Now that my pinned post is out of the way, I suppose should post something, yes? Allow me to give short reintroduction for those who havenāt seen my pinned. My name is Memento Mori, or just Mori. I aim to discuss and educate systems on dormancy in the hopes of making it less of a triggering and demonized topic.
So letās begin, shall we? What is dormancy? In short, and by popular understanding, dormancy is when an alterās job is finished and it is no longer needed by its system, so it stops fronting even when presented with triggers that would normally bring it to front. It does not appear in headspace nor does it exist in co-con. Dormant alters appear to vanish completely from the system. Some consider this to be ego-death or even genuine alter death, but itās important to recognize that dormancy is not final. Dormant alters can and sometimes do return, oftentimes when the trauma that formed them also returns.
What about medically? Is dormancy even a medically recognized and used term? Well, in this article (š), Natalie Frank appears to recognize dormancy, but this is not all therapists and psychologists. In fact, Frank appears to be the only one to speak on it. Similarly to what was explained in the previous paragraph, Frank believes that alters go dormant because their jobs have finished, though their presences or the lack thereof still hold importance. Kind of like haunting the narrative.
What is important to note here, is that Frank and the general (system) public believe that dormancy is a good thing. What is not good, however, is forced dormancy. Forced dormancy is typically found among persecutors, prosecutors, and other harmful alters. Forced dormancy is, as you can assume, when a system forces its alters to go dormant even when their jobs are not yet done. From what has been observed, it can be concluded that forced dormancy is not real, or at the very least, that is not what it should be called by the general system public. Forcing an alter to āgo dormantā should be more widely known as suppression.
Suppression is unlike dormancy in that it is harmful not only to the suppressed alter, but the system as a whole. A suppressed alter is still very much present within the system, so it can still influence front. If a system is suppressing a harmful alter, it has the potential to passively inflict intrusive thoughts and negative emotions onto the rest of the system. Those who claim that they need to suppress their harmful alters or āforce them into dormancyā for sake of their mental or physical health do not often consider or realize these repercussions until it is already too late. They also do not often seek out other options, and jump straight to suppression upon hearing of it.
For those considering suppressing any harmful alters, please consider the alternatives as well as the repercussions and side effects of suppression. Iāve made a list of alternatives for suppression containing coping mechanisms for harmful alters that you can find here (š).
