I want to learn how to get along with my alter.

I have a similar trauma-related persecutor/protector alter. Obviously my life experience is different to yours, so please be careful in reading and take my advice with a grain of salt.

Before I knew I had DID I used to suffer from a similar inner conflict. In this inner world there was me, who was just trying to do his best I guess, and an alter persecuting me for my actions. [scary things]He'd do and say all kinds of stuff to hurt me inside. Suicide bating or murder-tempting me almost daily. Sometimes when I'd go out walking, trying to cool off he would show up and try to push me off bridges and shit (as in a hallucination). Many times he just murders me internally by stabbing me to death or bashing me with a baseball bat. Well, these kinds of images just tend to pop up alongside the deep fury and hatred he seems to have for me from time to time. I'm sure you can relate in some aspects.(/trigger)

What has helped us, is truly figuring out what made him who he is and where he comes from, and why he is the way he is and why he does the things he does. I personally spent years ignoring, denying, resisting and fighting this type of persecutor, until I just couldn't do that anymore. I gave up and started listening to what he actually had to say. Okay, so I'm a piece of shit, fine, I accept it now, but why?

After accepting my alter's view of myself and the world (although it is highly "negative and destructive"), I began to understand him on a deeper level. Eventually he told me more and more about himself and why he hates everything as much as he does.

For us, my alter's deep wrath and hatred towards me originated from a promise I made to myself when I was about five. I promised that I'd never betray anyone I claimed to love, like my parents had betrayed each other and me when I was still a small kid. This idea and this promise became something of a "sacred law" in my life even though I did not fully realize that up until a couple of days ago.

Well, I ended up doing that, betraying someone I truly and honestly loved. The five year old in me just couldn't accept my actions and so we split. For a time he worked as my guilty conscience, up until he decided it was best to murder every single aspect of me and take over my life because I didn't deserve it.

I guess we're in a phase of self-forgiveness right now. The persecutor alter is kinda quiet nowadays. All the new understanding of different aspects of ourselves has given us some peace and we fight less nowadays, but it has taken us several years getting to this point.

As for straight up advice, I'd say the best thing for you to do is to listen to your alter and try to figure out and communicate as to why s/he is so defiant towards you. I've spent years living with an alter that hates my guts and I've learned that in truth, he is just an expression of my own disappointment and disgust with myself. As to whether this disappointment is deserved or proper, that is an entire topic on its own. That's the thing with highly sensitive trauma-related memories. We all know they are the "root" of this problem we are having, yet we cannot ignore the messages that echo from the past to the present.

I'm sorry to hear you're having a hard time, but keep struggling in there. I kept struggling for over 7 years and now I'm finally getting some answers. Well, that is probably not much of a consolation since those alter-attacks can be brutal and absolutely soul crushing, but I believe that you're going to figure everything out at some point and that you can have peace within your system. You just have to ask the right questions, from yourself and your alter.

Peace.

/r/DID Thread