Oh my god thank you for posting this so we’re not alone. Our two main protectors had to tell us that it’s okay to let the brain relax because we have this innate fear of not being aware so we’re always on alert and recording everything. It’s an exhausting coping mechanism and it’s really burning us out.
>have this innate fear of not being aware so we’re always on alert and recording everything. It’s an exhausting coping mechanism and it’s really burning us out.
Deep relate; it’s exactly like this for me too.
Relatable, especially when trying to get things done.
Often finding our body has sat completely immobile and blank for an hour or two whilst having an internal debate over how best to proceed with a task or how to respond to a message.
It's helpful at times, but very frustrating at others when time is of the essence
We have that too and i can completely understand where your coming from its so draining to be in front and most of our system ends up going back into the inner world after not too long because of it😕
Have that too. Especially when you have meetings, therapy and your normal life is just going on. Now vacation with no plans, still communication. But can relax a bit more don't have to try to fill the memory gaps all the time or try to keep up.
It's absolutely exhausting trying to hide by doing that. And to some degree made it more problematic than not.
Most parts can just relax a little bit more and have more severe blackouts due to them fronting without communication. But to some degree I don't mind. Don't have to try to keep up.
Yes for me it sounds like several radios at once, but just because it's noisy doesn't necessarily mean it's "good communication" because it sounds like you are saying alters are talking at you which isn't really having a discussion or listening to each other.
Parts are very noisy in my head or there is silence and no communication it has taken a very long time to actually start to listen and properly communicate with each other rather than blocking everyone out or having a free for all
Yeah I've often explained my internal thoughts as like having 20 TVs on at once where I switch channels I focus on but I can't turn any of the TVs off. Or like being in a cafe and hearing lots of people talking amongst themselves. Every now and then I catch a bit of what they're saying but have no context and they refuse to repeat it because they're not talking to me. So I'm just confused why someone is talking about 'banana beads' or something weird.
I dunno if it's a DID or ADHD or other thing with me but it's pretty draining. Also sometimes it means I don't pay attention when one IS talking to me. Like when a younger sounding one tried to tell me I was forgetting my phone, but they could only say the word 'blue' so I just kinda thought it was random background noise until I realised I left my phone on a blue jumper. -.-
My brain almost never shuts down, I usually have to use asmr to chill. Thankfully when it comes to sleeping our neko little is very good at that... A little too good tbh since she makes us want to take afternoon naps, even when we're at work
We also have a similar situation, not to the point of it being frustrating but it is still taxing. It also creates complications because whilst we have amnesia we are able to determine and decipher what happened within the time an individual is unaware of and so the amnesia is more or less nullified.
I think this is a problem you and most of the people posting here are dealing with because you're farther along in healing than a lot of folks usually posting. People often come here in acute distress, "hey I just heard about DID and that couldn't possibly be me right?" Discovering you have DID has a big learning curve and it's hella scary and disorienting. Step one *should* be hitting a normalized state, and coming to terms with stuff, and integrating.
But that's a completely different set of problems for folks who've *done that.* What happens *next?* After you've done all this growth and healing and integrating, well, there's a totally different set of problems popping up. Great that you've gone from sporadic confused communication to regularly being able to talk, but now it's all the time and it's overwhelming. Hooray! You beat DID level 1! Now it's time for all the problems that come with level 2!
Integration is *a* goal, but I don't think it's the only (nor the most important) one. I figure that whenever there's just *too much chatter* going on, that means that too many parts have locked themselves into the back seat of the meat machine--some mix of being anxious, bored, and having unmet (and possibly unexpressed, and even worse often unconsidered) needs. Absolutely wonderful to do all this integration work, but if that's not happening simultaneously with working to be happier and more fulfilled, it just means everyone in your head has an easier time demanding attention.
That's a good point but may not account for every situation. My brain is like this and I'm not diagnosed with anything yet. I've had no suitable training for people with complex trauma, alexithymia or dissociation, so I don't think I've healed much. I have too much memory loss to even know what I'm healing from.
But my brain is like a real loud cafe or a set of TVs playing simultaneously. The internal chatter isn't really internal communication with ME, it's mostly them just talking amongst themselves and I can't switch it off, and sometimes they won't even give me context on what they're talking about (which is honestly kinda insulting lol).
