About autism and dissociative disorders

Sorry I didn't go further last night as it was 2am local and I was falling asleep. I tend to use fae or fay because most people don't know the terms sidhe, sith or shee. It's like most people have never heard of baobhan, which is a type of sidhe which inspires creativity while draining the life force of an individual (this was actually depicted in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode The Muse).

The sidhe had a myriad of different forms from banshee (who were said to foretell the dead and are basically unchanged) to pucca (mischievous nature spirits [for example Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream]) to goblins (the Welsh word for which is coblin and is the origin of the term) to pixies (which are a lot closer to the fairies of this day). A lot of things changed when J.R.R. Tolkien came along and blended Celtic, Germanic and Norse mythology and folklore into Middle Earth. His elves, which are now the archetype, are a blend of Germanic elves and Celtic sidhe.

The fae in our system tack closer to the sidhe than to elves. I'm pretty certain that our system was influenced heavily by the stories we read as children and beyond. I know that I took on the form of a demon later in life, but that was still in my teens and I was far less in the outer world than inside. However, Beth was sidhe earlier than I was a succubus because we read about Celtic mythology long before we got into anything dealing with demons, but she was out more when we were reading about fae, elves, and sidhe. I'm pretty sure that Keira took her form of a dragon around the time of us reading The Dragonriders of Pern series, and became an oriental dragon as time went along.

TriForce, we were much the same. I suspect that the reason why we have such high co-consciousness is because we got punished if we got confused after switching. It kept us from getting hurt. Until six months ago, only four of us had names, and before five years ago, only three of us did, and going back further, Beth and Bri only took names two decades ago. We didn't have different names, but it's been wonderful to have them as it makes our identities clear. It's like when I say my name is Violette, that encompases what I am as an alter (now, in my case, it's more that I changed names as I used to even still answer to our dead name), but Beth is Beth and Pippa is Pippa. Part of what we're trying to get everyone to realize is it's alright to be ourselves out in the outer world, at least around our friends. We still have alters who mask. Vera and Lilith will imitate Pippa, for instance.

But all of this leads me to a question...I wonder if neurodivergent systems are more prone to non-human alters than neurotypical systems.

Vi

ViTheta wrote:
TriForce, we were much the same. I suspect that the reason why we have such high co-consciousness is because we got punished if we got confused after switching. It kept us from getting hurt.

But all of this leads me to a question...I wonder if neurodivergent systems are more prone to non-human alters than neurotypical systems.

Vi

I would not be surprised if we/they did.

I think we received something like the therapy called ABA??

https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/d ... n-therapy/

Although there are some memories of it being referred to as an 'Home Portage Program' or something like that over here? ..but it was basically the same being physically guided through appropriate behaviours and hours of learning flashcards and numbers and names of things and how to behave and what 'being good' meant etc!!!!

Also given we had no idea how to play properly ...been taught specifically how to play 'appropriately' with other children. There is a memory of being told...(and I suspect this was 'Bobby' up front as it had been mentioned that we didn't still didn't speak at this point) that we had been taken to a mother and toddler group to 'encourage us to copy other toddlers speaking and interacting'.... apparently a very lovely but posh lady had led 'me' to some dolls to choose one and left us a minute to go see to someone else...when they returned they were horrified to find we had removed all the heads off the dolls...and lined them up in a row!! ....our poor mother was told she had a 'very disturbed child' who needed to see a doctor immediately! (remember this was the early 70's! ..I was also my parents first and they were young parents!).. I imagine our 'therapy' to 'become normal' was probably much intensified after this event!!

Growing up autistic was difficult. We never underwent that level of therapy, but Mother would discipline us for incorrect behavior and sometimes that discipline would border on abusive. Most of the time, she didn't discipline us badly. Most of it was slaps on the hand and such, but she was always worn out and if we caught her at the worst times, her disciplinary actions would be severe. I think Mother did a lot of self-editing when it comes to what happened as well. It didn't help that my cousins and peers would flip around and sometimes they were nice and play well with 'me' (probably Beth or Marcus), but then turn and bully any one of us. It didn't help how things went that Beth might take punishment or abuse, but Marcus would hide and throw one of us out to take it.

We didn't start therapy until age eleven, and even then, most of the time I just hid away meaning Beth presented a view of our life that was nice and less than problematic. The second T who saw us never noticed anything. The third may have picked up on the DID as we didn't hide it quite as well around her. Our second T was a man, and none of us really trusted men for obvious reasons. We're on our seventh T across thirty years.

The autism predates everything and I know most of the system is autistic. I just happen to have the least amount of 'obvious' traits (though you probably noticed I obsess about stories and that Octavia didn't come out to discuss fae...I am the one who loves stories and so know a lot about fae, demons, dragons, etc.) I'm hoping that we'll see far fewer autistic systems in the future given the support that many of our younger 'siblings' have.

