The ETERNAL CHILD? Can ALTERS Age?! | Debunking DID Ep 11 | Dissociative Identity Disorder RE-UPLOAD

Hello everybody, welcome back to Dissociated. We are a channel dedicated to educating people about dissociative identity disorder and trying to diminish the stigmas that surround it. I've been running this channel for a year now and something that's come up regularly is people seeming to be quite confused about how aging works inside a system. If you don't know about DID much a system is the name for the collective group of all the alters inside one body. You get a lot of people asking, do alters age? Are they stuck at one age? Can alters grow older with the body? How come some alters are older than the actual body age? How does that work? What about littles? Do littles age? The short answer is yes and no. It's different for every system. Not all alters are others are trapped at a specific time period or a specific age that may be representative to them of a significant event or emotion. This is going to be a debunking DID episode which means that you'll be able to find all the links to the research, studies, medical journals, everything you need will be in the description box below. So if you would like to go off and do your own research then we have to encourage that and you should be able to find everything that we've mentioned in description box so don't forget to check that out at the end of the video. So first of all what is an alter? In 1998 Watkins and Watkins identified alters in DID as being their own identities involving a center of initiative and experience. They have a characteristic representation which may be different from how the body is perceived to be. They have their own autobiographical memory and can distinguish their actions and their feelings and their emotions from that of the host, the person who's in control of the body most often. This means that alters have a sense of ownership over their own actions thoughts and abilities and a disconnect from the actions thoughts and responsibilities of those or other alters or the host in the body. So alters can have their own skill set, they can learn things on their own that then won't be accessible to other alters because those parts of the brain don't connect properly, there's sort of a wall up between them. This means that information can't really be shared between alters unless they want it to be or it accidentally leaks. But alters can have different reactions to medication, they have different preferences in food, different sex, different sexuality, different gender, all that kind of stuff. Alters are very much their own person. So what about when it comes to age? Alters who are younger than the body especially may feel like they're frozen in a certain point of time or a certain age which could be representative of a time when they experienced the trauma that caused them to be created because DID is a trauma related disorder. It's only caused by trauma in childhood, repeated trauma. Some alters will find it very difficult to accept that they're not in the time period that they believe themselves to be in and can be stuck in a sort of eternal flashback where they relive this traumatic experience over and over again. So some alters stay in that moment in time and identifies the age the body was when that experience happened and when that alter was created. Child alters or littles are a really common type of alter. Now I need to say this, the term little is a colloquialism that's used in the DID and OSDD community. It's a term that refers to an alter who is a child usually under the age of around 10. It's not at all related to the term that's used in the DDLG community of little, it's completely unrelated to that. Child alters should also not be confused with the concept of having an inner child which applies to non-dissociative people. Child alters will often act or talk in a childlike way but unlike a biological child they may be able to understand abstract concepts or read and speak with a long words and long sentences due to the fact that they are sharing an adult brain. Because of this they may have some access to muscle memory used by the body and may be able to do some things that another child of that age wouldn't have learned to do yet, for example typing on a phone. This does differ dramatically from alter to alter and system to system. If your little can do things like type on a phone or uses very long words or doesn't speak like a child that's very valid. But again if your little can't do things like write or read or type on a phone or has difficulty walking that's also very valid as well. DID is a vastly diverse disorder and the way the brain creates these alters is specific to the circumstance that needed them to be made, specific to your trauma and to your experiences. Every alter will be different. So due to the nature of DID littles often hold memories of trauma or child abuse that occurred at the around the time that they were created and they hold that memory. That specific trauma may have caused them to be created so that they can contain or process what was happening to the body at that point in time and that's a reason why they may remain at that age. Due to this some littles may contain memories of horror and pain whereas others will be very carefree and fun loving. Some may even only have positive memories. The reason that a child alter may have only positive memories or be very happy and carefree and loving is because it's a way for the mind to try and experience the joy and innocence and playfulness of childhood that was stolen from them. Some child alters can also be idealized representations of the good girl or the good boy, the perfect child, the golden child. Perhaps if there were toxic parents involved or abusive parenting they were created to be the perfect child in order to keep the body the system safe. So what about age in child alters? Some can have the speech or appearance of a very very young child the smallest of which may not even be able to speak, may be pre-verbal or not be able to walk. This means that yes baby and infant alters can exist and yes child alters littles and infant alters can front so take control of the body and they will act like a child. Trauma memories of baby and infant alters primarily consist of sensations and feelings. They may not have a clear memory of any trauma that happened but they may hold very strong emotions or very strong reactions to external stimuli like darkness for example. Littles and all alters really can remain the same age or they can age up and learn to take on new responsibilities within the system that they exist in. This can happen in some situations when they've learned to come to terms with the trauma that they experienced and no longer feel tied down to that specific age or that specific time in their life. Aging isn't always a conscious decision and I looked very hard for any kind of research on what happens when an alter chooses to age. Some seem to be able to choose to age up or down and others can't and there's been very very little research done on this part of aging and age sliding within systems and alters. If there is anybody who is in the medical field or the psychological field this is something that needs more research and I'd be very interested to hear if anybody has any links or knows anything about this that I haven't been able to find yet. So other than holding a memory or re-experiencing what should have been a happy carefree childhood where a child will learn to explore the world and come to terms with who they are and what the world around them means, what's safe and what isn't, why would a child alter exist? Some child alters can go dormant. Any kind of alter can go dormant which essentially means that they go to sleep for a very long time either because they're not needed or something awful has happened and they need time to recharge. So some little alters may not have been active since the