(no subject)

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Alter. It looks so innocent that most of you just think of it as terminology. That’s what you call insiders…alters, parts, fragments, pieces.

You never call them people. They’re not people to you. They’re subhuman fragments that get in your way. They hold your emotions and hold your memories so you can go on being you. They’re the pieces that the real person threw away. They’re the fantasies of a child that tried to section him/herself off from the horrible trauma around them. They’re the entities who will spend their whole life in the shadow of the host. They’re the entities that fulfill a purpose or a job or a role because otherwise they’re not allowed to exist. They’re never people….just alters. What else could they be?

If you called them people, you’d have to acknowledge they were the same as you. You wouldn’t be able to insist that it’s your body and your life. You wouldn’t be able to push them off and insist to speak with your real significant other. You wouldn’t be able to say they’re just pieces to be put back together in a nice pat ‘cure.’ You wouldn’t be able to deny them their right to use their body.

We don’t have any alters nor do we know any. We just know people. Some of the people were created for a purpose. Some of the people were born in response to abuse. Some of the people were the first person in their body. Some of the people are the only person in their body. Some of the people put a lot of energy into their job and get a large part of their identity from their job. Some of the people have a lot of issues that they need to deal with. Some of the people don’t. They’re all people. They’re all equals.

Think about what you’re saying next time you call someone an alter. You’re saying they’re less than you. Think about what you’re saying when you call someone a host. Even if you just mean that they’re the person dealing with the outside the most, it still immediately labels everyone else as an alter. It still holds the connotations of dictator, the real person, of being more important than the rest.

We’re all people. We’re just as valid as the next person. It doesn’t matter if you’re a single, the person in a system that never comes out, or the person in a system that’s always out. We’re just people.

Comments

[ghostwalker.livejournal.com]

[rockstargrrl.livejournal.com]

"If you called them people, you’d have to acknowledge they were the same as you."

This statement confuses me. because in my therapy, my therapist talks a lot about how the other 'parts' of me are still me, they aren't separate from me, just different aspects of me. so to call them people, would be acknowledging that they may be people but are not the same as me.

I appreciate the post, though I'm torn how to think about it, so I may just not for now.

*sigh*

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Of course he does. That's the way the mental health profession sees it right now, that's how they call it, and the emphasis now is on telling plural people that they are only a collection of parts of a single self -- whether this is true for a particular group or not.

You might want to read this: http://www.issd.org/indexpage/isdguide.htm

Scroll down a bit for III. An Outline of Psychotherapy for DID

In reality, of course, some groups really do experience themselves as split-up parts of a whole person -- ques_nova comes to mind -- who may seek to reintegrate. And some, like ourselves or pengke, do not. The mental health industry's mistake is to judge us all by a single standard. In the end, you have to decide for yourselves what is true for your group. A competent therapist should encourage you to make your own decisions and assume responsibility for them.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Well that's a tough one. It is really a religious and philosophical question, what makes a person. And then it becomes a moral and ethical question, if these are people (and me too) how does that impact on how we treat each other.

Some therapists/spouses/non-multiples/multiples will hold firm to the belief that there is One True Way and that is: one person to a body, period. End of story. This is a pretty fundamentalist view (There Can Be Only One). But for some people, that degree of certainty is necessary to their mental health. I think many therapists have gotten caught in this trap and for good reason; much of the therapeutic literature insists very strongly that this is the One True Way to health.

There are alternative viewpoints. Right now they are very... alternative. A good but hard book is Jennifer Radden's _Divided Minds and Successive Selves_ which looks at ethical issues in multiplicity (she calls it dissociation).

Out of personal experience I can say that _for us_ the turning point came when we stopped trying to control/understand each other as fragments of a whole and started looking for the individual wholeness and capacities. It makes for a complex life though; you lose your moral certainty and some questions get a lot harder. But for us it has been the really only possible path to a kind of healthier way: respecting each other as people, the way we were not respected in our traumatic past.

Shandra

[pengke.livejournal.com]

You're the same in that you're equals. You're all people. And if it turns out for you that you do fit together into a whole, then you're just as much a piece as anyone else.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

*claps*

That's how we think about it too.

