#complex did

Original Post

Do you have a specific type of therapy that is your favourite and that works best for you? What types of therapy haven't worked in the past?

I can't say too much to this one because I've so far not had too many types of therapy, at least not long term.

I can say that art/music therapy (tried in a clinical setting) isn't for me because I deal with the internal pressure to create something perfect when I'm only meant to express myself through it and process through it.

I did acting therapy once in a clinical setting and it was extremely challenging because I struggle to improvise etc. but that's probably why it was good that I attended it. It didn't help much sadly.

Original Post

How do you experience DID? Do you find your symptoms manifest more physically, emotionally, mentally, etc?

My DID is rather covert. I function more through co-fronting, co-consciousness and passive influence than though full switches of the main fronter, however already co-fronting/co-conscious alters can and will take turns on the main front. I have 24/7 passive influence from the cores of my system (I use the term differently from most, I do not believe in a "first alter" and they also do not identify with the body) which can drastically change my thoughts, emotions and behaviour regardless of which regular alter is present. This is the only symptom of identity alteration that others around me may notice, because generally my system is built to hide itself and only then it fails.

I experience primarily grayout amnesia, and I experience it "globally", which means that it is not alter or switch based, but instead the front itself remembers and forgets. Alters can forget their own memories and remember memories that aren't theirs. My amnesia also sets in with a delay, memories fade over time rather than being instantly gone. That time is currently between a few hours and up to a day. On bad days it can be less.

I dissociate on a daily, my baseline is a 3-5/10, on bad days it has risen to 7-8/10. I feel disconnected from my body, my emotions, my thoughts, words and actions and my identity itself. I usually do not notice the presence of my dissociation as it only comes with physical symptoms like dizziness or exhaustion once it rises above around 5/10.

Turns out I have a subsystem in which I never stop fronting, and any of my parts (who are kinda me but in different variations, with very different things that they hold and are responsible for) who front, don't co-front but temporarily fuse with me. It made me think my subsystem was bigger than it actually is because it genuinely felt like that fusion was neither me nor the part but a new alter entirely.

It's not exactly the same as what you experience. We generally have quite low amnesia due to functional parts that never stop fronting at all in the main system. So we don't really have amnesia between parts of me fusing and unfusing. And it's also not a system wide experience as far as I know, currently I'm the first alter to notice this pattern in myself.

But I just wanted to say thank you for your post on M-DID as a whole, because without having read it, we would've probably taken much longer to understand what was happening and that that is even possible.

And this is random, so I also apologize lmao

Wait I just found this in my inbox, did I really forget to answer it?? Sorry for the late answer. I'm glad you guys are figuring things out. And thank you for your message, I love interacting with fellos systems.

Sorry guys wasn't on front much. A lot happened... But I'm back to rambling about [our] M-DID in hopes it might help other modulars feel seen or find words for their experiences. For those who don't know me; I am Auxin. Diagnosed with DID. Modular. Identified with polyfragmentation until I found out about modular systems.

Today I wanted to ramble about something in my system I call connector particles.

In our case the different alter "modules" have particles to connect them. This is because we had to be able to turn certain behaviours, thoughts, feelings or knowledge off or on depending on what our enviroment demanded. We had to micromanage facial expressions, voice tone, feelings and the like. The wrong alter having the wrong expression, impulse or other characteristic was dangerous.

TW mentions of abuse & trauma

We needed the amnesia between these different components instead of a fluid, fuller self expression so as to not have access to the "wrong" particle. For example, if an alter is more complex they can decide to (a) get angry, (b) go away physically (c) apologize, (d) look angry and apologize, (e) look indifferent and apologize, (f) feel scared and show it etcetc. Our abusers usually only allowed very specific actions, and if we made the wrong choice it was devastating. We ended up having to always assemble different "tasks" on top of each other in differing sequences during traumatic incidents.

There wasn't any alter that could fully predict what was necessary, we had to always look outward and push a new button when the situation evolved. We could not form larger, stable and complex parts. Instead we have widely different fragments with different ways of doing "the same thing".

These "modules" or groups sometimes needes to overlap. For example, there is a protector and then there is our host. The protector can be too aggressive for the situation, but the host is too sensitive. If the protector would always front in dangerous situations she would worsen the situation. If she knew about how tricky the situation is she couldn't hold that anger successfully or protect us when necessary because it's "too dangerous to be angry". So she isn't one full alter - like all of us - but a group of related particles who do different parts of the "angry protective big sister" job. We need a host with protector characteristics, or a protector who can turn off and on awareness of consequences.

Again if they share memories or were a whole alter instead they would have too many choices that could endanger us. Instead of them fully switching there is a particle that connects them. It has some awareness of both the situation our host has in general but has access to some of the protector's assertiveness and indifference to threats.

Now that we are actively recovering our particles build more stable shared identities, almost like a subsystem alter. But there are still often situations in which we do not fully front but instead do our job with a connector. I often only front through my connection to the host. I have some awareness of what happened to our connector if it was active but our connector has amnesia towards the "further ends" of me and him but has awareness of the particles "between us". Connectors may exist to make dissociation less abrupt and switching more fluid. Once the connector pulls out a particle of our protector the protector has amnesia towards what happened to the host. Or the host has amnesia for what happened to me. I'm not the best at explaining things and it is a lot more complex and layered of an issue.

Not my best graphic but here is how it looks in an average DID system versus a simplified example of our modular DID system. The big circles on the right are a module. The space between the particles is larger when there is more amnesia or intra-module integration. In my case my particles are more coherent and I feel "more" like one alter even though I too have different configurations. Our protector has multiple and more distinct versions of herself depending on the configuration and a larger sense of "this isn't me" when the configuration changes.

looks at our handwriting

Since SP is probably going to shut down eventually, Octocon too (although I could never figure out the workload of the transfer anyway) and Ampersand is dying already at the amount of sorting tags I'm creating while not having a single alter logged...

Any alternatives that work for a polyfragmented system who wants to log every single thing separately?

I had an extremely exhaustive folder system in my SP (probably 1k in total, Ampersand started increasing in loading time at "only" 300), and I currently have above 200 alters logged with potential for it to become more.

I'm thinking about just building an excel chart, but even that will be extremely difficult with the amount of stuff I want to track.