What is fronting?

Fronting is when a dissociative alter is at the “front”.

What is The Front? It differs for everyone.

Some people with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD) have described it as being in a car with passengers and one driving.

Inside Out came out in 2015, a few years after I was diagnosed with DID, and it stuck with me.

The Front & fronting

The Front is, again, different for everyone. For me, The Front area of the headspace looks a lot like control board area in Inside Out.

A control board illustrates well what fronting feels like for me/my system.

Being at The Front — as an alter in my system, on my own — has life feeling like I’m experiencing it from a space in my head, looking out through my eyes.

However, my system practices functional multiplicity — so I am rarely fronting on my own and most often co-conscious or like a blended alter cocktail.

Co-consciousness

Co-consciousness, or co-fronting, is when two or more alternate identities are present at The Front area of the headspace.

The first time I recognized someone else was at “The Front”, it felt like an out-of-body experience — like I was watching someone who looked like me do things as if they were me, while I was standing in another area of the room doing my own thing.

Like I wasn’t front-and-center, at the front, behind my eyes, navigating my body myself.

Like one of the scenes in Inside Out when the emotions are looking at the world through Riley’s eyes, standing next to the emotion managing the control board.

So, when alters interact with each other more directly because of conflicting values or decisions, it’s like a zoom-in reminder that I have DID.

That functional multiplicity has to pause and we all have to work ish out quickly, depending on the situation. Think of it like doing a group project with life-altering decisions where you have to agree or compromise within a few seconds or minutes.

The worst part of thinking of it as a group project is that this is your life. Having DID feels like sharing my life with other unhealed trauma parts who may not want to live like I do.

People who don’t have DID, who struggle to comprehend what DID is like — I find the group project analogy helps them comprehend it a bit more.

They start to think about their coworkers, previous peers, friends or even family members — and then it hits: “Oh, my Galaxy! I don’t want to let my boss decide how I live my life!”

So, you know. Camaraderie necessary. DID puts a spin on “intrapersonal conflict”.

Blending

Blending is different from co-consciousness. Blending makes the distinction between alters hard to discern because everything blends together.

It’s like…when Joy and Sadness created a multicolored memory marble, and so did other emotions, making multidimensional memories.

Blended parts don’t just make memories together — they function like one alter.

Figuring out who is who isn’t always easy; it’s a dissociative experience and part of having a dissociative disorder.

How I figure out which alter I am

Most of the time, I don’t need to know which alter I am specifically.

However, there are times when I find myself having thoughts, interests and even behaviors that aren’t mine. I’ll find myself feeling “weird” or “off” and not understand why. It feels like anxiety, but it’s not anxiety.

It’s a “who in the effervescence am I right now?!” type of feeling.

So I start working through that by asking myself questions in my head:

• Do I feel attracted to men or women? Or nonbinary people? Or no one?
• Do I wish I had a boyfriend/girlfriend?
• Do I like pineapple on pizza?
• Do I prefer Chinese, Italian or Mexican food?
• Who/what do I feel like?
• Where do I think I am?
• What are my social accounts?

Sometimes, I will catch that I’m not 100% myself when I’m typing my website into the browser bar because it’s an older domain I had. The same-ish happens with social profiles, like if I find myself before MySpace and confused to why it looks different.

Finding yourself at The Front after not being at The Front for some time feels like traveling to the future.

Or like going to the store and remembering where you park, but your car not being in that same spot when you go out.

Because it turns out you switched to the caretaker alter after you got inside, and didn’t come “back” to The Front until you went out the same store on a different day.

I take pictures of where I park now, both from where I stand AT my car and from where I stand at the front of the store.

Fronting, co-con, blending, having DID — it’s trial and error. I’m forever finding new ways I need to accommodate myself to stay aware system-wide.

Hope this helps explain what fronting, co-con and blending is!

P.S. I say “I”, but that’s really complicated. Writing about DID is hard. Sometimes, I say “I” and am actually referring to another part. This is because I write about DID to appeal to a singlet audience to help reduce stigma.