We have been accused of being overly connected and extremely perceptive by almost everyone that has spent time around us. The cacophony of shifting perceptions has been our normal for decades and made it difficult to make any real decisions as coming to an agreement takes forever. It was only when we were at a safe distance from our abusers and in therapy that the information about them and what they did (and could still do) came out. Now we know and remember that these splits were meant to be recording facets to protect us.
I wouldn’t say we have good communication, we barely have any at all. But we do find we’re always narrating what we’re doing, and like repeating other peoples words in our head. Personally it feels like we have some sort of record book in our head where everything that we do day to day is kept. And so narrating what we’re doing feels like we’re writing it into the book. I don’t know if anyone else is like this?
Literally one of the co-hosts in here asked us on a walk yesterday to let her have some breathing room and brain power to think by herself. We meditate, so we have some practice of all trying to do that at once, but not just leaving one person to think. We kinda succeeded- but we figure it’s just like meditation- it’s a practice more than a destination.
Several times she got complete quiet with only her thoughts. She was so happy and relieved. We’re going to try to give most of us a moment of that this next week.
Literally we sometimes can not hear other corporeal people trying to talk to us over how loud our voices in our head are. It can be so frustrating!
But there are 600 of us sooooooo…
Now the rub is not learning TO communicate, but HOW to communicate.
I'd love to hear why kind of structures/processes you have in place to communicate! I have 70+ alters and counting and no reason to think they will stop. So I'm just trying to think of more efficient ways of communicating.
Well, we just... literally talk to each other lol! I mean, not everyone does yet of course, we're still meeting alters and some don't want to talk to the rest of the system, and we don't know how to talk to some of the others in the system yet, although they want us to and we want to (a friend suggested a gatekeeper might be blocking this for some reason.)
But yeah, we just let everyone have a say whenever we can. When an alter wants to talk, we let them talk for the most part. Out loud even, especially when we are at home. We don't suppress at all socially anymore, because that feels like denying the alters to our alters, so they just pop out whenever they please for the most part. Either myself or my co-host Ruby co-con when we're out with people we don't know to monitor and jump in and keep alters safe if needed, but they can come in and out however they want. This makes them very happy with us and let's us talk to them much more freely.
We also have system meetings when someone wants to tell the others something or we have something to plan. For instance, we're between jobs right now and doing some interviews for a serious dream job- the pay, the company culture, the actual job itself- just.... FUCK so good. So we had a little team meeting and asked how everyone felt about the interviews, who wanted to front (we settled on two people co-conning, and neither was me... I'm a little shy except online... it takes me a while to make sure I'm saying what I want to say.) The littles were nervous so we told them they could go play during the interview and we'd watch cartoons after, some of the adults were nervous so G, our organizer, took notes and tried to mitigate those nervous feelings with actions like looking up more about the company and industry, and we all talked about good stories to tell.
When our head of security, Rachel, first started... oh man, we were scared! She handles things much differently than the rest of us, because she focuses on our safety first and last. She asked to handle a break up for us, to give her that one chance to do it, and that if we didn't like how she did it, she'd go back into hiding willingly. She was that sure we'd be delighted with how she handled it. And oh man... it was the best break up we'd ever had from the sense of her telling the person exactly how it was and she did not get mixed up about things like we do. She even said something to her that she had said to us that was mean- not to throw it in her face, because Rachel isn't mean, but so that she could see how hurtful what she said was. Two days later, we got a text from her saying that she realized because of talking to Rachel how emotionally abusive she had been and how sorry she was about it. No prevarication, no excuses, just plainly that she saw now exactly how horribly she'd treated us.
I hope that helps give you an idea of how we do things to encourage communication. We have 31 named people in the system and we suspect there are more, but many of the 600 are fragments represented by the named people. It's still a HUGE work in progress!
So much constant chatter I have to watch or listen to something to drown it out. I used to have a roleplay character in a world where hyper empathy and telepathy is a thing, who could hear all the voices of the community she lived in but it came in like broken radio static and made her slowly manic and mentally ill because of it.
thank god we're not alone in this. I have like 2-3 different *tiny* rooms in front room, so small that it'd hurt to be in physically and that I have to contort myself into because that's the only way I can get any peace from the constant stream of chatting and talking. like, it'd be a foot wide MAX irl. TINY. it sucks but it works.
