Poly-fragmentation experience

Can I know those who have dissociative identities, share of any experience during the time of being split/ fragmented and that is when an alter is created? I have felt poly-fragmentation very intensively for many years. What is the feeling? I felt every time I was fragmented, I was floating out, like struck by a lightning and it is so hard to describe...will say more when I can though.

no I did not feel like I was struck by lightening. there was no pain in fact all there was when I dissociated was feeling numb, no emotions, not connected to any bodily sensations, in other words a sense of disconnection mentally...

in me dissociation was nothing like you see on tv, it was a very calm , emotionless, painless state of mind. numb, spaced out and lacking any kind of emotions or bodily sensations.

i did get the feelings you described but they were medication and psychosis problems in me. if my meds were not the right dosage or I skipped a dosage or if I was withdrawing from meds I would get lightening sensations, sometimes the lightening feelings in me were called hallucinations and delusions if there was nothing triggering it to happen example if I wasnt skipping meds or withdrawing from my meds but still getting brain zaps/ lightening feelings for no reason my treatment providers called it psychosis, in either case adjusting my meds solved the problem

my suggestion is if this continues to bother contact your treatment providers, they will explain what dissociative symptoms you have told them you have and those that they know you have, they can also check your meds and other reasons that could be causing this in you, and get you treated for it so that you dont have to keep going through this.

I think knowing what will be and next is good thing. I can't say that I know what it means basically it just put some things into perspective for me. I'm not alone or crazy is the main thing I'd like to share in this post.

I can get the "numb" feelings too. I remember I had instant amnesia.

wanted to add something because I noticed your title of the thread is poly fragmented experience.....

here where I am poly fragmented .....used to.... mean a person had alters that were alters of other alters and that there was a certain order to the alters, this ordering was called prioritizing.....

example.....

I amanda dissociate during extreme trauma which caused Thelma to become who and what she was (her sense of agency)

Thelma while going through extreme trauma dissociated which caused Pink to become who and what she was.

Pink during extreme trauma dissociated which caused Green to become who and what she was.

Thelma was more important and designated first in line over Pink and Green.
Pink was more important than green but not as important as Thelma
Green was last in line, in the grand scheme of things on mental health paperwork Pink and Green were disregarded as just fragments, not important and not worth wasting therapy time and resources on.

With the new mental health system that America changed over to in 2013 all alters are now considered important and essential to the system, none are designated/ prioritized as more important than another. the alters that were just a bit of emotion are now just as important as the one that do the daily living, go work, take care of the family...

in other words the term poly fragmented is being replaced by other terms now like "sense of agency" which better describes the fact that all alters have their own way of being, one is not more important over the other, how much control they have, each ones job, purpose and reason for being and much more.

my point here where I am poly fragmented doesnt go by bodily sensations of feeling lightening, it was just a way to explain which alter came from who and why. which ones were more important than another, where each one fit in.... that kind of thing.

I did have the kind of system where some of my alters were created when I was dissociated and an alter went through the extreme trauma and they could not handle it so they dissociated which created an alter from them that could handle that kind of trauma. but none of my alters were considered more important than another, and so on after the change over to the new mental health system in 2013.

my suggestion since you are having lightening like feelings and so on contact your treatment provider. they will explain what they meant when they diagnosed you as poly fragmented and whether this feeling of lightening is part of it for you and how to best handle it....

Polyfragmentation means "many" or "much" (poly) fragments. In other words there are many many alters. Some alters may be much more developed than others because they are "out" a lot more often and experience more of life. Like perhaps some alters deal with a chunk of daily life (so are well developed) while others dealt with only one aspect of one particular trauma (perhaps 15 minutes of "air time" so to speak). Obviously the one who is out most will be much more developed as an independent self state than the part whose total experience is 15 minutes of trauma. Some Ts call alters like the 15 minute parts "fragments". The average number of alters is around 16. Some people have many many more alters than that, and that is called polyfragmented DID. I have never experienced that "lightning" feeling you describe and I don't remember any time an alter was created or what it felt like either. But maybe that is a good thing??

I hope it's ok to ask a question here since I`m not DID. If not then feel free to ignore me.

