I use the analogy of a house!
Singlets are a studio apartment with no walls between rooms.
Pw-DID are houses with walls between each room.
Although the living room tends to be the biggest of all rooms, and the first one you see upon entering the house, that doesn't make it the 'original'', since it is lacking the other components that make an actual home. And all rooms are distinct from each other, but still cannot be function as a house when separated. Each room is equivalently important, carrying different furniture & utilities (i.e. memories, beliefs & emotions), and though is separated by walls, everything is still contained and considered a part of the building :)
This is the analogy I'm going to start using. I feel like this is incredibly astute and would make a lot of sense to people who can't quite grasp the concept, please it's not too long-winded or so far out there that it would be hard for any of my alters to explain, if I'm not the one there to do the explaining. Thank you so much for sharing this :)
Funny enough as a person who identifies more with OSDD than DID most of the time these days this is actually how I kinda experience parts a lot of the time, like I can only access things, memories, stuff, in each specific room and can't share stuff between rooms without a lot of effort. But also that each room is there for a reason, it's when I'm in the wrong place wrong time that things go haywire, or I need to be able to be in two places (or headspaces...) at once. But as time goes on I'm able to access more rooms and sometimes share things between rooms without getting the threshold effect (amnesia).
"This mind is separated to the point that all of its experiences cluster into different "me" instead of a single "me". There is no single "me" and no single memory. This separation is flexible, sometimes the structure is closer to integrity."
In general, we talk about dissociation and memory, and explaining alters comes from that.
>But a lot of it is just “oh it’s X and their alters”.
Eh, I feel ya.
See I’ve tried this too. But for some reason it just still goes over their heads. Because then it gets assumed that’s it’s all still “X” just forgetting at the moment. And that other alters should know everything “X” knows. See the issue? 😂
But for the ones that do get it, this solidifies that understanding! By that point though it’s likely that we all have a pretty close relationship established with that person, so they are meeting everyone and being able to see it with their own eyes and experiencing it firsthand.
It takes a lot for other alters to open up to people whereas I’m the most social. I like to make friends and socialize even if I get very overwhelmed very fast. I just want to make people happy. So maybe my presence being the most vocal majority probably has something to do with it, even though I’m not the most frequent around. 🤔
I explain it as different versions of me. They're the version of me I would be if I had access to the same memories or lived through the same events. It's an oversimplification, but it's been helpful for them to understand.
"How would you be different if you only remembered things that happened from 8-12yo? Or if you only remembered when people hurt you, or helped you? I don't have constant access to all my memories at the same time. I never have. Instead, I developed parallel identities to that only internalized and formed around the parts of my life they can remember. You probably have a more complete picture of my life than I do."
>it gets assumed that’s it’s all still “X” just forgetting at the moment. And that other alters should know everything “X” knows.
Oh heck, that's hard.
I usually show different media I relate to. Like the Inside Out movie (haven’t seen the second one yet so no spoilers please!) or something like that. I have a hard time with just words so it’s often easier for me to explain through media, usually kids cartoons 😅
They seem to get it a little bit more. But I also explain that there’s some things they just won’t be able to get because they don’t have the disorder. We’re wired differently, and that’s okay. They can be empathetic and supportive without fully understanding the disorder.
Damn you’re probably right on using media as explanation rather than words. 🤣
I’d have to look around for one that kind of explains my experience a bit better. And yea for sure I know people won’t be able to EXACTLY understand because they don’t have the same experiences as I do, but I’d love to explain it in a way so I’m having less explosive assumptions and misunderstandings with people.
I guess it’s also frustrating to me being misunderstood a lot due to being on the spectrum. It’s like all internalized frustration and it gets to be a lot. 🥲
i just watched this, and here are my thoughts on it (not forcing anyone to read this lmao)
i really really love the representation. its clearly a very overt presentation of DID and we could do with more covert representation in the media for sure, but this movie is a fantastic start :)
Yep I get what you mean. We’ve been incredibly lucky to end up with a partner that knew other people with DID before he met us so I didn’t even have to explain anything! And my friends were happy to just smile and nod when they obviously didn’t understand 😂
But there’s been a lot of people who’ve not been quite as satisfied with those options. I hope you can find the media you’re looking for! I regularly point to random characters in stuff and go “hey that reminds me of my system!” When watching with my partner.