body was very very young. This means that unlike other alters who may have grown up with the body or aged alongside the body even if they don't identify with the body's age, some of these alters may not have had a chance to grow and develop alongside the rest of the system. Others may not want to age because they want to cling to that aspect of childhood innocence and an illusion of safety instead of being thrust into this this world where they need to learn about and re-experience trauma and it can be very scary to be in an adult body where everything looks bigger. You don't understand how to interact with the world around you. So some littles especially may cling to the age that they were first formed at and be very resistant to the idea of accepting what year it is now, how old the body is now and what they can do to be a part of that. They want to hold on to a sense of childlike wonder and innocence that the body wasn't able to have and for some systems that's very very important. Some child alters can take on lots of responsibility. They may have been tasked when they were created with going to school or making friends, encouraging affection from the caregiver whether that was a parent or another caretaker. But sometimes aging in alters isn't related to the time or the age of the body when they experienced the trauma at all. It could sometimes be that a body was a lot older, they experienced trauma but the alter that was created is metaphorically representative of how that trauma made the individual feel. So for example if something abusive was happening it may make an individual feel helpless or trapped or like a child unable to escape, not listened to or unable to communicate well, perhaps pre-verbal and an alter could be created that represents that experience and holds it for the host so that they don't have to experience, know, understand what happened and be able to continue on with daily life in a successful and effective manner. The existence of young alters used to be known as spontaneous age regression before DID was accepted as valid in its own right. At that time professionals attributed the spontaneous age regression which was actually switching to a young alter a little which was obviously regularly seen in DID patients and also believed that PTSD symptoms were central to DID. This is an accurate observation based off what we now know about DID and the studies that have been conducted around it which prove that DID is a and it's exceptionally accurate based on the prevalent acceptance of the structural dissociation theory. Alters may or may not age with the body. Some alters may age every year based on the body's birthday or a day that they've selected to be their birthday or a day that holds significance to them whether that's trauma wise or for another reason. Others may age sporadically throughout the years as they learn to come to terms with their own trauma and the time and date that the body exists in in the external world. And yes alters can age even if they are older than the body. It's possible for alters to be created who are older than the body age. For example older teenage and adult alters can be present in a teenage body. These older alters may have served as a authoritative figure or a parental figure to a dissociative child who didn't have reliable parents or a reliable caretaker or even adults in their life that couldn't be relied upon to stop the trauma that they were experiencing. Older alters may be caretakers or protectors for younger parts as they might have more confidence, intelligence, authority, strength than would be associated with that of someone at a younger age. Then again other teenage alters may not handle responsibility very well or not handle the responsibility that is taken on by adults. This is not always the case. Lots of teenage alters and sometimes even child alters hold a lot of responsibility within the system and may not seem to outwardly present as the age that they actually identify with. They might have responsibilities that require much more conscientiousness, maturity or general problem-solving ability than would usually be found of someone around that age. Some adult alters are also created due to the internal belief that if the child had been an adult when the trauma was happening then they wouldn't have experienced that trauma because it wouldn't have happened to an adult or if they had been older they would have been able to escape that situation. Teenage alters on the other hand might fulfill roles that other alters can't such as asking for attention and making friends. They might act stereotypically and be a bit rebellious in search of freedom and self-fulfillment in order to make them and the body feel good. This goes for any alter but as an example they may take over when the body is very very stressed to try and get the body to relax and chill out which would be stereotypical of a teenager often to just want to chill out. Not with all teenagers obviously and it's the same for all alters they are individual people with their own wants needs desires and personalities their own interests and their own responsibilities in their life and the life of their system. Teenage alters are most often the parts that will generally draw attention to the system's needs not being met. They may also hold a lot of internalized feelings that are very very negative especially towards the body and a lot of survivors of sexual abuse may have sexual alters who contain that experience who appear to be highly promiscuous or fun-loving or fun-seeking alters who often appear as teenagers. Not all alters will fit into a specific age category nicely and neatly and exactly how people like to put things in a box. Not everyone's going to fit in that box. Some alters can age slide and this means that they can go up and down between a certain set of ages so for example sometimes a particular alter may be a little and other times they may be an adult for example or it could be a very small amount of age change for example one of our alters Sally slides between the age of 24 and 27. Sometimes this can be brought on due to external factors so if a flashback happens for example an alter may slide down to a childhood age which may reflect how they feel about this memory that's resurfacing. Other alters may identify as being ageless and not identify a particular age at all or identify as never aging. This is often the case with alters who experience themselves as being non-human and we made a whole video on that and about why non-human alters are necessary, why they're created and why they're valid and why they do exist within DID and OSDD systems so if you'd like to know about that please do check it out. I think this covers pretty much all the basics of aging in a DID slash OSDD system but if you want to know more please do leave a comment and I will try my best to get back to you maybe even make another video on this. If you'd like a video on age sliding I can go into that in more detail as well. I really hope that you enjoyed this video don't forget that you can check out all the links to the research that we used and various medical journals down in the description box below if you would like to do your own research or check out where I got this information from other than personal experience and if you'd like to check out the rest of our debunking DID series it's a series of videos just like this where we go into detail on the science and psychology behind associative identity disorder and look at why it is the way it is. All links to studies, medical journals, research linked in the description so if you'd like to check that out please feel free to. If you'd like to watch some more light-hearted videos and meet us and see how we live our life with DID then we have lots of videos like that on the channel as well so I really hope that you enjoyed this video and I'm sending lots of love to you all have a great day everybody bye!