Hi! I’ve been writing a story with a protagonist who has DID, so I like to go find and follow blogs about DID for reference. I’d like to ask you how everyone knows what they look like in the headspace? I’m having trouble drawing these alters with their own inner appearances without making them look too similar to the body. It’s not important for the story necessarily, but I feel it helps me get to know the characters better.
Well I don’t really know if this will help, but a lot of alters have their appearances from what a lot of people call “the inner world”. With that being said, not all systems have an inner world, and not all alters (even in systems that can access it) can enter / look into / see into the inner world.
It is theorized to be kind of a mental place that the brain creates to help the parts that are otherwise strongly dissociated from one another to be able to communicate and to try to interpret trauma and all the fragmentation of the brain into a normal standard.
Also, a lot believe that inner worlds may or may not also be correlated to a not-DID/OSDD exclusive thing called Maladaptive Daydreaming.
That would probably be one way that alters find themselves taking on inner appearances, they just kinda form in there and their appearance there is just what they are.
Some I also imagine, especially those without an inner world, might have it just be an internalized feeling that they might naturally split off with. Like internally they already know that they are... Mexican and tall or something like that. Like I can’t say if non-DID/OSDD people do this since I have lately been finding a lot of what I thought was normal wasn’t, but if you think about how you look like in your head, you probably get an image of yourself, but for an alter, that image would be something strictly different often.
Actually now that you mention it, I might have been a decent person to ask? XD Up until like... a month or two ago, I actually had no clue (or well little clue) what I looked like other than that I DIDN’T associate with body. (I only knew that cause I’d look in the mirror and go “Oh shit wait thats me. I look weird”)
For me it actually took a lot of internal self exploring and understanding the basis for my identity before I was actually able to consistently know what I looked like to be entirely honest. For a good chunk of the time I really just knew I had brown hair and was kinda androgynous but like, that was it.
It is kinda a phenomenon with our experiences to be honest. It just kinda happens with everything else.
Also I am pretty sure some alters barely look different from the body and/or are the body but in different ages of their life (littles for example). That isn’t necessarily true in our case, but if you were to look at how Aderis, I, and Aya look (at least when Aya has brown hair) we all look vaguely similar to the original body.
I wouldn’t fret too much about them looking too much like the body since that is just well... kinda how it is sometimes. Of course some systems and some alters may differ a lot (Lucille, Iris), but I kinda notice a good few of them do resemble the body because that is the body they were formed in.
Anyways, if you have other questions about DID and/or character writing regarding that, feel free to ask. Writing about DID without having DID is a difficult and risky thing to do, but I really do appreciate you doing your best to do your research. It really means a lot and we’d love to help as a fellow writer.
-Riku (Host)
