Can they die?

Alters and fragments. I feel one of them dead after something happened two months ago but I realize about it just now. I feel her dead body inside my head.

For me, it has never happened that one of them has died... but there is one that has always been dead. She is just like the others except a ghost. I cannot speak for anyone else's systems though. I'm only familiar (and only somewhat) with my own.

simple answer no alternate personalities with DID can not leave the body by dying, being killed off or just deciding to leave.

the more complicated answer is that sometimes integration of alters can feel like that alter is not there anymore. kind of like when someone in your family has died and they are gone. but the reality is that everything that the alter was before integration is still there, just in a different way. a more normal way like non DID people.... their memories, emotions,sense of agency is now part of either the person they reside with in or as part of another alter....

the feeling of emptiness when looking for the alter as they were can sometimes ........feel.... like that alter is gone or dead.

its actually a good thing when alters give up who and what they were as a separate alter and everything they were is joined with the one they live inside of or another alter. it shows great progress and healing. I know it does not ......feel ....... that way

I also see you have other disorders besides DID. sometime people with schizophrenia and other psychosis type of mental disorders, they can react this way too...

my suggestion is contact your treatment provider. they will be able to tell you if your alters have integrated or if you are having a symptom of your other mental disorders. if this is integration for you its a good thing. if its a symptom of your other disorders your treatment providers will help you to feel better soon, maybe even do some changes of your meds if you are on meds or prescribe one if not on meds.

It make some sense...

...I doubt my pdoc will make a difference between psychosis and dissociation, he said I have the two mixed up, and since I don't metabolize APs they over sedate me, so from the sedation I feel nothing, and how can I sense my others if I am that sedated? I still seem to hallucinate while on AP even if sedated so heavily if the dosage went up it would be dangerous, but later I cannot remember them, It end up being everything blurried so I don't know "who was" the hallucination, ugh. My pdoc who is also my therapist doesn't mind what they are, he just treats them all of them the same way, it doesn't matter if I am more or less coherent, or if the voices look more psychotic or dissociative, or whatever they look like. I cannot take APs so I decide to treat all of them the same way. Probably the psychotic experiences are the least responsibes to me, fragments/parts tend to react to what I tell them, either ignoring me or with some feelings/words. The ones that look more psychotic keep saying the same all the time. I can notice the difference between the two but it is difficult to explain.

I don't know about dying, but I will say this!

in the earlier years of D.I.D, we did have a male (bearing in mind all of us are female), anyway we had a male called jake, and at the time when we did our writings or our journal entries, jake was always mentioned somewhere

however, he is hardly talked about now, and hardly seen.

it has been years since any of us have talked about jake- we don't know what happened to him

I can't help but to feel that we killed off alters by doing every drug under the sun for the past 30 years. It's like brain death damage by illicit chemical poison. And if not....we really hurt ourselves.

I don't know about any of my alters "dying" but one usually very active anp alter has been missing for three months now. She did a lot of work things and it is very different without her but I have no idea where she is. She had a big realization about the abuse and it was very very painful for her and since then shes just been gone.

here is something that may help....

at one point I was very angry about one of my alters. I said the words.... i wish this alter would die, i wish they would go away .....

my treatment provider laughed and told me it doesnt work that way. to think about something....

before I was abused I was one whole person. then I was abused and my one personality brain dissociated into many personalities. those many personalities came from where.... they didnt just jump into my body one day ( that would actually disqualify my having DID and confirming I was having delusions/ hallucinations in other words psychosis) so where did those others inside me come from....

they came from me, they were part of me, part of my one whole personality.

so if it was possible for my alters to die what would happen to me... I would also cease to exist little by little....

example if Rainy just up and died one day theres goes my ability to change into warm clothing, make a snack, watch tv, have the emotions of sadness, grief, depressions, playing, creativity, love for the universe because Rainy loved to watch stars, play with her toys, dress herself, make cookies and brownies and sandwiches, watch sesame street, ...

everything that rainy was would be gone forever.

each alter has their own way of being, their own jobs purpose, reasons for being created, how much control they have, what they do and so on which is now called sense of agency here in america....

can you imagine never again having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, never again cooking, never again being able to dress yourself, never again going to the bathroom, never again doing everything that was that alter.

