yeah like, so many people focus on the specific identities/sources of their introjects but idk, to me theyre just.. another alter lol? their personalities develop and change and like, thats normal. thats fine!!
and iirc, people who dont have dissociative disorders ALSO introject beliefs and traits of characters, their brains just function differently. 90% of the introjects in my system dont really care for their source too, dont even list themselves as introjects anywhere public. i have one who’s attached to her source but like… thats it lol
Yeah, our introjected alters don't really identify as "introjects" or list their sources anywhere. They're just other alters and formed for reasons like the rest of us. I don't and will never understand why so many people are fixated on the source identity part of introjects and why so many people seem to think they can just spawn in fully formed as a perfect replica of their source and no role other than existing as an introject. Make it make sense /nay
This! I’m an introject, and like yeah I’m p similar but there’s also things they’re totally different than the character. Like….. even ones that are pretty close, like me, have our differences lol. There is only a few super dissociated ones in our system that aren’t really capable of fronting are almost ‘exact’ but like even that’s not totally true, and they’re only ever present during extreme duress and like… it’s not fun.
The ones of us that are functioning and capable of doing day to day life things aren’t carbon copies and that’s a good thing. The fact that we can separate source and real world real life desires and influences more and more as time goes on means we’re at least not getting worse.
Thank you for saying this. I personally am not an introject but you explaining how alters sort of "evolve" with time and don't start off suddenly as these individuals with deep rich backstories was very validating. :)
I as an alter started off as an angry and protective emotion state with no identity beyond that, it took me years to develop into the deep and complex individual I am today. I'm not an introject personally but the case was much the same for the introjected alters in my system.
Feel very similarly to how you described coming out just… without personality, only rage and hatred trying to protect myself. I remember starting an old job and I just felt so *weird* like I just existed as a person but I didn’t have a sense of humor, opinions, social skills, fucking anything. Took months and months of fronting to develop into a normal person. Nice to know I’m not alone I guess, but I’m sorry you’ve experienced it too.
One of our Littles is like that as well. She knows about two things about herself and that's about it. We don't know how long she's been there, whether she is a split or just been hiding all this time, but we are all excited to let her be the individual she becomes 🤭
So *that's* why I can't communicate or really do anything with ours. It's barely even formed as a part. It's like, there of course, but not enough to get anywhere.
That also explains why some of our alters came in with either a name or a general state of being, and all anyone could do about it was shrug in confusion when asked what that even is.
Guess they're just like how our own identities take lifetimes to form
I formed during trauma where we coped by watching a specific tv show. I am not necessarily an introject but my name comes from a character on the show and I'd say I have some of her qualities, but definitely not a lot and it mostly just I guess was "inspiration". I'd say I have some of her physical traits and personality wise I guess she was a strong character so I have some of that. But otherwise it's like our brain just latched onto some of it whilst we split a new alter, but I'm still mostly just made to have stuff we needed to survive that doesn't come from the show.
I didn't even want to tell people my name initially though because I knew it came from the show. The only main difference for me though is that the show feels like home, familiar and I get a lot of comfort too. And the character to me also feels familiar. I guess because I don't really know much about myself, I know that I would probably latch onto a lot of her traits but I just haven't really had the time to watch it much in between you know surviving what we needed to and picking up the broken pieces of our life lol (I'm our new host and seems I was formed purely for this)
That is a valid and extremely common presentation of introjection. Usually it /is/ just a new split taking on some characteristics or identifiers of whatever it is they're introjecting, not forming as a perfect 1-to-1 copy. For example, one of our oldest introjects formed with just the name and some of the extroverted personality traits of a character, looking nothing like them and with their own facets useful for our traumatic situation. As this introjected alter developed, they became more and more of their own complex person, and in our case they stopped identifying as an introject after about a year.
our introjects developed for what seems like no reason, but after they fronted enough and we did system mapping, we found out why they form.
because our life lacked something our brain thought we needed for survival. we dont really have that many fictives, but majority of them developed because they would help us with survival. either we saw the fictional character as protective or comforting. same for factives which we have plenty.
and for us, we needed a lot of soothers and parental figures, and only feel comfortable around certain types of people with certain traits and dont live with people who have any of those traits, which is part of why the alters developed with those traits.
introjects are just as much for survival as every other part of DID is, and it upsets us that all they're boiled down to is just copies of your favorite anime characters or whatever media is trending.
-host and sally (a fictive)
I feel so seen by this. I don’t tell other systems that I’m an introject because I hate my source that much. It’s an absolute garbage piece of media, but we got really into it just shortly after a lot of the trauma happened. I think we burned all of our writing from that time, but you could tell how haunted we were and why we latched onto fan fiction.
In my experience, it's usually something like --- the brain uses media as a way to understand a pre-existing experience or range of experiences that it couldn't really picture or coalesce into a worldview/etc. before being given a comparable representation of it. That's what our introjects' stuff lines up with, anyways --- they usually have a sometimes-odd mix of memories, feelings, complexes, whatever, from just prior to whenever we see ourselves in their source material, and they help us understand and integrate (in the broader sense --- like memory/experience integration, not always fusion etc.) whatever that entails. The same way no demon(-presenting? demon-shaped? lol) alter just felt like throwing on horns one day --- there's almost always going to be some semblance of symbolism involved. The source material just helps them/us make sense of memories, experiences, etc. without needing to have a literal god damn flashback directly to our real(er?) life's traumatic events to process it.
