 Good day and welcome back to the Forty Autie podcast with you host as always, Mr Thomas Henley. Today we've got a very, very special episode. We're going to be talking all about dissociative identities disorder. Brilliant. Well, well spoken, Tom. Let's go from the top again. Good day and welcome back to the Forty Autie podcast with you host, Mr Thomas Henley. Of course, today we've got a very special episode for you. We're going to be talking all about dissociative identity disorder, or DID. Before we jump into the episode, I just want to point to the fact it's about March as of this recording. And we hadn't had any snow in the UK over the winter period at all, hardly anything. We had probably like a light sprinkling. But the past week, past two weeks or so, the snow has just been absolutely crazy and it's spring. And I was walking back from the gym earlier. I did some legs at the gym, which everybody who goes to the gym probably understand my pain. So the last thing that I really wanted to happen is walking back and having snow in my face for the entirety of the walk back. It's about a 20, 30 minute walk. And when I got in, I was literally caked in snow. I usually wear all black, so it just made me look like a Dalmatian. But anyway, anyway, today I'm going to be interviewing Notrix, who has been a part of one of the previous episodes with the neurodivergent crew, where we talked about different aspects of neurodiversity and creativity. Well, I feel like understanding DID is not something that I've had a lot of experience with. I haven't done a lot of research into it. It's not something that I particularly know a lot about. And when we were doing our interview, I really wanted to ask a lot more questions about it because I'm like, I find something new and I want to understand a different perception and way of being at different experiences. So with all that rambling done, how are you doing today, Notrix? Hello, Thomas. And thank you so much for having me on your podcast again. I am very excited, but also a little bit not worried. But it's quite a responsibility for me because with the condition that is not exactly very rare, but at the same time, it's underdiagnosed and underrepresented in day to day life. I do have that responsibility for sharing the information about my case and explaining how it works. But at the same time, I'm running the risk of not being understood the right way. So it's a big responsibility. And I'm looking forward to answering your questions today and telling more about it. But yeah, well, I'm excited to do so. So thank you so much for the chance. Sure. I think it's really important to highlight that the idea is probably just in my experience of looking into it, sort of going on to different Q&A sites and stuff. It seems to be one of the most stigmatized conditions that I've ever come across. And as we mentioned in the episode with the neurodivergent crew, my understanding of sort of DID chiefly came from Hollywood movies. I'd never come across any actual people talking about their life with it, sort of sharing their experiences with it. So when we got in touch, how long was it ago? A couple of months, a few months ago? Yeah. I thought it would be really, really useful to kind of have an episode where we talk about the specifics of it, some of the experiences, perhaps some of the differences or some of the similarities with other conditions like BPD and PTSD. But also, I guess talk about what experiences people with DID have within the medical system. So I imagine that as with the stigmatizing of conditions in the public, I imagine that the medical system and different people within that also have very controversial or differing opinions on particular things about it. And then I guess the last thing that I would want to cover is stuff about your music, because as we mentioned, I'm going to start saying mention the last podcast because it's going to get a bit annoying. But talking about your dark trap, your music, your music production, it's something that I listen to pretty much on a daily basis. It's something that not a lot of people would expect me to because I can have come across as perhaps quite mainstream to most people, but I very much love my dark trap and my emo rap and my metal. So we'll talk a bit on that. And then of course, sort of finish and talk about some of the actual controversies and sort of address those. So that's the overview. I don't know why I did that. For anybody out there, I am having a bit of a strange day today. My brain is all over the place, but usually I would sort of cancel the episodes and then sort of reschedule and do one again. But I feel like it would be best represented to everybody to show me on my highs and lows and my on point days and my not on point days. So we're going to run with that. So after me monologuing for a while, would you be able to sort of explain to us what exactly dissociative identity disorder is and what kind of characteristics are sort of within that? Yeah. So dissociative identity disorder is basically when a person's mind cannot cope with some traumatic experience and it creates a separate identity in a separate part of the brain where it keeps those memories and impressions separate from the host from the core identity. My case is luckily much simpler than it could have been. And I only have two identities. Some people have so many that they wouldn't even be able to count. I've heard of people with about a thousand, if not more. I just want to say because when we started chatting about it and sort of planning the podcast, I did go on