Trigger warning: this post talks about sexual assault.
Sometimes, alters in a system will have conflicting memories of the same event. For example, one alter may have memories of being sexually abused by an older brother but another alter says it was the brother’s friend, not the brother. Who’s right? How do you handle this?
It’s important to know that memories are not fixed in stone. That is, they can be changed each time the memory is recalled. Mood can affect what you remember. For instance, if you are feeling down and depressed, it’s much easier to remember other depressing events or notice other negative details than when you are not depressed. Memories are also not like video or photographs of the event. They are how our brains interpreted the events and what the brain decided was important to remember. And when it comes to traumatic memories, remember that the brain stores memories differently during trauma than at other times. Memories of traumatic events are often just pieces and bits of the event, with lots of holes in the memories. What you are told later on, after the fact, can also change a memory. For example, if you were told “that never happened that way. Your brother’s friend played with you because he was being nice” that might change how you remember events. This can be especially true if you hear different information repeatedly after the event. Alters may have different memories of an event because they were aware of different aspects of the event or were fronting at different times of the event. Using our example, it’s possible the older brother and his friend both sexually assaulted the younger sibling and different alters were present at different parts of the assault. It would be understandable that they have very different recollections of the event. Of course, it’s also possible that neither of those individuals assaulted the person with the memory, or that only one of them did, or that someone else entirely different committed the assault.
I would ask the alters to focus on the outcome of the remembered event, particularly if they can agree on that but not on who it involved. Focus on addressing the impact of the event initially. Don’t let disagreement on details of an event keep you from healing from that memory as much as possible.