I hated being DID but I had to admit that my alters did things that I could not handle doing and that if they died and I lost all that they were I would not be able to function everything that they were would be gone...

from that day on I never wished they would die, not exist and such things because I knew denying their existence was just condemning me and my own existence.

and when one day one was not there it scared me at first but then I realized they were still there, just in a more normal way. they were back together with me as one whole person again...

if you feel like your alters have died my suggestion would be to contact yours or a treatment provider who can tell you more in detail about dissociative type alters, where they come from and where they go when their jobs\ purposes\ ... and other sense of agency stuff is done.

I had this imaginary pet rabbit back when I was a little kid and I dunno if he was always part of my system or somewhere along the line I adopted him as an internal and not external thing or what but he used to be a living rabbit and then he died and I have had a dead rabbit part ever since.. well, he's more like a ghost or something since he does things but yeah, he is not a normal rabbit and has not been since I was a young child. He's the only one I have had that has died but he is still here, just different now. I used to have ghost type things (still do have a jinn) but they have since turned into living things.

I have had others just go away and vanish. Some go hide in the internal woods, some have been put in lock up over the years. A few integrated into the whole, but mostly some just seem to go dormant either due to inability to cope or the feeling that they just were not needed anymore (ie we had a mom-ish one and once the kids grew up and moved out she went away... job done kinda thing).

ummm Im guessing you can relax on trying to figure out if the imaginary rabbit was part of the system....or the ghost because the diagnostics here in america says those things are .... ruled out... meaning if a person has those as part of their system they dont have DID. (both the DSM4 and DSM 5 state it cant be because of having imaginary friends. here where I am having imaginary pets falls into the same category of being normal non dissociative situation) also the present standards here in america does contain the word possession but it isnt about ghosts and spirits, the cant be because of religious practices rules that out. possession is a cultural diagnostic. example my native american background words things like Rainy was in possession of the body instead of amandalouise dissociated and switched into being the alternate personality of rainy.

so taking a guess here that you had your dissociation system and then you had a separate non disordered element that many normal children do where they have imaginary friends.

Im not saying your ghost rabbit doesnt exist. just that I noticed your location was here in the USA and you didnt know whether the rabbit was part of your system. so thought I would post so that maybe you can talk with your treatment providers and they will help you to figure out where that rabbit came from and why it is a ghost now....

I know the dead rabbit is a part of my system now and has been for a long time. I'm just saying I don't know if he was a part of my system when he was a living rabbit or not. It seemed important for me to mention because I am not sure if I actually do have a part who has died or not. I think I do (sometimes I swear I know it) but I have been wrong before. I also know why he is dead/a ghost. I could get into the details of all of the above, but it is likely triggery and not likely relevant to the topic.

As for the ghost thing... it has nothing to do with possession or actual ghosts or whatever. It has to do with me being neglected and feeling invisible as a child. That is apparently how my brain chose to process, deal, and self protect with that. Anyway, I chose to mention that since I have had dead parts that now changed to living parts, so again, I relate as much as I am able, but from an opposite kind of way.

Maybe what I should have said from the get go is that people change, this includes those of us who are parts. Some might grow up, others might go away, some might turn into metaphorical living beings, some might metaphorically die. Anything is possible.

In my limited experience regarding the OP's question, yes they can die. Not only fragment identities can disappear, but in my case my primary identity has died, leaving a new primary holding the reins.

I see so rabbit in your system is like my eagle was... in my wording an alter (your words a part of your system) that wasnt an eagle in beliefs/ delusions/ hallucinations but an alter with the characteristics of an eagle.... fast, hyper aware ever watchful to ensure the safety of everyone ... your rabbit was part of your system (my wording an alter) that evolved into being the invisible one for your feelings of invisible.

thank you so much for clarifying it for me.