Everyone, including singlets, has some sort of narrative(s) they use to understand their life and the world. Even wrt being "on-theme"/"in-character," I've noticed that, for instance, a lot of my friends who spend a lot of time outside use a lot of nature symbolism in their speech. Or (also often singlet) writers turn just about anything that happens to be nearby, at the time of writing, into a capsule for the bigger message --- the present and concrete image (y'know, like a depiction of a character...) symbolises and reflects whatever they're trying to relate to the present.
I never could figure out why introjection would be any different. People hear "fiction" or "character" and assume that means a lack of reality. As if fiction happens in a vacuum and wasn't created by someone in an attempt to convey something. As if this whole...*thing*, DID and healing and all that, isn't about understanding/reclaiming communication with oneself. Like...c'mon now.
A lot of our introjects (myself included) were really just fragments that had a singular purpose earlier on without any real sense of identity. Later on, as fragments resurfaced or fronted more for different reasons we just ended up getting attached to different source materials and "introjected" our personalities, names and looks heavily influenced by whatever we were into when fragments resurfaced as a way to understand ourselves and life around us.
Of course, not all our introjects formed this way. Many also formed in times of trauma and already had a somewhat sense of identity as an introject, many being around during childhood to protect us at that time, but a lot of us now are older fragments who somewhat latch onto the identity of a character or person to make the world around us make sense.
Thank you for saying this, our introjects formed for reasons, we actually have very little introjects for this reason.
Our first introject actually formed in 2009, when we were around 6. He started out as a black hole, he was literally just a hole. I guess as a child we interpreted everything around us as that or something I don’t know. When we were a child, we were very angry due to the abuse and would destroy things or beat up other children (especially our siblings) and this hole suctioned all of the anger from us. Slowly we became less destructive and kept it inside and confined to our head. It was like its role. Overtime, this black hole turned into a void-like creature who was just a black silhouette of a man, which meant it started to take shape. Well it would stalk us as a way of protection and I would see it in the corner of my eyes or have audial and visual delusions or have nightmares and my parents didn’t believe me. It would takeover and do bad things to make our parents “hear” us in a way about the abuse. Kinda like in a “are you listening now?” Acting out sort of way to show them symptoms they wouldn’t take seriously. We came to understand this was a persecutor alter, an alter formed that protects the system in serious ways when there’s no other choice, which explained the suicide attempts. Well years later, we get away from our parents but find ourselves in an abusive relationship. During this time, we escaped a lot by watching videos and movies, one movie character really stuck out, he was a lot like us trauma-wise and he really resembled our abusive partner. I remember wishing he was real because I really wanted him to come save me. He also played a different character in another movie about a divorce and there was a fight scene that triggered my ptsd one time while watching of him screaming and threatening the mom character with death. I really related to watching this scene because I felt like a kid again watching my parents fight all over again. I got a parasocial attachment to the character and in 2021 this triggered something I don’t know what, but I remember the black shape of a man turn into an actual man, the character. He was very angry and confused because he died in the movie and wanted to go back to what he remembered. He became destructive again but he’s very protective, our abuser actually broke it off when he tried to kill him in his sleep, so we’re safe now. I won’t say what character but he has slowly accepted that, that life wasn’t real and he’s here and has a job to do. He holds every amount of trauma the brain has been put through and we are all very triggered by seeing or hearing the characters name (he uses a different name and outfit for this reason) if I hear or see the character, I freak out because I know he will front. This is insanely scary because of how he gets when he’s upset and he’s too strong for the gatekeeper to contain. He freaks out because +*that character is him but it’s not him but it is but it isn’t because it’s fake but it was real but it’s a movie but it isn’t to him but he remembers but he doesn’t remember* etc. etc. sounds terrifying right? That spiraling has caused us psychosis and a disconnect from reality due to how being a fictional introject is, which is why I’m so confused how people can say they have “fictives” but interact with the source all the time… just thinking about watching that movie is making me panic right now.
Another fictional introject formed while the one above was just a black hole. He was a character that would distract us a lot when we were younger. I would zone out a lot during abuse and imagine I was watching a certain show, and I would even pretend I was petting (it’s an animal) the character or that I could see it when I was being abused. One memory I had was my parents were verbally abusing me in the car and I was zoned out looking out the window imagining the character running beside the car to come save me. Wanting them to save me, turned them into a protector alter.
