This has been “love advice with protectors”

System update #1

I and my host regularly deal with feelings of dysphoria, him as a afab nb and I as an alter, so it is rare for us to feel appreciative of our image.

I checked our horescopes for the day - (we use two different apps)

Ollie: “Today is about showering yourself with love! Venus has entered Pisces and while it is a great time for interpersonal relationships, maybe a soecial someone, don’t forget to find the value in yourself!”

Alpha: “Your Venus in Sagittarius is the source of your stubborn streak. This moment provides you with an opening to raise your self-worth. You may experience this as your core self feeding your urge to go deeper.“

Self worth and loving ourself, sounds like the perfect time for some selfcare 😍

Self Love Bath Spell ❤️

Cinnamon (we used ground, though sticks also work!)

Rose Bath Salts (you may substitute rose water, petals, or soap!)

Apple Body Wash (also substitutable!)

Draw up a warm bath and insert the cinnamon and rose salts in and mix until dispersed! Then, after creating your own self-love sigil (you may use mine if you’d pike!), draw it in the water with the body wash! It is okay if the sigil breaks while you draw it (mine did too) as it’s your intent that matters! At this point if you do have crystals, feel free to add them to the bath!

(PLEASE MAKE SURE IT IS SAFE TO DO SO FIRST)

Have a love filled day witches ❤️

*Alpha

Cinnamon - Used for it’s association to Venus and it’s encouragement of personal & spiritual power, healing, love, strength, and prosperity.

Rose - Used for it’s association to Venus and it’s power with love, admiration, and respect.

 I've been able to acknowledge my first alter when I was 15. At that time, I was handling parental abuse by projecting an image of love and security on an equally abusive friend. It was all that kept me going, and the friend had just betrayed me. I wasn't allowed to mourn this, I was forced to do physical work. It felt like my life was going to end that day. I wasn't usually doing suicide attempts, but I couldn't stop myself. And then, I was stopped by the alter.

I didn't lose consciousness, all of my memories of what goes on when the alter takes over are just messy and blurry. But that first time, I had no idea what was going on. I couldn't control my hands, and I was hearing a stream of thought in my head that wasn't mine. This person hated not only my parents, but even my friend who I endlessly adored. I knew this wasn't me. I was aware of them for a while, but I thought our conversations were something I only made up to comfort myself. It was a shock to see they could control me. And one thing they repeated over and over again was 'You're not dying today.'

I reacted with a lot of rage at this, after all, I believed that the very last thing I had under my control was whether I die or not, I wasn't going to tolerate someone taking even that away from me. So I pushed back, and tried to hurt the alter in any way I could.

A week later, after I calmed down, I acknowledged that it was, in fact, a first time someone had wanted to protect me from dying, and was actively guarding my life, and I expressed gratitude for it. From that point on, I was tentatively testing the alter to see if they're really an ally, or a manipulative, controlling, evil presence. It took years of the alter consistently guarding my life, comforting me, jumping into situations that were making me sucidal, and talking me down from any dangerous situations, for me to accept that this person has my good interests at heart.

I named the alter 'Dark', because I watched anime. Dark was generally fun to be around with, they'd poke humor at me, call me out as a joke, and stand strongly on my side if anyone was against me. We had a lot of arguments because they actively despised every new person I loved in my life. Of course, all of these people later proved to be abusive, and I had to admit that the alter is smarter, wiser, and better at detecting manipulation than I was. I didn't tell that to them tho, don't want them to get smug over it.

Dark would take over only when my life was endangered, which was a few times per year, and they knew not to do anything that would upset me during that time, because they didn't want to risk my trust. I had a few friends who were aware of the existence of Dark, but they didn't take it seriously.

_

Fast forward to when I'm 23, at college, and first time developing full symptoms of ptsd. The trauma was drowning me, so I had Dark take over for almost every moment it was possible. I couldn't calm down, and Dark would magically stop my body from shaking, paralyzing or going into catatonic state. It was exhausting for Dark to keep control of my body for long; they can't deal with physical pain the way I can, so I had to start making do alone on that front. That's when the Child alter appeared.

