I was diagnosed with DID in 1998. How do you communicate with your alters? I f!

I was diagnosed with DID in 1998. How do you communicate with your alters? I feel crazy thinking about it.?

I am 53 and was diagnosed with DID when I was 47. I was raped by my uncle when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I had a repressed memory seeing my uncle parked in some woods and he was trying to pull down my underwear. I blacked out when he was trying to pull down my underwear. I told my mother when she came home from work that my private area was hurting. So she took me tothe doctor; he told her that I had been raped. I don't have any feelings about the rape because I don't remember the actual rape. I have had memory loss as long as I can remember. It seemed normal to me. Every time I tried to think about it, a little voice in the back of my head would say, "Don't go there." The DID explains so much that I have been through in my life, so I do believe that it is true. But how do you communicate with your alters when you don't know them?

The only thing necessary for communication to take place is a willingness to openly listen to what other parts have to communicate without judging their perceptions and strategies. As I tell my clients, just ask and be open to hearing the answers and realize that what you learn from your parts may be painful. Know also that they will only share as much as they feel you are ready to hear and to the degree that they trust you not to minimize their experiences. These parts of yourself have been protecting you for many years and it always helps to thank them and acknowledge the important role they have in your life.
Posting a question in a journal and leaving it open for any parts to respond to is always a good way to start out. Open-ended questions will obtain the most information, but you can also ask that parts sign the entries so you begin to know what information comes from where. The only drawback to using a journal is that very young parts may not have writing skills and may not be able to communicate directly.
The voice you heard in your head that warned you "don't go there" was protecting you and hearing voices inside your head is the most common form of communication between alter parts of yourself. Speak inside to the voice and it will likely respond in kind to you.
If you are in therapy, talk with your therapist about taping your sessions if you experience time loss during the sessions. It is often a great way of making the therapy sessions "public" and accessible to all alters. If you are not in therapy, I strongly recommend that you seek a qualified therapist with some experience in treating DID or at least with experience in trauma and dissociation. The therapist can help guide you in your journey of discovering the parts of yourself and also in helping you develop coping methods beyond dissociation which your alters may need to see before trusting you to handle what they have to share.
Again, if you are willing and open to knowing your alters, they will reveal themselves to you-the only thing that keeps them from it is denial of their existence or reluctance to knowing them.