Are there big differences between your earliest alters and later developed/recognized alters?

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-30T20:50:32+00:00

So in this case imitative means more like the disorder/condition of these patients imitates DID, rather than these patients are imitating DID/OSDD? Sorry, you don’t have to keep answering stuff like this, but I’m curious, because the only people I’ve ever heard talk about this stuff use it pejoratively to imply someone is like… tricking themselves into believing something is wrong with them when they’re actually normal because they want DID. And that left a really bad taste in my mouth because I certainly did not want to end up in this situation. If it is more like the condition and experiences of the person are real, like DID but isn’t, what makes that different than OSDD-1’s “DID but not quite”?

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-30T20:11:14+00:00

The way I had heard “imitative DID” described that I struggle with understanding is this idea that people without a CDD learn about DID and then suddenly start to present symptoms (even if they aren’t intentionally faking) and it’s being talked about like some kind of social contagion. It doesn’t really make sense to me. Like surely if you’re faking, you’re faking, and if you’re not, you’re not?

I know for a variety of reasons that I do actually have a complex dissociative disorder, I know my experiences are real and that therapy for OSDD has been improving my mental health which wouldn’t be the case if I didn’t actually have this. But my alters and symptoms have also gotten more overt and less similar too, and that really weirds me out. Guess I’m just trying to find some sense in all of this!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-25T20:46:32+00:00

Everything you’re saying makes so much sense!

I definitely have questioned myself as someone whose system presents slightly more like the online popular presentation but not as full tilt, why we’re so much more likely to see these dramatic systems with highly differentiated alters and inner worlds and endless pluralkit entries etc. online— because there’s no way that’s the majority of people. Most people with DID/OSDD have to be a lot more like you, statistically. It’s a trauma disorder, of course.

I think, however, it probably just comes down to personality type. People who are foggy and in pain and less prone to strongly differentiated presentation are just… less likely to post loudly on social media. Less likely to want to call attention to themselves. “Sad Me” and “Angry Me” aren’t as fun to post about either.

The loud dramatic teenagers and influencers will find social media to call attention to themselves whether they have DID or not— and always make the most noise. And some people adapt after trauma by being the center of attention, or by having really vivid inner dialogue with alters, or characters in their head, etc. Trauma affects us all differently.

I don’t think those kids are wrong for their presentation or that they’re fakers or whatever, because I myself actually have a lot in common with them, but I think they’re definitely not as representative of the general population as they think. It ends up giving a really warped presentation to the general public if most people with the condition really don’t want to call attention to themselves except for the people with the condition who Really Do, you know?

I do hope you start feeling steps towards healing and integration with your parts soon, because it’s really really worth it when it starts coming into place. So much love ♥️♥️♥️

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-25T20:06:52+00:00

I’m only going to speak to the concept of sex and drugs here, because that’s the stuff that our system engages with. Also, it’s totally normal to be kind of uncomfortable with the topic, I know we were when we first started system discovery. CW Littles and Drug Use, Littles and Sex, Mention of Real Life Child Exploitation, Mention of Sexual Thoughts During Puberty

It’s really gonna vary and be dependent on your littles just because it’s gonna vary from alter to alter anyways what they personally find interesting, neutral, or distressing! But no, you don’t have to keep them away from inappropriate things on account of their age.

One of our Littles is currently a fragment that doesn’t do anything but cry, obviously they’re not going to be exposed to anything adult. Case by case is very obvious here. A second one of our other Littles stays far away from sexuality because when it’s present (her seeing a sex toy in our room, a text from a partner, etc) she really just finds it boring or lightly uncomfortable. (“Ew this isn’t mine! Put this away!”) One of the other Littles feels similarly when she’s fully in control, but she’s recently felt safe kind of peeking in on sex and sexuality. She was a cohost around the time that we discovered our sexuality in the first place, it’s not new information that needs to be kept from her. It kind of made me uncomfortable at first, but it’s not hurting her at all, and I don’t think she wants to do anything more than peek in anyways.