I don't think they can die because the body didn't. I feel that they just go dormant because they are not needed anymore.

I get parts that wake up after years to decades that have no present memories. Seems kinda funny because they like freak out and they are like here again...like Hillbilly....from a decade ago....woke up and had a blast noticing that we were still driving the truck he bought back then as we are and have been living states and lifes away....then to say his farewells because this isn't his time....just triggered out and gone again....accent and all. I'm sure if chance maybe....he can/will emerge because some memories of his at times surface if we weed through the layers of past life...if lucky.

Died? I had a whole system die. Or go dormant. At least 7 from young to adult. My T said it's like a new system emerged. This was a two years ago. Sometimes I wonder if they will be back. The youngest played with my son, and he misses her dearly. I have no idea where any of them are. It was said according to T that she was told by another alter they went into "sleeping pods". Not sure I believe any of it. But it's just me. Just me.

One of our energies went 'away' inside, she was a main energy and we were very lost without her. It took a good 2-3 years to get going again at full bore without her. It is known where she is (inside) but she no longer has input. We don't know why this happened and there was a great deal of grief went it did. Knowing this energy, we can only guess that it was because we were to learn a life lesson. Still confuses us. We had grief like she died, but realise that she didn't. But didn't integrate either.

I also want to add that all his foggy memories became alive and crystal clear...everything about that time that we can't remember. Since he's gone, a few images linger on in fragment stills, but most have faded with him back into the dark recesses.....miniatures.

**This answer may be very triggering to some. I was born with Asperger Syndrome, so I can at times be too straight forward. I've tried to be as thoughtful and gentle as I can be.**

I know from experience and from college that alters are emotionally and mentally as human as any corporeal human being. And they also have coping mechanisms and survival mechanisms that are separate and apart from each other.

I also know from experience of my own abuse that alters or hosts can be damaged by mind control or psychological programming done when you are very, very young. My system's original host was so damaged by severe mind control and torture that she no longer exists. She was ordered, through extreme abuse, to not exist. And she chose to not exist to stop the extremity of abuse. It was my brain's way of coping with the severity of what was happening to me. It was survival. So the rest of me would survive, personality intact, and not kill myself like they wanted me to. Abusers all, ultimately, want their victim to kill themselves and for the victim to be blamed for their own depression. I'm sorry to be so blunt. I really don't mean to trigger you to even mention the A-word.

But I don't know what you recently went through that may have affected you. So I don't know how part of you might respond. I also don't know if you had a history as a child of part of your system choosing to not exist to help the rest of you survive. Sometimes, under severe duress, alters or hosts will cease to exist to allow the rest of your brain to survive as is. Because your beautiful brain chose to create this system as a means to survive - it could be described as your brain artistically self expressing. I was taught in college that systems changing, in any way, is your brain's artistic way of expressing your pain. The worst possible pain a child who never gets to live has to experience.

Dying is a part of the life cycle. Children who are abused never get to live. They only know birth and abuse. Each abuse representing another death. Children who are abused never get to live, only experience death of their childhood over and over again. The death of alters or hosts is a survival mechanism, so we don't kill ourselves. But so that we understand the severity of pain caused to us. Because we never got to or get to live. What we know is abuse. The death of our own system members is an act of survival and coping. We better understand the severity of pain of each act committed on each member, so that we never do anything close to that to anyone else.

And if part of you feels dead, then they may well be. Death is a natural part of life and I don't think anyone can tell you that death isn't a part of a DID system. No therapist can also tell you when you love or don't love. There is no measurement tool for love, but we all still freely do it. Once upon a time, love wasn't a valued emotion in human society. But we homo sapiens fought for that right. To love and be loved. To love openly. To express love. And to not be ashamed of having emotions. Love isn't quantifiable. Pain isn't quantifiable. Pain is perception to each personality. And that one inside of you that feels dead, if you need to mourn, I hope you give yourself time to do that.