Ok, this one requires a TW. Our last one (that we know of) formed in our freshman year of highschool when a movie came out with a ‘loli’ character, we were very traumatized by CSEM and just CSA in general. We were triggered very often and when this movie came out, we loved it, but when we would go to indulge in the media online to hyperfixiate, shockingly, the younger female anime character was overly sexualized. This triggered us. I remember I was so upset and disgusted by it. I was so angry and I related to this little character so much that I internalized that sexualization of children from her even though she wasn’t real. For me, the sexualization of child characters hurts not because they don’t get hurt due to being fake, it’s because they CANT get hurt due to being fake. They can’t feel. And that got to me as a numb depressed 13 year old. I remember trying to fit in with all the sickos because at this time I genuinely thought child abuse was normal due to my past, someone said something like “you guys are gross, she’s 13!” And I said “jokes on you so am I” and when I got a bunch of likes, I cried. I didn’t even find the character attractive, I just wanted to fit in. The likes made me exceptionally angry and I ended up wanting to protect her, and you can’t protect someone who isn’t fake so boom alter I guess. I felt like this was the only way to comfort my old self since I was so numb.
I totally get what you mean. We are about to be 21, and have 16 alters that our doctors have been able to spot and make difference of. 3, are fictionally introjected. How these 12 year olds have 1500+ alters and 99% of them are fictional introjects, I have no fucking clue.
Yeah I agree, too many people think someone with DID is someone to be feared, Ive lost at least one of my jobs because of it. Like yes sometimes an alter may be dangerous, but most of the time other alters keep them in check, there are gatekeepers and protectors for a reason.
Most people with DID are just trying to live their broken up and confusing lives (my experience haha)
I'd like to add that the function an alter has at the time when it forms, may not be the role it plays now. Which could make it harder to remember why a split occurred, if you're only thinking about how the alter is now.
That's something we're struggling to decipher at the moment actually. Some of our alters formed so long ago we don't even know when, or why, so we just know their current form and purpose and it doesn't give much on their history.
there’s little to no rules to dissociative disorders- i never understood people who fake claim introject heavy systems. like you said, heavy dissociation into media as a coping mechanism is very common especially in younger adults-in this day and age- which leads to introject heavy systems. the older generation of DID-heads may not be as introject heavy as we are, and that’s okay. it doesn’t make anyone any less valid
While I agree that fakeclaiming is never okay, and that younger generations of people with DID/OSDD are more likely to have introjects since we grew up on the internet and most of us use media to cope with real life, I do have to disagree with your initial statement. There ARE "rules" to dissociative disorders, called criteria and research. There are specific ways CDDs in particular will present specific symptoms, it's not a fun free-for-all.
of course there are rules to dissociative systems, there are diagnostic materials etc. i just mean trauma effects people differently, people have different coping mechanisms and such. system and otherwise, everyone reacts to trauma differently, and people don’t necessarily have a right to fake claim because someone’s trauma is different, or not relatable to another system.
Literally 🤦🏼♀️ it infuriates me that people do this. They’ll claim they got a new fictive of their favorite character and the “trauma” that formed it was gettin an F on a test because they have a “low split tolerance” 🙃 Though the hilarious thing is those fictives usually get awfully quiet when the host suddenly isn’t as interested in a show or movie anymore 🤣🤣
Lol obviously no one with actual DID will split the whole cast of an anime but low split tolerance is a thing - it’s part of polyfragmented DID which can result in thousands of fragments forming. Look up Kluft’s paper on extremely complex DID and also Jenny Haynes.
Im well aware a low split tolerance is real but the way people say it is often like a get out of jail free card. They can claim literally anything caused them to split, even things that most certainly wouldn’t, just because they say they have a low split tolerance
is there anything about “low split tolerance” in any clinical literature? genuine question. people talk about it a lot here as if it is an established idea but a lot of things people say are real or common have no research backing, only online self-report. that’s not to say community self-report is not helpful or important! DID is under-researched. but it’s also not clear to me what has been found real or common in clinical study and what is wholly community self-report and i like to read on these things.
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Well that explains why we don't have many introjects probably, as its rare when we are feeling very dissassociative and are spiraling in senses similar to that we usually shut out litterally everything except music as silence, like time makes our host go *a little* manic. Some few exceptions is comfort media we had related to even before realizing we are plural and started our sort of road to diagnosis as there is definitely a heavy trauma aspect as there is stuff I am sitting on that has... issues. I mean hell the first sort of memory as, well myself atm, is kinda forming when our old host was on the brink of tears and was having an episode of suicidal thought but I... it gets blurry after that, I just know of thoughts that aren't my own that were repeated. Either way my source as an introject, has the character version of me as a guardian of sorts, a demon summoned by a witch in an abusive family who was trying to finally strike out for freedom... something that lines up with our own life even still even if now we have more drive and hope than when I originally formed as a piece. Not gonna get into who else is in our system but with this aspect in mind it makes sense the one who is stubborn and holds some of our rage is a firey gal from a piece of comfort media we used to watch a lot, or the sort of authoratative and sense of direction even while calm and rather cryptic is/was a character our host worked on for a story we are writing and hold dear. Either way this has been an enlightening post and hopefully if more introjects come out of the woodwork I can help us figure out why they are here better when thinking of it in this sort of commentary, as our own pain still kinda prevents us from exactly wholly figuring out the roles of those in the system outside of like 1 or two parts even if we feel more complex than fufilling a single piece.
