Can you function in everday activities?

I have problem that I struggle to perform literally anywhere including my job if there is any doubt in who should be the front, or feeling insecure when fronting with certain persona/alter, or even simply not understanding certain persona/alter well enough.

It can be so severe that all my thoughts are consumed by self-reflection, so unless a great stimulation from environment, I can hardly do what currently has to be done, and when I am outside I feel like getting home and sleep over certain conclusions.

We might not be the best to answer this as we're on Disability because of our autism, but we have an alter who handles shopping and driving. We have this whole ritual that we go through before we leave the house and this allows space for Leila to come out and handle all of that stuff. This has meant that we have to have a list while shopping as she isn't as aware of what we need as the rest of us, but we're also not really allowed to interfere with her so no discussions about what is going on.

Honestly, it's for the best that she does this as the times any of the rest of us do any driving has been rocky at best.

I hope that this helps a bit.
Violette

I experience a similar problem. I have one alter in particular who is very bad with children and struggles to read and write in my native language. Usually when she for whatever reason comes out at work and experiences issues dealing with those things, she makes a run for it and either the alter or I swap in.
It's not ideal, as you may well know.

A ritual as Vi describes seems a good thing. Essentially the solution would be to improve communication between parts and focus on selecting times for a specific alter to be out. Premeditated switches, so to speak.

~ Grey/Knight

Good topic

Mainly I would choose to stick to low paid none skilled work that we can all do like cleaning work for example. That way we don't struggle.

One of us happens to be a very good sales person but once we switch then that one gets lost and I don't know how to access them again. It's really frustrating.

Yes--from the outside, we look extremely capable and successful. We're not currently working, but have worked part-time in a highly esteemed professional job, as well as raising three children. Now we're pursuing a serious hobby in the performing arts, and even though we only started doing this a few years ago, people think we're very experienced (but that's probably because of our age).

But we get a lot of backup support from the husband. He takes care of finances, car maintenance, grocery shopping, doing the dishes and cleaning the counters, etc, and a lot of the stuff that has to do with home maintenance as well. We do laundry, pet care, some of the hiring of repair people, and some other stuff.

Honestly, I don't know how we managed to raise the kids. It seems like another life Now we feel like we're about 17-18 years old, where most of the "adult" stuff is still taken care of by parents (in this case the husband), and we try to take on what we can manage, but mostly do our hobbies and classes, and projects around the house.

Oh yeah I find that housework, cooking etc is quite easy for me. I know what you mean about being too young to carry a lot of responsibility though. It has taken me years to get into a routine with it all but I manage pretty well for a teenager.

I also have a daughter but I failed at being a parent when she was small because well I was far to young in many respects. So she lived away from me.

Sorry I didn't read the thread title properly at first.

We manage round the home..just about...getting tired quickly is mostly the issue and limited mobility when pain is bad, Kate and Sue likes cooking and when we get our food shop in one or both will come out and do a batch cook for us, so we have healthy meals in freezer for days when cooking is too much.

Kate also helps tidy round. Otherwise only other main thing is get our dog out for an hour, we use a mobility scooter but even then sometimes its the only thing we manage. Kit usually does most of scooter driving, research and banking but is on a rest, so I'm (Jay} doing the most each day right now.

For appointments 2-3 of us blend to play 'official host' as for a long time none of us in particular identified with the legal name/identity created by last full time host 'Maddie'.

We function by prioritising, it doesn't always work....
We have 1 permanent part time job that is low skilled that we can all do.
We then alternate between short term contracts (3 - 6 months) of more specialised stuff that one specific alter can do realy well. These contracts are also part time so its less likely to burn out said alter and if they aren't available it is easier to hide switches as "off days" generally for us after 6 months there will be a new mix of who has more front time so our most reliably accesable skills change and our job needs to change to reflect the new skills set most likely to be available.
I tend to tell employers that I'm a jack of all trades.
If there is no job to suit the curent mix (like now) we go on a training course so that our cv doesn't have gaps and to expand the skills of said alter.

As for housework..... we can all do the housework, its a motivation issue. The littles love doing the odd job because we have a picture communication chore chart, when they do a job they move the chore from red to green. Enough green chores and they get a treet of their choosing. The adults do housework because they know it has to be done, though their standards of cleanliness are varied. One of our teens loves to cook and is fantastic at it so that's her contribution to the house but the other teen avoids housework like she is allergic to it.

When she is front too many days in a row things used to get bad, in the every single piece of cutlery and crockery would be dirty and shed just eat dry cereal out of the box bad. Now when things are sliding that way our partner does little "summoning rituals" basicaly changes the radio station, swaps the deodorant for another alters preferred brand etc as sensory cues to let the inside know that things are heading in an unacceptable direction (ie a bad example for our irl kid)
Our partner takes on the burden of housework when this teen is front so that we don't actually run out of clothes, dishes etc but as he works full time it puts a lot of pressure on him.

We don't expect the teen to want to do the housework but we would like her to start swaping out to someone else for them to do "the chores" instead of hogging front to lounge on the sofa all day.

Our driving ability is the most serverly affected every day skill we have maybe 2 good drivers a few ok drivers 1 bad driver and the littles are non drivers. Driving is highly stimulating so who is front fluctuates throughout a drive and we can be frequently seen pulled over on the side of the road "napping" as we wait for a less skilled alter to step aside. There was one notable journey that for some reason the littles kept popping front to look out the windows which causes brain fog and tiredness/slow reaction time in the driver we had to pull over 4 times in what should have been a 20 minuet drive.

Nowadays we plan for any journey to take double what the satnav says and if we have to get there at a particular time and can't set that amount of travel time aside we go by public transport or walk.

Looking back I am amazed at how long I managed to hold my life together with the intensity of dissociation I had back then - when you add autism and ADHD and intense gender dysphoria to the mix, it's almost a miracle I held it together back then.

Now that I am highly integrated, have healed most of my traumas, know how to compensate autism and ADHD without hurting myself and am on my transition journey, I am more aware of how difficult it is to keep the ducks in a row. As an example, I know recieve help and support for housekeeping and I have a taxi-bus service for disabled people (sensory sensitivity makes riding a regular bus an exhausting process with 3 days of rest after that).

Before, I was in constant burnout and constantly switching to be able to achieve the bare minimum and constantly dissociated from my own main, exaustion and everything else. Now I can feel everything and it is painful but I also recognize that what I do, I do better. I'm not successful at work really, I don't hold an 8-17 job and cannot do that. But the little projects of my life I manage. I write books on niche subjects that 2 people are interested in but it makes me happy to learn and organize informations and share my insights with the world. I write articles for a website about dissociative disorders and I help people around me the best I can. I do other personal projects (presently: knitting). And I spend a few hours everyday chatting with friends about how to heal from our traumas and doing peer support.

It's a full time job, to recover. Not one that a capitalist society will call a productive job. But one that makes me feel satisfied with my little life.