Is it really possible to fully heal/recover with alters stil

ArbreMonde wrote:
It does involve some level of dissociation because in order to mask efficiently, you need to disconnect from your emotions/sensory input. It is discussed, among other things, in: https://did-research.org/comorbid/devel ... -disorders

We found a sentence here

"Pressure to "mask" as neurotypical (i.e., hide autistic traits and pretend to be someone the autistic person is not) may cause identity confusion and, when combined with childhood trauma, encourage the formation of dissociated identities"

the word dissociated identities is underlined and a link which leads to a page about alters in general.


That page says the definition of DID is

"In cases of DID, most if not all alters can take recurrent executive control of the body in which they reside. Alters each have their own perception of self as a unique individual or entity and do not view themselves as only an aspect of a complete person"

In which case Kit is right we are 'more DID than OSDD' ..although sometimes it feels the other way if one alter is out alot and others just communicate with you in the background without taking over.

I think the fact some diagnosis lists say person must be traumatised by it made us unsure that we'd get a diagnosis? I think Kit may have took it to mean you had to be traumatised by being told you were DID or by the knowledge that you had multiple alters???

Maybe it's the autism and our younger alters heavy reliance on fantasy and non-human alters initially but none of the insiders felt traumatised by the news that DID maybe possible??? Most just found it a relief or see it as a gift (the inner world and being able to escape to it and switch out when stuff gets too stressful?

Maybe it's also partly there realisation that its a result of the way our brain processes stuff even things seen as non-traumatic for regular kids? we did find this and have found it mentioned briefly elsewhere.

"Other early and chronic traumatization can cause it, e.g., medical trauma, involving multiple painful and prolonged medical procedures at an early age"

We (I say we..I mean Kit here!..she did all the research) it was the early ..pre-7yr old experience of the intense 'medical intervention combined with the way our brain processes stuff' that triggered it in us at such an early age...and then bullying etc throughout school added to it ... and it was the only way the younger alters knew how to cope with or escape from it, so it became ingrained as a coping mechanism.

I wonder if thats why 'Thea' and 'Maddie' were then completely disconnected from the inner world when the social expectations from us was the highest? (college/work/uni etc ..(late teens to 40's when we became mostly housebound)? ..once alot of expectation disappeared and we got more and more time alone, the insiders started to re-emerge more often.

I would say then 'Maddie' would have potentially being the most distressed by it if she had actually got to a specialist to tell someone about her symptoms, because at one point she seemed worried she was developing dementia (she had written about it in a diary). I think the system didn't know what to do so let Kit came out and take over to start researching, but it caused more and more memory gaps for 'Maddie' because they could not be told without direct communication which was felt to be 'too risky' at that point before we understood exactly what we were dealing with and what might happen if anyone found out and we got a formal diagnosis.

This maybe why we've had no 'external social mask' that had no connection to the inside since, once the understanding had spread through the system?

TheTriForce wrote:"In cases of DID, most if not all alters can take recurrent executive control of the body in which they reside. Alters each have their own perception of self as a unique individual or entity and do not view themselves as only an aspect of a complete person"

In which case Kit is right we are 'more DID than OSDD' ..although sometimes it feels the other way if one alter is out alot and others just communicate with you in the background without taking over.

I think the fact some diagnosis lists say person must be traumatised by it made us unsure that we'd get a diagnosis? I think Kit may have took it to mean you had to be traumatised by being told you were DID or by the knowledge that you had multiple alters???

I bolded the section that I wanted to address fully. For us, the idea of having DID or OSDD-1a isn't even traumatizing. Ever since college and one of our professors encouraged keeping a dream journal (I've found other older journals also), we've known about the patterns that existed in the nightmares (that is one person at the center all the time [this being Marcus]), and conversations with family members (who mentioned sudden switches in behaviours [which caused mama to think we were developing schizophrenia]). The problem was simply that our system had convinced itself that we had a wonderful childhood and explained away the gaps in memory as 'just having a terrible memory'. Except when you can recall details of a story you read at the age of fourteen and haven't seen that books since, it becomes a bit hazy regarding just how awful one's memory is. What's more, being able to recall the entirety of what a building looked like you haven't set foot in since you were 17 kind of makes it hard to say that one's memory is bad.

If it hadn't been for computers, the reality is that we probably would have continued blissfully unaware of the various alters within the system because we would not have had no records of what Bri or I were researching. Beth wouldn't have been able to destroy journals that we kept justifying them as 'silliness' taking up space. There were still deletions, but it was harder to justify.

So, for us, the idea of being traumatized by a diagnosis of DID or even OSDD-1a just doesn't work. Having the diagnosis would not traumatizing in and of itself (we think our T is actually working on that), but rather the having to rip off the mask of childhood bliss has been. Working on blending, sharing, and communication is difficult though. But it explains the chaos of our life even if it does make us sound like a old fashioned royal.

On a different subject, but kind of related to this idea of system fusion and integration...how does one handle 'alter redundantcy'? Our system has several alters who have similar functions. Agnes and Agatha are both quite capable cooks; Agnes, Selene and Anathema all handle spiritual matters, and so forth.

Thank you,
Octavia.

ViTheta wrote:
On a different subject, but kind of related to this idea of system fusion and integration...how does one handle 'alter redundantcy'? Our system has several alters who have similar functions. Agnes and Agatha are both quite capable cooks; Agnes, Selene and Anathema all handle spiritual matters, and so forth.