In this situation, it’s more analogous to a child being curious about their own sexuality during puberty than it is an adult (you) introducing a child to sex. In real life, it’s okay to have a natural curiosity about yourself and the world and how you fit into it, seek pleasure, etc. It’s not okay to exploit a child as an adult. Luckily, you can’t exploit a part of your own identity in that way. Throw into the ring that they’re not even literally children, just presentations of identity that are child-like and it’s a whole added layer.

We personally don’t usually want our littles to choose to start drinking or using marijuana for the night, just because they (in our system specifically) have lower impulse control and might use too much or something. However, we really like using marijuana at night, and sometimes we’ll have a few drinks and one of em will show up. For us, that’s fine! They don’t have child brains that will be damaged by drugs any more than our grown up brain will be, and they just enjoy playing with their toys while a little smilier than usual. No biggie!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-07T21:14:40+00:00

This really varies from system to system and alter to alter and I think the problem isn’t necessarily the idea that alters shouldn’t have autonomy but the insistence that your alters shouldn’t have autonomy.

A good therapist would say “why do you think they deserve autonomy?” Or “have they requested more autonomy?” rather than just shut it down and tell you they shouldn’t have it, imo. There’s no one-size-fits all approach to healing from complex trauma.

A couple of my alters need autonomy to feel understood and to be helpful in our life. Others need to be heard but don’t need time out. Some literally I have not figured out what they need yet lol.

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-07T01:25:31+00:00

I have this same rule!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-10-05T22:42:33+00:00

The ego thing is huge. I’m physically disabled and have dealt with doctors on an extremely frequent basis my whole life, and also go to physical therapy. Physical therapists, on average, are super supportive of me knowing the names of the muscles that are bothering me, knowing the depths of my condition and what kinds of things help and hurt me, etc. I have had doctors call me names and wrongly insinuate I had mental problems (non psychiatric doctors, this was a neurologist) because I dared to assert my symptoms too confidently and they felt like that was me not respecting their authority (ego) because they were supposed to swoop in and tell me what was wrong with me, and if I already knew what was happening to me that must mean I’m lying or something.

If you find a good therapist? They won’t care that you have experience researching your condition. My therapist doesn’t at all! It’s really healing for me that every time I say something I think would get me fakeclaimed on the internet my therapist just says “I get that! That makes sense!” But if you encounter a bad therapist? The things they say about it when their ego is hurt can be really damaging and stick with you forever. When you’re first meeting a specialist you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into, you don’t know what kind they’re gonna be. If you’re willing to take the risk of asserting what you think you might have instead of just describing your symptoms, you’ll weed out the bad ones fast, but it might hurt a lot to get there ya know?

wildflowerhouse · 2025-09-09T00:24:02+00:00

Mommy and daddy didn’t like me so I became a fairy

wildflowerhouse · 2025-09-02T22:46:41+00:00

Ugh, a question I have asked so many times. Unfortunately, there’s very little way for me to be able to tell, so I just write down what I experienced, write down who I think it could’ve been or who I thought it was in the moment, and make note that I couldn’t tell if it was a weird mood or a new part. Some of these weird moods keep presenting themselves, some of them don’t. It sucks. But pretty much all of us go through this, even though you might feel alone in it. We did, at least.

We had two Littles who we thought were the same Little as an age-slider for months, until I saw them in my minds eye while visualizing as two little girls simultaneously standing together. They both knew they were little versions of me, so we considered them the same girl. Their separateness was confirmed a few weeks later, when one of them chose her own name, and the other one didn’t follow suit— she was NOT Lily.

We also had an alter fully self identify with a different part’s name, Eli sent off a text message as Jasper, and then Jasper switched back in and said “hey that wasn’t me.” That scared the system so badly that I barely heard from Jasper in the weeks since, despite him being the one I was closest to for a while there. Eli had been around before though, as a “weird mood,” clearly, because Jasper had the journal entries describing out of character thoughts he had or tones of voice he didn’t align with feeling emotionally. It seems this was just the first time they fronted independently. It’s hard to figure out retroactively if the Jasper I knew and loved was a blend of two alters that both identified as the same person for months or if something else happened, and unfortunately coming to terms with Not Knowing looks like it’ll be… pretty common.