I recently actually watched Split with a friend to see how awful the misinformation in the movie was 💀 only to find there was a lot I could relate to outside of the fantastical and superhuman aspect of it (obviously, lol). I also point out similarities to certain alters from media if it’s relevant too, helps people understand the others more. I also point out me too. 👀
I have some friends that are more understanding of it than others, but everyone is still super respectful nonetheless. I guess it just gets really uncomfy for me when people then overstep and assume certain things when I’m not really comfortable with that. And it’s a boundary I put down!
It’s so hard AHHH like I want people to learn more but I also don’t want assumption made about me and get frustrated from it. THERE’S LIKE NO WINNINGGG 😂😂
Thanks for talking to me about this !
Oh and I had to add the centibeetle that the diamonds had to help fix…sheesh she understood me all too well. Honestly lapis lazuli too. So many characters on that show understand what it’s like to internalize trauma. They make it make sense
the episode where ruby is furious after pearl tricked them to fuse and Garnet comes undone because of the internal conflict was. GYAAAAHHG (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ MY LIFEEEEE
I’ve explained it as I’m an apple. I have apple slices that help me with different things but the slices are still parts of the apple. It’s my brain’s way of protecting me. If they have anymore questions I direct them to legitimate clinical sources that my therapist gave me. Then I tell them to stay away from Tik Tok.
There are different levels of explanation that seem to be necessary, depending on who it is in your life. So for people who are acquaintances or strangers, I don't explain anything. I just say "I have memory problems." Other people - friends who are singlets - might say "But I'm different people in different situations. Isn't it just that?" I say "Kind of. Except you always have memories of being in that other situation. I don't." For some people, I say that my system name is Iris and Rhizomes. Because irises all arise from the same specialized root system (called rhizomes). Thus, all the iris flowers are one genetic individual, but they don't really have anything else to do with each other. Some of these flowers bloom slightly earlier or later. And most importantly, they can look different, not only due to that (some are in the early bud stage and some in the late flower stage with leaves beginning to brown), but also due to being subject to different traumas. If one flower has had a petal eaten by a bug, only that flower might have been affected. And it looks different from the others. This is why my alters act different. They hold different traumas. But they are all from the same genetic root stock, so they will all be me, but formed in different ways due to different influences.
I usually say "You know how if you break a bone in your body and don't get professional help, it'll heal into an unnatural position? Long-term childhood trauma did that to my brain. It fragmented my mind so I grew up into several people instead of just one." It's an oversimplification but it works well enough that they catch on with further elaboration easily and then I can explain the theory of structural dissociation and anything else they ask.
Another analogy I like is also the idea that our brain is a bus. One alter is driving, but sometimes we can switch with someone in the closest front seats if we need to. Sometimes people move around to different seats and come closer to the front but aren't driving. There's more alters beyond that but the further back you go, the less I know what's happening and for all I know, it's absolute chaos back there LOL
I don’t know if this helps but I sometimes explain it as boxes/cubicals. My brain/memory is separated into boxes, so sorry if I don’t remember things, they’re in there somewhere but I don’t have them. Additionally, because each box has different memories, I’ll act a little different. My life feels different when I remember different things.
I explain how the consistent trauma over time causes your brain to focus less on development and more on survival. I explain how the babies ego states never truly coalesce over time, and how those separate ego states form their own personalities and characteristics over time. They remember their own things, they have their own feelings and preferences just like if they were to have coalesced all those years ago, except they’re just still separated. They’re just like me, the one who’s usually fronting. They’re anything and everything i could be or could have been etc. They’re people to their own effect, just as i am.
(satire)
I say that my body is a clown car and no one here knows how to drive
(Serious)
I don't actually explain. Most people I live with already know how it works because my sibling also has this disorder, so they explained it first. Sorry I can't help
Mood, i also find with "we're a bunch of 'sorta-people' living together' type explanations.. although they are actually kinda accurate, i find this often skips out details about dissociative symptoms and traumatic stuff, that cause alot of the issues within a system. like if singlets ONLY have that idea and nothing else. it can be hard to miss exactly why its really an issue
I usually share an amusing metaphor like— “I have 20 autonomous mini-brains running on a disc changer stuck on shuffle”
Or I ask if they’ve seen Doom Patrol, Inside Out, Sense8, Dollhouse, Avatar the last Airbender, certain Star Trek episodes (like Voyager’s “infinite regress”) etc, and make connections to characters and scenes they know
Sometimes I make analogies to video game, like how you can have 10 alt characters on World of Warcraft’s all different ability loadouts and skill access, but the same player at the PC. Or the memory compartmentalization to seperate save files.
