Had a 'coming out', and then what?

No we don't have a therapist, as we said nobody knows. We have the autism diagnosis and its connected to that. We have been reading alot more lately specifically on autism in girls as its now realised it presents differently and they also mention the creating of new persona's and a rich fantasy world which explains Kit to a T! ..and may also explain the development of these characters which started off only in Kit's mind then took on a life of their own to help Kit deal with the outside world.

Since understanding we have managed to sort out 'Maddie' and she has gone. If Kit created Thea and Maddie in the first place then she can create a new one for the outside world to see based on our current physical ability. We don't know if this is typical of all kinds of DID/OSDD of whether its the autism aspect

Never heard of autistic people creating new persona's? Is this perhaps related to the 'imaginary friends' thing a lot of children have? Personally, I believe this comes from magical thinking*, which some autistic people also do.

DID/OSDD, is when the personality hasn't integrated because of ongoing trauma during early childhood. So if you want to figure out which condition brought Kit, Thea and Maddie to life:), the answer might be in your childhood.

Ex

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*I believe it's not magical thinking of children to have imaginary friends, but sensitivity and introvertness; noticing still loose parts of the personality and communicating with them until they, in most cases, integrate. This happens around the same age when children stop believing in fairytales (thát's magical thinking) becáuse of the integration/'teamwork' of brain, feelings, intuition, etc, which results in a more realistic view of the world/life.

Er

Bejer wrote:Never heard of autistic people creating new persona's? Is this perhaps related to the 'imaginary friends' thing a lot of children have? Personally, I believe this comes from magical thinking*, which some autistic people also do.

DID/OSDD, is when the personality hasn't integrated because of ongoing trauma during early childhood. So if you want to figure out which condition brought Kit, Thea and Maddie to life:), the answer might be in your childhood.

Ex

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*I believe it's not magical thinking of children to have imaginary friends, but sensitivity and introvertness; noticing still loose parts of the personality and communicating with them until they, in most cases, integrate. This happens around the same age when children stop believing in fairytales (thát's magical thinking) becáuse of the integration/'teamwork' of brain, feelings, intuition, etc, which results in a more realistic view of the world/life.

Er

We are starting to find more sites mentioning autistic girls having a richer fantasy world and creating persona's This is one where it mentions it.

http://www.mindsandhearts.net/index.php ... s-syndrome

It's hard to find anywhere where the persona's developed are described in detail as I suspect like myself they keep it secret.

an interesting paragraph further down:

"She becomes someone else, someone who would be accepted and not recognized as different. She learns how to act in specific situations, a strategy so successful that people may not be aware that the social abilities were a performance, achieved by intellect and imitation rather than intuition and inspiration. Girls who have ASD can be like chameleons, changing personas according to the situation, and no one knowing the genuine person. They may believe that the real person must remain secret because they fear that person is defective and must never be revealed"

I believe the bolded part maybe whats causing the confusion over whether it's just autism or DID too? Like yourself I had no idea autistic girls could do with this without having another condition too that would cause that. So we will look more into this aspect and see what we can dig up.


It maybe that ours developed more intensely as we were not diagnosed with autism as a child, we didn't know what was wrong or why we were the way we were so never had any autism-specific therapy as a child. Even with the later diagnosis, the criteria is based on the behaviour of autistic boys, we still couldn't explain our rich fantasy worlds and the emergence of Thea as we never met another autistic girl at our 'level' of ability. We always wondered if there was something in the mix.

Kit's parents died many years ago and has no older siblings who may remember her early childhood. We've moved 5 times, she has no memory of the first 7 years of her life, we were told it was due to epilepsy. We have no contact with anyone who knew Kit for the period she has no memory of, We only know what Kit remembers being told by her parents when she was a bit older.

We will go to research the autistic girls creating new persona's aspect of this, sorry to take over your post. We would be cautious about 'coming out' and revealing your DID to others. The real world seems less tolerant of the disabled lately and disability hate crime has increased in the last year. We would advise to wait until things improved then be really cautious about who you reveal to if you really felt you must.

