who am I?

[gelabean.livejournal.com]

Asking for some help from experienced multiples...



Some of you might remember my post here 2 weeks ago about my boyfriend meeting an alter, a protector. He talked to her for 3 hours. I posted about it and you were all wonderful with referring to a support website and dividedminds.com for more general information.

Since then, another abusive alter came out who constantly screamed and found fault with everything that W (boyfriend) did. I was co-conscious. She came out a few times.

After much fuss, we all made it to therapy today for the first session. I am not used to saying "we", but it seemed like not everyone wanted to go because W tried and tried to get me up and I remember nothing, but not like a typical half-asleep conversation and I had gotten plenty of sleep the night before.

This therapist specializes in abuse and trauma and works with dissociatives. We didn't really have much time to talk besides intro and basic info about each other. She will be using a technique called DBT, which is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. Similar to Cognitive-Behavior therapy but with dissociation. I will be seeing her 3 hours a week.

After the session, I kept thinking about what is "me." I remembered being aware of an alter when I was 19 - she was a 12 year old girl. I have this abusive alter, the little girl, the proctector, the malevolant self-destructive, and "me." None of these people have names. I am co-conscious with all of these alters.

The therapist said that I will be speaking with and setting rules with my alters later on. But right now my question has to do with names - as in, how do you know what their names are? I am only now barely aware of their existance. Will they introduce themselves to me?

I appreciate your patience with me as a newbie. If it is all right, I plan on continuing to post here with multiple-related questions/comments.

Comments

[egyptian-spider.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about names.. You'll find that they'll come to you, or someone will give an alter a name.. It's something that you shouldn't worry about, though.. If you worry about it, it just takes longer to happen.

At least that's my experience. Take it with a grain of salt.. *nods*

[hurricanrana.livejournal.com]

don't worry about names. They'll just come to you when you need to know or are can handle finding it all out. Journaling was a great way. I dare it's bait. LOL

If tha'ts what it is..don't rush it beucase it'll come on it's own time, not yours. Then when you get that far you can make a map! YAY FUN! LOL *insert sarcasim here LOL*

[hurricanrana.livejournal.com]

whoops..i meant to say I dare say it's bait to journal. sorry. don't worry about names. it is what it is, ya know? you'll learn it all eventually with time

[hurricanrana.livejournal.com]

i'd be careful about what you call some that don't have/won't give names. sometimes they seems like abusive when all they want to do is protect you.

it'll all come to you. just have patience. and if they don't have a name...they just don't have a name = )

[gelabean.livejournal.com]

yes I had just typed without really thinking about it that I have been referring to the abusive alter as Mega-Bitch, then took down the post, so that is why there is a gap. Thanks for the advice.

[whisperedones.livejournal.com]

Names, my dear, are merely labels to distinguish Us, or at least, that's my opinion.

My host (who's a bit upset today, unfortunately, hence the reason I am posting) learned Our names through the magic of journaling, or even a picture drawn by a particular alter. (That's how We learned Angelis' name) or soemtimes, they name themselves after a particular person...

At any rate... I haven't met anyone yet who 'names' their alters... Ruby (Our Host) sure as heck didn't name us. I'm not sure how my name came up... I just said it was my name, and that was that.

I wouldn't worry too much about names, sweetie. They reveal themselves in time. *smiles*

-Cor

[gelabean.livejournal.com]

Thank you all for your input so far. I really appreciate it.
-Angela

No Worries

[gia1977.livejournal.com]

No worries on the names. I'm with everyone, it comes over time.
I found my crew names thru writing. We used to write little stories and poems. I came across poems, that we had written. Two of my crew are in the poems, Rena and Victoria (Tori). I found the rest over time. Emily told me her name, by every time I heard the Emma/Em name I felt funny. So, I said those names repeatedly and she got mad and said it was Emily and to leave her alone. lol. Trust us all here, don't worry about it. When the time is right you'll find out.
Hope therapy goes good.

Re: No Worries

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

those are good tips. We found our names a lot of different ways. Most of us had to be pretty secure and self-aware before we could accept that we had names, or at least, before we could hear what our names were. Maybe on some level we didn't want to be real, or something. A lot of us just sort of felt around for our own names when we were out - "who do I feel like? What names do I like?" And sometimes we'd get flashes of insight -- like we'd manage to be open enough to suddenly realize that there were two Marys and a Cherry and we'd just have to trust that we'd figure out who they were eventually :)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Watch out for your therapist naming "parts" that you do not feel are persons in your system. In fact, try not to let her give names to your people at all. You and your people should keep that under your control.

But since she works with "dissociatives" we'll assume she uses the modern guidelines and won't try to see people where there aren't any, while your post indicates she does acknowledge your experience of the people you do identify as persons in your system.

Yeah, it can get kind of old calling them "the cute kid," "the snarky one," etc., but names are important, and like other people have said here it's best to wait and let the names come to you, let them choose their names, let them tell you what their names are. Also, they may have several names. Many of us have two or three names each.

Good luck!