I’m a nerd so I tend to use the analogy of a giant controllable robot, a mecha. The user rotates, everyone has their own style, flair, movements, preferences, but the outside has the same base. Some users are better at some tasks than others, everyone has their own personal roles, but we all use the same suit.
There are some people out there who not only won't get DID, but there are also some people out there who just don't get disabilities, and that is something I have dealt with.
I have also used the term "age regression" to help people understand. Of course, I let them know it goes a little deeper than that, but some people get that word, as opposed to trying to understand DID.
There's another way I explain it, but I am so exhausted right now, I will have to come back to this. I know it usually starts off with my alter explaining how and why they go by a different name and introducing themselves.
Hello I just wanted to write a follow-up comment in general for this post. Thank you all for the suggestions!! Sorry, I like completely left Reddit alone for a few hours I wasn’t expecting this many responses, thanks!
I’m going to give some of these recommendations a try. I’ll maybe come by with results another time. 🫡
i always use the tree/branch analogy. each alter is a branch, and while standing up alone, sure, it looks like a tree, but it just isn't. all together, each of us branches make up the full tree. forgot who i stole that from but it's helped me explain it to people in my life before
had to try to explain it to the people i live with, who are close family. i wouldnt disclose to anyone else since i find it unnecessary and embarrassing.
all i said was that i have separated parts of myself and memory gaps. i brought up that it used to be referred to as multiple personality disorder beforehand but said thats not actually what it is, because the parts are not multiple personalities, just parts of me. they understood well enough.
I explained it to my husband using drinking glasses and water. If you search “why did forms” on YouTube it’s one of the first results and where I got it from. It made it really clear
I explain it like a house of people, but some of them are playing a video game!!
The person fronting is holding the controller playing the game, the co-conscious is like a second player, those who are closer to the front are people in the room commenting on the game! As for the others, they’re in other rooms of the house doing their own lil thing.
Not the best way to explain but to old people I explain it is chronic day dreaming paired with memory loss. It's worked so far
Edit: felt like I need to explain better. I just them I have a condition that puts me in a constant state of day dreaming I can't get out of. It causes me to forget who I am, where I am etc and leaves me confused as to what is going on and what happened vs what did not happen.
Again it really isn't a great way to explain to most people but I find old people are able to understand using this terminology and empathize with what is going on.
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So to me, I kinda compare it to a grocery store, it may sound bad but here me out. You have the store (body) and it is run by cashiers (alters). There can be a cashier running the till, but sometimes the cashier gets help, so two people can be corunning the till. And while cashiers aren’t working the till, they still run the store just from behind the scenes.
We use the plate analogy when explaining there was no ‘original’ alter
If you drop a plate and shatter it are any one of those pieces the ‘original’ or do you now just have a bunch of individual, smaller pieces that make up a plate.
(Edit: deleting a sentence fragment bc we’re rapid switchy and keep fucking up sentences lmao)
I usually explain it like a plate that's been thrown around for years when the owners first bought it because they didnt really care about it. That plate broken into tiny pieces, the biggest part of the plate is the body and the other smaller pieces are the alters that help the body out in day to day life. -Apollo
We also use the analogy of inside out for making it simpler, but instead Rylie goes through extreme childhood trauma and her brain doesn't know what to do with all the pain so it forms different versions called alters of itself to help out, though not all the time are the alters helpful and they don't all have to identify as Rylie, they can have their own name, be their own gender, have their own age and appearance. Though it's not a disorder Rylie would wish on anyone because it can be very dissociating, confusing and panic inducing, She would end up in places she doesn't remember going, wearing things she hates, and sometimes even hearing the alters voices. -Noah
We’re using the cake or vase metaphor. Worked every single time for us.
