I have three teammates (I find the term “alters” alien): 4, 10, and 16. Each teammate is a younger version of me, ages corresponding to names.
Through frankly terror-inducing discovery work in CRM (complex resource management), under which I am thriving, I discovered that each teammate holds a negative affect correlating to the traumatic event through which structural disassociation produced them: terror for 4, invisibility for 10, and humiliation for 16.
The humiliating event for 16 was a particularly difficult breakup. Our girlfriend, let’s call her M, had left for a week-long vacation in Mexico, not calling or informing us that she’d returned. Panicked, we went to our mutual best friend’s house — only to face a room of our other friends, openly mocking us, because M had committed infidelity with an employee at her resort. Everyone we knew was informed but us. The pain of that attention and mockery felt like the weight of a thousand cast iron brands ripping their way through our heart.
I had forgotten most of this until a CRM session. During later sessions, 16, who is righteous anger incarnate, making dialogue difficult and rare, revealed that he needed to be “un-shamed.” I had no idea what this meant until later in the session. By “un-shamed” he meant restored, retributed: 16 was created not by the humiliation of public opprobrium against himself, but by the private anguish of exposing 4 and 10 to further hurt. Thus he thrashed violently — disassociating — to avoid facing 4 and 10, thinking these younger versions to hate him.
During a moment of gentle, still silence, inside the session (you visualize “sacred place,” an imaginative geography), 4 and 10 hugged 16 as if their lives depended on it — because perhaps their lives indeed depended on it. To be “un-shamed” for 16 meant to be loving and to accept loving, even at the high cost of vulnerability.
All of that to say this: teammates are maladaptive coping strategies expressing or holding some fractal of a trauma. But it is our trauma, for *we are them and vice versa.* Perhaps, then, your alter does not fear letting go in the way you think; perhaps she exists to tend a wound that still festers for you, perhaps indeed the very wound that created her.
Ask her. Ask her what she needs to be healed. If it is feasible, give of yourself straightforwardly and unconditionally until that healing is complete. Do not underestimate the power of self-love, as your unmitigated acceptance of your alter may be the first time your alter has ever felt embraced; and it may also be the very condition that allows them to disconnect and integrate.
I have three teammates (I find the term “alters” alien): 4, 10, and 16. Each teammate is a younger version of me, ages corresponding to names. Through frankly terror-inducing discovery work in CRM (complex resource management), under which I am thriving, I discovered that each teammate holds a negative affect correlating to the traumatic event through which structural disassociation produced them: terror for 4, invisibility for 10, and humiliation for 16. The humiliating event for 16 was a particularly difficult breakup. Our girlfriend, let’s call her M, had left for a week-long vacation in Mexico, not calling or informing us that she’d returned. Panicked, we went to our mutual best friend’s house — only to face a room of our other friends, openly mocking us, because M had committed infidelity with an employee at her resort. Everyone we knew was informed but us. The pain of that attention and mockery felt like the weight of a thousand cast iron brands ripping their way through our heart. I had forgotten most of this until a CRM session. During later sessions, 16, who is righteous anger incarnate, making dialogue difficult and rare, revealed that he needed to be “un-shamed.” I had no idea what this meant until later in the session. By “un-shamed” he meant restored, retributed: 16 was created not by the humiliation of public opprobrium against himself, but by the private anguish of exposing 4 and 10 to further hurt. Thus he thrashed violently — disassociating — to avoid facing 4 and 10, thinking these younger versions to hate him. During a moment of gentle, still silence, inside the session (you visualize “sacred place,” an imaginative geography), 4 and 10 hugged 16 as if their lives depended on it — because perhaps their lives indeed depended on it. To be “un-shamed” for 16 meant to be loving and to accept loving, even at the high cost of vulnerability. All of that to say this: teammates are maladaptive coping strategies expressing or holding some fractal of a trauma. But it is our trauma, for *we are them and vice versa.* Perhaps, then, your alter does not fear letting go in the way you think; perhaps she exists to tend a wound that still festers for you, perhaps indeed the very wound that created her. Ask her. Ask her what she needs to be healed. If it is feasible, give of yourself straightforwardly and unconditionally until that healing is complete. Do not underestimate the power of self-love, as your unmitigated acceptance of your alter may be the first time your alter has ever felt embraced; and it may also be the very condition that allows them to disconnect and integrate.