Drawing by Misfit (7)
NOTE: Each alter’s name has a number after it the first time
it is on the page to show which group s/he belongs to.
See the right of this page for the group.
Yes a new look. Not only have we hit Value Village this week for a pile of new duds but we have redressed our blog as well. If you have any comment on the new looks (the blog we mean, not our clothes) feel free to let us know.
Our birthday is still a happening thing 2 days later. Yesterday we went to the support group and received more cards and gifts. Wow. Did we feel flattered. What a nice group these guys are. Mind you one of the presents was MORE DEADLY CHEESECAKE. Doesn’t anyone understand we are trying to lose an inch or two off the middle portion of our body? How the hell is that going to happen when people are giving us our absolute favouritest food of all. Sigh.
Well ... we are not really complaining.
And today we celebrate some more. A group of us from the support group are going to get together to celebrate our birthday and another woman’s. A two-for-one day. This is the way to do birthdays for sure.
Some of our irritability has lifted. We can tell because we are not getting so annoyed when Panda Bear demands or complains about the establishment’s food. And we are not so hyper and wound up about our blog. We have calmed down a few inches. Of course, we also feel like we’re getting a cold and that’s probably slowing us down a little too. But .... that’s okay. Where’s the Echinacea you guys?
Conversations within
Yes we have many. Sometimes it’s kind of funny because someone will make a comment about something. Then the next day they will say the same thing. Some of us laugh a little. Then the next day they will say the same thing again and more of us roll our eyes. Remember the days when people sent out memos on paper – in triplicate or more? It’s kind of like that. The “repeat offender “, that is the alter who keeps repeating themselves, in defence will say “hey I’m just sending out copies. Wanna make sure everyone knows what I’m thinking.”
Of weaving and Weavers and webs (and spiders) and Webers and The Web
A number of years ago we decided to give our personality system a name. At first we chose “Tir’s (1) Clan” but many of us didn’t like that a lot. Then we had a wonderful image of a spider’s web. And there were each of us on a spot on that web. Any movement anywhere on that web caused the whole web to vibrate. The part of the web closest to the movement vibrated more than parts further away. So anyone of us doing or saying something affects all of us to some degree. Those closer to that alter may feel more impact than those further away. So we became The Web and we wove ourself into a tapestry. (We were going to call our book that – Tapestry – but then decided on I Am. We Are.)
Then we took up weaving for real. We figured we should seeing as how we are weavers on a web and our last name is Weber and we have one alter called Black Widow (3). Better find out how to weave. Well that was some endeavour. Took a class. Bought a loom. Spent hours and hours each day weaving. Then had a major, we mean MAJOR meltdown. A whole bunch of yarn became extremely tangled. And boy did we lose it. We were sure that we would not be able to weave, that we had no talent for weaving. Who were we fooling anyway? And we felt very suicidal. Kept thinking “this is serious. Maybe we should go to hospital. We are just such a failure.”
But somehow we got through that day and calmed down. But two days later it happened again and the meltdown happened again. Thought we should just quit and sell the loom. It was obvious we were a complete failure. And not just at weaving but at life. We sat on the couch and cried and cried. We hurt so much. When we had cried ourself out a new thought began to emerge. We began talking Inside and slowly it dawned on us – we have to fix that tangled web you know. We have to undo the knots. We have to. We can’t not do that. For our own sanity we had to. So we did.
Then an amazing idea popped up. Light bulb. Hey you guys we aren’t giving up. We are refusing to give up. Did you guys know that we are capable of that? We usually give up don’t we? But this time we’re not? Well how about that.
And they lived happily ever after. No giving up. Of course there’s a difference between letting go and giving up. Not the same at all. There are some things you need to let go of. But you don’t have to give up on things.
We did manage to weave a few things to our great pleasure and we were happy with them. Yea!!! Then we decided to weave a blanket for Lance but we started to make a number of mistakes. So we let go. For a few years.
Only a few months ago we decided to start weaving again and to do Lance’s blanket all over from scratch. What was truly amazing was our confidence. When there was a mistake we thought about it, came up with ideas of how to fix it and we fixed it. Yea!!! We are doing the blanket in 4 strips or panels about 22” wide each and 96” long. We have already completed the first panel and it looks just great. Yea!!!! We have grown up and matured.
Back to conversations within and about being a whole bunch of people inside one body which is called a “personality system” in the literature about multiplexity. But before we tell you about this we wanted to quickly summarize and finish our talk about types of alters.
Types of alters, cont’d
We have told you about the Original Person or Birth Personality, about the Host or Outside Person, Inner Self Helpers, Child Alters and Persecutor Alters. These are the most common types you’ll find in many multiples.
Protector alters
These ones can easily be persecutor-type alters as well or they may work to counterbalance any persecutor or suicidal alters. The ISHs can certainly take on these roles as well. In therapy protector alters might learn how to have more control so that it isn’t so easy to harm the body. They may also try to protect the person from any Outside harm.
Other alters
There are anaesthetic alters who do not feel physical pain and may harm the body, mute or autistic alters, cross-gender who often cross-dress and may be responsible for a unisex look that apparently many multiples have. There are inanimate objects, animals and insects, Pollyanna-type alters, suicidal, and promiscuous alters.
We have an alter who used to be called The Mute (3). She wrote in our journals and did other writing but always for other alters. Her name is now Oregon (3). Stoene Boy (6st) used to be almost autistic, very withdrawn, and had his own language. Mind you he was only 1, so maybe it was just baby-talk.
Alters can be male, female, both or neither. They can be any age – older or younger than the person’s actual age, unborn (our Phoetus (4) is like this and lives in Una’s (4) womb), or from a past life. X-Files had a multiple in an episode who had an alter from a past life. That was kind of a cool idea. We have an alter named Old Self (2) who we believe holds all of our ancestry. Like we have said a number of times, it is a child’s imagination that creates alters and the sky is definitely the limit. It’s wide open.
A final note about alters for now. We have described alters who are very distinct types but alters are not always so distinct from each other. In fact they may be very similar. The memories they have or their functions may overlap sometimes. They may actually collaborate to present as one alter for a time in order to hide the multiplexity.
There is a lot more to tell you about alters and about our own alters and how we work. But we are going to move on to the personality system and then come back to more about alters. However, we will do that in our next post. We have tired ourself out with redesigning our blog and thought we would treat you to a shorter post (in case some of you find our posts a bit lengthy ... well Graham, our son, does).
Any questions about alters? Or anything else. Feel free.
Talk to you later folks and thanks for listening.
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