Quote from: Lilis on May 30, 2025, 11:09:51 AMThe LEGO houses analogy is beautiful, I love it. It helped me visualize the inner structure of more complex systems with more clarity. Thank you for that, but that's a whole different topic.
Is that because the totality of the self is fragmented, like your LEGO houses once were scattered across separate spaces with their own walls, doors, and lived realities?
The bitter truth is that there is only one whole - and despite protestations from alters to the contrary, each is only part of that whole. Every one of my adult parts believed that they were complete. To them, they were, but none could explain the laspses in consciousness that each experienced as one personality left and another came to the fore. Occasionally, 2 or more parts were present and could even talk. As we became more coherent as a functioning system, we even held meetings!!.. In reality, this was a form of telephone system between the Lego houses.. a communication channel that some parts managed to forge between these separations. It started with 'real life' post it notes. Notes to 'whomever is in control' and then more specific. The controlling alters, leaving 'task lists' for the others to follow so the 'whole' can seemingly function normally to the outside world.
DID is not something that should be detectable from outside easily. It is, after all, a defence mechanism. My alters came into the fore to interact with specific people. A couple dealing with my abusive partner depending on her desires. If she was angry, then the calm, methodical, analytical alter would be there.. unphased by her unhinged actions and sayings and moderating her, protecting us. If she wanted romance, another alter would step in for that.. she called these 2 parts her husband. She knew these parts existed for years before any of us (the parts) did. She used this knowledge to manipulate the whole and to get her own way all the time and control us.
The lack of communication between parts, then, was a barrier. It was DID working against us (In a way) and so this drives the defence higher.. the division actually increases, the parts become more autonomous and overt. Overtness of parts is not a usual symptom of DID.. These idiots on Social Media that dress up in silly hats and declare that 'now they are alter A'.. is on the whole, total trash. DID is designed to hide in the shadows, make you LESS of a target to your abusers and overt alters do the opposite of that.
As my DID got more entrenched, as each part took more control of their path. My partner got worse and worse. Her subtle way of controlling her partner was evaporating because 'SHOCK HORROR!!' The parts were starting to communicate. It was not evident to me or my therapist at the time, but this was the start of the end.. this was part of me beggining to heal.
A number of things happened at once early in 2020. My partner started to physical abuse me, much like my parent and my other abuser.. that is triggering alone. I had a cPTSD flashback of a time, as a child, when I very nearly died. I was alone, no one knew or saw what happened.. and I told no-one.. I was 11 years old, I nearly killed myself and I did not tell a single person, not even my best friend.. that is unusual and needed a lot of psychoanalysis. Then my father died from Covid, my business collapsed due to no work and my medical issues (low immunity) put me at great risk of becoming another of those death to Covid statistics.. with no vaccine I had to isolate, whilst my partner did everything they could to bring the infection into the home.. it was akin to living in a warzone.
This huge amount of trauma, the steps I had already made in healing and weirdly my daughter going through puberty (something that I had not done - long story) started the collapse.
I recall that the main analytical part, the part that previously had decided that ending it all was the best way out, analysed the catastrophe of everything that was going on at the moment.. He came to the conclusion that he was actually only a part. That was hard. That was like admitting to yourself that you don't exist and you do actually live in a simulation. That was his reality. This was real... and so, the houses started to collapse. Brick by brick parts of one house got removed.. it started with a big chunk of the alter called Sarah.. she, as it turned out, was holding the majority of the personality.. But she did not have even half of the everything.. that big chunk of Sarah's house became the foundation of the 'mansion' that was going to become me.. It wasn't quick.. but the foundation was now where my main thought processes stemmed from.. and slowly bits of the others came over - Skills and talents that had been spread across parts.. memories, now coalesced.. and the truths of my past started to stitch together and make some sense.. I would say it took 2 weeks to finalize.. and, honestly, I faked it for a week after. Too scared to reveal to anyone that I had infact merged into one. I even went to therapy and pretended to switch (something 2 of my alters had learnt to do, sort of like a party trick). You see, I was vulnerable. The only defence mechanism I had against this world had suddenly been taken from me. For the first time in my entire life I was alone inside my head.. and it was a scary place. I had to learn how to adapt to this world, how to survive the pain and how to sort this mess of a life out. One thing that had never (I mean NEVER) been evident was that I was not a guy.. infact, I was not even attracted to women.. I was infact, a heterosexual woman. That was a problem, as I lived (mainly) as a heterosexual male.
The changes that happened after this, I documented in brief below.. but essentially, I lived my truth. I found happiness because of that.. and not some glib, dance in the moonlight happiness. No, my happiness is facing life with my partner. No matter what it throws at us. Life throws us all the same trash that it did.. but somehow now, it doesn't matter. Happiness really is internal, not eternal...
I would just like to finally add a fact about 'Trans with DID' .. you can't be a transsexual and have DID.. a part, or an alter can be another gender other than the assigned at birth one.. in fact, I don't think I have ever met a true system that doesn't have some alternate gendered parts.. but the whole, no one can tell what gender or even sexuality that will be. DID is about hiding the truth to protect it. My sexuality was in a male part, a part that thought of themselves as gay. My gender in a couple of places.. the mother in me in one, the party girl in another.. it was split out like this so as to keep the whole safe.. so as not to allow anyone to point at us and label us as something they thought was unsavory. DID is an amazing coping strategy that can only be developed before a personality is formed (before about 6 or 7 years old) You can with 100% accuracy state that anyone with DID suffered early childhood trauma. It however, will only persist if the environment you are in is traumatic or at least triggering. I did 'merge' at the age of 9.. I told my mother, 'A mistake has been made, I am a girl'.. she laughed at me, I persisted.. after the 3rd time, she hospitalized me by breaking my wrist.. told me I fell down the stairs.. and so, again, DID came back and the real me, the happy female child, was banished to four corners of the mind, in separate compartments.. to only be reunited 40 years later.
