Alter Appearances and Distinction?

Lowkey? I don’t really understand the alter identity stuff still. I don’t even understand how we… found our appearances? How we draw ourselves.

Because Tumblr is our favored social media, we sometimes stumble upong things and check out what they are out of curiosity. We used to have build a headmate and related tags blocked, but unblocked that stuff (and almost all syscourse stuff) because it just. Limits a LOT of what we can see, and we like seeing stuff :3

So yeah we sometimes look at build a headmate stuff out of pure curiosity, plus they may have names, genders, anything really we might connect to, and there’s a LOT of them so there’s plenty of stuff to look at.

And I know the whole thing is alters don’t CHOOSE their appearance, they don’t CHOOSE if they’re introjected for something. But like… how do alters even GET appearances and stuff? How does the brain decide how an alter presents, how is identity formed?

 Is it. Is it like with gender and sexuality that you just have to explore to find it? Can it be a choice, even if only a little?

I just don’t fully understand it all, tbh. And like. It’s very common that when we visualize stuff internally, whoever is there kinda defaults to a… mannequin, sorta? Like those art bases and whatnot, where they’re essentially featureless. At most we usually get a face, an expression. And we tend to cling to that idea and how we have different emotional baselines, kinda? The whole thing about how it’s just “vibes”.

Just the thing that sucks about that is we WANT to differentiate enough to not confuse whoever it must have been with someone else. We want a level of distinctness between us! It’s just. Confusing? I just don’t understand how alters can have names and preffered pronouns and genders and other identity stuff immediately sometimes.

And yea I know it that isn’t the case for everyone, that pwDID may present differently for their symptoms and stuff. But like. I dunno. Can you essentially “force” or create an appearance and stuff? Or is it really just going through the process of finding yourself, that you came “pre-packaged” with certain preferences and you just have to figure it all out through trial and error? (Which imo that sucks bc like passive influence from others or triggering someone else by accident and just how confusing it might get. It feels like it’d be counterproductive in practice, atleast in the beginning to some extent, or just really discouraging)(I’m trying really hard to express that I don’t like the idea of just having to brute force figuring things out but I’m being given ideas/thoughts about how it’s actually a good thing even if it’s confusing bc enough trying can help you essentially untie the massive knot that identities can be)(I’m pretty sure this is passive influence or someone else just showing up to combat my opinion/perspective 💔)

Anyways yeah sorry uh is it ever a conscious choice with alter appearances and stuff? Or is it really just spawning in with preset settings and not being allowed to open the menu to see them? That somehow the brain made decisions without anyone knowing or choosing it and having to live with it? I just don’t understand it :<

Alter distinction is difficult </3

(If only Ren understood the process and could give an in-depth explanation as our most distinct alter (somehow); but alas; the brain is dum /lh)