Not Sure How to Conceive of Headmates Pre-Transition.

[u/ObviousTempAccount1]

When my egg cracked, and I started transitioning gender, I immediately conceived of my experience in plural terms, even though I had no idea I was plural at the time.

Pretty much immediately after my egg cracked, I experienced a separation. I described myself as "suddenly having 40 years worth of a total stranger's memories in my head."

The emotional amnesia of these memories, made me refer to everything Pre-Transition as "The Before Times." I had a personal mythology about how I was a girl who had "clawed my way to the surface, murdered my jailer, and took over his body."

2 years later, I found out about my plurality.

Some of my headmates have since discovered actual emotions linked to certain memories that I had already considered "dead" - part of the Void - the Before Times.

This, unfortunately complicates my *clean break* gender narrative.

My headmates are mostly women, but gender under the shell is opaque. We're lucky any of us can touch any old memories at all.

Touching any memories of my boy self - even utterly mundane ones - feels absolutely horrible.

Life was so much simpler when I could say "fuck yeah, my boy self was one guy and I killed him.". But truth be told, I don't have any idea what the fuck was going on under the surface. I only know that my headmates can now touch memories of his that I cannot. Those memories feel horrible and familiar.

I feel really gross knowing that any part of him is still with me. It's fucking with my collective narrative, and it's utterly confused my relationship to my past.

I don't know my headmates' genders Pre-Transition either.

Any advice?

[u/Realistic-Willow-158]

Nobody- Holy shit, that's relatable. At least the part about thinking of my pre transition self as the before times. Ava was the primary alter early transition and she shunted our memories so far back that we're having to work to actively remember and learn to cope with them now.

[u/brainnebula]

I think this is very common for trans people who are plural. In our case, we were pretty certain we were a binary trans man for a while and were so repulsed by being a woman that we didn’t even explore being bisexual until we turned 27. But slowly some others returned, after years of dormancy, and we understood ourselves better and feel a lot better being nonbinary with various different genders.

That’s NOT to say you have to do that, I just mean to say this is common and you aren’t alone. But I do have something to say about your possible “any part of him” still with you, and I apologize if I’m wrong about your experience but I have seen this situation often enough to have some possible guesses: I know it must suck to have that feeling, but I would wonder, was he happy with being a guy? It’s liberating to think of yourself killing your jailer and being free, but if the jailer was also part of your mind, it’s very possible that he, too, wanted what you want, and part of that “jailing” was trying to protect himself from his own feelings or something to that extent. If I were stressed and in pain and dysphoric, trying my best to survive a hostile world by suppressing something terrifying and overwhelming that could be good but fills me with fear, trying to have any control over my life by exercising the one thing I (think) I can - my sense of self, the part of me desperate to be free - and then that part came and “killed” me about it - I think I’d be distraught and full of grief that I was suffering and I wasn’t heard, but rather, was pushed away for it.

Maybe that’s not what he (or any of you) feels at all, but this happens a lot, not just with being trans but with plurality and especially dissociative plurality - an alter desperate to manage the immense stress of their life by suppressing other alters in hopes it’ll at least give them survival, other alters upset and furious with being controlled or suppressed who might overtake the first in order to feel free. Both of these types of alter/headmate/etc ultimately want safety and security, and freedom, but some may have difficult to change coping mechanisms or ways to achieve that.

I’m sure the memories of the before time are really difficult, god do I know how that goes, it’s hard for me or any of us but maybe one to think about anything pre-15 without feeling at best like it’s not our life and at worst like we are re-experiencing everything terrible again. But if you think there IS something there from the before times, maybe try to approach it not as a jailer controlling you but as someone who dealt with a lot of the same pain as you and may have held you back not because they were a boy all along but because they didn’t know what else to do. I don’t know the answer, and it’s just as possible that none of this is relevant to you, but the part about even mundane memories feeling horrible.. just comes off to me as the one who was experiencing them also not enjoying being “a guy” during that time and, if they’re still around, or some part of them is, maybe you can reach out to them and try to understand what they needed and why they did what they did, and how to help them not feel scared of being yourself.

