The creative purposes of DID alters

Xénon
Jan 6
13 min read

Written by Xénon, reviewed by Leo

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

childhood abuse & trauma (verbal, physical, emotional), toxic family, swear words, PTSD

Dissociative Identity Disorder, or as I'll shorten it as DID, is a mental health condition affecting about 1.5% of the world. (1) One of its most recognisable traits are the disruption in identity, being the presence of at least two personalities or alters in those affected, and gaps in memory. Alters in DID may be similar to each other, all the way to being so different from each other that they perceive themselves as non human, fantasy creatures, objects or body parts, different ages, genders, orientations and races.

Hi, it's Xénon writing. If you don't know me, I have DID and am a part of a system (meaning group of alters present in one person with DID) nicknamed Xéna & Kin. We've been doing mental health awareness work since 2021 when we struggled with our university studies due to the lack of accessibility aids for people like us and the fact that we weren't able to access therapy despite being hit by wave after wave of almost lethal depression and social anxiety struggles.

It's 4am as I'm writing this and my sleep schedule is garbage, but I also think to the fact that I generally always sleep and wake later than everyone else in my system. The first reaction my loving system members will have is "makes sense, he's a vampire after all, so we have to all work hard and get Xénon out of bed in the morning!" This got me thinking about the fact that not all alters are necessarily human, despite stemming from a human mind and body, which isn't talked about very often in awareness spaces. I at least don't bring it up as much, in part because I have so many things to cover on DID in events where I speak to the public but also because it opens a giant can of worms.

This can of worms involves childhood coping mechanisms, spectrums within the DID community, and people becoming disbelieving of DID because of the perceived absurdity that you are currently reading a blog post written by a vampire who studied biochemistry, dropped out then studied art in university, struggles with C-PTSD and cannot sleep at night.

On the rare occasions where I do bring up this factoid at awareness events, people's first reactions contain three questions: How? Why? What species are included in your system? Let's address all of them in this blog and I'll ask some of my system members for their input on themselves.

How and why do non-human alters form?

So, how the hell does that work? How does it happen? DID is not just a disorder frequently developed after childhood trauma, it's also a developmental disorder (2) and a coping strategy. Being about the nature of how you identify with yourself, DID forms at an age where children consolidate who they are as people and create a coherent sense of self, an identity of their own. Childhood trauma gets in the way of this healthy development, and unsafe environments encourage children to never consolidate their identity in exchange for safety and maladaptive but very much needed coping mechanisms.

In a sense, all children before that age range are kind of plural. Think about it: children of a certain age start testing social boundaries, creating bonds with others, and have different facets through which they interact with the world around them. Kids carve out their own space in the world by being experimental with what they can and cannot do, what they like and what they don't like, what others do in reaction to their behaviour. For example, it's natural to behave differently with your teacher than you do your mom, or your friends, or your neighbours. Kids push it to an extreme before settling down at around age 7 at which point they naturally consolidate every facet of themselves into a somewhat coherent sense of self. Most adults still retain strategies like this in complex social settings like work, schooling, relationships but have a coherent sense of identity and the self awareness to consciously adjust their behaviour to the situation.

In cases like DID, this consolidation never happens. As children with DID grow up, the facets within themselves grow evermore distant from each other, specialising themselves, multiplying on top of being kept apart by dissociative amnesia. (3) For example, the facet of the kid originally present around teachers continues to exist in an almost independent way from the others, switching in when teachers are around, being specialised to deal with serious social interactions in academic settings and may develop additional traits to help them in this "task" of theirs even down to developing their own life stories separate from real life experiences set in fictional universes. The normal childhood developmental phase becomes a coping strategy for dealing with trauma as some alters become specialised to only exist in traumatic settings, around abusive figures, or live to be the only ones in systems to remember traumatic events and the associated emotions that would overwhelm any child. The compartmentalization of memory happens as a result of two symptoms, being dissociative amnesia and identity fracturing, striking a desperate deal to protect a person with DID.

