Welcome to my Blog.

These are my ramblings in an attempt try and understand my Dissociative Identity Disorder. Thank you for reading my blog and I hope that together we can come to a better understanding of the human mind. If you have any questions or comments you are more than welcome to add them to my blog, or to email me. I would love to hear from you.

21 July, 2016

Abuser Alters

I don't know if I have spoken much about Abuser Alters before but thought I might try and explain abit now.
To most outsiders it must seem a horrible concept to have alters inside who go around abusing other alters. Surely the system would want to work together and help each other out. That's good in theory, but you have to remember that this is a child, a young very helpless and lost child. "There are no safe places to go, no safe people to get them out of this, and there are horrific things this child must see, do and experience.
How does this child cope with the horrors of what they have seen and experienced. They have no control over it, there is no way to stop it, and they feel powerless to do anything about it.
One way to cope with what is happening, is to try and make yourself feel stronger, more incontrol. If you have someone who is like the abuser inside, then they are not a victim, they are not weak. They are just like the one who has the power, even though their power and strength is only ever used on others inside the system. In a very large way they are taking away some of the powerlessness the child feels and giving them a sense of strength. Like they are in control of something in their life. That they too have power. And yes these abuser alters do go around inside abusing other alters. It's not fair, nor does it help on the road to healing, but in truth, it is one of the reasons that system is even alive to this day.
How do you cope with the pictures in your mind of the horrific things you have seen .....you identify with the abuser, you think like them, you see it like them. Then you see it from a very different view. Yes it is about power and control. That's what abusers use. So to have an abuser alter gives the child/system a sense of power and control in a world in which they really have none.

To be or not to be?

One of the hardest decisions we have to make, is do we tell new friends about 'us'.
When meeting new people we always present ourselves as a singleton. "Hi my name is Lonnie and i am a multiple" is a bit too much of an opening statement for most people. But at some stage as the relationship develops, even just a friendship, there comes the question......"should we tell this person that we are not who they think we are?"
Do they need to know? Do we want or need to tell?
The whole point to hiding it is for our own self protection. We HAD to hide it when we were young. No one could know or they would find out our other secret......that very bad things were happening to us. It was the primary objective, to hide it all. Thats why we had DID, to get through all that was happening to us and still go on to live a seemily normal childhood. 
But we are adults now, and we are not living that life anymore. All the old rules still seem to apply though.....hide, hide, hide!!!
It deosnt work so well now in the adult world. Having a 5 year old pop out because she wants to say Hi, doesnt make sense to someone who has no idea about who we are. Its not fair on the other hand to make everyone inside have to hide if they dont fit into our age appropriate activities. We are many, and there is no original person. No one person in our system holds a greater position of importance than another, so it seems unfair that only a select few get to come out and socialize with others.
When we are socializing with other multiples, or those who know us well and understand, we can have much more freedom to just be us, just be who we are. Otherwise we are living a life of pretend. Pretending to be who we are not, so that those around us are comfortable. Dont get me wrong, I know that to a degree that will always be our life, but like most people we just want to have times and places where we can just be free to be us, and be accepted for who we are. 
This brings me back to my original question, how and when do we tell new friends that 'I' am 'We'?
How do we also deal with the fear of going against a life long self protection training that screams 'we must never let anyone in and they must never now about us'?
I dont have the answers..........