[daznjonesy.livejournal.com]

We use alter as a way to distinguish between people in this body, and people in another body. For instance, Emily is my alter, and I am Emily's alter.

I guess we hear alter as "another" when many people hear it as "other."

[ex-celestit.livejournal.com]

I dislike "alter" because of its MPD-ish connotations, but I see why it would be useful for that, and I do wish there was another word I could use in the way you've described. There really isn't one, is there? Sarah is a singlet, La Senza Fine is a multiple system, Emilia is a soulbond, Cerys is a... what? Of course we're all people, myself included, but I'd like it if there was a word which described my living situation a bit more specifically.

SenzaFine^Cerys

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

Bravo. You put it so beautifully.

I think too many people hide behind 'alters'. It's a frightening thing to give up that 'control' of thinking you're the one in charge, and actually labelling them as individuals, as valid as if they'd been the only ones born into the body.

I mean, how often do you hear, 'no, I'm not the host, I'm just an alter' actually from someone? Hardly ever. Everyone who speaks with free will in a system tries to express their individuality and their freedom as a person. A person with just as much right to exist as the one someone labels the 'host'.

I mean, so often the person that someone meets first is automatically assumed to be the 'birth' person, and all else are 'alters'. Never mind if the one they met is only out every two weeks, and someone else fronts every day and holds down the employment. When it comes time to 'integrate', odds on, who's going to survive? The one who fronts in the world, or the one who sought therapy? Either way, the system loses out.

Most people who speak on boards who say they're the 'host' cling to it like driftwood. They're the important one. How does it feel for an 'alter' to be told they're just a coping device, and soon they'll be 'squished' so the 'host' can have a real life? Never mind how long and how much they've been around for. Psychiatrists often don't even consider the fact that people could be plural and functional. They think if you're plural, you have to be sick. What's sick about living your life surrounded by your family?

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

*standing ovation* :)

[myrai.livejournal.com]

What's sick about living your life surrounded by your family?

What a lovely way to put it. Thankyou.

-Viola & Caitlin

[thenetwork.livejournal.com]

Yes. Exactly. Precisely yes. Couldn't put it better.

[arhuaine.livejournal.com]

*applauds* Thankyou. Very well put. :)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Good post; raises a lot of interesting questions.

I've never used the word "alter"... never occurred to me to use it, but then, I have never told any member of the medical establishment that there's more than one of me.

It's been nearly 30 years since "consensus" was reached on the "me or we?" question - whoever's running the corporeal form has the right to say "me"; separate names are not needed (why should they be needed inside? and nobody outside had any business knowing); memory is shared. It's like a household sharing a single computer, single e-mail addy, single password - no separate user-names required. Works just fine.

When I, me-who's-typing, say "me", depending on the context it may mean "us" or it may mean just-myself. If I say "I love to read", I'm not speaking for my 'kinsman' who can't read at all, nor for his twin who can, but sees it as a mere utilitarian skill... but it is still a true statement.

The boundaries between "us" are not as clear as it sounds when I talk about it. I am one person and more-than-one all at the same time. I don't think my kin, my 'housemates', are "just parts of me"... in fact, when I was young, I seriously wondered if "I" was one of their imaginary playmates, in the places where they were... it seems weird to call them "them", however. The problem seems to be a linguistic one: there is no pronoun to describe other people who share one's own consciousness.

Note, I do not say "body". Our silent one needs corporeality; his twin does not, and only very rarely assumes it... he's much more fully present in intellectual consciousness though, has very definite opinions about everything, while his brother doesn't pay much attention to anything not primarily sensory. They are most likely a "split", one-person-become-two, but... are not the "same one" as me-here-typing, and never have been, as far as I can determine. I wasn't abused as a small child, and there were no indications that I may have had a "vanishing twin" before birth either.

Want to know what's weird - I've got this long-running RPG storyline about a fictional family of Elves, and over the years it has turned into this sort of metaphorical Jungian autobiography of "life as an inner household". It's all fiction, though - fantasy roleplaying, nothing more - and while the three main characters are hauntingly similar to me-as-a-whole, it's only me-typing who writes this stuff; the guys take little interest in it.