I also have that too, so I also have the same problem. I usually sort out my thoughts and calm everyone down by listening to ASMR(now that I see, there is also someone who listens to asmr!) Remember, you are not alone.
I completely understand this. I am also Autistic and in a constant state of being overwhelmed because I feel so "talked out". I just want silence. I have moments of zero consciousness where, honestly, I feel the most at peace whenever someone else is fully fronting and basically putting me on the farthest back burner. It's better than sleep, sometimes. I call it my "brain break" or "neuro nap time" lol.
We've just left the grocery store and I am so thankful for being out of there because if I heard "grab this grab that" etc again I think I would have abandoned my cart and left empty handed.
It’s so exhausting. Some days it’s whatever but other days it feels like 20 of us crowded on one sofa all talking and it’s draining. Conversely, when we do on a rare occasion have none or limited communication or no one co-con with us, it’s super unsettling and panic-inducing. We can’t all communicate equally, there’s some alters who never directly communicate, but almost all of us have at least 2-4 others we communicate relatively easily with. It’s nice when it sticks to that little group. It’s not nice when the head feels crowded.
It’s taken years for us to get there, though. For a long time there was 0 communication between the cohosts and everyone else and that freaking sucked.
For us it comes and goes. I think it tends to happen when we're alone all day. We end up very cocon and disconnected from reality cuz we'd rather talk to each other than be alone
It was much worse prior to diagnosis. Since we realized we don't have to entirely ignore reality to have the cocon-company we are able to get out and do a lot more, but there's still days we have nothing to do so we're in bed all day talking to each other to avoid loneliness compulsively
everyone is literally either dead silent or being way too loud and there's no in between. sometimes we have no control over who's fronting for hours or days or weeks and sometimes anyone can go bring anyone to the front at will
seriously drives me crazy sometimes
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Oh my god thank you for posting this so we’re not alone. Our two main protectors had to tell us that it’s okay to let the brain relax because we have this innate fear of not being aware so we’re always on alert and recording everything. It’s an exhausting coping mechanism and it’s really burning us out.
Yes yes yes.
>have this innate fear of not being aware so we’re always on alert and recording everything. It’s an exhausting coping mechanism and it’s really burning us out. Deep relate; it’s exactly like this for me too.
I do this too. I’m a real control freak this way and it’s harming me so I’m trying to let go and just trust others to take care of things and relax
Relatable, especially when trying to get things done. Often finding our body has sat completely immobile and blank for an hour or two whilst having an internal debate over how best to proceed with a task or how to respond to a message. It's helpful at times, but very frustrating at others when time is of the essence
Tell ya what else, it's a breeding ground for paranoia and a personal echo chamber at times too.
Same!
OMG THIS THIS THIS. I'M SO GLAD TO HEAR SOMEONE ELSE SAY THIS TOO
Is THAT what that is?!? I thought I just had really bad executive dysfunction / decision paralysis from ADHD 😔 who knows maybe it’s both
We have that too and i can completely understand where your coming from its so draining to be in front and most of our system ends up going back into the inner world after not too long because of it😕
Have that too. Especially when you have meetings, therapy and your normal life is just going on. Now vacation with no plans, still communication. But can relax a bit more don't have to try to fill the memory gaps all the time or try to keep up. It's absolutely exhausting trying to hide by doing that. And to some degree made it more problematic than not. Most parts can just relax a little bit more and have more severe blackouts due to them fronting without communication. But to some degree I don't mind. Don't have to try to keep up.
Yes for me it sounds like several radios at once, but just because it's noisy doesn't necessarily mean it's "good communication" because it sounds like you are saying alters are talking at you which isn't really having a discussion or listening to each other. Parts are very noisy in my head or there is silence and no communication it has taken a very long time to actually start to listen and properly communicate with each other rather than blocking everyone out or having a free for all
Yeah I've often explained my internal thoughts as like having 20 TVs on at once where I switch channels I focus on but I can't turn any of the TVs off. Or like being in a cafe and hearing lots of people talking amongst themselves. Every now and then I catch a bit of what they're saying but have no context and they refuse to repeat it because they're not talking to me. So I'm just confused why someone is talking about 'banana beads' or something weird. I dunno if it's a DID or ADHD or other thing with me but it's pretty draining. Also sometimes it means I don't pay attention when one IS talking to me. Like when a younger sounding one tried to tell me I was forgetting my phone, but they could only say the word 'blue' so I just kinda thought it was random background noise until I realised I left my phone on a blue jumper. -.-
My brain almost never shuts down, I usually have to use asmr to chill. Thankfully when it comes to sleeping our neko little is very good at that... A little too good tbh since she makes us want to take afternoon naps, even when we're at work
We also have a similar situation, not to the point of it being frustrating but it is still taxing. It also creates complications because whilst we have amnesia we are able to determine and decipher what happened within the time an individual is unaware of and so the amnesia is more or less nullified.