How do non-human alters fit into this ordeal? Well, most children have a phase where they pretend to be animals or roleplay fictional characters. It's a way for them to yet again socially experiment but I'm also reminding you that children don't have a sense of what is normal the same way adults do. Most adults think of themselves as human, because, well you just are, right? Children don't think that way yet and they can find their senses of self and identity or relatability within fictional stories and animals around them. (4) The way DID toys with this aspect of childlike wonder is kind of twisted but also ingenious. Think of the common joke "if you feel stuck, just think of what *insert celebrity* would do." In a way, this is the most relatable analogy to me and how I see the origins of non-human alters. Alters are, in the end, solutions to problems and answers to questions. Here are some examples to help you understand where I'm going with this:

"What if I cannot be loved?" "If I am a dog, I will be loveable, everyone loves dogs!"

"My parents constantly blame me for things." "If I am an angel, then I can act perfect and they will stop blaming me."

"My parents keep insulting me." "If I am a robot, then I cannot feel emotionally hurt."

"Why do my peers constantly point out bad traits I have and outcast me?" "If that's happening, maybe I'm a demon."

Through this kind of problem solving, conscious or not, children with DID achieve impressive levels of self preservation in their lives by adapting to traumatising situations and psychologically damaging upbringings through creative means like non-human alters, fictional lives and backstories.

Mini interviews with Xéna & Kin members

So here I am, documenting what I'm doing travelling across our inner world to go meet my system members at 5am and chat about our shared theories on how each of them helped us overcome trauma. This list of mini interviews are raw discussions of how some of our members experience and view their existence in the context of DID. To tease you a little more, you'll get to read the perspectives of a werewolf-vampire, a merman, a fairy and about an android. Leo's already awake, he's a werewolf-vampire hybrid who frequently helps us with diplomatic stuff... like boring emails or helping me organise our mailbox.

Leo: Now that you say that, Xenon, it would be funny if I'm kind of a dog because I like fetching the mail. Jokes aside, if you ask me about why I think I'm a werewolf-vampire hybrid, I think it's seen nowadays as a natural contradiction. Xenon: Yep, a lot of modern media like to make vampires and werewolves natural enemies or something. Leo: I recall a lot of stories I have heard about the system's parents being racist towards each other, discreetly or not. Being mixed ethnic, Anja grew up struggling a lot with her identity. Wether it's because of her peers at school bullying her due to her asian heritage, or her mom making passive aggressive comments about westerners or both making negative assumptions of Chinese people, Anja must have grown up with a lot of internal conflict. It's a difficult feeling to grow up with, feeling like you have to choose a side, that you never truly belong anywhere and that either side both want to claim you as one of theirs while fundamentally hating at least 50% of what you are. Xenon: Wait, that's basically what you went through, right? Leo: Yes, for context to our readers here, our inner world also has this vampire-werewolf conflict and I was born out of wedlock. My mother, the werewolf side of my family, had this brother who really hated me, probably because he offloaded a lot of his hatred for my father, who's a vampire, onto me as I grew up with my struggling single mother. I don't have the same family structure or context as Anja, but went through the exact same feelings as her in terms of my species and her about ethnicity. I feel that my older age and experiences of physical assault from my uncle before he died allows me to now help Anja out and be understanding of her feelings when her family members would mistreat her and hold prejudice towards her for things outside of her control. Xenon: Thank you so much for that. You honestly help me a lot too. Leo: Vampires help each other out so no worries. Are you going to bed anytime soon? Xenon: Ahhhh um I still have other interviews to do byeee

Next up would be what I like to call the tech family, because these three alters live in an area of our inner world that is full of cyborgs, robots, spaceships and all. Eric is a punk merman cyborg secret agent who's blank faced at most times and super helpful in daily life. Techna aka Monica is a woman in STEM (trademarked) who cut off and subsequently replaced her fairy wings with her first ever cybernetic enhancement prototype wings all for a PhD. Two-0 (nickname we use instead of his serial number) is an android built by Techna and maintained by both her and Eric whose goal is to get as close to sentience as possible without the use of souls or magic from our inner world. They live together in a giant research facility and I like to think of Two-0 as Techna and Eric's child, as an inside joke between all of us.

