Confession: I used to think it was impossible for DID systems to intentionally create headmates. I was wrong.

I'm writing this for the folks who are like how I used to be. You might think that 'creating' headmates goes against psychological understandings of dissociation. You probably don't care how it works for people without dissociative disorders...but it certainly shouldn't work in DID because that's not how DID works, or so you think.

This page isn't about spirituality or tulpamancy or personal beliefs on plurality. Let's leave them aside for a moment. We are only talking about trauma-related dissociation, here. Be prepared for lots of medical language!

In mainstream psychology, headmates in DID are considered to be dissociated parts. They are individual senses of self ("Me") that became separate from the rest through dissociation. In the plural community, many of us use terms like 'splitting' or 'creating' or 'developing' to describe how it feels for new parts to form, but it really is just dissociation. Pieces of the psyche become detached, pushed far away, and sealed off into their own little bubbles of "Not Me."

From the psychologists behind the theory of structural dissociation of the personality, DID is initially caused by trauma but a DID system can continue to develop new dissociated parts throughout their life. Parts that aren't a direct result of any trauma might come about "because daily life may be overwhelming due to a difficult environment, internal chaos from conflicts among dissociative parts of the personality, chronic reactivation of traumatic memories, and" a low capacity to integrate information (summary of Chapter 4).

To put it simply: the system can't tolerate what's going on, so all the intolerable bits are sectioned off into their own dissociated part. Or, sometimes, all the things the system needs in order to cope are sectioned off instead, so that part can be the one to handle it.

But maybe this explanation leaves a little to be desired?

There isn't any one single idea on how this all works. Theories like structural dissociation acknowledge this. This is the psyche plus its mysterious and subjective inner workings that we're talking about. It's unrealistic to expect it to work in any single cookie-cutter way.

We aren't flawless machines. We aren't following a recipe. We're just trying to put words to something so damn personal.

By the way, have you ever forced yourself to dissociate? I have. In the past, sometimes I couldn't cope with reality anymore. Things were too painful or scary or stressful. I triggered myself to switch, to go numb, to send my mind into a different time and place. In many cases, it got me through to the next day.

Dissociation is initially adaptive. Through it, I survived. The numerous traumas that bled into my daily life trained and sharpened my dissociation to a fine point. But as the danger lessened, my dissociation remained the same. It became everything I knew...I couldn't "be here" even when I wanted to...even when the danger was long, long gone.

How would purposefully creating a headmate work any differently?

Maybe you think it's impossible to forcibly dissociate to the same degree as what would create a new part? Personally, I don't think a brain that is already primed to dissociate that severely is going to differentiate between what is purposeful and what isn't. In the past, I'd try to trigger my dissociation and get swamped with effects I wasn't asking for. I'd try and force myself to forget something painful, only to succeed too well at it and snap out of the haze several days later with no recollection of the time that passed by.

Maybe you've tried to purposefully dissociate but it didn't work? I can relate, too. There were times when I desperately wanted to disappear and be replaced by someone else, but nothing happened. My usual escape method was short-circuiting and I remained trapped in an unbearable reality.

Aren't these all just examples of how uncontrollable the dissociation in DID can be? When someone with a dissociative disorder tries to purposefully dissociate, of course it can slip out of their control. It's a disorder.

I don't think that purposefully creating a headmate would work any differently from any other purposeful dissociation. It's all just dissociation. It might work, it might not. You might dissociate way too much, or way too little. It might be exactly what you want, it might be utterly horrible. It might be a mix of everything. And, at the end, you might not remember much to tell what happened at all. You might not have even been aware of it.

I've always wondered how anyone knows if they've truly created a dissociated part. What if the part existed before their 'creation' but no one realized or remembered, including them? What if they already existed as an undeveloped fragment and their 'creation' fleshed them out into a more distinct person? What if they're not a dissociated part at all but it just makes sense to the system to think of them as one? What if they originally weren't a dissociated part but a dissociated part introjected the idea of them? What if they are an intentionally created dissociated part but the rest of the system doesn't believe it's possible?

Personally, I think it's just not realistic or even necessary for a system to know every single minute detail about themselves, especially when they're dissociative. Recovery doesn't hinge on being correct about everything. That applies to things outside of being a system, too.

When I look back on my past opinions, I wonder why I thought creating headmates was impossible for DID systems. It frankly doesn't make sense for it to never work. I think I just heard a lot of people online telling me that it wasn't possible, so I started echoing that without doing any deeper thinking into it.

I'm assuming you're reading this because you met a DID system (or similar) who has headmates that call themselves tulpas, willomates, parogens, created, etc. Regardless if they're right or wrong about being intentionally created, ignoring or shaming their existence is countertherapeutic and cruel. It can make their dissociation worse. Please don't do that to someone else, even if you aren't convinced that DID systems can intentionally create headmates.

You shouldn't need psychology to validate someone's beliefs in order to respect that they have them.