#mcsra

[This article describes the ways in which new alters form inside a dissociative system.  This does not cover how the initial alters are formed in a dissociative disorder, nor does it go into detail on how abusers intentionally form alters.  This is once a system has already started to create alters and get organized into a functional system.]

There are several ways in which new alters (alters, fragments, or parts) can be created inside.  The most common way alters are formed is when an alter (called the "Original Alter" or "OA"; this does not mean the Core) is placed in an extremely stressful or traumatic event, or an emergency situation, in which they do not know how to successfully cope or function.  Dissociative systems aim to survive these types of situations in a functional manner, meaning they usually strive to perform the functions they believe are being demanded of them in a way that causes the least amount of danger to themselves or others.  They believe, usually rightfully so, that failure to perform in a functional and successful manner (ie. meet their abuser's demands and comply with orders while causing the least amount of disruption/chaos) will lead to more frequent, more severe, and even more life-threatening forms of bodily damage.  When they have a long-term, or life-dependent, relationship with their abuser (such as parents, authority figures, programmers, and handlers), they are also trying to protect and maintain their relationship, because it is necessary for survival.  This is especially true when the survivor is a minor, and their basic needs are dependent upon the adults in their life.  Once this pattern is formed, it is hard to break, even once they are able to meet their own needs in adulthood.

There are four major areas of their relationship they believe they have to protect for their own survival:

The stability of the relationship (avoiding conflict/anger, being seen as a disappointment/failure)

The security of the relationship (avoiding emotional detachment/abandonment, neglect/withholding of basic needs, and social/emotional isolation)

The future of the relationship (avoiding punishment/retaliation, complete abandonment/rejection, and severing of the relationship)

The affect the relationship has on others/other relationships (avoiding the abuse, neglect, punishment, or life-threatening torture of other people, friends, family members, pets, etc.)

The OA may not be able to switch, the system may not be able to find anyone else who can perform better, or there may not be enough time to find a replacement to switch with.  The OA perceives something about the situation to be extremely challenging, toxic, or damaging to their sense of self, their sense of sanity, their core identity/beliefs/anchor point, and/or their perceived ability to successfully survive the situation, and therefore believes that escape is the only functional option (that is, they make the decision to try to escape by splitting/breaking).  Or the OA may break unintentionally while the situation is happening because they have run out of energy/stamina, pain tolerance, pain sharing/dispersement options, dissociative skills, or other mental skills needed to stay present and functional (at which point someone else in the system may make the decision to create a new alter for them).

The OA or the system may try to cause loss of consciousness (called "dropping," which is an internally caused fainting or passing out) to prevent the OA from breaking when switching is not an option.  However, dropping may not be an option in these situations.  For example, because the body chemically can not drop, such as when too much adrenaline/other stimulant is present; it is not allowed, such as when abusers have already proven that dropping will be severely punished so the system learns to avoid dropping; or it is not safe because the body must maintain consciousness to stay alive, such as when driving a vehicle.

When the only way to functionally survive these situations is to allow a new alter to surface, the new alter can be: forced into the situation to replace the OA, can assist the OA in handling the situation by being in the situation at the same time, or can hold the memories of the event separate from the OA (through the use of amnesic barriers).  New alters can be created by the OA or the someone in the system in several ways, including: breaking the OA, breaking someone else, creating one from scratch (from the Core Energy), or using a pre-existing alter/fragment who has not yet had an identity or anchor point established (sometimes called "blank slates" or "base programmed" alters).  In non-intentional alter formation (i.e., not intentional design and programming work) new alters usually end up being created outside of the OA, and most commonly are created from the OA breaking/splitting.  When the OA breaks inside of themselves, and retains those parts, a subsystem is formed.  (These are described below and will be described in more detail in a future post.)

(Click to enlarge graphic)

In my experience, every systems has something or someone they'll die for, which programmers exploited, and programmed around.  Part of what we’ll die for comes from our basic temperament/personality (which they begin assessing as soon as birth).  Are we driven to protect ourselves, or protect others?  Are we passive, or aggressive?  Do we become angry or depressed with stress?

It’s also important to remember that suicide programming is a large umbrella.  "Suicide" can look different though depending on the system, its intended purpose, and its Owners/Architects.  It’s not just the typical suicide of “I’m going to get sad enough that I decide to take my life” kind of suicide.  That type of suicide is the most common, and it can have three major functions:

It can act as a threat (kind of like the implanted bomb threat) that makes survivors believe that they can be triggered to kill themselves at a moment’s notice;

It can act as a safety valve where those most stressed in a system can feel like they have an escape path “if things get bad enough,” which helps prevent them from actually mentally breaking down in a severe way (such as becoming psychotic, or destroying themselves and becoming unusable) and reduces the risk that they’ll attack/try to physically harm their abusers/handlers (aims it inward instead of outward);

It can give alters a self of control, as in “I have a way out but I’m not using it yet, but it’s in my back pocket for when I’ve decided enough is enough.”

Suicide can be trained in Omegas, and it often looks like the above (suicide on command, when too overwhelmed, when system not functioning correctly, when system at risk of performing a major violation of security or safety to protected others/abusers).  But it can be found in other programming types/layers:

Gammas can be programmed to suicide in order to protect secrets/information/abusers. 

Deltas can be trained that suicide as part of an assignment is noble, normal, even expected.  They may also see themselves more as kamikaze warriors who will become go out in a blaze of glory type homicidal actions, or death by cop/other Delta/or directly challenging another aggressive abuser or co-survivor/training peer. 

Thetas can be taught to accept suicide as a ritual, sacrifice for the Family/cult, or as some way to strengthen, honor, restore life/reincarnate/spiritually merge with a specific abuser/leader. 