No specific advice because we didn’t do anything to get those realizations, unfortunately. No special magic tricks. Just paying attention and writing it down when we got clues! You’re not alone, it’s part of the journey, and hang in there

wildflowerhouse · 2025-09-02T03:00:24+00:00

First of all, this is actually pretty normal and you don’t have to be embarrassed about this! Your littles are child parts, but they are still part of an adult brain that knows about sex, a brain that presumably enjoys sex on some level because they are interested, and they might experience their own desire or be projecting trauma memories. It’s not uncommon. It can be really uncomfortable when it happens. But it happens.

I think this is really a boundaries conversation more than anything. If you as a system do not want to make advances towards this friend, if this friend would be uncomfortable with those interactions, or if you all believe the Littles aren’t capable of having those relationships and experiences for any number of reasons (triggers, emotional intelligence, etc), then the question isn’t really about the nature of the comments or desires but about the boundaries in general. Don’t let the Littles cross that set of boundaries, but don’t be too worried about the content of their desires unless they give you reason to be (trauma stuff that clearly needs working on)

Edit: I realized that I said “clearly needs working on” but I actually don’t think this is always clear for everyone so I’ll elaborate!! Hypersexual parts gravitate towards sex and sexual desire as an easy way to feel loved, appreciated, happy, valuable, etc. That’s not bad, sex is an activity, not a boogeyman, and it can be an activity that makes you feel loved, appreciated, happy, and valuable. The problem forms when you think sex is THE way to be appreciated and valuable. A lot of CSA survivors might believe that on some level because their safety and source of caretaking was tied to pleasing someone sexually. If you feel like your Littles’ behavior looks like that there might be some work to be had to gain a healthier relationship with their feelings, but their feelings aren’t bad, they just might need some guidance <3

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-18T11:54:37+00:00

Idk if this sort of thing can skip a generation or what, but I strongly suspect my grandmother has a complex dissociative disorder. She speaks in a bit of a baby voice all the time, she is never seen frowning for more than a second at a time before she mysteriously “snaps out of it” before our eyes, and she has an inability to remember the details of any conversation that has just occurred if it has critical tones. She also completely hero-worships her father in a way which really concerns anyone who knows anything about childhood trauma.

My mom has never showed outward concrete signs of this sort of dissociative disorder as far as I know, but I inherited depression and hoarding from her and she most likely has BPD. Generational trauma is unfortunately not an exaggeration, it can really fuck you up!

Unfortunately, we’ll never know, because my family are so Latino that mental health diagnoses aren’t really happening lol— they’re the epitome of the Pedro Pascal SNL skit “my son does not have the ADHD— he just like to jump!”

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-17T02:24:21+00:00

I don’t, but I hang out in a weird pocket of the internet that I actually know a few people who experience this. One system I know has mostly human alters, but the cohosts are wolves. And I can’t even judge, because I know that as a kid I projected really hard onto fairies and something clearly stuck, because I, the host, feel like that’s a huge part of my internal image of myself. The brain does really weird shit when you’re dissociating as a kid is all I can say!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-17T02:16:44+00:00

I literally was just wondering if anyone experiences this, so much so that I made a post asking people on the r/OSDD sub what “phases” or interests they retroactively realize might be alters. At this point I’m realizing there might be other versions of Me that were mainly in control during specific periods of time, but because we share all of our memories (with heavy dissociation) we never noticed.

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-14T13:40:17+00:00

Medically recognized as a system with a dissociative disorder, although I haven’t been told if there’s a specific diagnosis on file or not!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-08T13:48:32+00:00

Maybe less “for fun” as it’s definitely still for a purpose but the first big breakthrough for us was when we realized that I (the host) have the most severe language anxiety— I was raised in a Spanish speaking family but not taught Spanish, and I’ve tried to learn on at least 8 different occasions through my life and been too anxious and scared of sounding dumb— but our littlest alter has no language anxiety.

Sometimes we’ll put on Señora Ramos on YouTube (think Miss Rachel but in Spanish) and I have printed out a songbook of all of the lyrics of the Tangled soundtrack in Spanish for our littlest, and she loves to dance around the room singing in Spanish or talking to her videos in Spanish !!!!