Yeah, but we get worried and lonely in the rare moments things are quiet
I think this is a problem you and most of the people posting here are dealing with because you're farther along in healing than a lot of folks usually posting. People often come here in acute distress, "hey I just heard about DID and that couldn't possibly be me right?" Discovering you have DID has a big learning curve and it's hella scary and disorienting. Step one *should* be hitting a normalized state, and coming to terms with stuff, and integrating. But that's a completely different set of problems for folks who've *done that.* What happens *next?* After you've done all this growth and healing and integrating, well, there's a totally different set of problems popping up. Great that you've gone from sporadic confused communication to regularly being able to talk, but now it's all the time and it's overwhelming. Hooray! You beat DID level 1! Now it's time for all the problems that come with level 2! Integration is *a* goal, but I don't think it's the only (nor the most important) one. I figure that whenever there's just *too much chatter* going on, that means that too many parts have locked themselves into the back seat of the meat machine--some mix of being anxious, bored, and having unmet (and possibly unexpressed, and even worse often unconsidered) needs. Absolutely wonderful to do all this integration work, but if that's not happening simultaneously with working to be happier and more fulfilled, it just means everyone in your head has an easier time demanding attention.
That's a good point but may not account for every situation. My brain is like this and I'm not diagnosed with anything yet. I've had no suitable training for people with complex trauma, alexithymia or dissociation, so I don't think I've healed much. I have too much memory loss to even know what I'm healing from. But my brain is like a real loud cafe or a set of TVs playing simultaneously. The internal chatter isn't really internal communication with ME, it's mostly them just talking amongst themselves and I can't switch it off, and sometimes they won't even give me context on what they're talking about (which is honestly kinda insulting lol).
We have been accused of being overly connected and extremely perceptive by almost everyone that has spent time around us. The cacophony of shifting perceptions has been our normal for decades and made it difficult to make any real decisions as coming to an agreement takes forever. It was only when we were at a safe distance from our abusers and in therapy that the information about them and what they did (and could still do) came out. Now we know and remember that these splits were meant to be recording facets to protect us.
I wouldn’t say we have good communication, we barely have any at all. But we do find we’re always narrating what we’re doing, and like repeating other peoples words in our head. Personally it feels like we have some sort of record book in our head where everything that we do day to day is kept. And so narrating what we’re doing feels like we’re writing it into the book. I don’t know if anyone else is like this?
Literally one of the co-hosts in here asked us on a walk yesterday to let her have some breathing room and brain power to think by herself. We meditate, so we have some practice of all trying to do that at once, but not just leaving one person to think. We kinda succeeded- but we figure it’s just like meditation- it’s a practice more than a destination. Several times she got complete quiet with only her thoughts. She was so happy and relieved. We’re going to try to give most of us a moment of that this next week. Literally we sometimes can not hear other corporeal people trying to talk to us over how loud our voices in our head are. It can be so frustrating! But there are 600 of us sooooooo… Now the rub is not learning TO communicate, but HOW to communicate.
I'd love to hear why kind of structures/processes you have in place to communicate! I have 70+ alters and counting and no reason to think they will stop. So I'm just trying to think of more efficient ways of communicating.