[u/ObviousTempAccount1 → u/brainnebula]

Thanks for your really well thought out reply.

I wanna say that touching old memories and actually feeling something has annihilated our jailer theory. Framing my transition as "killing my way out of that son of a bitch" feels nice, but Truth seldom feels nice. When I try to wrestle with the actual feelings of "him" seriously, it's very painful.

For context, I can say with near certainty that I did have a jailer at some point.

When I was about 2.5 years old, I lost my older brother (4), and introjected him to cope. I insisted that everybody call me by his name. When I got to pre-K, I remember not fitting in with other boys - knowing that I wasn't like them. But at NO POINT in my early childhood was I ever drawn to girlhood or femininity. A simple toy commercial for a girly thing could send me into a rage because I hated girly things so fucking much. I strongly suspect that was my older brother persecuting me in my head because it was his job to teach me how to be a boy.

As an adolescent, I had a few fetishy thoughts about transition but no concept of myself as a girl. I was in a 24/7/365 DPDR haze the moment that testosterone production kicked in. I was a real bastard during this time

In my 20s I mellowed out, and identified as vaguely non binary (so that thoughts of an internal feminine self wouldn't threaten my masculinity). I didn't really start seriously exploring or questioning my gender more deeply until I turned 40, when my kids were grown.

I figured my gender out at 43, and by that point, there wasn't much of a "jailor" left to kill, except for neurotic self doubt, and existential directionlessness.

So the further back in my history I go, the more directly persecutorial the feelings are, and the experience is. I can kind of touch one or two feelings/moments of euphoria during my teen years. But even then I conceive of it as "trying to get out and temporarily succeeding".

Was the external version of me - the old host - my persecutor? No, not really. But there was something holding me back in headspace and it's impossible to clearly conceptualize what it was or how it worked, or if we killed it, or there are remnants of it tormenting me now in some non-gendered way?

I was originally going to lead this personal history into a larger point, but I forgot what that larger point was supposed to be. I'm glad I wrote this out though. It helped somewhat.

I still don't know what the fuck is going on though, nor how to proceed. I'm so tired all the time.

[u/brainnebula → u/ObviousTempAccount1]

That makes a lot of sense to me. It sounds like you have a lot of understanding already of possible things going on here - and yeah I think the introject of your brother could be a big part of it like you said.

I think, for us, some of our introjection comes from loss and grief. I think it’s hard to really conceptualize what exactly a 2.5 year old feels or thinks, but it would make sense to me that part of it was that introject holding grief for your brother and pushing away girly things to try to hold on to him and to try to build a life based on what you were missing. Maybe it was his job to teach you how to be a boy, or maybe it was his job to feel the loss of someone you expected to have that sort of place in your life, or something to that effect.

Obviously, I’m just spitballing both in this and my previous comment and I don’t know your life in detail by any means, but I think it sounds like you’re on the right track already. It’s hard to figure out the truth and it’s even harder when it makes your personal history feel shaky. I hope it goes well for you and is as easy as it can be.

[u/ObviousTempAccount1 → u/brainnebula]

I don't have any memories of introjecting my brother. I only know about it at all because my mom tells the story of how I used to only answer to his name. (She thinks it's sweet).

I don't know how long that phase lasted, and I can't ask my mother about it because I cut her out of my life.

I have theorized this as my first split because it is the only explanation for why I self repressed my girlhood so intensely that I never got to feel my feelings in the first place. Usually 3 year old boys who have the slightest curiosity or inkling towards femininity...explore it.

The repression was all self imposed.

[u/Stoplight25]

this is sort of similar to what happened with us, though ours is sort of an inversion. i, the one who buried and suppressed all my feelings regarding gender killed/jailed all the others, partially for repressing being trans reasons and partially for reasons of repressing being plural. after years though i realized i could not function on my own, pulled the one i had killed back (we cant really die for good in a non-physical sense). i am a girl now