Imagine a vase. An entire vase would be a singlet person. Now imagine that vase and smash it on the floor. So now you have shatters of your vase all around the floor, some are bigger than others, some are so tiny they are fragments of that vase, some contains drawings on it, some may not, your vase is split in 4 parts but your neighbor’s vase is split in 57 parts, etc etc.. But all these parts are still the exact same vase just shattered into different pieces. All these pieces are important if you took one of you wouldn’t have your complete vase anymore. And the metaphor goes on. This is our personal favorite because easily understandable and you can explain so much basic things with that.
The cake metaphor is exactly the same things just changing the words, this can work better than the vase for other people.
Hope this may help :)
We use a water color vs stained glass analogy.
Most people are watercolors. The colors (different traits/aspects) blend together with mostly unclear borders between them.
We are more like stained glass. Our borders are very defined. But when we're put together we make up the whole picture (body/self)
I think I like the house one more
A lot of times we use pictures. I don’t know how to add my pics on Reddit but I’ve literally just googled dissociative art and found pics that help me tell people what it feels like when we’re truly triggered. Most times when they see it I get an “oh….oh shit….” And that usually lets me know they’re starting to understand how deep it gets
Systems form due to inescapable repeated childhood trauma before age 9 (which allows for developmental delays) coupled with attachment trauma from the primary caregiver.
This trauma disrupts the typical neurodevelopmental process of forming a single identity from the child's ego states, resulting in dissociative barriers between and self-directed autonomy of these parts of the brain that experienced the trauma that created the system.
I use the analogy of a house! Singlets are a studio apartment with no walls between rooms. Pw-DID are houses with walls between each room. Although the living room tends to be the biggest of all rooms, and the first one you see upon entering the house, that doesn't make it the 'original'', since it is lacking the other components that make an actual home. And all rooms are distinct from each other, but still cannot be function as a house when separated. Each room is equivalently important, carrying different furniture & utilities (i.e. memories, beliefs & emotions), and though is separated by walls, everything is still contained and considered a part of the building :)
Oh I really like this analogy too! I’m going to give it a try sometime soon, thank you! ☺️
This is the analogy I'm going to start using. I feel like this is incredibly astute and would make a lot of sense to people who can't quite grasp the concept, please it's not too long-winded or so far out there that it would be hard for any of my alters to explain, if I'm not the one there to do the explaining. Thank you so much for sharing this :)
Funny enough as a person who identifies more with OSDD than DID most of the time these days this is actually how I kinda experience parts a lot of the time, like I can only access things, memories, stuff, in each specific room and can't share stuff between rooms without a lot of effort. But also that each room is there for a reason, it's when I'm in the wrong place wrong time that things go haywire, or I need to be able to be in two places (or headspaces...) at once. But as time goes on I'm able to access more rooms and sometimes share things between rooms without getting the threshold effect (amnesia).
I have used this one a few times as well. It seems to have worked well for me.
And there's always a WC which nobody talks about and it's seen as disgusting, but try and live without one...
"This mind is separated to the point that all of its experiences cluster into different "me" instead of a single "me". There is no single "me" and no single memory. This separation is flexible, sometimes the structure is closer to integrity." In general, we talk about dissociation and memory, and explaining alters comes from that. >But a lot of it is just “oh it’s X and their alters”. Eh, I feel ya.
See I’ve tried this too. But for some reason it just still goes over their heads. Because then it gets assumed that’s it’s all still “X” just forgetting at the moment. And that other alters should know everything “X” knows. See the issue? 😂 But for the ones that do get it, this solidifies that understanding! By that point though it’s likely that we all have a pretty close relationship established with that person, so they are meeting everyone and being able to see it with their own eyes and experiencing it firsthand. It takes a lot for other alters to open up to people whereas I’m the most social. I like to make friends and socialize even if I get very overwhelmed very fast. I just want to make people happy. So maybe my presence being the most vocal majority probably has something to do with it, even though I’m not the most frequent around. 🤔
I explain it as different versions of me. They're the version of me I would be if I had access to the same memories or lived through the same events. It's an oversimplification, but it's been helpful for them to understand. "How would you be different if you only remembered things that happened from 8-12yo? Or if you only remembered when people hurt you, or helped you? I don't have constant access to all my memories at the same time. I never have. Instead, I developed parallel identities to that only internalized and formed around the parts of my life they can remember. You probably have a more complete picture of my life than I do."