Since DID develops in young childhood I don't understand how a young child would be capable of even knowing they 'split ' or 'fragmented' during abuse. It's hard for adults to comprehend all of this so I can't imagine a child being able to.

Abusedtoy, how were you able to know what was going on when your alters were created?How did you have that knowledge at such a young age?

Or have I misunderstood what you are saying?

And this.How were you able not only to know what amnesia was but also to know that you had it instantly?Or to 'remember' that you had it?

The reason I ask is because I didn't know I had even experienced amnesia in childhood. Not until I took a picture in to therapy that was taken after I had left the hospital after being treated for some extreme physical abuse. When I talked about the abuse and showed the picture, I believed the picture was taken right after it happened. But it was obvious from the color of the bruises and how all the swelling was down and it looked like my injuries were almost healed up that it was taken at least 2 or 3 weeks later.

As a child I had no clue I had amnesia, to me it just seemed like the abuse happened and then the picture was taken and that was the entire story. As a child I didn't question where the time had gone or anything, it didn't seem like anything at all. After processing that specific trauma in therapy I did eventually remember what happened between the abuse and that picture, but not as a child.

I didn't create an alter during the abuse but I did experience dissociative amnesia,I think that's what it's called. But I had no clue I did at all.

I am fascinated by this. Can you elaborate please?

As an adult, one of us had a time of extreme stress (I'll call that one A.H.) and upset and just could not deal in life and instead of switching out, that version of me 'split' into another version of me (who I will call C.E.). As A.H., I had no idea that I had split into a new person at the time. I just knew I was not okay and kept blanking stuff, freaking out, stressing, so on... how that version of me would have functioned in any other time of extreme stress, you know, poorly. Um, but as C.E., it took awhile to be able to say, yeah I am a new person in this pound of flesh. At first there was the question of who am I, what am I because there was an awareness of my surroundings, the people and places here in the (what was then) here and now. There was confusion, but confusion happens to a lot of us when life is stressful. There was a distinct shift in ability to handle the stress and life (it was a bit easier) but that could have been just 'me' detaching from emotion and so on. It took a few weeks before C.E. was comfortable saying yeah, I am a new version of me.

So from that perspective, for (the A.H.) me that time, it just felt like nothing out of the ordinary compared to me just being set off and another me showing up to deal with whatever situation was setting me off... a lot of confusion, stress, inability to cope, instability, mini breaks in reality followed by me just being gone and a different me showing up to deal. I can't get much more specific about sensations because when I get set off to that degree, I am not much aware of what is going on with me... or if I was, I totally forgot/detached from all that later. My memory is not always so great.

We have had a few of us remember how and when they came to be. I don't know if any of us remember splitting, but yeah, a few of the ones who split do recall suddenly being aware of their surroundings and feeling hyper aware/vigilant... one of us (who since integrated into the whole) remembered this pull to help 'that girl' and he rushed to action, so to speak. At the time he had no idea he was not just some random boy or whatever. He didn't really have an idea he was a person or anything. His fight response was so very much his entire existence it never would have occurred to him then to stop and think, hey, how can I be a person if I have no history, no name, no anything. All he knew was fight. So he fought. Then he was gone when fight was no longer needed. Not sure who took over after that or what girl he was fighting to protect. I know all that from when he showed up five or ten or whatever years ago because he was co con with a lot of us and he spent a few months out and about dealing with a lot of what he went through and part of it was making sense of who and what he was. He was a cool kid to have around.

-Avery

I started to know there were alters in me, when I heard voices in my head. I have no idea when did I got my alters split, only later in adulthood, I have found out that I have dissociative identities. Being a young child, it is hard to differentiate whether one has alters or not, because the child parts are identical to the current age, but in adolescence or adulthood, it would be more obvious to tell the difference. I knew I felt something, of being numb, floating out or that lightning feeling, but I did not know what it was, only now I am more aware as an adult.

It happened in the past, I had a particular severe trauma and had instant amnesia. I did not know this at all during that time, but now I am made aware of it after I have my memories integrated. I had complete memory lost of all traumatic memories for many years and it was last year, the triggers were breaking off the amnesic barrier and I have been hospitalised since then for a suicide plan for remembering all of the memories again.