Yesterday, I watched a video discussing a theory of autism created by three autistic researchers called monotropism. It, basically, is that the autistic brain lacks any strong ability to multitask, and tends towards hyperfocusing. The video then discussed how some autistic people may create alters to just cope with the world such as being yanked from one task to the next without being able to properly finish and refocus creating a situation where alters are created just to be able to quickly change from one thing to the next. They posited that such force and rapid changing from one task to the next was traumatic for a young autistic child. They did not discount the idea of traumatically created alters, but that this might explain alters who don't hold trauma and are very hyperfocused on certain things. Their ideas weren't based on something scientific, but it was an interesting idea and I thought I would share it.

ViTheta wrote:Yesterday, I watched a video discussing a theory of autism created by three autistic researchers called monotropism. It, basically, is that the autistic brain lacks any strong ability to multitask, and tends towards hyperfocusing. The video then discussed how some autistic people may create alters to just cope with the world such as being yanked from one task to the next without being able to properly finish and refocus creating a situation where alters are created just to be able to quickly change from one thing to the next. They posited that such force and rapid changing from one task to the next was traumatic for a young autistic child. They did not discount the idea of traumatically created alters, but that this might explain alters who don't hold trauma and are very hyperfocused on certain things. Their ideas weren't based on something scientific, but it was an interesting idea and I thought I would share it.

Do you have a link for this video? Are they talking about Autism and DID together? or just Autism and dissociation in general?

https://youtu.be/7YJs96gHFps

Sorry about that. Things were discombobulated this morning. The creator of the video says that she has both DID and autism. I did look up the theory she talks about and it is legitimate.

ViTheta wrote:https://youtu.be/7YJs96gHFps

Sorry about that. Things were discombobulated this morning. The creator of the video says that she has both DID and autism. I did look up the theory she talks about and it is legitimate.

That's good...and interesting question..if having a Monotropic brain pre-disposes people to DID, why aren't all autistic people DID?


...possibly to do with 'awareness of expectation'? when I worked with the host in the past there was a huge demand to be seen 'as normal' at all times and to fit in with where ever we were expected to go or do.

An autistic person with more learning difficulties will not always have that level of awareness that 'if I don't behave like everyone else people will know there's something wrong with me and may bully me" so there would be no subconscious thoughts leading to 'I need to pretend to be like x to be liked' or 'I need a new persona for this next part cos I only know how to do y' etc?? ..so therefore they would not develop???

Maybe also in this climate of pushing towards more acceptance of who a person is will mean less autistic kids these days feel the need to mask as much so DID would become less common in the next generation of autistic adults? ..unless of course they were in the kind of situation (ie ongoing abuse) that would cause any child to become DID? .... but not purely due to 'just being autistic' if they had understanding and acceptance from everyone around them?

Well, I remember Autistic Selves positing that if someone who is autistic isn't put into a pressure situation where they end up having the constant trauma of constantly being forced to change rapidly, they may not develop DID because they have an easier time of coping with the changes, if given time to adjust.

I know that we weren't given the chance and Mom always was punishing us for doing anything that was autistic. This seems to be why some of us are just functional alters.

It's wonderful to see this theory, though.

The hyperfocus is found in ADHD too, so I really do not understand this "monotropic" hypothesis. Especially since very dissociated persons tend to be less able to multitask (because they have a lower mental level) and integrated persons tend to be better able to multitask (because higher mental levels).

The whole chapter 9 of "The Haunted Self" talks about this.


"Hyperfocus" has to do with dopamine levels: it is the neurotransmitter deciding if you can start or finish a task, how much you are focused on it etc. and when its levels are doing whatever they please, you can end up unable to focus on something you really want to do, unable to start a task, or, unable to stop a task and therefore, "stuck" on a task.


As for dissociation and autism, the bibliography review shared on DID-research explains that the sensory hypersensitivity alone explains why autistics dissociate a lot more: they dissociate in order to shield themselves from a way too intense environment.

ArbreMonde wrote:.

As for dissociation and autism, the bibliography review shared on DID-research explains that the sensory hypersensitivity alone explains why autistics dissociate a lot more: they dissociate in order to shield themselves from a way too intense environment.

[KIT] I think this is why we had a deaf alter ... we always struggled to learn when the body was 'hearing'...after we lost some hearing due to a medication review the system somehow realised how useful this was as many of the pitches that triggered 'Bobby's meltdown's were then no longer within our hearing range

of course the outside world likes to fix things! ... so we ended up with hearing aids..again Bobby soon realised they could still control the 'volume of the outside world' by having them in but switched off or by using the T setting to connect to a neck loop & walkman so they were playing 'predictable sound' ie music, songs - that are always the same no matter how many times you play them! ..and subsequently creating our deaf alter 'Thea' to cope with going to college, learning to sign, use an interpreter, preparing for work etc. ..she remained years after the hearing returned but because only the insiders knew this who never 'came out fully' unless home alone in the bedroom ... the outside world only knew us as 'Thea' and they of course at that age did not understand we were DID and that others were perceiving us as different in different situations.

I now believe a similar thing happened with 'Maddie' after the onset of neurological issues ..our brain couldn't make sense of what was going on in the body so simply kept 'Maddie' out front to deal with hospitals and such until 'the new state' could be made sense of. As we were still very disconnected and many still not aware of each others existance, not everyone was getting the same information and 'Maddie' remained stuck at a specific point of physical ability/inability every time they got triggered out???