to YouTube and there seems to be quite a few, well, I don't know how many, but there seems to be quite a few YouTubers with DID talking about their experiences and sort of showing their alters, like their different identities. And it's, you know, I don't know why I haven't ever come across that kind of stuff because it is under the neurodiversity umbrella, but it just never seems to be something that kind of comes across my feed. So meeting you sort of opened me up to these different YouTube channels, which sort of talk about. And it is very interesting sort of here, how they sort of manage life alongside sort of helping others understand. So it's a very complex thing to explain to someone, I imagine. It's a very complex thing to understand too. Basically, how it happens is that because it's a protective function of the brain separating those things, you're basically not expected to know that this happened to you. And I only understood that. The funny thing is that I always felt like that's the case. I really keep coming back to a drawing that I made in my teenage years where I had four personalities in that drawing. That's not confirmed. I only have two. But my teenage self was, when I was there, I was already understanding that something must be different with my brain than from a normal brain. And I only finally understood what's going on. It was almost two years ago now, when I was diagnosed the first time. And so the doctor who was examining me, she explained to me that is legitimately the case that I have DID and that's the two different personalities. And then it was in retrospective, analyzing everything that was going on. And as always, this is when it clicked and all started making sense. Before that, I couldn't even understand what's going on. And there was a year of complete and other confusion where I could understand what's going on with my life. And this is why when I started my music project and I started being a public person, I realized that that's something I'm definitely not hiding. That's something that I'm sharing with the world. Because yet again, explaining and raising awareness might help other people to stop and think and try to go seek help and try to find out what's going on with them. Because ultimately, it's all about the way of coping with it and the way of organizing your life to help yourself live with your condition. So without that consoling, I probably wouldn't have been able to sort out what's going on. And I wouldn't have been able to build my life the way. I feel like there's some sort of parallels that I can draw. I mean, particularly when I was younger, obviously, I'm autistic, I don't have DID, but I did always feel like something was kind of a bit different about me that was sort of, you know, like people would make sort of general statements about how people perceive and feel and think about certain things, which most of the people around me would or most of the kids around me would sort of immediately understand and sort of identify with. And for a lot of the time, so during that kind of early childhood days, probably about seven, eight, nine or 10 years old, I did just feel like something was off. And one of the interesting things was that I think I've mentioned to you this before, but I used to think that I might have DID. And it was, you know, it was mostly a consequence of the fact that I didn't understand much about autism. It was only until I came across the concept of Alexofimia, sort of struggling to notice and categorize emotions within yourself, that I sort of retrospectively looked back and kind of tried to understand what was going on. And basically what I did when I was a teenager is I would split up myself into colors. So, you know, nowadays, for your information, the colors were just different emotions. But for me, because I can sort of identify with them and put them into a box, I felt that whenever I was feeling a different emotion, that that was a different personality. Because I was like, oh, I'm thinking different things, I'm feeling differently in myself, I'm thinking differently about other people. I'm perceiving things a bit more differently. And I was like, hey, like, that must be the case. Because nobody's telling me, like, that this is a thing, this is something that people experience. And the funny thing is, is that, you know, not many people do know about that sort of aspect of autism. And it's very highly linked to autism, having that experience with Alexofimia. It's very different to understanding other people's emotions. There's different sort of things that come into play with that. But for me, that was kind of, as well as watching those Hollywood movies that I was saying about, that that was kind of my sort of dive into DID sort of back then. I guess, I mean, because there's a specific part of DID as a diagnosis that I think some people might be able to relate to. And that's the dissociative part. Because, you know, dissociation is kind of a natural defense mechanism for your psyche to cope with situations that you didn't expect. And they're just overwhelmingly negative or positive. A lot of autistic people experience something called a shutdown, which tends to come with a lot of heavy dissociation meltdowns do as well. And a lot of people experience that feeling of dissociation, particularly when they're drunk, as well. That sort of not feeling in touch with reality a little bit. There's two specific aspects of dissociation. There's the, I'm only speaking about it because I have them both, but one aspect of dissociation is the derealization. So