Non-typical dissociation.

I have a hard time understanding why my symptoms do not exhibit like many of yours do.

I have no co-consciousness. But I have had some recovered memories of myself in this other state. I know that my alters, or at least the primary one, have attitudes about me similar to the attitudes that my Mother and Brother had toward me. Basically my feelings were never a consideration in my Mother's and Brother's minds. I am fairly sure that my alters feel toward me exactly like my Mother and Brother did. I did not matter to them or, I should say, my emotional and psychological well fair was not a concern for my Mom and she passed this attitude on to my Brother.

I am thinking that this plays a major role in why there is no co-consciousness in my system. I know that they are there but they do not seem to come out much. But they can manipulate me in a billion ways just like my Mother and Brother did and seem to enjoy making me self-destruct.

I think every persons system would be made to be just how it needed to be. I have coconsciousness with a few alters and no coconsciousness with an unknown number of others (quite a few). The ones I have coconsciousness with share life responsibilities. The ones I don't (but know of through my T or other means) have ideas memories and or feelings that are beyond my ability to tolerate. The group of ones that are coconscious weren't always this way, we only started being able to be aware of eachother and communicate through therapy and our t helping us develop those skills.

I had very little co consciousness. my treatment providers called it limited co consciousness. I had alters like you describe. in me those alters were called introjects. they were very similar to my DID alters but a bit different. they did not have to take over to cause me problems. I could hear their voices, knew how they were feeling, and remember what they did when they were in control. my introject alters took on the role of being the abusers with me, saying and doing acting like what my abusers did/ were.

the treatment I was on for the introjects was the same as having an abusive DID alter.... therapy, countering negative with positives, taking my meds as prescribed, ... the usually therapy stuff that works for things like ptsd, depression, anxiety,.... in other words nothing special beyond whats normally done for any mental disorders.eventually these introject alters just went away on their own because their sense of agency was was no longer needed. they didnt have to integrate/ merge together with me because I already had all the memories and so on that they had. like I said these introjects were different than my DID type of alters.

maybe your alters that you describe in your post are something like this where they are different than what most people have for alters so when you try and compare yours to everyone elses its different.

there is also dissociation doesnt look the same in everyone. example my DID alters were different from yours in general because you did not get abused in a mine shaft like I did, you dont have the same life that I have, you dont have the same health issues that I have....

my point.... my alters were there based on what abuses I went through as a child, what childhood trauma's I went through, what my body and mind needed to survive. your alters and system are set up in what ever ways you and your body/ mind needed to survive.

there is more to this but it gets really technical like how alters are created, how the brain works and so on, that your own treatment provider can explain to you directly related to you and your alters/ system.

Michael,

If you feel that who wrote paragraph one is an alter, then start by getting it a name or adjective based on the sentences etc...I think this is a start it is not always easy to know who it need to meet first for co con but it is indeed a start.

I know many people believe that DID was a coping mechanism developed so the child could survive like you suggest. I do not. I believe that the toddler's mind gets broken before it has a chance to develop normally. I believe that the alters develop over a period of years just like a normal child's personality would develop over a period of years. Each alter develops over time growing up in the abusive or dysfunctional family. How they develop is a function of their individual interaction with the sick family members who are traumatizing them. I do not believe that there is any sanity or logic in why the alters exist. Maybe if one could actually witness the interaction of each personality with the different members of the sick family, you might could find some logic in how they developed.

I believe a toddler gets traumatized so badly that the toddler goes into shock. A new born has no conscious personality. It has the innate brainstem portion of the brain but the conscious brain, the logical brain, has to develop over time. The memory, also, has to develop over a period of time but all of it starts developing at birth.) So if the toddler gets traumatized before the logical brain has developed appropriately it is the subconscious mind, the brainstem mind, that is affected because the logical brain has not developed yet. Any way we know that the toddler's brain development gets screwed up.

I beg to differ, Michael. I'll tell you why...

I was thinking something along the lines of introject as well. There have been a few in my system over the years who would go out of their way to make others in the system miserable (kinda an understatement there, but y'know...) in one way or another. Some turned out to be protector types just doing what it is they felt they needed to do, some I still have no clue what their deal is. Thankfully this is not a problem at the moment for me.

I'm sorry you had to go through that and that for whatever reason it still lives on and plays out in hurtful ways in the present. You deserved better as a child and better in the here and now as an adult as well.

-Avery

My dark alter mainly levels his insults at me but, he says mean things about my other personalities too. This kind of behavior from mean or callus personalities toward originals or others must be pretty common. A novel I once ran across had a main character with DID who was named "Ulysses" and most of his other alters called him "Useless". I remember that his therapist in the story didn't approve of that behavior in the other personalities because it was disrespectful and the therapist didn't want them disrespecting one another. I probably should never have read that book but, I love horror and the character being MPD, (what was used at the time to describe it before DID came about or at least I think so) fascinated me so, I couldn't resist.

I second that. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier. What happened to you was unfair but, you survived it and that makes you a fierce warrior. L.P. is right. You deserve better.

I know for a fact that abandonment can traumatized a toddler. So I feel your pain. When I was twelve my Mom had a mental breakdown. My Sister was only about two at that time. Dad was a medical doctor and so when he decided to put Mom in a Mental Health hospital in Atlanta for two to three months, he made the decision to send my Sister to my Aunt's house to live with them. It traumatized my sister horribly. She did not understand. She would scream and scream when we left her.

When Mom came home and we brought my Sister back home, my parents did not do what was necessary to help my sister get over the trauma. All it would have taken was extra love and attention for the next few years to help my Sister know that she was loved and wanted. No one did that!!!! I was already mentally ill at that time and did not know enough to help my Sister. She never recovered. To this day she has anger issues and cannot commit to any relationships. She is a lesbian and she has had many good partners but she just will not bond. Fear from that childhood experience. Fear of the emotional pain. It makes my gut knot up because to help her would have been so simple if I knew back then what I know now.

You're right. That is a horrible thing to do to a child. I just don't get parents sometimes. What's really bad is when everyone else considers them as good parents and good people and then they do not so good things to or with their children. I'm going through something similar to that on fb with some family members who don't seem to want to believe that I was abused. All my life I grew up being told that my concerns were all in my head and that my traumas were just bad dreams. That's the kind of good, good family members that I have to put up with. Always denial with them.