What is fronting?

The Front & fronting

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

A control board illustrates well what fronting can feel like for people with DID.

Being at The Front can feel like experiencing life from a space in one’s head, looking out through their eyes.

However, some systems practices functional multiplicity — so they are rarely fronting on their 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.

Recognizing another alter was at “The Front”, can feel like an out-of-body experience — like watching someone who looks like you do things as if they are you, while you’re was standing in another area of the room doing your own thing.

Like you’re wasn’t front-and-center, at the front, behind your eyes, navigating your 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 they have DID.

That functional multiplicity has to pause and the alters 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 your life with other unhealed trauma parts who may not want to live like you do.

People who don’t have DID, who struggle to comprehend what DID is like — the group project analogy often 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 people with DID figure out which alter they are

Most of the time, someone with DID doesn’t need to know which alter they are specifically.

However, there are times when they find themselves having thoughts, interests and even behaviors that aren’t theirs. They’ll find themselves 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 they start working through that by asking themselves questions in their 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?

People with DID have their own set of questions to work through the disorienting experience of dissociative switching.