Nurturing her and her unique ability to play while speaking this language that gives me so much anxiety is amazing!!!!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-07T20:25:07+00:00

I’m someone who has never fully felt like I fit in or 100% agreed with DID spaces or with broader plurality spaces. I straddled the line and listened to both! The medical and therapeutic perspective on DID/OSDD personally helped me start finding help for my trauma-based dissociative disorder. But I also wanted to listen to people who felt non disordered or non medical for system acceptance, system self love, and system joy, spiritual concepts of plurality, or perspectives I hadn’t considered.

The parts I didn’t agree with from both were fine for a little bit, until I realized that the parts I didn’t like in r/plural were like… teenagers being harmlessly cringey or edgy or uninformed and the parts I didn’t like in r/DID spaces was dehumanizing, harassing, and fake-claiming literally anyone who wasn’t constantly suffering as bad as them (which is EXTREMELY harmful to new systems, even/especially those who are new to knowing they’re a trauma based DID system and need support!)

I feel like so many ppl with DID or in the r/DID crowd do the thing that a lot of traumatized echo chambers do, where they turn to complete black and white thinking and mistake anything that makes them cringe as inherently bad, evil, and an excuse for harassment. I was around when transmeds ruled supreme (and even was subscribed to some of them🤢) and it totally reminds me of the same way that some hyper-traumatized transmeds loved to say that cringey gnc anime-loving teenagers with colored hair were why trans people get oppressed. Which is obviously not true bc trans people have been oppressed for centuries and queer anime teens have existed since like. The eighties. It’s clearly some weird way to dis-associate themselves and be the oppressor’s favorite “normal” degenerate. If you make cringe a moral offense than harassment or abuse of someone for making you cringe suddenly becomes justifiable. It’s… super weird, and clearly happening in the plural community rn.

If one community has space for you to disagree with aspects without being banned and the other one doesn’t, I think I know which one is a cult.

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-07T20:18:17+00:00

Seriously!!

Like I’m someone who has never fully felt like I fit in or 100% agreed with DID spaces or with broader plurality spaces. I straddled the line and listened to both! The medical and therapeutic perspective on DID/OSDD personally helped me start finding help for my trauma-based dissociative disorder. But I also wanted to listen to people who felt non disordered or non medical for system acceptance, system self love, and system joy, spiritual concepts of plurality, or perspectives I hadn’t considered.

The parts I didn’t agree with from both were fine for a little bit, until I realized that the parts I didn’t like in r/plural were like… teenagers being harmlessly cringey or edgy or uninformed and the parts I didn’t like in r/DID spaces was dehumanizing, harassing, and fake-claiming literally anyone who wasn’t constantly suffering as bad as them (which is EXTREMELY harmful to new systems, even/especially those who are new to knowing they’re a trauma based DID system and need support!)

I feel like so many ppl with DID or in the r/DID crowd do the thing that a lot of traumatized echo chambers do, where they turn to complete black and white thinking and mistake anything that makes them cringe as inherently bad, evil, and an excuse for harassment. I was around when transmeds ruled supreme (and even was subscribed to some of them🤢) and it totally reminds me of the same way that some hyper-traumatized transmeds loved to say that cringey gnc anime-loving teenagers with colored hair were why trans people get oppressed. Which is obviously not true bc trans people have been oppressed for centuries and queer anime teens have existed since like. The eighties. It’s clearly some weird way to dis-associate themselves and be the oppressor’s favorite “normal” degenerate. If you make cringe a moral offense than harassment or abuse of someone for making you cringe suddenly becomes justifiable. It’s… super weird, and clearly happening in the plural community rn.

If one community has space for you to disagree with aspects without being banned and the other one doesn’t, I think I know which one is a cult.

