What is DID? What causes it?

We have a page addressing general DID info here. We recommend reading that prior to reading the rest of this FAQ!

The following questions are answered much more from a personal perspective about our own system and lived experiences.

Are you aware of when different alters are taking control?

Yes, we are generally aware of our switches. At this point in our healing, most of them are intentional. And yes, the rest of us do typically remember what happened when other alters were fronting!

People often think of DID as a disorder of “losing control,” but actually some part of the brain is always in control—it’s a high amount of mental control that enables a person to function with DID to begin with! The whole goal is to function as effectively as possible even under stress or in hard situations.

What does your everyday life look like with this disorder?

We do all the normal things most people do in life!—work our job, parent our kids, care for our home, run errands, pursue hobbies. We just do it as a “team” of different personalities who have to take turns to accomplish all that we do. Some days we have tough PTSD to work through, and need to spend more time doing self-care, but most days our life is very “normal.”

From the outside, these switches mean that our voice, mannerisms, and personality will change regularly throughout the day. This is normal for us and having a switch does not mean anything is wrong! It usually just means another alter wants to be out for whatever activity or conversation we’re engaged in at that time, for one reason or another.

Which alter is named “Constellation”?

All of us are! We chose Constellation as a collective name which refers to all of us and our entire system. Like a group of stars that form a bigger picture together if you connect the dots, we are all individual alters that together form the whole Constellation. There is no “main person” and “others,” nor are some alters more important than others. Each one is a real, elaborated, matured aspect of the original personality of the child we were, preserved by the DID in the midst of trauma that could have otherwise obliterated us entirely.

If you’d like to hear the story behind our name, there is a video here!

How would you like me to refer to you?

We all go by Constellation, because it’s a system name we all love, so when in doubt please feel free to use that!

However, if you’d like to get closer to us, knowing which alter you’re talking to and interacting with will make a difference in your experience with us. We are all distinct, like vastly different siblings from the same family. Using “Constellation” is akin to calling us by the family surname or by the name of a larger group we each love and represent. We love it, but we also have our own individual names that matter to us.

So if you know which alter is out (sometimes we wear a nametag, or you can feel free to ask), just know that being called by their own first name might make their whole day. It means a lot to us!

For more information on
why it’s useful for alters to have names,
check out our video here.

I’ve known you for [X] years and now you’re talking about having all these alters. What happened to the person I knew before?

This is hard to answer because you probably knew more than one alter! Many alters were involved in daily life over the years. Before we were aware of having DID, the person we “presented as” externally was a combination of the various alters who were around at that time. Who you knew might depend on what time of life you got to know us, or what we did together.

No part of the child or the person with DID truly disappears or is lost. Some may go “dormant” for a time, but they are always there, even if they fuse and join with other alters to become part of a larger self. So any parts of our system you knew then are still here, and still exist! You may just need to talk with us to find out who they are.

We have a video here where Ithy talks
about her experiences with being a dormant alter.

Why do some of the alters have male names? Do you consider yourself gender-fluid or trans or otherwise LGBTQIA+?

Not at all. We believe God created us a woman, and that God’s designs for gender and sexuality are beautiful and purposeful, and our body is valuable and just as much us as our soul. Not only that, but it’s vital for every alter’s healing to fully own their body for themselves.

Some alters have male names because, unable to live life at the front growing up, they spent a long time (sometimes years) playing male characters in our books, and during that time most of them were disconnected from our real life and genuinely believed that they were male characters in our head rather than real people. Many of those parts of our personality were “coded” masculine, which can be for a variety of reasons:

A. We grew up exposed to some some patriarchal ideologies and gender stereotypes that made us disconnect parts of ourself that didn’t feel “feminine” enough.

B. The trauma those alters went through made them feel male to handle how brain-breaking or perverse it was.

C. Some of those alters rescued other alters in the midst of trauma, taking the front and the suffering for them, thus coding them as stereotypical “male hero” archetypes in our mind, and eventually in our novels.

The male alters in our system love to discuss how they have healed and adapted to understanding and embracing being a woman, so please feel free to ask them questions about their own experiences with gender dysphoria.

We also have TikToks about why male alters come to be,
and about gender dysphoria.

Why do you use plural pronouns? What are your pronouns? Do I need to use male pronouns with the male alters?

Do whatever feels comfortable for you! We aren’t fragile or picky. We often do use male pronouns for the male alters to honor where they’ve lived and grown up—as guy characters in our books—and their roles within the sphere of our system, but each one is proud to be a woman.

As for plural pronouns, we are each individual personalities, who grew up in very different pieces of life, and have vastly different life experiences, perceptions, memories, and feelings. We’re far from monolithic. Using plural pronouns just acknowledges there is more than one of us here!

If you’re wondering how to refer to us or about us as a collective, she/her is fine and appropriate, but they/them in the plural sense is always appreciated!

How many alters do you have?

This is difficult to answer because we are what is considered a “polyfragmented” (many fragments) system. In essence, even our alters have alters. The number we have continues to be in flux as we discover more fragments and also experience fusions.

That said, we have around 20-ish prominent figures in the system (most are featured here on our site’s main page) and we expect to fuse down to roughly that number in the course of our healing process.

What do your kids think about this? How do you juggle being a mom?