KitMcDaydream wrote:"She becomes someone else, someone who would be accepted and not recognized as different. She learns how to act in specific situations, a strategy so successful that people may not be aware that the social abilities were a performance, achieved by intellect and imitation rather than intuition and inspiration. Girls who have ASD can be like chameleons, changing personas according to the situation, and no one knowing the genuine person. They may believe that the real person must remain secret because they fear that person is defective and must never be revealed"

I've read about people with ASD having the ability to be social chameleons before. I remember it is more common in people with higher IQ's and in females. My interpretation at the time was that the person's they assumed were more akin to a actor playing a role then having other personalities because it went on a lot about mimicking expected behaviour and not about the behaviour coming naturally from somewhere within. But I read about it before I learnt about DID so that may have affected my interpretation.

Very interesting indeed! This does not feel to me like you're taking over this post, I like this discussion:)

I knew it's harder to recognize in girls because of how girls are raised (focussing more on social skills/soft side), but the actual different persona's is new to me.

But it does make sense for a magical thinker to name those persona's. And to distance yourself from them, without them actually being dissociative identity states.

However, not having memories of your childhood, and having those traumatic experiences alone because of the unrecognized autism and, as you now mention, epilepsy; medical trauma's during childhood (and perhaps not the right/enough care) can also cause dissociative disorders.

To me it sounds dissociative, explained/named/shaped wíth your autism?

Do you experience ptsd symptoms? Flashbacks, nightmares, etc?

And thank you for your kind advice. I already came out in public, and I don't regret it. My 'scene' mostly 'contains' artists, who all are weirdo's anyway:) I kind of had to; because of a big switch when my crisis began, I thought I was transgendered (Er, J and B identify as male) and even changed my name on social media and when publishing art. So it was a big mess. When switching again I started dressing feminin again and stuff, so after a big and long thinking things through, decided to just set things straight and be myself. Yes, not everybody is openminded about these things, also people I didn't expect it from, but it truly feels great not hide it anymore and to be with people who accept/understand it. It makes me cry of relief just writing that down:) Feeling safe with others and accepted is AWESOME. I think I'm also lucky with my country, where there's not much hate crime (a lot of politically left thinkers). And just like you don't/didn't discuss your autism with your university friend all the time, I don't discuss this with my peeps all the time. It's just great to not have to hide it.

I wish that for everybody here.

-- Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:29 am --

NyxX wrote:

KitMcDaydream wrote:"She becomes someone else, someone who would be accepted and not recognized as different. She learns how to act in specific situations, a strategy so successful that people may not be aware that the social abilities were a performance, achieved by intellect and imitation rather than intuition and inspiration. Girls who have ASD can be like chameleons, changing personas according to the situation, and no one knowing the genuine person. They may believe that the real person must remain secret because they fear that person is defective and must never be revealed"

I've read about people with ASD having the ability to be social chameleons before. I remember it is more common in people with higher IQ's and in females. My interpretation at the time was that the person's they assumed were more akin to a actor playing a role then having other personalities because it went on a lot about mimicking expected behaviour and not about the behaviour coming naturally from somewhere within. But I read about it before I learnt about DID so that may have affected my interpretation.

Yes. The difference between a 'you' faking another 'you', or a 'you' having several 'you's'.

Oh wait, ASD is antisocial, right? I've read the same about that condition indeed. ASD and ASS get confused sometimes as well, because of the same cognitive empathy (which explains the understanding of why certain gestures 'work' on an intellectual level), versus less emotional empathy. But there also are a lot of differences between ASD and ASS. Such as wanting to connect (ASS) versus mimicing to manipulate (ASD).

ASD is used for autism spectrum disorder I don't know if it's used for anything else

Nice confusing one

ASD is used for both;

http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=5096738

Anti Social Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder

Maybe it's my country, where only ASS stands for autism.

It's not uncommon for different countries to call things buy different names and with how many initials get used for this stuff I always find it confusing.

Even within the same countries, yes!