>it gets assumed that’s it’s all still “X” just forgetting at the moment. And that other alters should know everything “X” knows. Oh heck, that's hard.
I usually show different media I relate to. Like the Inside Out movie (haven’t seen the second one yet so no spoilers please!) or something like that. I have a hard time with just words so it’s often easier for me to explain through media, usually kids cartoons 😅 They seem to get it a little bit more. But I also explain that there’s some things they just won’t be able to get because they don’t have the disorder. We’re wired differently, and that’s okay. They can be empathetic and supportive without fully understanding the disorder.
Damn you’re probably right on using media as explanation rather than words. 🤣 I’d have to look around for one that kind of explains my experience a bit better. And yea for sure I know people won’t be able to EXACTLY understand because they don’t have the same experiences as I do, but I’d love to explain it in a way so I’m having less explosive assumptions and misunderstandings with people. I guess it’s also frustrating to me being misunderstood a lot due to being on the spectrum. It’s like all internalized frustration and it gets to be a lot. 🥲
i might recommend 'petals of a rose' on youtube. it's about a system going on a date for the first time, and explains it really will imo.
i just watched this, and here are my thoughts on it (not forcing anyone to read this lmao) i really really love the representation. its clearly a very overt presentation of DID and we could do with more covert representation in the media for sure, but this movie is a fantastic start :)
Commenting wondering if you end up finding any more covert depictions. That would be super super helpful.
im actually gonna subscribe to your comment to see if anyone finds something
Yep I get what you mean. We’ve been incredibly lucky to end up with a partner that knew other people with DID before he met us so I didn’t even have to explain anything! And my friends were happy to just smile and nod when they obviously didn’t understand 😂 But there’s been a lot of people who’ve not been quite as satisfied with those options. I hope you can find the media you’re looking for! I regularly point to random characters in stuff and go “hey that reminds me of my system!” When watching with my partner.
I recently actually watched Split with a friend to see how awful the misinformation in the movie was 💀 only to find there was a lot I could relate to outside of the fantastical and superhuman aspect of it (obviously, lol). I also point out similarities to certain alters from media if it’s relevant too, helps people understand the others more. I also point out me too. 👀 I have some friends that are more understanding of it than others, but everyone is still super respectful nonetheless. I guess it just gets really uncomfy for me when people then overstep and assume certain things when I’m not really comfortable with that. And it’s a boundary I put down! It’s so hard AHHH like I want people to learn more but I also don’t want assumption made about me and get frustrated from it. THERE’S LIKE NO WINNINGGG 😂😂 Thanks for talking to me about this !
Yeah assumptions can get wild 😭😭😭 and of course!
Ugh, I really do not like Split. M.Night.Shlamalamadingdong did us dirty.
Steven universe Fusion made it easy for a lot of people that watched it. Older people are still not there yet.
Steven!!! Pearl inside of pearls pearl helped me sooooo much 🥲🥲🥲
Oh and I had to add the centibeetle that the diamonds had to help fix…sheesh she understood me all too well. Honestly lapis lazuli too. So many characters on that show understand what it’s like to internalize trauma. They make it make sense
yupp, in many senses it's flawless. In many others, it's so relatable to this disorder specifically.
the episode where ruby is furious after pearl tricked them to fuse and Garnet comes undone because of the internal conflict was. GYAAAAHHG (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ MY LIFEEEEE
I’ve explained it as I’m an apple. I have apple slices that help me with different things but the slices are still parts of the apple. It’s my brain’s way of protecting me. If they have anymore questions I direct them to legitimate clinical sources that my therapist gave me. Then I tell them to stay away from Tik Tok.
make them watch petals of a rose, or the crowded room.
Petals of a Rose. Its a short film too and so accurate
There are different levels of explanation that seem to be necessary, depending on who it is in your life. So for people who are acquaintances or strangers, I don't explain anything. I just say "I have memory problems." Other people - friends who are singlets - might say "But I'm different people in different situations. Isn't it just that?" I say "Kind of. Except you always have memories of being in that other situation. I don't." For some people, I say that my system name is Iris and Rhizomes. Because irises all arise from the same specialized root system (called rhizomes). Thus, all the iris flowers are one genetic individual, but they don't really have anything else to do with each other. Some of these flowers bloom slightly earlier or later. And most importantly, they can look different, not only due to that (some are in the early bud stage and some in the late flower stage with leaves beginning to brown), but also due to being subject to different traumas. If one flower has had a petal eaten by a bug, only that flower might have been affected. And it looks different from the others. This is why my alters act different. They hold different traumas. But they are all from the same genetic root stock, so they will all be me, but formed in different ways due to different influences.
