My First Experience with Alter Personalities

Dissociation and dissociated personalities.

This is probably one of the hardest topics for me to discuss for a few different reasons.

Even though I share a lot about my diagnosis and struggles with mental health on social media, I have held back sharing too much about my experience with dissociated personalities because I’ve been scared of how much people will judge me and my situation. Although the topic of dissociation itself is more widely accepted, the topic of dissociated personalities comes with a lot of stigmatization.

On top of that, dissociation has just been a very complex topic for me to learn about and experience.

As I recently made a blog post about being more real and sharing more openly, this felt like a good topic to really open up and share about because it’s not common and there’s little information or support out there, no matter what your diagnosis is when experiencing this.

Although I have been working on trauma therapy for at least 4 hard years, the extent of just how dissociated and distinct my personalities were didn’t become obvious until the 3rd year.

Previously, I had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, so the abrupt change in personality was initially attributed to that, but as time went on it became obvious that these changes were always triggered by an external source that reenacted trauma. In Bipolar Disorder, the changes are due to chemical imbalance and external stimuli can increase stress but is not the reason for the sudden extreme fluctuation in mood.

So, where did it begin?

Having No Personality…

When my therapist and I began doing work with dissociative symptoms, therapy became really difficult for me. Not only did the work feel hard, but because of the severity of my dissociation, I had a lot of trouble even understanding what it was. My therapist would have conversations with me explaining the concepts and information behind dissociation and after leaving I would have no recollection of the entire conversation. He gave me a book to read on dissociation and although I knew I was reading it, I couldn’t remember the information that I was reading. It took a lot of work to get my mind to even open up to the idea of dissociation and the possibility that I was living with severe dissociative symptoms.

After months of work introducing the concepts of dissociation, I finally started becoming aware of my dissociation.

At the same time that I began to acknowledge my dissociation, I began to experience an overwhelming feeling of dissolution of my personality and the structure of who I considered myself.

It became obvious pretty quickly that I had become a lot of different versions of myself to fit the person that other people expected from me, and in the process had given up the chance to ever really know or experience myself, my own wants and needs, my own desires and dislikes.

Thanks to my childhood trauma, I had become a pro at dissociating and had unconsciously used my dissociation to my benefit by becoming whatever and whoever those around me needed me to be. (This is really common in trauma and you should not be ashamed or feel like you were “fake” with people. This is your bodies way of SURVIVING and it’s not a choice someone makes.)

One of the hardest problems with dissociation is that in its purest form, the person is completely unaware they are dissociating. When I became aware of all these different personalities or people I had become, I felt confused and afraid because I had no idea who I actually was. I felt like I was everything and no one at the same time.

I remember sitting in my therapists office, feeling deep emptiness inside of myself, and telling him that I wasn’t even sure if I really loved the things that I was known for deeply enjoying or caring about. Everything felt unreal and fragmented and finding who I really was inside the rubble of the dissociation we had just torn down felt like an impossible task.

To Having Multiple Personalities

Despite all the unease I felt, I dived into doing trauma work with my therapist. I wanted to get better and I was willing to do whatever it took to get there, even if it was very uncomfortable.

As we began doing more work with dissociation and I became more aware of my dissociated personalities or parts, I could start to recognize when I was going to switch or had already switched into a dissociated personality. With the awareness of dissociation becoming more obvious to me, it also became more and more obvious that these personalities were distinct from my own personality and were able to “control me” in a sense.

Previous to my dissociative therapy work, each of these personalities had “taken over” when present, rather than just influencing my behaviors, so although I knew my personality or mood could change drastically, I wasn’t aware that it was presenting as what we would call an alter. (An alter or part is a personality separate from a person’s normal personality that identifies as its own separate being.) These periods just felt like drastic fluctuations in moods where I had little or no control.

I used to be terrified of triggering these other states, and to some degree I still am, because I have always felt like I made horrible decisions or decisions I would not usually make while in these states.Although it was still me inside my body, these personalities had the ability to take over and become who they thought I should be instead.

The awareness was unsettling and caused me a lot of distress, especially the times I felt like I was losing control of my mind and body.

Making Peace with My Other Parts..

Some common names for these dissociated experiences is alters or parts. I prefer to use the term parts as opposed to alters for myself because my different parts still identify as me, just me at different stages in life, and don’t have their own separate identities.

In the beginning, I was way more resistant to the idea of having dissociated parts. I still feel some resistance to the idea today, mainly because of the stigma attached. It is hard to feel comfortable in your experience when the world around you treats you like that experience is wrong or different than you describe. It’s invalidating and makes identifying my own experience even more confusing than it already is.

The resistance I felt had two parts. The first part was directed at who I considered “me” and a general distrust of my inner experience. Long story short, I thought I was acting “crazy.” The second part was directed at my other parts. A part of me knew they were real and I had to deal with them, but I felt HIGHLY resistant with engaging with and interacting with these other parts.

If there is one thing I have learned though, it’s that resistance to who you are and what you feel inside is the most sure path to a life full of suffering and pain.

Through hypnosis, I have been able to make a lot of progress with my different parts. Beginning to learn about and understand the different parts of who you are and why those parts exist is an essential part of the healing process.

With my therapist’s help, I have begun to become more open to my experience. I have began treating my experience like it is something for me to learn about myself with and less like something to just be ashamed of.

If you have your own experiences with alters or parts, I’d love to hear about your journey in the comments below! Normalizing our experiences and making way for others to do the same is one of the best ways to combat the stigma that is attached to alters, parts, and dissociated personalities!