Eric: I'll go first. Sure I front a lot when you guys don't drink enough. The moment I feel the body dehydrate, it feels like my gills are drying up and I cannot breathe. Honestly, I mostly look pissed off at all times because nobody's hydrating enough for me to ever be in a good mood. Otherwise, my own experiences in this world is that others can't really read my emotions. I guess the cultural barrier of being from the ocean is just that strong. Now that I live on land and have land-dwelling coworkers, it takes people outside of my team ages to understand me and how I work as a person. Gets annoying real fast when they cannot tell wether I'm being supportive, annoyed or feel any emotion at all. A lot of my communication methods are also just gone on land. I don't get to use my underwater clicks, whistles, body language or chemical signals and have to make way more unintuitive effort to make other people get the subtle stuff. Techna: I feel like, if we think about it, you had to grow up concealing a lot about how you feel to not get targeted by the abusive people in your childhoods... Eric: Yep. The bastards in Anja's childhood sure hated her having anything they cannot control, including feelings. Xenon: Yep, I got really used to acting out different emotions without feeling them, just to survive and not get screamed at for weird reasons. Eric: Meanwhile I just fundamentally don't behave the same as the average person. Hah, maybe if you get bent backwards enough, you'll turn into some version of me, Xenon. Anyway, you used to do a lot of communication indirectly, expressing how you truly felt about the "care"givers through body language and words they didn't have the emotional intelligence to understand just so you wouldn't need to go insane with your own thoughts. Techna: Maybe it's autism? After all, we did think for a while that we may be autistic too. We don't have a diagnosis though. Eric: Emotional numbing is pretty normal if you get treated like shit as a kid. I wouldn't go straight for the 'tism card, even when a lot of our autistic peers are kinda relatable to me in terms of how society at large treats our differences in emotional expression. For me, this look of emotional numbness is just on my face at all times in a pretty natural and painless way. Maybe to justify it I'm some fish with no habit of making facial expressions and are out of ways to truly convey what I feel with others, the same way you struggled with actually communicating your misery towards others, Xenon. Xenon: I definitely also think about the fact that something I struggled with as a child to survive is... just your natural behaviour. Eric: Touche. Good point.

Techna: For me, I really liked our time studying biochemistry together. It's my favourite subject, otherwise I wouldn't have wanted to study it past the bachelors myself haha. I frequently helped out everyone with assignments and explaining stuff. In the end though, if you and Anja were forced into studying STEM because of an Asian mother... it's still awful and wrong. I'm glad we got into art school and I can study STEM in my free time! Xenon: You helped out so much, even now. I know art school is hard for you at times. Techna: Yeahhh Anja's mom always wanted a girl who was "strong woman in STEM, CEO husband and two kids" kind of vibe, really not what her daughter is actually like and she's kind of in denial about it still, constantly telling Anja that she's disappointed in her, repeating it over and over while staring at us as if there's anything to be done about things only she feels. If you ask me, I'm super proud of Anja for doing her own thing. Xenon: So, Techna, when's the CEO husband and two kids coming in for you? Techna: Oh stop it hahaha but yeah it was discussed between us before that I'm definitely some kind of placeholder for a kind of daughter Anja could never have become... sadly maybe in the hopes that her mom could finally give her any kind of decent treatment and interest. Being interested in your kids' life is so important as parents to build bonds and trust... also because why wouldn't you be interested in your child being that creative? I grew up with divorced parents and my dad was at first thinking I could get a "traditional" job for a fairy like say being a priestess because I had lightning powers as a child. When I told him I wanted to move away to the big cities, study in academia for engineering and the sciences he was floored and took a while to cope with the idea but ultimately ended up being my biggest supporter alongside my stepbrother. Having had at least a taste of healthy support meant that I got to support Anja emotionally through "disappointing" her mom all while fighting for her dreams. Xenon: Besides your life experiences allowing you to cope and help us, do you ever think about why you might be a fairy in the context of DID? Techna: Huh... I never did. I mean, I'm a bit of a wild stretch. I honestly do not see many "techno fairies" out there wether it's in my work environment or in popular media. I feel like it should totally be more of a common trope than it actually is, much like artists who are into STEM or scientists who are into the arts. Like Anja, I'm pretty feminine yet enjoy being unconventional by my cultural standards all while she's a child of a tiger mom who ended up studying art all while she continuously gets informed of disappointment every time she has to go home for a holiday. At least my dad got on board with it, Anja doesn't have the same basic stuff from her mom. Xenon: You know what... it makes a lot of sense to me now. Techna: Yay!