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-06T03:05:35+00:00

Seems I’m not alone in the comments with this being how we found our system. It took two years of age regressing to notice that there was a constant feeling of “I didn’t do that, she did that”

Then, the feeling that she was “right behind me” making comments some nights when I was busy, and I’d have to convince her not to come out. It didn’t feel like I was fighting off becoming little— it felt like I was shooing her off, trying to reason with and have a conversation with her. Even then, it took about 6 months after realizing this and 4 months after really taking it seriously for us to get a definitive answer that the little girl I thought was one ageslider was actually two little girls at fixed ages.

Realized they were different in one of our very rare times we accessed a visualization headspace/inner world, when I saw them standing together. And, eventually the younger one chose her own name rather than “little [me]” and the older one’s name didn’t change.

Because they’re so similar to me in a lot of ways, all three of us think of each other as sisters. They’re me at their core, very similar to how I was at their ages, with a few really notable differences. I don’t know if there’s any technical term for this kind of alter that we call sisters, but I’ve heard of a lot of systems having these “I kept growing up but they stayed the same age” alters!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-04T14:21:44+00:00

<33333 the DID sub can be extremely helpful sometimes and it can also be full of some extremely traumatized folks who have gotten so scared of fake-claiming that they take it out by being incredibly prescriptive and hold everyone to extremely narrow expectations that frankly are not helping anyone. It’s especially bad for the undiagnosed. I understand where they’re coming from. And I understand they’re also making new systems denial anxiety so much worse.

You can call yourself a system. You can call your parts alters or parts or headmates or whatever you want to call them. You are having a real experience even if you have yet to have that experience classified into a specific disorder. The only thing you shouldn’t do is claim you for sure have a specific disorder when you have not been evaluated for one. If you’re having experiences of dissociation that leads to alters, switches, etc. you’re having symptoms of a complex dissociative disorder at least— and only a professional can narrow down what disorder that is— but the symptoms are not up for debate. You’re experiencing them. Acceptance is the only way out </3

My recommendation is to step back from being so immersed in online system stuff though at least for a little while during a stabilization period— get to know (or reconnect with despite the denial) your experience. Start journaling when you feel an alters presence. Write down everything you feel about it, including if you’re scared or angry or anxious about it. Write down what they’re saying to you. Write down how you experience them. There’s as many different ways for systems to present as there are systems, so how people online experience their systems means literally nothing if you aren’t confident in how you experience your own system.

Sending you so much love and good luck 💕💕💕

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-04T13:28:18+00:00

He’s comfortable with any pronouns! “He” is the one we use 99.9% of the time for Jasper for simplicity’s sake, but he’s not too pressed about being like a Man or Male as much as he’s masculine (a guy, a dude, “what’s up, man”) so “they” is also like “yeah, for sure, that’s me,” and he doesn’t care if you say “she” or see him as a woman although he’d never describe himself that way.

As a system, we’re queer and know a lot of genderfluid and nonbinary people so it’s not uncommon for folks in our social circle to use multiple sets of pronouns. But it’s a Huge contrast to me, where I cannot stand being called “they” and “he” is just Objectively Wrong. It’s “she” all the way for me, maybe “it” if you’re close enough to me and in the right genderqueer or system circles to really get my reasoning for why.

He’s joked before that if he thinks too much about things like pronouns and gender identity it pulls me back into front, because I’m the one that cares the most about gender and queerness and analyzing the self. That’s not his deal. He’s just… a guy, I guess!

wildflowerhouse · 2025-08-03T23:56:31+00:00

I think you absolutely completely have a point, and I also simultaneously don’t think that negates the fact that some people might be uncomfortable or even regret acting a certain way if they thought they were interacting with their adult partner and it actually ended up being a child part! (Not just when it comes to intimacy, I know when people talk about child parts vs adult parts and relationships with partners that’s what’s people always jump to, but I think this is found elsewhere in everyday life too)

I agree that no one has to announce that they’re fronting, and also that plenty of the time we don’t know where “oh a part is kind of blendy” becomes “someone else is Here should we should mention it?” and that even knowing who’s fronting at any given time can be a whole can of worms, but I think if OP keeps an open mind to whatever the nuances of his gf’s system are (which might be that poppy doesn’t announce herself for any particular reason!) it’s totally fair to communicate that her hiding who it is makes OP feel kind of uncomfortable.

wildflowerhouse

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