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After we were first diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), we worked towards total integration of all of our alters. We got to know each alter and, one by one, they eventually fused together, usually in an extended therapy session.
My main motivation was our desire to be a parent and believing we couldn't have alters and still be a safe and effective parent. We now know this isn't true as we are a parent today and very much have alters.
We lived as one person, or were unaware of having others, for over a decade. We felt this was a huge achievement at the time which it was but we weren't really being our true, real self during this time. It is difficult to know where the alters were and what was really happening but during this decade we didn't have therapy and were highly focused on bringing up two young children.
After our children were diagnosed as autistic we realised we were also autistic.
Shortly after autism was diagnosed, in 2018, our alters gradually re-emerged and we were reassessed two years later to determine if we had DID only, autism only or both DID and autism.
It was decided we are both autistic and DID.
We prefer life when we are living it as many people because that is what is natural for us.
It doesn't make us unsafe as a parent, if anything it makes us a better parent because we are parenting authentically and our children see our true reality.
We were very much of the opinion that social services would not take kindly to us parenting with alters. We met someone online who had DID and told us social services removed her child at birth and she had to fight to get her back. We know now that is discrimination - no one should remove our children purely based on a diagnosis, they should properly assess our parenting skills however, it still stays with us. We still feel we have to be a superparent - to somehow over prove our worthiness to look after children. We talk about it a little in our video on parenting below, you can find more content on our Autistic Selves YouTube Channel.
Autistic Selves have a ko-fi page where people can make one off or recurring donations, just donating £1 is helpful in enabling them to continue their work.
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