Not Alone: on being friends with your alters as a traumagenic system

We haven’t had the best childhood. Our parents would ignore us half the time, but at the same time, they would coddle us and show us off like a doll to other people. We struggled making friends. We would lash out because of our treatment, and would get punished in severe ways. All of this as a young child can lead to some pretty serious mental health conditions. So! Among other things, we developed Dissociative Identity Disorder. A term we learned online was “traumagenic”, meaning a system that derived from trauma. So, that’s us! A traumagenic DID system. We’ve experienced a lot of hardships in our life, but it’s okay, because we’re all together! I love my headmates, they’re my dearest family!

I know a lot of people may look at their systems negatively, especially those who didn’t choose to become a system. If you experienced a lot of hardships, of course you wouldn’t have the most positive feelings when it comes to systemhood. You’ve been through a lot, and this is the result. Your identity is fractured. You lose your memory frequently. You don’t have full control over your life. You can’t be yourself, and who even is yourself, anyway? We’ve been there. We feel as if we spawned into this world at age 20. We know that we had a life beforehand, of course, but pretty much everything before 2019 feels like a gigantic blur. We have some memories, though they’re very few, but we don’t know when they happened. Having Dissociative Identity Disorder can be hard. We know that. But! Life has changed for us in the past year. We’ve struggled, we’ve succeeded, we’ve been functional, we’ve been dysfunctional, but above all, we’re a system! And we’re happily us.

When it comes to being a system, you might not want to be particularly close to your alters. You might be afraid, or distrustful of them. After all, they’re taking your time away from the world! You don’t want to black out! You don’t want to lose time! It’s their fault you’re losing your identity! Except… they’re going through the same thing as you, you know? When we were coming to terms with our plurality, all of us were fairly distant from one another. We did have some close relationships, like the friendship between Leo and Nana, but we were largely on our own. Barriers were high, our mental health was godawful, and we were struggling to make it through the day. Everyone was wary of one another. We were afraid that we would bring harm to each other. It was a rough way of living.

So, what changed? Well, we decided to just… talk more. We had people who wanted to talk to us as individuals. We weren’t just a group of people pretending to be one anymore. We were given the freedom to be ourselves. To learn more about ourselves. And, through that, we learned more about each other. For some, it can be hard to think of your alters as their own people. You share a body, after all! Plus, sometimes you’ll have introjects, and maybe it feels like an imaginary friend to you. But your alters are people. And you’re an alter as well! Everyone in the system is an equal, and you should acknowledge that. It’s the first step towards having a better life with one another. Over time, we realized that, hey! If these people weren’t in our body, we’d love to be friends with them. So… why can’t we be friends now? There are things we like about one another. There are things we don’t like about one another. Some of us get along really well, like Aster and Luna. Some of us are family, like myself and Io. Some of us might be in a relationship, like Nicola and Finis. Not all of us have core friend groups, but we all still care about each other deeply. So, we talk, we play games together, we enjoy life together. We have similarities, we have differences. Some of us don’t get along, of course, but we all know that, hey, we’re in this together for the long haul! Personally, there’s no other group of people I’d rather be stuck in the same body with. Though… it would be nice if we all had our own bodies and lived in one of those giant fanfiction mansions where we didn’t have to pay rent and could just hang out with each other all day lol

By being friends, we’ve also allowed each other to be more like individuals. While, of course, offline we tend to mask as “Iris, a cute librarian girl!”, online we’re able to be ourselves. We have our own gender identities, sexualities, interests, fashion senses… We even have a Pinterest where we express ourselves, as well as individual Tumblr sideblogs for us to have fun on. Some people talk about how becoming individuals is anti-recovery. By being multiple people, and not trying to fuse, you’re harming yourself. We do fuse, though! Just not fully. We only fuse to create identities that are stronger. More solid. We want each alter to be able to be happy, and everyone is happiest as themself. We’re very happy right now, even if other people don’t think we’re allowed to be because of the trauma we’ve faced and continue to face, as well as us having a very serious mental disorder.

Over time of being friends, we’ve noticed a distinct shift in how we are as a system. First of all, we love to talk alongside one another! We have a lot of conversations with singlets where multiple of us will chime in. It’s like a group chat! Because of this, our switching has gotten more smooth! Though, of course, we do still have a lot of blurry moments and dissociation. Our amnesia, outside of very stressful events with our mental health, has gone down extremely! Our knowledge of what the others have been doing is still a bit blurry, and we do lose a lot of information, but we get the gist! And, of course, by being friends, we’ve learned more about ourselves as well! Personally, I used to be a fairly innocent, quiet alter. I was a little naive, and I was pretty heavily guarded because of it. But now, I have friends! And I’ve learned so much about myself by being allowed to express myself! I’m outgoing and adventurous, and love games where I get to explore. I also love nature! Being outdoors is so fun! I’d love to start growing plants one day when we get our own place and have the room for them. I’m nonbinary! I can try out pronouns, and they’ll be just for me! I want to learn to play the kalimba so bad! We’re considering getting one for me so I can learn! I love watching my older brother create art, and I’d like to try it myself one day and see what medium I enjoy the most! I’m an individual, and I’m a system! I have friends in my head, and they’re individuals too! We’re happiest when we’re ourselves, and we’re happiest when we’re together! I highly recommend just sitting down and… talking to your headmates. Close your eyes if it helps. Say hello, and they might say hello back! And keep reaching out. Ask if they want to do something with you. Ask what kinds of things they like, or want to try. Let them scroll through images, seeing what stands out to them. Let them form their own identity. And then, regardless of who or what that identity is, the most important step is this: love their identity. Love them for them, because, again, you’re in this together! You have all suffered deeply. You’ve all struggled. So, you know, reach out a helping hand? You’re not alone. You don’t have to be. You have as many people as your brain thinks you need to help you through the hardships you’ve faced, and may continue to face. Help each other. Care for each other. Form bonds with one another.

Remember! You’re not alone!