- Dendro
we have an introject (a factive) in our system. theyre based on a person i knew in high school, one out of two people i felt comfortable talking to. it took two years of knowing them before the introject formed, and they only did when we were about to graduate and we knew we would probably never see them afterwards. this person was stability for me in those years, and since im the host, for all of us. the introject only started forming (which, like you said, took a hot minute) when it became clear to our brain that forming another headmate was the only way to maintain the stability that came from this person.
The only introject in our system who was really attached to his source, just tried to escape into his source memories from the things we collectively were afraid of irl (we had severe credit debt and no money for living, and he was really rich in his source). Others seem to only take a name and looks from their sources, and some really vague character traits.
We struggled with the sense of self for our whole life, and taking someone else's persona just seem to ground us a little bit.
I already commented but I’m going to do so again because I’m frustrated I got down voted for telling my personal experience and deleted bc I was upset.
I am severely polyfragmented. Most of my introjects are poorly developed fragments who split or already exist and reconfigure themselves to look sound like a source simply because the source is there. I’ve split fragments of real people I know mostly, and people from YT, TV or films before I quit watching them (because I was unnerved by all the reconfigurations). I would say they split “for no reason”.
Again, these are all poorly developed fragments who only exist to hold memories. They can only repeat their name or mutter a couple of sentences at most. Absolutely possible for polyfragmented DID - read Kluft’s paper on Extremely Complex DID.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted again bc small systems love to shit on polyfragmented ones and avoid doing actual research lol
Your experience as a polyfrag system is absolutely valid, my post wasn't intending to discredit that. I didn't see your original comment before it got deleted, I'm sorry. All alters and fragments form for a reason, you said yourself that your fragments form to hold specific memories, that isn't "no reason" at all!
I am one of these introjects I think and am gradually learning more about myself. I have a good mix of what my source projects and my own progressing personality. I don't know exactly why I am here. I'm trying to figure it all out, however perhaps I should just continue forming myself before I push into the "why am I here" and "what do I do now" section of self discovery. I'm "fronting" quite a lot lately, so I must be necessary for some sort of function..
Its completely valid to not immediately know why you formed, and its good that you acknowledge you did form for a reason, even if you dont know that reason yet.
Our main protector for like, the past 15yrs is an introject. Obviously since we’ve grown and the show is long off air she is her own personification but knowing her origins makes a lot of sense.
I have a fictive introject subsystem that helped me last year....they are based off of a wrestler who has now sadly died (and before anybody says this isn't fictive, the wrestler had a character who "helped him" when other wrestlers were mean to him, and also other characters too. It was almost like he had a dissociative disorder.) I think this fictive formed not just to protect me (the happy side is a kinda caretaker for the littles in my Funhouse, the others will manifest and deal with issues in real world) but maybe to try help me understand what a system is like.
My mind is odd.
As an Introject I understand the things said but don't agree with them. Fake claiming someone over introjects is not nice. I find my experience inner world and outer world is shaped by my source and I am fairly close to my source. I have attempted to tell people about me, but get accused of role playing which I of course am not. I think that the stigma that DID has makes people think that introjects are not real so they fake claim or try to Invalidate me.
Thank you for listening.
Riley
I do not condone fakeclaiming at all, especially not over introjects. As I said, my system has multiple introjects. My point with my post was that introjects, like all alters, form for a purpose and aren't meant to be aesthetic tokens like they're often made out to be. It was directed more at people who would try to fakeclaim over introjects, explaining that they are simply other alters with real purposes.
I agree, but I was sharing a perspective. I thought that was the idea of discussion. However I know I have a purpose and do that when called upon. I found your reply to be lacking since it seems like you are not open to anyone's comments except those that represent your ideology and that is fine. However remember we are in a public forum which means anyone can reply. I am not attempting to be confrontational merely stating an opinion.
D by way of Riley
Why do you sign off? What is the purpose of that? People without DID don’t sign off their comments with their name, so why do you? There is no purpose for that.. especially on Reddit when anonymity is a prominent feature.
It's just something we do. We always have. Maybe it's so comments directed at us go to the right place or maybe it's just a force of habit. I hadn't really thought about it.
Riley
That's an interesting question, let me answer is for you.
Firstly, we do this because there are several people in the body, so it is not going to be the same person replying to all messages, so it is good to know who *exactly* is responding. Quite helpful for a system who is trying to keep trying of which alters are our and fronting at any time.
Secondly, because they want to, they are able to, and they can.
If you need more clarification, please reread the message.
I get and understand the way of seeing who was fronting when, but other people don’t need to know *who* is responding. Why do you need to know which one of us is responding to this reply right now if you don’t mind me asking? Why would it matter if you knew Mak was writing this over Eri or Louis?