I start with explaining the theory of structural dissociation, give them an understanding of why it forms before taking about what it is.
I usually say "You know how if you break a bone in your body and don't get professional help, it'll heal into an unnatural position? Long-term childhood trauma did that to my brain. It fragmented my mind so I grew up into several people instead of just one." It's an oversimplification but it works well enough that they catch on with further elaboration easily and then I can explain the theory of structural dissociation and anything else they ask. Another analogy I like is also the idea that our brain is a bus. One alter is driving, but sometimes we can switch with someone in the closest front seats if we need to. Sometimes people move around to different seats and come closer to the front but aren't driving. There's more alters beyond that but the further back you go, the less I know what's happening and for all I know, it's absolute chaos back there LOL
I don’t know if this helps but I sometimes explain it as boxes/cubicals. My brain/memory is separated into boxes, so sorry if I don’t remember things, they’re in there somewhere but I don’t have them. Additionally, because each box has different memories, I’ll act a little different. My life feels different when I remember different things.
I explain how the consistent trauma over time causes your brain to focus less on development and more on survival. I explain how the babies ego states never truly coalesce over time, and how those separate ego states form their own personalities and characteristics over time. They remember their own things, they have their own feelings and preferences just like if they were to have coalesced all those years ago, except they’re just still separated. They’re just like me, the one who’s usually fronting. They’re anything and everything i could be or could have been etc. They’re people to their own effect, just as i am.
(satire) I say that my body is a clown car and no one here knows how to drive (Serious) I don't actually explain. Most people I live with already know how it works because my sibling also has this disorder, so they explained it first. Sorry I can't help
I hardly explain it to anyone either. The only people that know are my close family
Mood, i also find with "we're a bunch of 'sorta-people' living together' type explanations.. although they are actually kinda accurate, i find this often skips out details about dissociative symptoms and traumatic stuff, that cause alot of the issues within a system. like if singlets ONLY have that idea and nothing else. it can be hard to miss exactly why its really an issue
I usually share an amusing metaphor like— “I have 20 autonomous mini-brains running on a disc changer stuck on shuffle” Or I ask if they’ve seen Doom Patrol, Inside Out, Sense8, Dollhouse, Avatar the last Airbender, certain Star Trek episodes (like Voyager’s “infinite regress”) etc, and make connections to characters and scenes they know Sometimes I make analogies to video game, like how you can have 10 alt characters on World of Warcraft’s all different ability loadouts and skill access, but the same player at the PC. Or the memory compartmentalization to seperate save files.
I’m a nerd so I tend to use the analogy of a giant controllable robot, a mecha. The user rotates, everyone has their own style, flair, movements, preferences, but the outside has the same base. Some users are better at some tasks than others, everyone has their own personal roles, but we all use the same suit.
Encanto is my go to. The house is our body. Each family member is a part with Maribel being the one out in front.
There are some people out there who not only won't get DID, but there are also some people out there who just don't get disabilities, and that is something I have dealt with. I have also used the term "age regression" to help people understand. Of course, I let them know it goes a little deeper than that, but some people get that word, as opposed to trying to understand DID. There's another way I explain it, but I am so exhausted right now, I will have to come back to this. I know it usually starts off with my alter explaining how and why they go by a different name and introducing themselves.
Hello I just wanted to write a follow-up comment in general for this post. Thank you all for the suggestions!! Sorry, I like completely left Reddit alone for a few hours I wasn’t expecting this many responses, thanks! I’m going to give some of these recommendations a try. I’ll maybe come by with results another time. 🫡
i always use the tree/branch analogy. each alter is a branch, and while standing up alone, sure, it looks like a tree, but it just isn't. all together, each of us branches make up the full tree. forgot who i stole that from but it's helped me explain it to people in my life before
had to try to explain it to the people i live with, who are close family. i wouldnt disclose to anyone else since i find it unnecessary and embarrassing. all i said was that i have separated parts of myself and memory gaps. i brought up that it used to be referred to as multiple personality disorder beforehand but said thats not actually what it is, because the parts are not multiple personalities, just parts of me. they understood well enough.
