To start, dissociative identity disorder is the most severe type of dissociative disorder and is characterized by an individual having two or more distinct identity states; those identity states are caused by trauma, and cannot be attributable to substance use, identity disruption or confusion due to other illnesses/disorders, or cultural or religious practices. DID forms prior to the 7-9 age range, caused by chronic trauma and disorganized attachments to caretakers (the latter of which can be traumatizing in itself). For children whose default response to said trauma is intense, chronic dissociation, this can prevent their brain and sense of self from properly integrating, which causes separate identities (called alters) to exist; every identity, including whoever is seen as the “default,” is an alter, and the whole of every alter in a single case of DID is called a system. And anyone who says you can have a system without trauma and/or a disorder, can become a system after early childhood, or can choose to become a system is full of shit. ♡
Many people find it most helpful and conducive to their healing to regard all alters as versions of a core host, which is completely understandable and reasonable. Others, like myself, are most functional when regarding alters as individuals, as much as they’re able to be when sharing a singular brain and body. The alters in my system have their own names, senses of self, genders and pronouns, and so on. Our “collective” identity as a nonbinary Sikh lesbian using it/its or she/her pronouns is due to most of us being Sikh, using she/her or it/its, being women or feminine nonbinary, and being almost exclusively attracted to women. Really, being aromantic and asexual are the two variable identities that don’t really vary among alters. Our end goal is functional multiplicity: living well and healing from our trauma while remaining multiple.
We are a polyfragmented system, which is characterized by a low splitting threshold (basically, new alters form/split more easily due to a decreased stress tolerance); ability to split multiple alters at once; a disproportionately high number of fragments (alters who are more “two-dimensional”; often meant to hold onto only one or very limited number of emotions, trauma, etc); expansive and/or very complex inner worlds; extreme and/or overly rigid structure, order, hierarchy, and internal organization; and “hidden” or “unseen” alters. Not every polyfragmented system will possess all of those traits, but it’s common for them to and I personally do.
An inner world, in the context of DID, can present in a vast number of ways. It’s imaginary, of course, as it exists exclusively inside a person’s own head; some or all alters might be here, it can look like anything, and it’s generally shaped by things from real life (trauma, real places, etc). How alters interact in this space can also reflect real-life events, like trauma; for example, there may be certain alters that exist to perpetrate abuse against other alters, serving as a reenactment of the trauma a person has been through. DID can sometimes automatically come with an inner world (either fully or partially formed), but sometimes it doesn’t; systems without visual inner worlds might never have one, or they might be able to invent one that’s either ever-present or temporary. It’s all extremely variable! It can also be very small or very vast, can be alterable or not, and can have unique physics or not. Also, some systems will have amnesia about their inner world when fronting and will be temporarily unable to recall what it looks like, what occurs, what role they may play internally, what others they might interact with, who else exists within their system, etc.
(Note: How alters behave internally shouldn’t be used measure their moral worth in any context; there’s a vast difference between how they treat others in their own brain vs. how they treat external individuals.)
The group of alters who front the most changes with much more frequency than with most systems, which is another relatively common trait of having a polyfragmented system. Generally, we cycle through small collections of alters who are around consistently or semi-consistently for around 4-6 months at a time; sometimes it’s for a shorter span of time, but very rarely a longer one.
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