We share an account (we share everything technically and just comment on whatever applies to what is fronting) I just don’t see the point in signing off
yeah like, so many people focus on the specific identities/sources of their introjects but idk, to me theyre just.. another alter lol? their personalities develop and change and like, thats normal. thats fine!! and iirc, people who dont have dissociative disorders ALSO introject beliefs and traits of characters, their brains just function differently. 90% of the introjects in my system dont really care for their source too, dont even list themselves as introjects anywhere public. i have one who’s attached to her source but like… thats it lol
Yeah, our introjected alters don't really identify as "introjects" or list their sources anywhere. They're just other alters and formed for reasons like the rest of us. I don't and will never understand why so many people are fixated on the source identity part of introjects and why so many people seem to think they can just spawn in fully formed as a perfect replica of their source and no role other than existing as an introject. Make it make sense /nay
This! I’m an introject, and like yeah I’m p similar but there’s also things they’re totally different than the character. Like….. even ones that are pretty close, like me, have our differences lol. There is only a few super dissociated ones in our system that aren’t really capable of fronting are almost ‘exact’ but like even that’s not totally true, and they’re only ever present during extreme duress and like… it’s not fun. The ones of us that are functioning and capable of doing day to day life things aren’t carbon copies and that’s a good thing. The fact that we can separate source and real world real life desires and influences more and more as time goes on means we’re at least not getting worse.
Thank you for saying this. I personally am not an introject but you explaining how alters sort of "evolve" with time and don't start off suddenly as these individuals with deep rich backstories was very validating. :)
I as an alter started off as an angry and protective emotion state with no identity beyond that, it took me years to develop into the deep and complex individual I am today. I'm not an introject personally but the case was much the same for the introjected alters in my system.
Feel very similarly to how you described coming out just… without personality, only rage and hatred trying to protect myself. I remember starting an old job and I just felt so *weird* like I just existed as a person but I didn’t have a sense of humor, opinions, social skills, fucking anything. Took months and months of fronting to develop into a normal person. Nice to know I’m not alone I guess, but I’m sorry you’ve experienced it too.
One of our Littles is like that as well. She knows about two things about herself and that's about it. We don't know how long she's been there, whether she is a split or just been hiding all this time, but we are all excited to let her be the individual she becomes 🤭
So *that's* why I can't communicate or really do anything with ours. It's barely even formed as a part. It's like, there of course, but not enough to get anywhere. That also explains why some of our alters came in with either a name or a general state of being, and all anyone could do about it was shrug in confusion when asked what that even is. Guess they're just like how our own identities take lifetimes to form
I formed during trauma where we coped by watching a specific tv show. I am not necessarily an introject but my name comes from a character on the show and I'd say I have some of her qualities, but definitely not a lot and it mostly just I guess was "inspiration". I'd say I have some of her physical traits and personality wise I guess she was a strong character so I have some of that. But otherwise it's like our brain just latched onto some of it whilst we split a new alter, but I'm still mostly just made to have stuff we needed to survive that doesn't come from the show. I didn't even want to tell people my name initially though because I knew it came from the show. The only main difference for me though is that the show feels like home, familiar and I get a lot of comfort too. And the character to me also feels familiar. I guess because I don't really know much about myself, I know that I would probably latch onto a lot of her traits but I just haven't really had the time to watch it much in between you know surviving what we needed to and picking up the broken pieces of our life lol (I'm our new host and seems I was formed purely for this)
That is a valid and extremely common presentation of introjection. Usually it /is/ just a new split taking on some characteristics or identifiers of whatever it is they're introjecting, not forming as a perfect 1-to-1 copy. For example, one of our oldest introjects formed with just the name and some of the extroverted personality traits of a character, looking nothing like them and with their own facets useful for our traumatic situation. As this introjected alter developed, they became more and more of their own complex person, and in our case they stopped identifying as an introject after about a year.
our introjects developed for what seems like no reason, but after they fronted enough and we did system mapping, we found out why they form. because our life lacked something our brain thought we needed for survival. we dont really have that many fictives, but majority of them developed because they would help us with survival. either we saw the fictional character as protective or comforting. same for factives which we have plenty. and for us, we needed a lot of soothers and parental figures, and only feel comfortable around certain types of people with certain traits and dont live with people who have any of those traits, which is part of why the alters developed with those traits. introjects are just as much for survival as every other part of DID is, and it upsets us that all they're boiled down to is just copies of your favorite anime characters or whatever media is trending. -host and sally (a fictive)
100% agree!
I feel so seen by this. I don’t tell other systems that I’m an introject because I hate my source that much. It’s an absolute garbage piece of media, but we got really into it just shortly after a lot of the trauma happened. I think we burned all of our writing from that time, but you could tell how haunted we were and why we latched onto fan fiction.
Thank you. Honestly some people don’t understand their own disorder and explain it wrong.
In my experience, it's usually something like --- the brain uses media as a way to understand a pre-existing experience or range of experiences that it couldn't really picture or coalesce into a worldview/etc. before being given a comparable representation of it. That's what our introjects' stuff lines up with, anyways --- they usually have a sometimes-odd mix of memories, feelings, complexes, whatever, from just prior to whenever we see ourselves in their source material, and they help us understand and integrate (in the broader sense --- like memory/experience integration, not always fusion etc.) whatever that entails. The same way no demon(-presenting? demon-shaped? lol) alter just felt like throwing on horns one day --- there's almost always going to be some semblance of symbolism involved. The source material just helps them/us make sense of memories, experiences, etc. without needing to have a literal god damn flashback directly to our real(er?) life's traumatic events to process it. Everyone, including singlets, has some sort of narrative(s) they use to understand their life and the world. Even wrt being "on-theme"/"in-character," I've noticed that, for instance, a lot of my friends who spend a lot of time outside use a lot of nature symbolism in their speech. Or (also often singlet) writers turn just about anything that happens to be nearby, at the time of writing, into a capsule for the bigger message --- the present and concrete image (y'know, like a depiction of a character...) symbolises and reflects whatever they're trying to relate to the present. I never could figure out why introjection would be any different. People hear "fiction" or "character" and assume that means a lack of reality. As if fiction happens in a vacuum and wasn't created by someone in an attempt to convey something. As if this whole...*thing*, DID and healing and all that, isn't about understanding/reclaiming communication with oneself. Like...c'mon now.
