About autism and dissociative disorders

"All the world's a stage."

For us, the stage at the cabaret is the place where we go to interact with the real world. We created a cabaret a long time ago because it was, historically, a safe place for LGBTQ+ people. In fact, we started building our fictional world from the shape of our inner world. To a certain degree, I think it also grew because we knew early on that actors were human beings performing a show and it made sense that we were different actors playing a part in the outer world. We had our social scripts and did our best to act in accordence to the dictates of the world interaction.

I forgot to add this while I was babbling this morning.

Has anyone ever had different sensory issues depending on who is fronting/co-fronting? When Bri is up front in any capacity so much ends up hurting. If the lights are too bright, or the wrong detergent is used or anything, it overwhelms her more than it does, say, me (Vi). Yes, I still have sensory issues such as an aversion to unfinished wood or bright yellow light or many perfumes, but with her it seems amplified to an extreme.

ViTheta wrote:I forgot to add this while I was babbling this morning.

Has anyone ever had different sensory issues depending on who is fronting/co-fronting? When Bri is up front in any capacity so much ends up hurting. If the lights are too bright, or the wrong detergent is used or anything, it overwhelms her more than it does, say, me (Vi). Yes, I still have sensory issues such as an aversion to unfinished wood or bright yellow light or many perfumes, but with her it seems amplified to an extreme.

Bobby is the most autistic in our system. They are more sensitive to sound than light and always had a particular fascination for the kind of lighting you typically find in 'sensory rooms'. We have several fibre optics lights, bubble lamps and one that project aurora's and stars on ceilings etc.

I (Kit) don't like strong scents ..perfumes, aftershaves, room fresheners and the smell of some foods etc. I have some issues with sounds but have better control over my reaction than Bobby..losing some hearing for higher frequencies has helped but the Tinnitus can be as bad and cancel out the advantage.

Bobby and I though have the ability to completely focus in on video games and zone out the Tinnitus whereas Yuna struggles to think about anything else other than the noise from the Tinnitus unless she wears the hearing aid,which to us is worse cos it amplifies all noise which appears more unpredictable unless its a song we know or the sound from the video game.

Yuna copes better with unpredictable sounds in public like when going to hospital app and there's all kinds of environmental noises we don't usually hear just in our house...tannoys..voices of multiple people talking in waiting rooms, phones ringing behind desks and things bleeping etc. Bobby and I find it near impossible to function in those kinds of environments.

Different sensory processing according to different alters is common in DID. The otherkin community (which strongly smells of OSDD IMO) calls this "sensory shifts", that's how commonplace it is in dissociative disorders.

From experience, it eases up with integration: the more integrated I become, the better I manage sensory informations. Granted I'll never reach neuroTypical levels or managing sensory inputs, but I am going towards "normal autistic" instead of "autistic and another level of hyper/hypo sensitivity atop of it due to dissociation".

Dwelt wrote:, I realize now we're almost totally integrated that dissociation had made those symptoms far worse, specially if it implied switching between alters. Now we're 3 alters left instead of 15, it's so much easier to be flexible... we still doesn't have "NT levels" of flexibility, but it's better than before.

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How do you get from 15 to 3? Did a selection of alters themselves decide to permanently blend with each other to become one? I'm trying to understand why this happens? Are the one's that blended all 'from the past' to make up one that represents a specific era of a person's life?

Our ones left all represent different decades. If I included the names of ones that have disappeared from the system too there would be a collection of 3 core personalities for each decade.We were all very seperate until our 40's when 'social front Maddie' dissolved and insiders from different era's started to come forwards.

Until Teen S was pushed out due to the stroke and renamed herself 'Yuna' in this present she didn't see alters that originally 'came after her' as part of her...only the one's that came before eg she could see 'little Susie' as a younger version of her but couldn't see me (Kit) as a 'different version' of her.

As Yuna fronting for most of the last year most recently she has now accepted all human alters before this time she came out as 'past versions of me' (the Changelings are accepted as beings created by Bobby like 'imaginary friends' that became sentient over the years..we know other humans - outside of our system - can't 'see' them!).

Myself and Jay have also spanned different era's when we have fronted and can see 'previous others' as 'versions of me'. Bobby recently fronted in adult form after getting stuck out front but has returned to the inside where they feel safest in child form with Little Susie and Phoenix, (the one's they grew up with). I find myself wondering if they 3 will one day choose to blend as one.

Thank you both TriForce and Arbremonde.

Until yesterday, I figured that none of us in our system would qualify as NT, but I hadn't realized just how bad some of the autistic traits could be for some of us. There are a few things which we are averse to which may not stem from the autism. Bri coming forward for the first time in a while showed just how bad things can be for some of us and we're starting to wonder how she stood being host at any given time. It might be that she masked and pushed the pain back into the system. That seems most likely.

However, it also seems to explain why some of us don't want to announce when we come forward except to the system and hide behind either the Theta moniker or the voices of one of the more social alters such as myself or Pippa.

TheTriForce wrote: How do you get from 15 to 3? Did a selection of alters themselves decide to permanently blend with each other to become one? I'm trying to understand why this happens? Are the one's that blended all 'from the past' to make up one that represents a specific era of a person's life?

I've answered here : Our integration process

I'm still reading the research gate article!....thought I'd reached bottom of page but realised there's loads more pages..I wonder if its safe to download on my iPad to read?.... many of the examples explain so much for me over my life!

QUOTE "I feel like I'm stuck inside a body that doesn't belong to me" UNQUOTE

- most of us have felt this since the body first developed neurological difficulties and had to start using a wheelchair...this is probably what triggered the creation of 'Maddie'.

The problem was when Maddie started to dissolve our 'insiders' still didn't feel it was their body!

QUOTE
'Whenever I am in sensory overload it feels like my bodily functions like
walking, reacting to people in a crowd, watching out for objects in the way while
walking are sep[a]rated from my personality so that I don't have to make
conscious decisions about it because my working memory cannot process these
AND the sensory overload. I feel dismember[ed] from my body" UNQUOTE

I realise now no-one specifically taught us how to compensate for the difficulties we were experiencing with balance and co-ordination. Insiders would come out and work things out themselves...some more than others depending on how often they 'came out' and whether they fronted properly..like a proper switch or not...

We know from Maddie's diary she was told by Neuro they didn't know what had caused and it would cost them too much to test for everything she basically had to go home and get used to the wheelchair...I think 'Maddie' never got past that stage in her head. We only walked (although still with walking aids to help us balance) when the brother was around because he triggered 'his sister' (Teen S/Yuna) and always has done. 'Maddie' was originally just a social media persona/public face mask.

Somehow this time (last year the mini stroke) as we all knew about each other were all instantly at the same level of 'being affected' by it and with a more structured rehab are starting to come together and realise sometimes in moments of clarity ... 'actually this is our body' ..and when we're most dissociated is when we're dealing with high levels of pain, fatigue, Tinnitus or often all 3 together! ..its triggering 'sensory overload' almost constantly!

I wish someone would find a cure for Tinnitus! but it probably doesn't get as much funding as stuff like cancer and covid etc ...I'm sure there wouldn't be nearly half as much dissociation if didn't have the constant noise from the T to cope with... doesn't mix well with autism and a sound sensitive brain!