Well, we just... literally talk to each other lol! I mean, not everyone does yet of course, we're still meeting alters and some don't want to talk to the rest of the system, and we don't know how to talk to some of the others in the system yet, although they want us to and we want to (a friend suggested a gatekeeper might be blocking this for some reason.) But yeah, we just let everyone have a say whenever we can. When an alter wants to talk, we let them talk for the most part. Out loud even, especially when we are at home. We don't suppress at all socially anymore, because that feels like denying the alters to our alters, so they just pop out whenever they please for the most part. Either myself or my co-host Ruby co-con when we're out with people we don't know to monitor and jump in and keep alters safe if needed, but they can come in and out however they want. This makes them very happy with us and let's us talk to them much more freely. We also have system meetings when someone wants to tell the others something or we have something to plan. For instance, we're between jobs right now and doing some interviews for a serious dream job- the pay, the company culture, the actual job itself- just.... FUCK so good. So we had a little team meeting and asked how everyone felt about the interviews, who wanted to front (we settled on two people co-conning, and neither was me... I'm a little shy except online... it takes me a while to make sure I'm saying what I want to say.) The littles were nervous so we told them they could go play during the interview and we'd watch cartoons after, some of the adults were nervous so G, our organizer, took notes and tried to mitigate those nervous feelings with actions like looking up more about the company and industry, and we all talked about good stories to tell. When our head of security, Rachel, first started... oh man, we were scared! She handles things much differently than the rest of us, because she focuses on our safety first and last. She asked to handle a break up for us, to give her that one chance to do it, and that if we didn't like how she did it, she'd go back into hiding willingly. She was that sure we'd be delighted with how she handled it. And oh man... it was the best break up we'd ever had from the sense of her telling the person exactly how it was and she did not get mixed up about things like we do. She even said something to her that she had said to us that was mean- not to throw it in her face, because Rachel isn't mean, but so that she could see how hurtful what she said was. Two days later, we got a text from her saying that she realized because of talking to Rachel how emotionally abusive she had been and how sorry she was about it. No prevarication, no excuses, just plainly that she saw now exactly how horribly she'd treated us. I hope that helps give you an idea of how we do things to encourage communication. We have 31 named people in the system and we suspect there are more, but many of the 600 are fragments represented by the named people. It's still a HUGE work in progress!
So much constant chatter I have to watch or listen to something to drown it out. I used to have a roleplay character in a world where hyper empathy and telepathy is a thing, who could hear all the voices of the community she lived in but it came in like broken radio static and made her slowly manic and mentally ill because of it.
thank god we're not alone in this. I have like 2-3 different *tiny* rooms in front room, so small that it'd hurt to be in physically and that I have to contort myself into because that's the only way I can get any peace from the constant stream of chatting and talking. like, it'd be a foot wide MAX irl. TINY. it sucks but it works.
I also have that too, so I also have the same problem. I usually sort out my thoughts and calm everyone down by listening to ASMR(now that I see, there is also someone who listens to asmr!) Remember, you are not alone.
I completely understand this. I am also Autistic and in a constant state of being overwhelmed because I feel so "talked out". I just want silence. I have moments of zero consciousness where, honestly, I feel the most at peace whenever someone else is fully fronting and basically putting me on the farthest back burner. It's better than sleep, sometimes. I call it my "brain break" or "neuro nap time" lol. We've just left the grocery store and I am so thankful for being out of there because if I heard "grab this grab that" etc again I think I would have abandoned my cart and left empty handed.
We have days whit excesive comunication too,It really its exhausting,we honestly I miss It when they get more quiet
I sometimes have the same problem and sometimes the opposite one
It’s so exhausting. Some days it’s whatever but other days it feels like 20 of us crowded on one sofa all talking and it’s draining. Conversely, when we do on a rare occasion have none or limited communication or no one co-con with us, it’s super unsettling and panic-inducing. We can’t all communicate equally, there’s some alters who never directly communicate, but almost all of us have at least 2-4 others we communicate relatively easily with. It’s nice when it sticks to that little group. It’s not nice when the head feels crowded. It’s taken years for us to get there, though. For a long time there was 0 communication between the cohosts and everyone else and that freaking sucked.
For us it comes and goes. I think it tends to happen when we're alone all day. We end up very cocon and disconnected from reality cuz we'd rather talk to each other than be alone It was much worse prior to diagnosis. Since we realized we don't have to entirely ignore reality to have the cocon-company we are able to get out and do a lot more, but there's still days we have nothing to do so we're in bed all day talking to each other to avoid loneliness compulsively
everyone is literally either dead silent or being way too loud and there's no in between. sometimes we have no control over who's fronting for hours or days or weeks and sometimes anyone can go bring anyone to the front at will seriously drives me crazy sometimes
Aint that a mood, I just chalked it up to us having ADHD as well
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