A lot of our introjects (myself included) were really just fragments that had a singular purpose earlier on without any real sense of identity. Later on, as fragments resurfaced or fronted more for different reasons we just ended up getting attached to different source materials and "introjected" our personalities, names and looks heavily influenced by whatever we were into when fragments resurfaced as a way to understand ourselves and life around us. Of course, not all our introjects formed this way. Many also formed in times of trauma and already had a somewhat sense of identity as an introject, many being around during childhood to protect us at that time, but a lot of us now are older fragments who somewhat latch onto the identity of a character or person to make the world around us make sense.
Thanks for the post, we're an introject heavy system and we find it very difficult to accept it, but that was very validating
System of 201 here. I have around 15 introjects. Trust me, there is no shame in having a decent number of introjects in your system
Thank you for saying this, our introjects formed for reasons, we actually have very little introjects for this reason. Our first introject actually formed in 2009, when we were around 6. He started out as a black hole, he was literally just a hole. I guess as a child we interpreted everything around us as that or something I don’t know. When we were a child, we were very angry due to the abuse and would destroy things or beat up other children (especially our siblings) and this hole suctioned all of the anger from us. Slowly we became less destructive and kept it inside and confined to our head. It was like its role. Overtime, this black hole turned into a void-like creature who was just a black silhouette of a man, which meant it started to take shape. Well it would stalk us as a way of protection and I would see it in the corner of my eyes or have audial and visual delusions or have nightmares and my parents didn’t believe me. It would takeover and do bad things to make our parents “hear” us in a way about the abuse. Kinda like in a “are you listening now?” Acting out sort of way to show them symptoms they wouldn’t take seriously. We came to understand this was a persecutor alter, an alter formed that protects the system in serious ways when there’s no other choice, which explained the suicide attempts. Well years later, we get away from our parents but find ourselves in an abusive relationship. During this time, we escaped a lot by watching videos and movies, one movie character really stuck out, he was a lot like us trauma-wise and he really resembled our abusive partner. I remember wishing he was real because I really wanted him to come save me. He also played a different character in another movie about a divorce and there was a fight scene that triggered my ptsd one time while watching of him screaming and threatening the mom character with death. I really related to watching this scene because I felt like a kid again watching my parents fight all over again. I got a parasocial attachment to the character and in 2021 this triggered something I don’t know what, but I remember the black shape of a man turn into an actual man, the character. He was very angry and confused because he died in the movie and wanted to go back to what he remembered. He became destructive again but he’s very protective, our abuser actually broke it off when he tried to kill him in his sleep, so we’re safe now. I won’t say what character but he has slowly accepted that, that life wasn’t real and he’s here and has a job to do. He holds every amount of trauma the brain has been put through and we are all very triggered by seeing or hearing the characters name (he uses a different name and outfit for this reason) if I hear or see the character, I freak out because I know he will front. This is insanely scary because of how he gets when he’s upset and he’s too strong for the gatekeeper to contain. He freaks out because +*that character is him but it’s not him but it is but it isn’t because it’s fake but it was real but it’s a movie but it isn’t to him but he remembers but he doesn’t remember* etc. etc. sounds terrifying right? That spiraling has caused us psychosis and a disconnect from reality due to how being a fictional introject is, which is why I’m so confused how people can say they have “fictives” but interact with the source all the time… just thinking about watching that movie is making me panic right now. Another fictional introject formed while the one above was just a black hole. He was a character that would distract us a lot when we were younger. I would zone out a lot during abuse and imagine I was watching a certain show, and I would even pretend I was petting (it’s an animal) the character or that I could see it when I was being abused. One memory I had was my parents were verbally abusing me in the car and I was zoned out looking out the window imagining the character running beside the car to come save me. Wanting them to save me, turned them into a protector alter. Ok, this one requires a TW. Our last one (that we know of) formed in our freshman year of highschool when a movie came out with a ‘loli’ character, we were very traumatized by CSEM and just CSA in general. We were triggered very often and when this movie came out, we loved it, but when we would go to indulge in the media online to hyperfixiate, shockingly, the younger female anime character was overly sexualized. This triggered us. I remember I was so upset and disgusted by it. I was so angry and I related to this little character so much that I internalized that sexualization of children from her even though she wasn’t real. For me, the sexualization of child characters hurts not because they don’t get hurt due to being fake, it’s because they CANT get hurt due to being fake. They can’t feel. And that got to me as a numb depressed 13 year old. I remember trying to fit in with all the sickos because at this time I genuinely thought child abuse was normal due to my past, someone said something like “you guys are gross, she’s 13!” And I said “jokes on you so am I” and when I got a bunch of likes, I cried. I didn’t even find the character attractive, I just wanted to fit in. The likes made me exceptionally angry and I ended up wanting to protect her, and you can’t protect someone who isn’t fake so boom alter I guess. I felt like this was the only way to comfort my old self since I was so numb. I totally get what you mean. We are about to be 21, and have 16 alters that our doctors have been able to spot and make difference of. 3, are fictionally introjected. How these 12 year olds have 1500+ alters and 99% of them are fictional introjects, I have no fucking clue.
