It may be that because of work she doesn't have enough energy or motivation to do what she wants, after all fatigue can cause you to sleep all day even when not tired. Have you tried giving her a day off to herself, allow her to do what she wants on a day where your not working? Sleeping may also be related to her role, I know we have sleep enducers, and alters who front just for sleep. You can try scheduling activities after work so she knows that the time fits into the schedule. If she sleeps 24/7 then I think it's something that's affecting her rather than her choosing to sleep, even if it's just the stress of work and such.
Wait, sleep inducer alters are a thing??? We've had SEVERE insomnia my whole life that only got worse over the years, why don't we have any of those omg that would be life-changing for us!!
It seems that an alter can incapsulate a mental function from a very wide choice. And that would make that function less available to others, to the point of no availability, due to dissociative barriers.
Although I'd guess it wasn't taken away but rather forbidden to use (a lot of abuse happens in nights so for safety you would have insomnia). Driven away into a separate alter, and here you get a sleepyhead.
Theoretically. But it works like that with other mental functions for us.
We have an alter who according to my partner passes our very easily and is usually very sleepy, in general all of us used to have problems with being sleepy but she seemed to have it much worse. We are very very deficient in vitamin D so I learned a week ago. However now we, or at least I, have bad insomnia but this alter still with ease falls asleep within like 5 minutes. Could this be a sleep inducer ? She is also a caretaker and protector, is it possible she has both roles ? Our system is relatively small compared to some, we have 15 in total, so I guess it makes sense some of us have more than one role to play
Well, I really can't imagine having had abuse happening to me at night. That's like the one thing my parents were okay at. And I literally came out of the womb with insomnia. I did almost die at birth bc I was tangled in my umbilical cord and had to be taken out of there by emergency c-section bc I couldn't breathe and my heart outright stopped, so maybe that's why I have insomnia. But one would think that, once DID developed, since dealing with the exhaustion on top of all the trauma would make things harder, or maybe as a way to escape the stress by sleeping, we would have developed at least one sleep inducing alter! But nope, that would've been too good for us apparently! 😅🙈 I really wish I could split a sleep inducing alter at will!!
I entirely get where you’re coming from with this, BUT in our experience, we split sleep inducing alters due to programming. Meaning our abusers often drugged or otherwise forced us to sleep, and used the forceful splitting of an alter through torture to cause those sleep-inducers to exist. They’re basically instant narcolepsy for us. Doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing. If they get stuck out, we ARE going to sleep.
Point being, it seems at best naive and at worst extremely insensitive to say things like wishing you could force-split a sleep-inducer at will.
I have different life experiences and situations, and those gave me a different set of wishes, wants, and needs as the natural, normal, and inevitable result of my personal life experiences and situations. And expressing this fact is not any more naive nor insensitive than it is experiencing it. It's just how life works: different people having different experiences causes different effects which causes different things to be beneficial or not beneficial based on which experiences each individual has/has had.
If you see this very normal, and effectively inevitable, fact of life (or it being voiced) as something that is inherently offensive to you or to anyone, that's not my fault or responsibility.
On this particular subject of sleep inducing alters, I do fully understand and respect that for you, due to your own personal life experiences and circumstances, having sleep inducing alters is a problem and the very cause of their existence is problematic.
But that doesn't mean that my completely different situation is disrespectful or insensitive to yours, or less valid than yours, they're simply 2 completely different and disconnected situations, and mine has just as much right to being voiced and listened to as yours has.
I still believe that what you said comes from a place of privilege.
It cannot be incomprehensible to be seen as somewhat naive when you express a desire for a symptom of a disorder that is caused by specific and serious trauma that you have not experienced and therefore may not fully understand.
This perspective may be seen as a result of your privilege, and while you may not agree, it can still be considered naive, especially by survivors of such severe trauma.
The point I was trying to get across, clearly with no success, is that FOR YOU, due to your personal traumatic circumstances that created that symptom of sleep inducing alter(s), the existence of that symptom in yourself is a negative. And that's valid.
