The multiple selves of a singleton

These are interesting thoughts. I think that when we split off parts, we definitely utilized the internal separations you discuss - as if the trauma-survival response pushed the 'gaps' wider then put up partitions.

Reduces it to just feeling of ownership and amnesic barriers

But this carries so much with it. Because we don't 'own' dissociated identities, they have their own connections to our brain architecture, like multiple users accessing the same CPU's. Alters have their own 'programs' running on our aversion circuitry (amygdala etc), to keep us out of situations which resemble traumatic ones, or invoke their own coping responses if we can't escape them. They have separate programs running on our 'seeking' circuitries, which help us engage with the world and pursue goals, but are also implicated in aversive behaviors and conditioned responses. They make their own use of our reward circuitries, leaving us vulnerable to dopamine regulation issues and addiction, and of our embodiment circuitry, so that they can front and take over. In order to input data to their 'programs', alters have their own connections to our sensory-information networks and processors.

I think this is where we differ most from non-DID people. Their circuits are relatively simple, relatively accessible, and relatively under-exploited. If we all begin as desktop PC's, running a browser and a word-processor and antiviral software and not much else, then we've had to mod and hack ours so it functions as a mainframe supporting multiple simultaneous use of enhanced versions of all kinds of specialist software. Non-DID people don't get resource conflicts, and have a nice friendly interface for maintenance and making tweaks; we live with freezes and catastrophic system errors and snow-crashes, until we suck up the manuals, learn machine code, and get busy with the soldering iron.

I don't really have a point, either, but that's how I interpret the fundamental difference between me and someone without DID. They have a neat little box to work with, running its factory set-up: I have a tangle of bastardized motherboards and overclocked chips held together with globs of scorched solder and scotch tape. Recovery is about finding ways to function without starting fires or blowing power to the whole block.

/r/DID Thread