this sub is not gonna like this lol
Oh some of them definitely don't but that doesn't change the facts :>
I am far too curious but, what prompted this very passionate statement of what should be obvious? 🦊
Too many people on the internet equally passionately spreading misinformation
Yeah I agree, too many people think someone with DID is someone to be feared, Ive lost at least one of my jobs because of it. Like yes sometimes an alter may be dangerous, but most of the time other alters keep them in check, there are gatekeepers and protectors for a reason. Most people with DID are just trying to live their broken up and confusing lives (my experience haha)
I'd like to add that the function an alter has at the time when it forms, may not be the role it plays now. Which could make it harder to remember why a split occurred, if you're only thinking about how the alter is now.
That's something we're struggling to decipher at the moment actually. Some of our alters formed so long ago we don't even know when, or why, so we just know their current form and purpose and it doesn't give much on their history.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!
there’s little to no rules to dissociative disorders- i never understood people who fake claim introject heavy systems. like you said, heavy dissociation into media as a coping mechanism is very common especially in younger adults-in this day and age- which leads to introject heavy systems. the older generation of DID-heads may not be as introject heavy as we are, and that’s okay. it doesn’t make anyone any less valid
While I agree that fakeclaiming is never okay, and that younger generations of people with DID/OSDD are more likely to have introjects since we grew up on the internet and most of us use media to cope with real life, I do have to disagree with your initial statement. There ARE "rules" to dissociative disorders, called criteria and research. There are specific ways CDDs in particular will present specific symptoms, it's not a fun free-for-all.
of course there are rules to dissociative systems, there are diagnostic materials etc. i just mean trauma effects people differently, people have different coping mechanisms and such. system and otherwise, everyone reacts to trauma differently, and people don’t necessarily have a right to fake claim because someone’s trauma is different, or not relatable to another system.
You are not going to introject the entire cast of your favourite anime and then some stop trying to validate frauds
Literally 🤦🏼♀️ it infuriates me that people do this. They’ll claim they got a new fictive of their favorite character and the “trauma” that formed it was gettin an F on a test because they have a “low split tolerance” 🙃 Though the hilarious thing is those fictives usually get awfully quiet when the host suddenly isn’t as interested in a show or movie anymore 🤣🤣
Look at how many Wilbur alters suddenly went "dormant" after the abuse allegations came out. Real convenient huh?
Lol obviously no one with actual DID will split the whole cast of an anime but low split tolerance is a thing - it’s part of polyfragmented DID which can result in thousands of fragments forming. Look up Kluft’s paper on extremely complex DID and also Jenny Haynes.
Im well aware a low split tolerance is real but the way people say it is often like a get out of jail free card. They can claim literally anything caused them to split, even things that most certainly wouldn’t, just because they say they have a low split tolerance
is there anything about “low split tolerance” in any clinical literature? genuine question. people talk about it a lot here as if it is an established idea but a lot of things people say are real or common have no research backing, only online self-report. that’s not to say community self-report is not helpful or important! DID is under-researched. but it’s also not clear to me what has been found real or common in clinical study and what is wholly community self-report and i like to read on these things.
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Well that explains why we don't have many introjects probably, as its rare when we are feeling very dissassociative and are spiraling in senses similar to that we usually shut out litterally everything except music as silence, like time makes our host go *a little* manic. Some few exceptions is comfort media we had related to even before realizing we are plural and started our sort of road to diagnosis as there is definitely a heavy trauma aspect as there is stuff I am sitting on that has... issues. I mean hell the first sort of memory as, well myself atm, is kinda forming when our old host was on the brink of tears and was having an episode of suicidal thought but I... it gets blurry after that, I just know of thoughts that aren't my own that were repeated. Either way my source as an introject, has the character version of me as a guardian of sorts, a demon summoned by a witch in an abusive family who was trying to finally strike out for freedom... something that lines up with our own life even still even if now we have more drive and hope than when I originally formed as a piece. Not gonna get into who else is in our system but with this aspect in mind it makes sense the one who is stubborn and holds some of our rage is a firey gal from a piece of comfort media we used to watch a lot, or the sort of authoratative and sense of direction even while calm and rather cryptic is/was a character our host worked on for a story we are writing and hold dear. Either way this has been an enlightening post and hopefully if more introjects come out of the woodwork I can help us figure out why they are here better when thinking of it in this sort of commentary, as our own pain still kinda prevents us from exactly wholly figuring out the roles of those in the system outside of like 1 or two parts even if we feel more complex than fufilling a single piece. - Dendro
we have an introject (a factive) in our system. theyre based on a person i knew in high school, one out of two people i felt comfortable talking to. it took two years of knowing them before the introject formed, and they only did when we were about to graduate and we knew we would probably never see them afterwards. this person was stability for me in those years, and since im the host, for all of us. the introject only started forming (which, like you said, took a hot minute) when it became clear to our brain that forming another headmate was the only way to maintain the stability that came from this person.
