This topic has been very helpful to me, I have spent a long time trying to understand how my mind works (mainly because its not working properly with depression and anxiety and such) and this has turned it from an alien landscape I need to explore into something I understand and which makes sense, the idea of multiple egos existing even in healthy minds has made everything just fall nicely into place for me (as my egos are so wildly dissimilar), it also explains DID which I could never quite see as real before (though I never believed it was fake) because I couldn't understand the mechanic of how it works, now it seems as obvious and natural as any other mental dysfunction.
i hope you are not beating up on yourself for “childish self-programming” i clearly did the same and i do know it was hijacker’s work. i was aware of what was going on at the time but i just could not stop myself from doing it. specifically i’m talking about doing extremely negative self affirmations effectively brainwashing myself to greater self harm. but that is not childishness and not something easily dealt with. and with people in the field not really giving this subject the recognition and study it deserves it is a shame at the very least. It is so good to know that others do believe in it. i do think you have a good understanding of DID/ESD Dante. I really hope more in the MH healthcare field come to understand it.
Ah, what I did wasn't something so natural as that, I was a smart cookie when I was small, and I noticed I was bad with people, (in hindsight it was due to my Aspergers, which I wasn't diagnosed with until I was 20) I was almost entirely non-expressive, distant, and my natural reactions were simply different to normal people, so consciously and deliberately I generated a persona which I meticulously constructed and perfected over the last 20+ years, things I did to construct this (in order of when I started them):
1) Repetitively practiced conversations whenever I was alone to make them flow more naturally and program which responses I would naturally reach for
2) Repeated phrases over and over to myself with different intonations until I found the one I thought sounded good
3) Practiced facial expressions and body language in the mirror for different emotions, not the ones I felt, but the ones I "should be feeling" and trained with them to be more natural
4) Implemented the above together in real situations practicing feigning the "correct" social and emotional response to stimuli and trying to feel the corresponding emotions tweaking my responses based on people's reactions
5) Repeatedly exposing myself to "correct" stimuli and involved social situations to force myself to become comfortable with and derive enjoyment from them.
With the exception of stage 5 (which came at university) the groundwork was laid in the first 10 years, since then I just tweak and practice. That "persona" is now a fully developed ego, one of my 2 primary ones and the one I inhabit most often, and the problem exists in that it is in DIRECT conflict with my other primary ego, the one I see as the "real" me. If "The Persona" and the "Real Me" met as separate people, they would not be friends, they have almost nothing in common.
So in short, I think I screwed myself.