Little overt interest, I should say... but... our silent one used to not speak at all. Then when I started learning Tolkien's Sindarin Elvish, and using it in my gaming, he started picking up some of it, and in fact got good at it faster than me-typing did. Then... apparently as a result of this?... he started picking up some English.

What's up with that? Because supposedly he can't read at all... so how is he learning a language from text? By listening to me read and write it, yeah... okay... so why didn't that work for English, all these many years? Who knows? He speaks English passably well now, though he still doesn't say much.

I have no idea what I/we are; to what degree we are separate people or aspects of one another... I've encountered no book, either scholarly or fictional, that describes anything even close to my situation. That's okay though, y'know? I don't need to speculate beyond the data about "reasons why"; the household is at peace.

BTW, just this past year I finally told my daughter, who's 14 now, about being multiple - she looked at me calmly and said "I thought you probably were." LOL, well, cool... no biggie then.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

*giggle* It's great when they take something like 'no sweat' or 'is that all? i already knew that', specially after you agonise over telling...bit of a anticlimax, but in a good way.

[forever-alone.livejournal.com]

That was beautiful. Thank you for making this post. I feel the same way.

Sort of agree...

[nematoddity.livejournal.com]

I never used the term 'alter' until last year, when I started heavily reading MPD/DID sites. I picked up the term and ran with it, though, because in my head--which I realize is shared by others--it was a solid label I could utilize. Kind of freeing in a way. 'I have alters' acknowledged I had other people, that I wasn't the only one in this bod.

And I don't operate under the theory that I'm the front person with all the status. I'm the mask. I'm the one that's thrown up so others can hide behind me. I wasn't the original, I'm not the core, I'm not real in any sense. Which makes it all the more ironic because, with the big sleep-fest going on, I'm the only one awake.

Re: Sort of agree...

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

That's very heavy to deal with. *hugs*

I think what was the issue was the idea of one 'real' person, and the rest just being split off bits, in need of being 'glued' back together.

If you've got an identity that allows you to say 'I am seperate from those guys, but we all exist in this space', then you're an individual. It doesn't matter if you're crafted, soulbonded, or identify as the 'birth' person. You're all valid in proclaiming your existence. I think, therefore, I am.

[moablaharet.livejournal.com]

Back in the days of our bad therapy, the terminology 'host and alters' was used prevalently. When our forced integration fell apart, we threw the terminology out. We had to. When all the people disappeared except for a few that hid and one that was left alone, it was obvious that we weren't just fragments. Close friends had seen through the mask of the one left saying "I feel so much better now that I am one.". For the first time ever, the body was experiencing a true chemical depression. When we burst out screaming "I LIVE!", found friends in the shadows, and confronted the lies that had been imposed on us by people who were 'qualified' and by ourselves in our fear, that was when we actually started to talk to one another. We stopped generalizing and let go of our expectations of one another. And we were free.

-Angel, Shell, and some whispered contributions

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

wow.... honour to you.
jason, for many others

[thenetwork.livejournal.com]

Now there is the kind of success story about healing we can get behind.

::applause::

[the-kaeru.livejournal.com]

I would like to say the word 'alter' makes me want to dry heave. The only time I ever use the word is when I'm sewing.

We are all just people.

And that's the truth. *blows raspberry*

[emploding.livejournal.com]

thanks for your opinions.

however, we will continue to call ourselves whatever want.

free speech and thought is a wonderful invention.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Sure. But if you're trying to imply that Pengke& are trying to crush free speech and thought for encouraging people not to use the word alter, well, frankly, I find that kind of hilarious, because the psychiatric establishment has been downright tyrannical about trying to make all systems accept the model in which they're all split-off pieces of one person. Yes, free speech and thought is a wonderful thing, and I applaud Pengke for having the courage to practice it in the face of prevailing opinion.


Jayasi

New

[gia1977.livejournal.com]

I'm new and I still have mixed views, but I like the flexibility to call it whatever I choose. Some days I'll say alters, other days, I say people, most times I say personalities, but all in all we are here. We are all our own as we function together as a group that got us all this far in life. I'm just thankful to be.