Thank you,
Octavia.

I'm not sure because for us 'Thea' -the culturally deaf 'social mask' used to get through deaf college and university, hasn't been seen for years...and neither has Maddie who had remained stuck at the point of MS dx unable to walk.

At the point of them disappearing no-one in the system yet had any understanding of DID and there was no communication between them and insiders... if it felt safe to switch an insider just switched out .... when Thea or Maddie eventually switched back in they wouldn't remember that time.

The system would use past memories in a similar situation to fill the gap for longer switches - like if an insider had stayed out all weekend, cos then how would they explain they couldn't remember anything of the entire weekend or holidays!..it would have drawn too much attention to us...but at some point they were switched out for the last time and just never re-emerged to front. I think in our case they were just purely 'social masks'

Others have some of their memories so we can pretend to be who someone was expecting.. eg a student we knew from uni wanting to meetup after we had left. Whoever went knew the other person was expecting someone who signed fluently but didn't speak...they would have access to the learned signed vocabulary and knowledge of 'Thea's mannerism's and 'level of ability', but would sometimes have to pretend they remembered what the other person was talking about for specific events...such as a student night out, what a specific lecturer might have said or worn one time, another student the other person was talking about etc. ..'social chit-chat' was often not stored as a priority, so if anything 'tripped us up' or made people wonder about us...it would have been that.

Jay

DID is a coping mechanism in face of trauma. It can be positive for the person because it is a coping mecanism, but it is exhausting for the brain and body. Some people can be distressed by the diagnosis, especially if they have a lot of denial and/or amnesia, but since you are here on the forum on your own accord without an official diagnosis, I guess it is not your case

DID is caused by trauma. Trauma is anything that is stressful enough to cause brain damage (because of the stress molecules) on the long term: being victim of physical violences, but also, emotional distress, sensory/emotional overload, negligence, emotional violence or neglect, burnout, bullying, being a witness of violence... Being pressured to mask can be one of these violences and stressful long-term event causing trauma on the brain. The simple oversensitivities of autism can cause traumatic sensory overloads.

Being born premature can also cause hypersensitivities leading to being traumatized by a lot of non-violent things such as being touched to get a diaper change. Which is a very recent discovery because 20 years ago or so, it was believed premature children had no sensitivity due to having an immature nervous system. Thing is, it's the other way around: an immature nervous system is even more sensitive. Which is why an event that an adult can go through like "meh just another saturday" can be traumatizing for a child due to the immaturity of the nervous system.

ArbreMonde wrote:DID is a coping mechanism in face of trauma. It can be positive for the person because it is a coping mecanism, but it is exhausting for the brain and body

That would explain the Chronic Fatigue symptoms and sometimes crashing so bad we didn't have the energy for people to switch.

ArbreMonde wrote:Some people can be distressed by the diagnosis, especially if they have a lot of denial and/or amnesia, but since you are here on the forum on your own accord without an official diagnosis, I guess it is not your case

Technically the body was already here before I (Jay) re-emerged into it this time though with everyone already understanding and agreeing with Kit's research that they were part of a system.

ArbreMonde wrote:Being pressured to mask can be one of these violences and stressful long-term event causing trauma on the brain. The simple oversensitivities of autism can cause traumatic sensory overloads.

I guess it's just odd that all the stuff we'd read in the past about Autism they never mentioned Dissociation or having other complete identities. It was usually always just about lack of social & communication skills, challenging behaviours and additional learning disabilities or being non-verbal.

But I guess (some) specialists are more aware now I mean look how many people are getting diagnosed much later in life and are people most would have thought of being NT because they may have jobs, be married, have kids and all the stuff people with autism were thought to not be capable of in the past.
We never achieved that (marriage and kids) but none ever seemed to want it even the most able 'masks' but we were considered by the psychologist as 'unusual' because they could not get an average score because in some areas the abilities/scores were exceptionally high and others they fell within the 'learning disability range' yet still managed to complete a degree!

We realise now that was probably down to our ability to mask and 'switch alters' in different situations even though we did not understand we had DID at the time and not all alters even knew about each other. (some insiders have always known about 'the others' but were not the one's who ever fronted in public).

Jay

TheTriForce wrote:I guess it's just odd that all the stuff we'd read in the past about Autism they never mentioned Dissociation or having other complete identities. It was usually always just about lack of social & communication skills, challenging behaviours and additional learning disabilities or being non-verbal.

That's because people specialized in autism aren't trained about trauma and even less trained about dissociation. Dissociative symptoms are often seen as normal symptoms of autism (for example, DP/DR = shutdown), and they don't investigate further.

On the other hand, people trained in trauma and dissociation rarely come from the neurodevelopmental field. They don't have the tools and knowledge to spot autism or ADHD, which is why symptoms of both are often mixed with traumatic symptoms ; and then, shutdown becomes DP/DR responses, but the treatment doesn't seem to work on those.

And yep, more people coming from one field are starting to gain interest into the other field, that's why we have a bit of resources about autism and dissociation being comorbid now - but it's still a small minority of specialists.

That might be why our T is a bit different. She is more of a generalist who fell into being an autism specialist and has been doing a lot of research into trauma of late because so many of her patients are exhibiting trauma symptoms and she can't recommend a trauma specialist because there's no one who can take new patients.

But, yeah, academic over-specialization is a pain in the backside no matter which field.