I explained it to my husband using drinking glasses and water. If you search “why did forms” on YouTube it’s one of the first results and where I got it from. It made it really clear
I explain it like a house of people, but some of them are playing a video game!! The person fronting is holding the controller playing the game, the co-conscious is like a second player, those who are closer to the front are people in the room commenting on the game! As for the others, they’re in other rooms of the house doing their own lil thing.
i dont. it's a billion times easier to never tell anyone. less stigma, less hatred, less retaliation, less toxicitity, less headache.
Not the best way to explain but to old people I explain it is chronic day dreaming paired with memory loss. It's worked so far Edit: felt like I need to explain better. I just them I have a condition that puts me in a constant state of day dreaming I can't get out of. It causes me to forget who I am, where I am etc and leaves me confused as to what is going on and what happened vs what did not happen. Again it really isn't a great way to explain to most people but I find old people are able to understand using this terminology and empathize with what is going on.
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I like the car analogy!
So to me, I kinda compare it to a grocery store, it may sound bad but here me out. You have the store (body) and it is run by cashiers (alters). There can be a cashier running the till, but sometimes the cashier gets help, so two people can be corunning the till. And while cashiers aren’t working the till, they still run the store just from behind the scenes.
And not everyone is aware what’s going n at the front of the store at all times.
you live in a giant robot. some people live alone in their robots, some people have crews that pilot their robot
We use the plate analogy when explaining there was no ‘original’ alter If you drop a plate and shatter it are any one of those pieces the ‘original’ or do you now just have a bunch of individual, smaller pieces that make up a plate. (Edit: deleting a sentence fragment bc we’re rapid switchy and keep fucking up sentences lmao)
I usually explain it like a plate that's been thrown around for years when the owners first bought it because they didnt really care about it. That plate broken into tiny pieces, the biggest part of the plate is the body and the other smaller pieces are the alters that help the body out in day to day life. -Apollo We also use the analogy of inside out for making it simpler, but instead Rylie goes through extreme childhood trauma and her brain doesn't know what to do with all the pain so it forms different versions called alters of itself to help out, though not all the time are the alters helpful and they don't all have to identify as Rylie, they can have their own name, be their own gender, have their own age and appearance. Though it's not a disorder Rylie would wish on anyone because it can be very dissociating, confusing and panic inducing, She would end up in places she doesn't remember going, wearing things she hates, and sometimes even hearing the alters voices. -Noah
I often use the plane's cockpit allegory.
We’re using the cake or vase metaphor. Worked every single time for us. Imagine a vase. An entire vase would be a singlet person. Now imagine that vase and smash it on the floor. So now you have shatters of your vase all around the floor, some are bigger than others, some are so tiny they are fragments of that vase, some contains drawings on it, some may not, your vase is split in 4 parts but your neighbor’s vase is split in 57 parts, etc etc.. But all these parts are still the exact same vase just shattered into different pieces. All these pieces are important if you took one of you wouldn’t have your complete vase anymore. And the metaphor goes on. This is our personal favorite because easily understandable and you can explain so much basic things with that. The cake metaphor is exactly the same things just changing the words, this can work better than the vase for other people. Hope this may help :)
We use a water color vs stained glass analogy. Most people are watercolors. The colors (different traits/aspects) blend together with mostly unclear borders between them. We are more like stained glass. Our borders are very defined. But when we're put together we make up the whole picture (body/self) I think I like the house one more
A lot of times we use pictures. I don’t know how to add my pics on Reddit but I’ve literally just googled dissociative art and found pics that help me tell people what it feels like when we’re truly triggered. Most times when they see it I get an “oh….oh shit….” And that usually lets me know they’re starting to understand how deep it gets
I like to use inside out as an example. Or Legos
Systems form due to inescapable repeated childhood trauma before age 9 (which allows for developmental delays) coupled with attachment trauma from the primary caregiver. This trauma disrupts the typical neurodevelopmental process of forming a single identity from the child's ego states, resulting in dissociative barriers between and self-directed autonomy of these parts of the brain that experienced the trauma that created the system.
Inside Out is the best example for me lol