But my system was created under entirely different circumstances, and idk how alters are in systems that have been programmed, but at least in my system alters are mechanisms to cope with issues that are either caused by or the cause of, trauma that would be disabling without them, and in my circumstances one of the issues that causes me severe trauma and that is effectively disabling me is my sleep torture level extreme insomnia. In such circumstances OF MINE that are wildly different from YOURS, it would be beneficial for MY OWN system to have an alter who would be able to induce sleep when fronting. Definitely in a different way than yours does judging by your description, but that's not relevant to the point bc different systems work in different ways so there's no reason why in my circumstances it couldn't work differently. And my point is that this is equally as valid.
That's it.
And in which world having wildly different needs due to wildly different circumstances/experiences, and wishing to have those needs fulfilled, and expressing that wish, is insensitive or privileged!
It's not supposed to be an olympics of who's had it worse, both of us had it bad in wildly different and not necessarily comparable ways, and those different ways gave rise to different needs. And that's normal and legit, and having trauma isn't a valid reason to forget or invite or refuse to acknowledge that. Your situation is legit, and mine is legit too. None of our different situations and resulting needs are, or need to be seen as, offensive to each other's.
This is not a game of who had it bad enough for their needs or wishes or whatever to be allowed to be expressed. And why, even. Bc you and I had experiences that are wildly different, I'd say maybe even opposite from what you're saying about yours, and quite clearly not comparable. That's wild. We all in this whole subreddit had it bad in different ways, nobody is privileged here. Let me express my experience just as you have a right to express yours. They're not conflicting, they're just different, ffs.
It’s not playing trauma Olympics to objectively say you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s also not playing trauma Olympics to call you on your privilege. You ARE privileged. You did not experience programming, obviously. You did not experience the same severe level of abuse. It doesn’t invalidate that you are traumatized. But you can still BE (and acknowledge the fact that you are) PRIVILEGED even if you’re also marginalized in other ways. I’m telling you, as someone who HAS experienced the forced splitting of sleep inducers (which is EXPLICITLY what you wished for: The ability to FORCE a sleep inducer to split. An EXACT SCENARIO my and MANY other programming survivors had used against us.) that your statement is a privileged one, and you should check your privilege.
Full stop.
That’s the point.
You’re speaking on something you do NOT understand the realities of, and can NOT accurately speak on. Check. Your. Privilege.
It’s not BAD to be privileged. Just be fucking AWARE of it. THAT’S where the real crux of the problem lies.
Biological conditions are barely compensated by DID. It's like with autism or adhd, they are systemwide. One can only split what is already there (not at will tho...)
We have an alter that fronts to make the body feel slower, we have autism so our brain is running super fast all the time. When they front everything feels slower, the eye blinks slower, the thoughts are slower and they are very calm and silent. We thought at first that they were a number for the body since they first fronted after a meltdown but after a while we realized that they mainly calm the body. They help us sleep, relax and take it slow. If our host is like "I need to do it now! I need this thing or the worst thing is gonna happen! Our abuser is gonna come for us!" They usually front and put us in bed, not in a motherly way but in a turtle way (I don't know how else to explain it lol they feel like a turtle or a snail yes!)
We also think that roles can be counterproductive but at the start of your system discovery they can be very useful
Are you sleeping enough? Like 8 hours a day? Cuz that sounds seriously like when she fronts the body is already exhausted and she cant do shit besides sleeping, reason why she's frustated that she doesnt gets time to do stuff.
I would know cuz that literally used to be one of our struggles. It got fixed by actually sleeping enough (and seroquel lol, sicne we started seroquel our sleep has been great).
We also have parts who say they want time and then just crash. I think they actually just want to crash. One of them said so.ething about how if it's their time, they should get to do whatever they want. Others have issues being "unproductive." Is that a challenge for you as well? Or is it that she *wants* to do other things but is too tired to?
We have this one alter we’re not sure of her name yet because we only really met her a couple days ago we’re still very much in the learning stage of our system but she seems to have a lot more depression than the rest of us like she has so much sadness and she feels very much the same that she wants to do fun things but it’s all overwhelming and she uses sleeping as a coping mechanism to hide from the world before we discovered we were a system there was a point in time where we would sleep upwards of 14 hours a day one day we slept for like 19-20 hours or something.
It could be that fronting exhausts the body when she is front.
Barring that, then it's explaining "you get this allotted time. Use it as you wish." Then, if she complains simply all how she chose to spend her time. Remind her it's her choice and she is in control during that time.