Internal Enforcers/Abusers/Programmers can learn suicide (of self, or flooding/triggering suicidal alters to do so) as a punishment/effect of entering recovery, allowing insiders to change programming/scripts/jobs, and for not staying in contact/use with abusers (callback programming, end of the line programming, thrown off the train programming, termination/expiration/contact clock programming, etc.), or if triggered with specific codes/commands by Owners/Handlers.  These alters are often Omega, Theta, Delta, or some combo.

So when looking for "suicide programming" in a DIDMCSRA system, do not overlook these other forms of suicide or self-destructive programming which need to be addressed as an important part of recovery.  It's also extremely important to realize that when you're working with an alter who is feeling suicidal, you need to make sure that they aren't being flooded/triggered by someone else who is trying to force them to act (i.e., it's not their own choice/programming, so trying to help them feel less suicidal isn't actually fixing the real problem causing the suicidal symptom - because that's happening in some other alter).

Getting properly diagnosed is more difficult than people realize, especially for DIDMCSRA survivors.  This population probably has a harder time getting properly diagnosed with DID/OSDD than any other population in the mental health system.  Not only do they have to struggle through their own dissociation and amnesia to even know what that there is a problem, they also have to fight through professionals and societies that often do not believe their abuse histories, their internal experiences, or the validity of their mental health condition.  They have to fight their own fear, as well as the programming and threats from their abusers, but they also have to figure out how to explain memories and internal/psychological experiences that they may not have the vocabulary to describe.  

It's no surprise then that research shows that the average DID patient is in the mental health system for seven years before they are finally diagnosed correctly.  For survivors of MC/SRA, the wait for correct diagnosis may be even longer because of the programming that inhibits their internal awareness, makes them afraid to speak about "secrets" (the abuse), and the presence of alters who sabotage therapy by blocking therapists or keeping therapy focused on "safer topics" (like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, and self-injury to keep the therapist too busy to discover the DID).

It is not uncommon for DIDMCSRA systems to reach a point when they allow a therapist to see, and work with, a small group of alters while hiding a majority of the internal system and the majority of the abuse.  These "surface alters" are usually the ones who dealt with school, the family or origin, work, and trying to live life passing as normal.  These alters may have some abuse memories, generally from one or two abusers who were in the family (such as a father or uncle).  They use these "highlighted memories" to explain why the system exists and why they have so many struggles.  But these are merely the least dangerous memories, and the longer the system works with a therapist the more these deeper memories will surface.  Some therapists question the validity of these "new memories" because they believe a client would have disclosed them sooner.  They may accuse the client of confabulating memories, false memories, picking up memories from other survivors in group settings, or even having memories based on books they have read.  Instead of understanding that they are just unraveling the next layers of the same onion.

DIDMCSRA.wordpress.com  ©4/18/2016

Many survivors of MCSRA spend years in the mental health system before they received the correct diagnosis of DID or OSDD/DDNOS.  There are many factors that cause this delay, which will be explored in the next blog post.  Often survivors enter therapy in order to address a specific set of symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, or insomnia.  They will focus on those symptoms, hoping that if those are alleviated that their system will function better and that their life will make more sense.  Sometimes they work on these issues in therapy and then leave therapy, only to return years later for another issue, a relapse of the same issues, or to dig deeper into the underlying causes of their problems.  

Other survivors get lost in the mental health system, where they may be under-diagnosed (given a lesser diagnosis that focuses on one or two symptoms instead of the broader picture) or even misdiagnosed (where the diagnosis is actually incorrect).  The most common misdiagnosis is when mental health professionals label the survivor as having a psychotic disorder (usually Schizophrenia) as soon as the survivor admits that they hear voices.  The clinicians often then recommend heavy medication for the survivor, which may make the voices harder to hear or even go away, but that is because the medicines are making internal communication difficult or even impossible.  It does not actually stop the dissociation, prevent switching between alters, or stop the creation of new alters in the face of new trauma.  This is extremely dangerous when some alters are actively suicidal or engaging in risky behaviors because the rest of the system can become too unaware of each other to try to force a switch back to a safer alter before very bad things happen.   It is not uncommon for survivors diagnosed with a dissociative disorder to also have diagnoses at the same time.  These are called comorbid diagnoses, meaning they exist at the same time and may be related or affect each other, but are usually seen as secondary to a primary diagnosis.  The most common comorbid diagnoses seen with DID and OSDD/DDNOS are Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD.  Other common comorbid disorders, which may apply to some alters but not most alters, include Substance Abuse Disorders, Eating Disorders, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury.  

There are two diagnoses which may be diagnosed alongside with DID and OSDD/DID, but may be under-diagnosed labels (meaning they only describe a piece of the picture, and should have been thrown out once the DID or OSDD/DDNOS was applied), misdiagnosed (meaning the mental health professional isn't understanding what they are seeing, or are trying to find a diagnosis that fits because they refuse to apply the DID or OSDD/DDNOS diagnoses), or only apply to a few alters (or based on how a few alters appear to mental health professionals, giving a skewed presentation of what's actually going on).  The more I understand how DIDMCSRA is created, the damage it leaves behind, the way it shapes alters to behave in certain ways, the more I believe that these two diagnoses are completely inappropriate to DIDMCSRA systems.  These are Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder.  All too often these diagnoses are applied because professionals are baffled by the switches in alters, and assume the mood swings and changes in attachment/relationships are occurring in one person, rather than signs that there are multiple people with differing moods, opinions, thought processes, relationships, traumas, fears, and abandonment issues/damage.

DIDMCSRA.wordpress.com  ©4/18/2016