Our kids know quite a bit about all the alters, and can even recognize many on sight, and like to guess who’s out. That said, it’s important to us as a parent to keep up a cohesive unified front with the kids. We are all Mom to them, and try to be consistent in how we interact with them. But being open about the alters keeps us in reality-based authentic relationships with others, so it isn’t something we hide from them. This is the reality of our brain and lived experiences, so all of us living life as mom and friend is so good for healing!

How do you function with DID? Is it crippling at all?

Daily life is more vibrant and full than ever since knowing about the DID! Before we knew about the alters, our brain would often “zone out” or dissociate or tell us that we weren’t capable to avoid triggers that might cause us to remember our trauma. Living in dissociation actually takes a lot of energy, and we were chronically exhausted and felt overwhelmed much of the time.

Now that we have been able to look at our past and process many of our trauma memories in safe therapeutic spaces, we are freed up to live in the truth, vibrantly using all of our brain. We can have rough mental health days like anyone can, and sometimes look a little ADHD or forgetful in our everyday life, but on the whole we manage a lot more than we ever could before, with the ability to bring all alters’ skillsets to the table.

How do you know what you’re experiencing isn’t demonic possession?

First of all, all parts of our system confess and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord!

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”—1 John 4:2.

Theologically speaking, we don’t believe it’s possible for the Holy Spirit and demons to both dwell in the same person, so we don’t believe a Christian can be demon possessed. Here’s a link to some more information on that: https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/video/can-born-again-christians-be-demon-possessed/

Secondly, alters are all real parts of the human being with DID; they are organic parts of that person’s mind/brain and are not spiritual forces or supernatural entities that come into the person from outside.

Here is a video we’ve made on this topic as well.

What is it like to have alters? Do you have conflicts with each other? Is it hard to take turns fronting?

Having alters is like being a whole team with different skills we can access, like a Swiss army knife. (Although sometimes you can’t get out an alter when you need them, and that can be distressing.) Once in awhile we have conflicts, but on the whole our system is a very harmonious one. One hard thing is having very different tastes in food, style, and clothing, so that sometimes you end up fronting with a meal on your plate you’d never eat, or wearing an outfit that makes you feel uncomfortable! We have to negotiate with each other over big life changes, decisions, and how we spend our time. It’s also important to make sure every alter has the chance to engage in their interests, hobbies, and relationships, and isn’t stifled out of life for long periods of time.

What happened in your childhood to cause this?

Trauma is a very private, personal, horrific lived experience of the different alters who have gone through it. That’s information we only give out as needed, after building friendship and trust for a long time.  And mostly that’s to protect you. These topics are world-shattering and heavy. They spur loving, good people to action. It would be like handing you a heavy boulder that you have to keep private—while also having to figure out what to do with it. While we stand publicly in advocacy for DID systems and childhood abuse survivors, the individual details of our trauma we keep to ourselves unless necessary to share about. Thank you for wanting to engage with such a serious topic!

What does healing with DID look like? Are you not trying to fuse (integrate) all of the alters into “one person”?

Healing will look different for every DID system. Some do aim toward fusing all of their alters into a singular personality. For others, that is not desirable, because they value their differentiated selves, and/or it may not even be possible for them to fully fuse because the structure of the brain was impacted so greatly or from such a young age that there is no singular “sense of self” to recover back to. These systems may instead aim for what is called “functional multiplicity,” healing the trauma and dissociation but remaining multiple selves. We are in that latter camp.

For us, healing looks like every alter being able to live and thrive in any part of life they want: to have a deep relationship with God and grow in faith, to have fulfilling and healthy relationships with others, to feel and express the full range of human emotion, to be fully present and embodied, and to be able to hold both good and bad experiences and not split or dissociate any of it. Our goal is to see every alter freed from trauma to flourish, grow, pursue passions, glorify and enjoy God, and love others wholeheartedly.

As a highly fragmented system, we do experience a lot of fusions in our course of healing. Many alters survived by “cutting off” parts of themselves throughout our life, whether that be traumatic experiences they couldn’t bear to remember, or emotions that felt too horrible or intense to endure. Taking those parts of themselves back is hard work but deeply healing, and doing so frees that alter to be actively involved in life.

We also really value the versatility our system gives us, to use a number of very different gifts and personality styles and perspectives. We consider those things “spoils of war” from the suffering we’ve endured. Developing these differences kept us alive in horrific circumstances once, and healing means we can turn those diverse skillsets toward a multitude of gifts and callings that God has for us to live out.

How do you hang on to your faith or live with this as a Christian?

Jesus is our steady rock, our immovable lifeline, and we can’t imagine going through this healing and processing of trauma without Him. He has held us and walked with us through the darkest pains imaginable, and gently drawn each part of the system into His grace. Every single alter has their own unique and growing relationship with Him.

It’s also wonderful to know that Jesus treasures every aspect of our system, all parts of who we are. Not a single one of us is forgotten, overlooked, or unimportant to Him.

Sometimes drinking a cup of bitter suffering is where you find the love of Christ tastes sweetest and affects you the most keenly, and we’ve definitely found that to be true in the trauma and hardship we have walked through. Having His grace enables us to move forward and have grace for one another on tough days, as well as to hold tight to trust in Him when it feels like there is no safety or justice in this life.

We can think of no better, more beautiful gift He’s given us after our suffering than this—the opportunity to so thoroughly know and love Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Thank you so much for reading and being curious!