I recognized them right away, because I remembered myself clearly, at 12 years old, stubborn, self-hating, trying to erase myself from existence. I used magical thinking into making myself believe that I would die, without doing it myself, and the Child alter felt I owed them this death.

I felt guilty, but I couldn't die only because I promised it to my child self. I refused. I decided the child alter should see how life looks right now, and then decide if death is still the best choice. Dark was telling me it was a bad idea, but did I listen? No. I didn't. I kept the Child in my head and talked to them during the next few days, and the child did their best to point out every reason why I should die, poked at my every insecurity, and I still thought, this is fine, nothing bad will happen. Until I came dangerously close to an attempt, and realized the child is powerful. Dark decided it's been enough of that, and kicked the child out. I wouldn't hear from them for a while.

The child came back a few more times, lasting only a few hours or a day before I felt so cornered by it, Dark would kick them out again.

_

Fast forward to after I ran away from home. Dark would appear every now and then to fight me on eating. I dealt with not having a steady income, by refusing to buy food, and I knew nothing about nutrition, so I was in starvation more often than I should have been. (Dark says one time is too many.) Dark would take over and buy food that I was too scared to buy. At one point, Dark was frustrated with me, and I noticed they were getting increasingly tired, and I wanted more of their attention, so they finally got mad and told me 'Fine! See what I deal with!' and left for a few days.

Right after that happened, I was attacked by almost un-ending stream of suicidal thoughts. I didn't know I had them. There were multiple ones per minute. I soon got scared, because it didn't seem like I could make it for long. How did I not know about this sooner?

That's what Dark wanted me to know. They exist to guard my life. At first, this meant stopping the attempts, but then that wasn't enough. So they intervened with situations that made me suicidal, offered me support, and then, after I got cptsd, that wasn't enough either. They banned me from thinking of suicide, so if I ever tried to think it up, it was shut down immediately. And then, even that wasn't enough. I was more suicidal than it was possible to guard. So they had to block my every incoming suicidal thought before I could think it. And there were millions a day. That's why they're so tired. That's why taking over and doing all that was so exhausting. It's why they got so angry.

I was shaken by how much work it was to keep me living. I felt my life was hanging by a thread. Dark came back, accepted my apology, and continued making me oblivious to my own thoughts. I understand these are created by the circumstances, not me. In a situation where living is so painful it makes little sense, it's normal for thoughts like this to be generated. My survival instinct is insane tho, so this is why the struggle goes on.

_

Next chapter of this story happened on a summer, when I was severely depressed. I was so tired of dealing with trauma episodes, and just wanted it all to stop. I started pretending it happened to someone else so I wouldn't have to feel it so strongly, but then I felt nothing, only the numb weight of it. I was completely alone. I lost the willpower and energy to get up, nothing made sense anymore.

In the middle of all that, the child alter appeared. But different. I didn't recognize them. It was a cheerful, passionate, energetic child, hungry for life, adventure, friends, knowledge. They started pushing me to get up, and go out. They wanted me to go be in the park, go to the library, jump over some stairs, run around, climb trees, go visit the playground, befriend someone, learn a foreign language. I didn't have the energy to do all of that, but I was eventually swayed by their excitement, and started spending some time outside in the park, visited the library more, started learning russian on duolingo. I realized this alter had all of my willpower and energy stored inside, and if I did what they wanted me to, I felt better. After a few weeks of this, everything changed.

Alters have a visual space they occupy in your brain, a world they exist in. The space Dark exists in, is a dark void, a black hole with nothing inside. That's the world I feel safe in. I haven't seen the world Child alter existed in, until one day, I was hit with a vision of it. I was standing in a world of fields that were all either on fire, or completely burned down. Charred grass, burnt foliage, a destroyed wooden shack burning in the background, and a night sky above. Dark was standing there, and stared at me with an uncertain face expression, as if they didn't know what to do.

Child alter was lying on the ground, right next to the fire. They were dying. I instinctively went to hold their small body, and they whispered 'Please let me die'. And the world was frozen in that moment. It never went forward, the child kept dying over and over in my arms, begging to be allowed to die, and I could feel their pain and it was unbearable.