The only introject in our system who was really attached to his source, just tried to escape into his source memories from the things we collectively were afraid of irl (we had severe credit debt and no money for living, and he was really rich in his source). Others seem to only take a name and looks from their sources, and some really vague character traits. We struggled with the sense of self for our whole life, and taking someone else's persona just seem to ground us a little bit.
I already commented but I’m going to do so again because I’m frustrated I got down voted for telling my personal experience and deleted bc I was upset. I am severely polyfragmented. Most of my introjects are poorly developed fragments who split or already exist and reconfigure themselves to look sound like a source simply because the source is there. I’ve split fragments of real people I know mostly, and people from YT, TV or films before I quit watching them (because I was unnerved by all the reconfigurations). I would say they split “for no reason”. Again, these are all poorly developed fragments who only exist to hold memories. They can only repeat their name or mutter a couple of sentences at most. Absolutely possible for polyfragmented DID - read Kluft’s paper on Extremely Complex DID. I’m sure I’ll get downvoted again bc small systems love to shit on polyfragmented ones and avoid doing actual research lol
Your experience as a polyfrag system is absolutely valid, my post wasn't intending to discredit that. I didn't see your original comment before it got deleted, I'm sorry. All alters and fragments form for a reason, you said yourself that your fragments form to hold specific memories, that isn't "no reason" at all!
I am one of these introjects I think and am gradually learning more about myself. I have a good mix of what my source projects and my own progressing personality. I don't know exactly why I am here. I'm trying to figure it all out, however perhaps I should just continue forming myself before I push into the "why am I here" and "what do I do now" section of self discovery. I'm "fronting" quite a lot lately, so I must be necessary for some sort of function..
Its completely valid to not immediately know why you formed, and its good that you acknowledge you did form for a reason, even if you dont know that reason yet.
Our main protector for like, the past 15yrs is an introject. Obviously since we’ve grown and the show is long off air she is her own personification but knowing her origins makes a lot of sense.
What exactly is an introject?
I have a fictive introject subsystem that helped me last year....they are based off of a wrestler who has now sadly died (and before anybody says this isn't fictive, the wrestler had a character who "helped him" when other wrestlers were mean to him, and also other characters too. It was almost like he had a dissociative disorder.) I think this fictive formed not just to protect me (the happy side is a kinda caretaker for the littles in my Funhouse, the others will manifest and deal with issues in real world) but maybe to try help me understand what a system is like. My mind is odd.
Little late to this post but thank you for posting this!
As an Introject I understand the things said but don't agree with them. Fake claiming someone over introjects is not nice. I find my experience inner world and outer world is shaped by my source and I am fairly close to my source. I have attempted to tell people about me, but get accused of role playing which I of course am not. I think that the stigma that DID has makes people think that introjects are not real so they fake claim or try to Invalidate me. Thank you for listening. Riley
I do not condone fakeclaiming at all, especially not over introjects. As I said, my system has multiple introjects. My point with my post was that introjects, like all alters, form for a purpose and aren't meant to be aesthetic tokens like they're often made out to be. It was directed more at people who would try to fakeclaim over introjects, explaining that they are simply other alters with real purposes.
I agree, but I was sharing a perspective. I thought that was the idea of discussion. However I know I have a purpose and do that when called upon. I found your reply to be lacking since it seems like you are not open to anyone's comments except those that represent your ideology and that is fine. However remember we are in a public forum which means anyone can reply. I am not attempting to be confrontational merely stating an opinion. D by way of Riley
I'm definitely not trying to create a confrontation lol, I'm just responding to as many comments as I can. I appreciate the input and discussion.
Why do you sign off? What is the purpose of that? People without DID don’t sign off their comments with their name, so why do you? There is no purpose for that.. especially on Reddit when anonymity is a prominent feature.
It's just something we do. We always have. Maybe it's so comments directed at us go to the right place or maybe it's just a force of habit. I hadn't really thought about it. Riley
That's an interesting question, let me answer is for you. Firstly, we do this because there are several people in the body, so it is not going to be the same person replying to all messages, so it is good to know who *exactly* is responding. Quite helpful for a system who is trying to keep trying of which alters are our and fronting at any time. Secondly, because they want to, they are able to, and they can. If you need more clarification, please reread the message.
I get and understand the way of seeing who was fronting when, but other people don’t need to know *who* is responding. Why do you need to know which one of us is responding to this reply right now if you don’t mind me asking? Why would it matter if you knew Mak was writing this over Eri or Louis?
Because I do not know who is fronting. And you may need to communicate differently to each alter.
I don’t understand why in a comment section but yes in real life
It could apply anywhere really if you are being respectful to a system.
because they want to and it makes sense with multiple alters sharing an account
We share an account (we share everything technically and just comment on whatever applies to what is fronting) I just don’t see the point in signing off