecting so many responses. Heh. Thanks all. Gotta say though I'm a tad bit overwhelmed and not sure how to respond. I never did figure out forum etiquette. It seems snubbish to not respond to everyone individually, but on the flip side of that, I would be long winded if I did so. I hope you all are cool with a big ole thanks to all

Still in the process of song collecting, but I am making strides. I'm thinking I have a few songs picked out for about ten people in my system. Some of them have me stumped. I'm gonna have to go on a youtube binge or somethin'. But to explain what I mean by using music, I'm wanting to give folks in my system a theme song or two, using songs I find that reminds me of whoever. I'm not the most creative person in this here body I'm in so I'll get a piece of paper, write a name and then jot down the songs I find for that person. I'd like to be able to put them on a cd (or three) eventually so if anyone in my system wants to check it out they can.

-Tay

thats a cool idea...though it wouldnt have worked for me in the same way it will for you.... I didnt have co consciousness with most of my alters and those I did have co consciousness with it wasnt a situation where I would know them very well, it was more like something would cause me to dissociate (feel numb, spaced out, disconnected...) and then the alter would be taking care of that which caused me to dissociate.

for example heres what would have happened for ....me.... if I had tried to give my alters a song that represented who and what they were....

if there was a major storm going on that would trigger my dissociation responses, which would cause Rainy to take control. then she would deal with the storm by making sure we got home our of the storm, into our jammies and wrapped in a blanket.

the song that would represent this would be a song where a storm was represented (lots of rain, thunder and lightening sound affects) which of course would then trigger me into dissociating which would result in the alter taking control shutting off the music, get us into jammies and wrapped into a blanket.

on the reverse side of this my treatment provider and I through the charting process learned that Rainy and my other alters already had their own songs, Rainys was "this little heart of mine let it shine let it shine let it shine" (she would add to it the words and chase away the rain) and also the song "its raining its pouring the old dog (substitution for man) is snoring". Thelma's favorite song was "Rocky top", some of my alters loved new kids on the block, cher, debbie gibson and b*witched.

suggestion maybe have your alters help you pick the songs too, that way you wont have to do the youtube binge thing if you dont want to and who knows they might already have their own songs that you can use to represent them.

If any patient is capable of making a system map, it discredits the diagnosis. It may be that the therapist is trying to prove that the patient is dissembling! It means that the patient is in control of which alters present themselves. True dissociative patients are not in control and have no idea of the dissociated personalities, in most cases. Only when a trained mental health professional helps break down some of the amnesic barriers do patients start to know the alters. Obviously there are exceptions to this but this is true for most dissociative patients. At least from what I have read in Dr. Ross's book.

What you're saying is making my brain hurt. I do believe I am having a bout of misunderstanding going down. Are you saying that if a person's t suggests they make a system map then the t thinks the person is lying? I'm also not understanding how if a person knows about some others in their system then their dx is discredited. I also don't understand how having some degree of co con means a person can control who is out.

I understand that you said 'most', but it gets me concerned when I hear about doctors trying to apply some narrow standard across a broad range of people. I understand things such as the need for uniform standards in diagnostic criteria or the mental health system would be a hotter mess with one doc using his ideas and another using hers. Messy. But to hear about someone trying to say that if someone can make a system map about some people they have awareness of discredits them... that completely invalidates a huge population of people who have some co con going on in their system. I find that to be dangerous and concerning if mental health people truly do believe what you wrote to be truth. I truly do hope I am seriously misunderstanding this, because if I am not, my nonexistent faith in the mental health field has plummeted even farther below zero faith. Did not know that I could think less of them.

-Tay

I don't have co con with anything close to the majority of others. I'm just focusing on the ones in my somewhat extended group. I have a mostly decent amount of co con with them.

Ah. Gotcha. The song you would have designated to her would have brought her up front and center and in a way that would have been all around a not so good situation. Good on you for having the insight and awareness to not set that in motion. I want to add also, the old dog part bit got a chuckle out of me. We have a few who switch up words and L.P. has a dog thing so dogs often make their way into our rewritten song lyrics.

As for the youtube binge, I'm kinda diggin' on the sporadic music binge. Went surfing for an hour or two last night. Discovered I really like bass heavy trap music. I didn't even know what trap music was a few days ago. Heh. Learn somethin' new every day. Oh but for sure. I already got W and N's attention with this and one is wanting to decorate envelopes for the song lyrics written out and they'll have her input and I'm sure it won't be just the two of them by the time it's said and done. Perspective is good, imho.

-Tay

Yeah, nah. That isn't how it works. I think you might be making assumptions about how a system map is made.

i have tried to, but it just isn't possible. things are way too disorganized to know who is where and even how many there are, if any know about each other or not, and how they work in correlation to each other, etc.

while i know several of them (some i only came to know about in the last year who were only around briefly), there are others i don't know of. i am slowly learning there are a lot more layers (more inactive behind the scenes parts), so to make any kind of map really is too difficult.

even with the ones i know of, things can change around a lot, and the way they can be seen or felt even can change which would cause any kind of map to have to be done in different ways to try to capture how it might possibly be..if that makes sense.

but as far as just identifying parts by characteristics, names, ages, genders, etc., that is way easier to do usually, so going by that, i do have a list of sorts.

I'd like to share a picture of how I work with mine. I do it with poster stars. They change, depending on what situation I'm in and what part of me is dealing with it.

I just wanted to put a picture here to help validate that it's fluid. Hope that makes sense.

I won't leave it for very long, but I hope it helps in some way.

here is a good example of what mapping DID systems is in my location. its like making a family tree.... Dissociative Identity Disorder: Mapping Your System

being able to map ones system does not mean it invalidates the diagnosis. it just means the person with DID has enough co consciousness between their self and their alters to be aware of the alters, or they have been in therapy long enough for their treatment providers to be able to help them figure out which alters come from who and such (this link uses the term how the alters are related to each other and who is closer to who)

those that I know that have done this, they have done this over the course of years during therapy due to the way treatment providers in my location do not call out alters or expect any direct outcomes and do not put any expectations on the map making.

like I said before my own treatment providers and other treatment providers in my location preferred/ prefer doing the more natural approach of "charting"

i like the fluid idea TR, that's how we are working with trying to find out about our system right now. But we use objects instead... we have a few crystals, a couple of meaningful small objects and stones etc. We can manipulate them to show relationships between parts etc. Who spilt from who, which events or things they deal with and stuff like that.

In the past (I am talking 90s) we initially wrote lists of alters as we came to know them. As we got to know more we made a timeline kind of thing, and put on what info we knew, and added more as we learned more. Like we would map on the timeline what we knew about when an alter first appeared, when they were most active, when they stopped needing to be out so much and things like that.

I know that many of you have co-consciousness. I am not saying that would discredit the diagnosis. I am saying that it is impossible for the patient to create a complete system map. The patient may have knowledge of some of the alters but not all. At least not without being cured.

I took a diagram to therapy once just cause I wanted my T to know their names and stuff.I thought I knew all of them but was shocked to find out later I was totally wrong and the number of them I had written down was off by about 40.

The weird thing about it was on that day I took the diagram in I knew all the ones on it and was able to tell about them but then after that day I lost all that knowledge or something so I felt like I had lied to the therapist.But then a long time later all that knowledge about them came back.So weird.