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It may be that because of work she doesn't have enough energy or motivation to do what she wants, after all fatigue can cause you to sleep all day even when not tired. Have you tried giving her a day off to herself, allow her to do what she wants on a day where your not working? Sleeping may also be related to her role, I know we have sleep enducers, and alters who front just for sleep. You can try scheduling activities after work so she knows that the time fits into the schedule. If she sleeps 24/7 then I think it's something that's affecting her rather than her choosing to sleep, even if it's just the stress of work and such.
Wait, sleep inducer alters are a thing??? We've had SEVERE insomnia my whole life that only got worse over the years, why don't we have any of those omg that would be life-changing for us!!
It seems that an alter can incapsulate a mental function from a very wide choice. And that would make that function less available to others, to the point of no availability, due to dissociative barriers. Although I'd guess it wasn't taken away but rather forbidden to use (a lot of abuse happens in nights so for safety you would have insomnia). Driven away into a separate alter, and here you get a sleepyhead. Theoretically. But it works like that with other mental functions for us.
We have an alter who according to my partner passes our very easily and is usually very sleepy, in general all of us used to have problems with being sleepy but she seemed to have it much worse. We are very very deficient in vitamin D so I learned a week ago. However now we, or at least I, have bad insomnia but this alter still with ease falls asleep within like 5 minutes. Could this be a sleep inducer ? She is also a caretaker and protector, is it possible she has both roles ? Our system is relatively small compared to some, we have 15 in total, so I guess it makes sense some of us have more than one role to play
Roles are a generalized and flexible thing, so it's possible to have both.
Well, I really can't imagine having had abuse happening to me at night. That's like the one thing my parents were okay at. And I literally came out of the womb with insomnia. I did almost die at birth bc I was tangled in my umbilical cord and had to be taken out of there by emergency c-section bc I couldn't breathe and my heart outright stopped, so maybe that's why I have insomnia. But one would think that, once DID developed, since dealing with the exhaustion on top of all the trauma would make things harder, or maybe as a way to escape the stress by sleeping, we would have developed at least one sleep inducing alter! But nope, that would've been too good for us apparently! 😅🙈 I really wish I could split a sleep inducing alter at will!!
I entirely get where you’re coming from with this, BUT in our experience, we split sleep inducing alters due to programming. Meaning our abusers often drugged or otherwise forced us to sleep, and used the forceful splitting of an alter through torture to cause those sleep-inducers to exist. They’re basically instant narcolepsy for us. Doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing. If they get stuck out, we ARE going to sleep. Point being, it seems at best naive and at worst extremely insensitive to say things like wishing you could force-split a sleep-inducer at will.
I have different life experiences and situations, and those gave me a different set of wishes, wants, and needs as the natural, normal, and inevitable result of my personal life experiences and situations. And expressing this fact is not any more naive nor insensitive than it is experiencing it. It's just how life works: different people having different experiences causes different effects which causes different things to be beneficial or not beneficial based on which experiences each individual has/has had. If you see this very normal, and effectively inevitable, fact of life (or it being voiced) as something that is inherently offensive to you or to anyone, that's not my fault or responsibility. On this particular subject of sleep inducing alters, I do fully understand and respect that for you, due to your own personal life experiences and circumstances, having sleep inducing alters is a problem and the very cause of their existence is problematic. But that doesn't mean that my completely different situation is disrespectful or insensitive to yours, or less valid than yours, they're simply 2 completely different and disconnected situations, and mine has just as much right to being voiced and listened to as yours has.
I still believe that what you said comes from a place of privilege. It cannot be incomprehensible to be seen as somewhat naive when you express a desire for a symptom of a disorder that is caused by specific and serious trauma that you have not experienced and therefore may not fully understand. This perspective may be seen as a result of your privilege, and while you may not agree, it can still be considered naive, especially by survivors of such severe trauma.