Thanks for explaining abusedtoy

I never knew that I had amnesia as a toddler. I never knew that I had amnesia at all until I realized that I had MPD at the age of 36. My parents did not communicate with me enough, growing up, to even know me or my personality. My Dad never talked to me. My Mom did but it was mostly the same type communication that you would have with a teacher or other adult that you were not closely involved with. For the first ten years of my life I followed my Brother and his friend around like a puppy dog. We never had any conversation at all! He abused me constantly, (physical, emotional, psychological), but we never talked. He never told me why he was mad at me. I never asked. I did not know to ask! My Mom started telling me when I was two and one-half that it was normal for my older Brother to "pick-on" me. By the time I was five I had been totally programmed to accept the abuse. I could not get mad. I only felt extreme grief. My parents never talked to me about my relationship with my Brother.

I now know that I was constantly in a state of mild shock my whole childhood. I had a type of PTSD but it was not from horrible physical abuse but constant emotional and psychological abuse. My Brother kept me so upset that I could not keep my mind on anything. This constant abuse which put me into emotionally sick states of mind may have played a role in the episodes of amnesia.

I wonder what makes some children develop alters during abuse while others don't.

I guess that could be a whole other discussion though, couldn't it?

There are articles written about protective factors that help even very young children deal with trauma. One of the most crucial ones is having emotional support. Another is having a healthy attachment to at least one caregiver. Its almost certain there are genetic factors too since our genes are the foundation of everything related to our physical being, including our brain.
There are likely so many variables it would be hard to pinpoint specific factors. It might be easier to think of commonalities in people who do develop dissociative disorders.

In terms of "splitting" it feels like its more likely that certain parts of personality were "walled off" rather than some parts splitting away from a larger part. Over time maybe the walled off parts develop more distinct characteristics the more they are needed to act. So some became better developed than others simply because they have gotten more air time. That's how I think of it in us anyway, and it seems to play out. Our alters who are more highly developed all have a greater role to play in life. Our more fragmented alters are very limited in what they can do, because they've only dealt with one or two very limited things. Those ones seem to be ones who handled just a tiny fragment of an abuse episode. They don't come out at all apart from if they are reliving their trauma in flashback.

It is genetic. Many people have been abused much worse than me and did not develop a dissociative disorder. But most who were abused have some form of mental illness. Some become sociopaths or psychopaths. Some become criminals. Some are gay or have gender identity problems. I believe that schizophrenia has its origins in traumas that occur from newborn to two years old. Those who develop dissociative disorders have a genetic propensity to go into hypnotic or trance like states.

Same here. My father was very something else. Always on pins and needles I was. By the time I got through junior high I was a zombie. When I did graduate, I felt like I lived in a blasting zone all my life that the effects started wearing off in my late 20’s.

For one prone to dissociating, an ongoing, continual, unrelentless, inescapable, abd an unending series of trauma events are bedstones of poly-fragmentation.

This is also c-ptsd to the bone.

There are so many pieces to pick up, it’s a wonder that we can make it through the day, but we have parts that won’t give up while Others just want to die already.

I didn’t truly understand what amnesia was, is, and how it really felt till a few years back. It’s more than not remembering, but also more like not owning the fragment memory- they are so cold an isolated like they belong to somebody else.

I asked my T about this today, to see her perspective of why some people have polyfragmented systems and others don't, since she was the one who described my system as polyfragmented. (Please note: I want to be very clear I am not saying it is a diagnosis, it is a description of a DID system that has a large number of alters, some of whom have an extremely limited sense of agency. My diagnosis is DID. I am sorry if my use of that term given to me by my T is upsetting to anyone).
Anyway, my T said in her experience people with polyfragmented systems tend to be highly creative and to have experienced ongoing trauma over an extended period of time. I have no clue where she got her information from though, but since the term is widely used and accepted I suppose it has just become a descriptor used by some Ts over time. My Ts thoughts on polyfragmented DID seem to match up with your thoughts on this Alwayschanging. It makes sense to me.

This is the only scenario that makes sense to me by experience...because even today my memories are fragmentized with flashbacks of all times of our existence. Once a Poly...always a Poly if time escapes you.