“The therapist didn’t believe us and told us not to talk about it to anyone.”

Hello, I am Alec. Well, actually I’m not Alec, Alec is the person everyone sees. I’m Zif and I am part of a DID system. DID, better known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, is a form of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) in which your personality isn’t able to form in childhood because of severe traumatic events.

The personality parts stay parts, also called alters. We found out we’re a system four years ago and got the diagnosis a year ago. As a child we always showed signs of autism, which got ignored. The woman who gave birth to us wasn’t what you would call a mother. She had Borderline Personality Disorder, refused therapy and had a substance abuse disorder, mainly with alcohol. Our parents are divorced and we lived at both of their houses. We tried to tell multiple different people what happened at our mother’s home, but no one heard us. Around the same time our best friend committed suicide.

Everything was so stressful that we didn’t realise our autism symptoms were getting worse. During our fifth time in a psych ward (at the age of 13) we tried to tell our therapist there about the system and about (what we started realising was) probably autism. She didn’t believe us about either of those and told us not to talk about it to anyone.

We started to lock everything up inside us. We talked to a friend who’s a psychologist and he unofficially diagnosed us with DID. We obviously already expected it, sadly we can’t get treatment since it’s not official. He told us that he wasn’t able to make a diagnosis for autism but the signs were there, so officially our autism is self-diagnosed which makes it really hard to function in daily life without anyone believing us as to why it’s so hard. We’re not on medication specifically for those two disorders but we get neuroleptics for our ADHD, which helps with the autism a little.

Basically we have all the symptoms that are typical for autism and DID. Some autism symptoms are stronger than others though, for example we have extreme texture issues, but not that many issues with social stuff. It can be stressful in life because most people simply don’t understand and call us crazy for ‘imagining other people in your head’ or say we’re dramatic when it comes to the autism.

For me personally, it helps when I listen to music and go to my safe place in meltdowns. We’re really open about the DID and most people openly learn about and accept it. We have already experienced fake-claimers who told us we’re faking, especially since we have a lot of fictives. We only bring the autism up when we need to since some people understand it but most don’t, or don’t want to.

We actually know a few other systems and people with autism, which helps us to realise we’re not alone or ‘weird’. I wish people know that fictives aren’t just roleplaying a character, but we’re actually suffering because of it. I’ve already seen headmates break down because of trauma that didn’t happen or because they miss their (non-existent) friends/family/home. I wish people would realise that us people with autism aren’t just sensitive, we have it hard in life and we do anything we can to fight against it, but often it doesn’t work. People should learn to have as much patience with mentally ill people as with physically ill people.

Even though it may be hard, harder than for other people, I know that somehow we’re gonna make it, and you will too.