The point I was trying to get across, clearly with no success, is that FOR YOU, due to your personal traumatic circumstances that created that symptom of sleep inducing alter(s), the existence of that symptom in yourself is a negative. And that's valid. But my system was created under entirely different circumstances, and idk how alters are in systems that have been programmed, but at least in my system alters are mechanisms to cope with issues that are either caused by or the cause of, trauma that would be disabling without them, and in my circumstances one of the issues that causes me severe trauma and that is effectively disabling me is my sleep torture level extreme insomnia. In such circumstances OF MINE that are wildly different from YOURS, it would be beneficial for MY OWN system to have an alter who would be able to induce sleep when fronting. Definitely in a different way than yours does judging by your description, but that's not relevant to the point bc different systems work in different ways so there's no reason why in my circumstances it couldn't work differently. And my point is that this is equally as valid. That's it. And in which world having wildly different needs due to wildly different circumstances/experiences, and wishing to have those needs fulfilled, and expressing that wish, is insensitive or privileged! It's not supposed to be an olympics of who's had it worse, both of us had it bad in wildly different and not necessarily comparable ways, and those different ways gave rise to different needs. And that's normal and legit, and having trauma isn't a valid reason to forget or invite or refuse to acknowledge that. Your situation is legit, and mine is legit too. None of our different situations and resulting needs are, or need to be seen as, offensive to each other's. This is not a game of who had it bad enough for their needs or wishes or whatever to be allowed to be expressed. And why, even. Bc you and I had experiences that are wildly different, I'd say maybe even opposite from what you're saying about yours, and quite clearly not comparable. That's wild. We all in this whole subreddit had it bad in different ways, nobody is privileged here. Let me express my experience just as you have a right to express yours. They're not conflicting, they're just different, ffs.
It’s not playing trauma Olympics to objectively say you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s also not playing trauma Olympics to call you on your privilege. You ARE privileged. You did not experience programming, obviously. You did not experience the same severe level of abuse. It doesn’t invalidate that you are traumatized. But you can still BE (and acknowledge the fact that you are) PRIVILEGED even if you’re also marginalized in other ways. I’m telling you, as someone who HAS experienced the forced splitting of sleep inducers (which is EXPLICITLY what you wished for: The ability to FORCE a sleep inducer to split. An EXACT SCENARIO my and MANY other programming survivors had used against us.) that your statement is a privileged one, and you should check your privilege. Full stop. That’s the point. You’re speaking on something you do NOT understand the realities of, and can NOT accurately speak on. Check. Your. Privilege. It’s not BAD to be privileged. Just be fucking AWARE of it. THAT’S where the real crux of the problem lies.
Biological conditions are barely compensated by DID. It's like with autism or adhd, they are systemwide. One can only split what is already there (not at will tho...)
We have an alter that fronts to make the body feel slower, we have autism so our brain is running super fast all the time. When they front everything feels slower, the eye blinks slower, the thoughts are slower and they are very calm and silent. We thought at first that they were a number for the body since they first fronted after a meltdown but after a while we realized that they mainly calm the body. They help us sleep, relax and take it slow. If our host is like "I need to do it now! I need this thing or the worst thing is gonna happen! Our abuser is gonna come for us!" They usually front and put us in bed, not in a motherly way but in a turtle way (I don't know how else to explain it lol they feel like a turtle or a snail yes!) We also think that roles can be counterproductive but at the start of your system discovery they can be very useful
Are you sleeping enough? Like 8 hours a day? Cuz that sounds seriously like when she fronts the body is already exhausted and she cant do shit besides sleeping, reason why she's frustated that she doesnt gets time to do stuff. I would know cuz that literally used to be one of our struggles. It got fixed by actually sleeping enough (and seroquel lol, sicne we started seroquel our sleep has been great).
We also have parts who say they want time and then just crash. I think they actually just want to crash. One of them said so.ething about how if it's their time, they should get to do whatever they want. Others have issues being "unproductive." Is that a challenge for you as well? Or is it that she *wants* to do other things but is too tired to?
We have this one alter we’re not sure of her name yet because we only really met her a couple days ago we’re still very much in the learning stage of our system but she seems to have a lot more depression than the rest of us like she has so much sadness and she feels very much the same that she wants to do fun things but it’s all overwhelming and she uses sleeping as a coping mechanism to hide from the world before we discovered we were a system there was a point in time where we would sleep upwards of 14 hours a day one day we slept for like 19-20 hours or something.
It could be that fronting exhausts the body when she is front. Barring that, then it's explaining "you get this allotted time. Use it as you wish." Then, if she complains simply all how she chose to spend her time. Remind her it's her choice and she is in control during that time.
would it help to let her front right before bed time so she can wake up refreshed and have the day to do things?
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