[epitomeof-crazy.livejournal.com]

Even though this particular incedent has nothing really to do with being plural at all, my best friend's therapist refers to her parents as 'the mother' and 'the father' while everyone else she talks about are referred to by their first names. She/we thought that was amusing that suddenly her parents were no longer real people with real names.

[arimle.livejournal.com]

That makes sense if everyone in your friend's system doesn't regard the biological parents as their real parents. Like if the therapist were talking to a person who didn't consider the biological parents his/her parents, it would be rude to ask questions about "your mother", as rude as if they called them by the shared body's given name. It's sort of like how some multiples refer to their shared body as "the body". We sort of think of our body, our parents, our situation, etc., as just general realities of the material world and aren't particularly tied to them. In general I'm the most tied to them, being frontrunner -- sometimes people refer to our biological parents and sister as "Elmira's family", which I think is kind of irritating, but understandable.

Elmira

[epitomeof-crazy.livejournal.com]

Even though this particular incedent has nothing really to do with being plural at all...

I meant to make it a point that my friend isn't multiple... but yes it would make sense if she were. Probably more sense. I was just reminded of this by the comment made about referring to others as 'the snarky one' and such.

[epitomeof-crazy.livejournal.com]

Meant to close that italics tag after the quote... oh well

[arimle.livejournal.com]

Oh. Haha. Sorry.

the cute kid, the snarky one

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

I would be annoyed if my therapist tried to give me or someone else in here a name. Names are personal! Labels are a little different -- it can be ok to just refer to someone by a shared experience of them, like you and the therapist talking about "the one who hates the wallpaper" or whatever. It depends.

But I REALLY hate when therapists (in particular, but others in general) label system members by emotion - like "the angry one," "the sad one" -- because a lot of people go by this idea that people in a system are just fragments that got split off and one of them "holds all the anger" or "is the one with all the sad feelings," and then think that "in order to heal, you need to integrate those people so that you can feel those emotions." A lot of people get screwed with that paradigm -- like Adam in our system, who *has* a lot of anger, and also has a lot of deep and equally intense emotions running underneath his rage that he didn't want to admit to and feel and deal with. And it was really easy for people to see him as wholly and always angry -- and then to treat him like nothing more than an angry asshole -- and then he never got to experience being treated with respect for his feelings, so he always acted like an angry asshole. It wasn't until people started treating him with respect and even admiration that outsiders started seeing all the other sides of him. And that was a really important healing experience that he wouldn't have gotten if everyone had just gone "oh, he's the angry one, you need to integrate that *part* of you."

what i was originally going to say about this!

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

It's also really interesting sometimes to see -- if you can -- how other people in there see you. So they're the cute kid or the snarky one to you -- you might find that secretly they refer to you as the bossy one or the clueless one or something else, even if they know your name. It can be really interesting to look at it that way, and it helps to see everyone in there as equals instead of the easier position of being the main person who's out (or just thinking you're the main person, which also happens) who's trying to figure everyone else out. And it often helps with system communication.

Re: what i was originally going to say about this!

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

*grins* is quite so! It turned out that the person in our system who initially viewed herself as being the 'original' was regarded by several other people as being too controlling, somewhat narcissistic in thinking of herself as being more real than them, and having very low self-esteem and a lot of self-destructive habits.

Getting the other side of the story, while difficult for her to come to terms with, was beneficial to everyone in the long run.

Re: what i was originally going to say about this!

[arimle.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely. I had a weird sort of epiphany the other day when I was walking up the stairs and I realized that I'm just another person in the back of this body's head. It's taken me a really long time to get to this point and certainly I have even further to go.

I heard a theory awhile ago that the people who get shoved up into the position of default frontrunner are likely the people who are most opinionated, most practical, with the "strongest" personalities (less conciliatory, I mean), and that's certainly true for us, whether it's true or not for others.

ha!

[kaleidescope.livejournal.com]

our theory is that people who end up fronting tend to be the control freaks with a lot invested in acing normal :-)

[20splinters.livejournal.com]

A highly functional multiple acquaintance recommended for us to have people write notes when we were first becoming aware. The main purposes there were to get a feel for who everybody was and minimize dissociations, but a few people signed their notes.

Names really aren't much more than labels, but I guess it is handy to have something other than "the big Bitch" or "the 12 year old." ::shrug:: Of course, I was merely "the Analyst" until recently. I let somebody outside the body name me, but hey, Darth Vader rules!

~Anakin

[sexylittleone.livejournal.com]

My names Adriana and ya... We all had names pretty well when we cam eout to our core. shrugs. Some did not but most did. The ones who didn't we gave names to sometimes and they stuck or didn't. A few had some pretty wild names they chose lol. (Jeans Monteclaire comes to mind, *rolls eyes*). Go figure that he's gay. Or was... shrugs he's gone now.

One of a few things can/may happen: they will show you their names in some fashion; they will tell you directly; they will never speak to you & tell you for their own reasons (don't force things here); or in all probability they will just reveal themselves slowly over time & you'll pick up names as you go.

Adriana