Xenon: Can I talk about Two-0 with you two? Techna: Of course! Eric: Sure. Xenon: I mean, it's become increasingly obvious with our fronting journals and trackers that Two-0 jumps to front when we get lost somewhere and his internal navigation system has saved us so many times. He also just doesn't get offended at all and doesn't register bodily harm as pain, only "hardware damage". Eric: Yeah, I can't add much more to that, you got it down. He's a robot, he doesn't have an ego and at most he pretends to know what feelings are. Just like how he easily navigates home, he's always passively collecting data from how people speak, move, emote and details in his environment to copy other people and blend in when the program activates.

Editor's note: Hi, Leo here! This wasn't pointed out in their discussion but I want to bring up the fact that hypervigilance and hyperawareness of your environment is related to PTSD.(5) Maybe a child brain would cope with the fact that they have to be hypervigilant against threats in their own home by becoming a constantly scanning robot. Just a thought I had while editing this. Also, Two-0's nature of copying others around him can be a part of the fawn response when met with a threat. He almost exclusively fronts when sensing threat. His eyes were also built to move around a lot to quickly gather information, but that can be matched with darting eyes seen in hypervigilant people after experiencing trauma. Without his masking program added by Eric and Techna, Two-0 has a long distant stare to him that can rapidly switch to intense staredowns as he analyses people who enter into his field of view for behavioural cues. His eyeballs, with embedded cameras and lidar tech can open their lenses wider to capture more info, but this translates into him widening his eyes frequently when fronting. Two-0's habit of studying people around him is internally framed in a sensical context, being that he is made by a scientist who wants an android to become human through intense studying and mimicry. Yet when seen from a trauma informed perspective is riddled with signs that he carries a lot of our C-PTSD symptoms. (6)

Techna: Honestly I didn't intend for Two-0 to turn out as a navigational aid but I'm really glad he did. He also became super useful as an autopilot for when we dissociate but still need to keep things running like keeping up an appearance around abusive people, navigating around or doing basic tasks like eating and drinking. He does all of those things through past data he collects and copies gestures. When he fronts, conditions are met in such a way that he treats it as a temporary mission, finishes tasks within said mission and leaves quickly to let us recover from dissociative episodes, C-PTSD flashbacks and panic attacks. He also doesn't feel dissociation headaches or vision distortions all while being capable of registering that the body may be hungry, thirsty, injured or tired and very quickly takes corrective actions. Thanks to his databank, he can also visually and auditorily tell if certain people are threatening or not and effectively set boundaries, fight or remove himself from situations with a really detailed priority list and logic. Eric: Essentially, seems like when he fronts, he analyses the body as if it were his own components. You get all the advantages of not being dissociated being that you still can barely function and care for the body, while getting the advantage of dissociating and never being present enough to realise the horrors of your situation. It's some weird twisted idea of what extreme survival is like. You don't care about anything excessive or useless like emotions, ego and personal preferences, you just wanna get shit done and get the fuck out. If you need resources, you take that and only that and look for independent ways of acquiring them without any reliance on external entities. Copy others, blend in, don't stand out and you won't get destroyed. Pretty much how abusive emotionally volatile households work if you wanna live.