Hi everyone! I don't know anyone irl that can relate to even CPTSD let alone DID, but every time I read anything here I feel a kind of solidarity or kinship that I've never, ever felt before. Huge, huge thank you everybody and I love you all!! ❤️

I'm very new to DID (in fact I've been actively trying to avoid it my whole life for some reason) and have only started to try accepting it after our T brought it up. And it's been hell, although there were some periods on heavenly and unprecedented feelings of freedom and true self-expression, they now just feel like some fever dream. I keep swapping between trying to accept DID, and trying to deny it. I feel so stuck and exhausted. I thought it would be a good idea to ask you all some newbie questions to help me make sense of what's happening.

To be clear: I'm not seeking diagnosis which I understand is against the rules anyway, I'm just hoping to get advice and hear others' experiences. I've felt alone in this for most of my life and it's supportive to think that I might not be :)

1. Two alters seem to be intensely fighting over the front, and although both want to accept that we have DID and that the other really exists, neither can really bring themselves to believe it. Is this normal? Any advice?

2. Let's just say my hostname is X. One of my alters, Z, has been fronting so much lately, and as she was trying to accept it and started trying to called herself Z instead of X, it felt so wrong to say "I am Z", where as in our head there's no confusion at all that she's Z. It also felt just as wrong to say "I am X" which is confusing. "I am nobody?" Idk. It's like the alters are clear internally but they all think they're really the host and their internal names are false. Has anyone experienced this? How did you overcome it?

3. I often can't seem to accept that I'm hearing an alter in my head, I just explain it away as a combination of my subconscious and my inner monologue. I can't rule that out, but neither can I rule out that it's an alter. Help? Is this normal when a system starts becoming aware of itself? Does it change over time and become clearer?

4. I've had many dissociative experiences and the amnesia, especially in times of high emotions. Now that I'm becoming more mindful, I can feel those as shifts. The problem is that for the last week or so, I can't seem to feel the shifts. Hardly any face-scrunching. I just seem to be one alter and then I'll go for a long walk and somehow come home another alter. I actively spend the entire walking feeling and thinking, trying to be aware but I don't notice anything. Somehow I just realise later that I've changed. Shouldn't there be some noticeable shift?

5. Speaking of switching, I thought if I accepted DID I'd just be able to switch alters like some cool magic trick, but it's not like that at all. Sometimes we get stuck and can't remember or tell who is who or what is what - no control, so gross and messy. Sometimes it happens by itself, sometimes I can "channel" another alter and sometimes they can actually slide into the front (woohoo) and it feels sooooo so good, and so right; so finally natural in my own existence... and then it fades and it seems like just some imagined fantasy rather than something that actually happened even though I leave physical marks to be remembered. With time and training, do you learn to deliberately switch with more control? Is it like a skill?

6. A common situation for me is feeling like there's one "me" controlling all of the thinking, and some other foreign "me" having all of the feelings. Sometimes the thinking me will just let the feeling me do what it wants with the body without my engagement. It doesn't seem to fit the co-front or co-con model from what I'm reading. Any insights?

7. So much of what I'm supposed to do seems to be listening to how I feel. There are so many times where I can't tell how I feel. It's like I'm just a detached and floating thinking-machine. I don't know what my hobbies are, my gender or sexual prefs, my worldview, my relationships, etc. It all just comes up blank, or ambiguously uninterpretable. Is this normal? How do you work out how you feel? Are you ever unable to access your feelings too?

8. I'm scared of learning about DID roles like gatekeepers, persecutors, etc, because I'm worried about giving my subconscious ideas that it might start to imitate which would make an honest diagnosis harder. Any advice? Am I being smart or silly?

9. Ever since I let myself be open to the idea that I might have DID, music is literally slower to our ears! We literally spent an hour measuring the tempo of a bunch of songs in a bunch of different apps and on different devices and couldn't find any evidence of it being some computer problem. Like what the hell? Why does music consistently sound slower now?! Is there something wrong with my brain?

10. Finally when systems hear alters in their heads, what exactly is it like? Is it easily distinguishable from the internal monologue? Does it ever feel like it could have come from an externally source (even though you know it didn't)? Are the voices different than the host's voice? My head never seems to stfu but I wouldn't exactly call it "voices". It's more like what you read in your head when you're reading. Does any of this relate to you?

For those who have the time to answer, thank you so much in advance!! ❤️ Much love to you all, and all of your beautiful pluralities.

• Host and/or P (can't tell, sorry)