After I've witnessed it once, I kept living it over and over again. Every day and night, if I closed my eyes, I'd be in the burning fields again, I kept hearing them asking for death over and over, and I felt all of the pain. A month of it drove me insane. There was no reasoning with a dying child. Dark couldn't stop it, I couldn't stop it, I even started considering that it's a manipulation and just a new plan of the child to kill me. But the pain was real. How would someone in that amount of pain not do anything to stop it? I also saw everything the child was re-living, every traumatic scene they were forever frozen in, but I saw it happening to them, and not me. It almost hurt worse watching it happen to a kid.

I took a long time trying to resolve this so that I wouldn't go insane. The solution was 'Acknowledge that the trauma happened to you.' I figured it out one day when I realized I haven't talked about it or acknowledged it whatsoever in half a year. I had to talk to someone about what had happened to me, because that makes it real.

I used one of those 'get a free listener online' sites (they're rampant with predators so be careful if you use those), asked a person politely if they felt comfortable listening to traumatic stuff, and got to tell my story. It was painful to acknowledge it was all real, but still less painful than watching a child die for a month. As soon as I did that, the visions stopped, the dying stopped, I was free of it.

So I learned that me and the Child share the trauma, and if I don't acknowledge it or push it away, they end up experiencing all of it, all of the time, and they cannot handle it. Of course, as soon as the vision stopped, they went back to their 'die immediately' version, but as I was a bit older, I was able to argue back, and worked hard on finding the core of it.

The core of it, was brainwashing.

All of the things my parents said to me, were internalized strong in the child, even after arguing it down for months, the child wouldn't let go of it. I've started suspecting my parents had wanted me dead, because there was no other way for a child to be this certain that death is the only correct option, you don't do this to a kid accidentally. I had to find the internalized versions of parents and show to the child that they're harmless, unable to speak or touch us or do anything to us anymore. I broke down all of their arguments to prove they're wrong. I had the internalized parents sized down to dolls so the child could stomp on them – this did entertain them for a few days.

It would still take over a year for a child to consider that the parents weren't the absolute law and can be disobeyed without excruciatingly painful consequences.

Thru all this time, Child is continually advocating for death, and was at constant odds with Dark, who was not having it, but acknowledged we can't kick the child out. After a while, Dark decided the Child was no longer a death threat, and they joined ranks, so they could mock me together (we have fun). Child is still vicious towards me, doesn't accept criticism, even less support, if I try to be gentle, they insult me, if I ask them questions, they throw it back in my face. I'm still being held as 'guilty for all the pain because I refuse to die', and I got used to it. They respect Dark tho, and I think it's because of the power dynamics you have in violent childhoods, where you respect only those who are powerful enough to hurt you. Dark is capable of kicking them out, thus they get respect. I'm harmless, so I might as well be a bug on the side of the road. Adults use that system a lot too (respect their boss, lash out at their children) so I understand that a child can't just get out of this mindset.

I learned to pacify the child if I offer them some of their preferred activities, which is to go outside, have adventures, go on treasure hunts, sit on swingsets, take them to the store and buy them candy, watch anime, play games they like. Then I'm promoted from a street bug to a 'possibly useful minion' and I get degraded less. But I also do better psychologically, have a bit more energy and less breakdowns. I also have to periodically acknowledge that the trauma happened to me and talk or write it down, so I don't push too much of it towards them. Out of all of us, Dark seems to be least affected by trauma, and has all of the 'Forbidden' qualities (entitlement, selfishness, jealousy, desire, pride, laziness, vindictiveness), which I have no access to. I thought for a long time they're the 'healthy' one, but realized there wasn't enough healthy experiences in my life to create a healthy alter, and their ideas are based on trauma childhood events as well.

I still am trying to figure out how to deal with the child, they cannot take over as they're utterly terrified of the real world, and they would still much prefer to die, but they've accepted it's just not going to happen. However, I can't stop them from being vicious to me, Dark 'doesn't want to get mixed up in this', and I have no idea how to stand up to a child. Did anyone ever figure this out?