that's the feeling like the world around you is fake, and you don't feel you feel like you could snap your fingers in a moment and just wake up out of a dream. It's that sort of crazy sort of lens that you have on the world. And then there's the aspect of depersonalization, which is I feel like it could be more applicable to DID, whereby you don't identify with the person that you see in the mirror. You might have experiences when you have bad mental health, where you're struggling quite a lot. You might feel it be feeling a bit existential. And you sort of look at your hands and you see them moving or you look at yourself in the mirror and you watch yourself. And no matter how hard you try, you just can't identify yourself with that. And it's a very crazy feeling. And it used to bother me quite a lot when I was younger, particularly when I got injured. If I got injured and something was like sticking in my skin or something, I felt sort of invaded almost, sort of went off into a lot of dissociation. But I guess, you know, if you were to give some characteristics, I guess, about DID, what would be the best way of sort of explaining that those sort of aspects? Those two that you mentioned are actually also part of most lives of the people with DID. So it's known that DID people experience diversionalization and derealization. Also, there is another aspect which is even more interesting is that sometimes our other identities might not be even separate from us as they don't have to switch. They might be present in our day-to-day life, just passively influencing other behavior. And that's my least favorite part of DID. So you have the split and you have the altars, like in your case, two altars. And then sometimes you switch and one person is sort of in control of your body and is sort of aware and within your body. But sometimes there's people, there's experiences where you're sort of going out on your day-to-day and you have someone kind of, you feel like you have some sort of influencing your choices and decisions and your thoughts. Yes, I've learned to spot this behavior over the last few months, basically. Before that, I couldn't even realize how much of my behavior is sometimes controlled. But at the end of the day, it does very much impact the quality of your life when you just sometimes can't exactly do what you want to do. But yeah, so the particular case with DID is that there is a separate identity that cannot be accessible for you. You cannot just control their actions. They are an absolute distinct other person. So at first, when I was trying to reconcile my day-to-day life as this personality, basically, so just to go back into how it all started and how it all developed, we started like the separate identity appeared in my head when I was a teenager as a result of a traumatic experience. And all that time, I wasn't aware that that's the case. And we were randomly switching every now and then, but I was the very part of the very identity that was not convenient and was not welcome. I was the very identity that was created as a result of the traumatic experience. Why that was the case, it was because our brain could not really cope with all the emotions. It was a teenage brain already overwhelmed with the world. And there was too much to process. And at the same time, there was our family that didn't really help live through those emotions and didn't help to actually process them instead. So validating them and such. Yeah. Instead, we were told that all those, all that suffering and depressive thoughts are for weak people. Just let them go and just forget them. And that's where they all started piling up separately without being dealt with. And they were kept separately of the day-to-day life. And that dome just started growing and growing and growing. It never had any way out. It was just there and it was not accessed. And basically, because that was kept in a separate place, that place just started being uncontrollable. And so that very identity became dominant. So I sometimes explain it that people all do have different sides of themselves. It's just that they can easily go back and forth and they don't have to separate them. They don't have to suppress it. They can be their good self, their bad self, their sad self, their excited self like everything is fine. Whereas, I was not allowed to have that part of my life. So it was just separated from me. And eventually it just started being way too strong, way too dominant and way too like just impossible to ignore. And it was just those times when we felt safe to express ourselves. We could switch from one to the other, could be this one or that one. But with time, what was also interesting is that my normal other altar started becoming unhappy that there have to be switches and there have to be times where she is not in control. And because yet again, she was so much more convenient to the society, she was so much more welcome by the people around her. She started pushing me out. And I'm the very one who was suppressed and had those darker thoughts and is much less optimistic. And I found myself hiding and suppressed for quite a while where I would be the one having passive influence and I would be the one not in control, but just being on the sidelines of everything that was going on in our head and was going on in our life. And later, at some point, there was another trigger. So I'm not sure how other people with DID work with regards to that, but I'm mostly switching with triggers. There has to be something really particular for the full switch to happen. I think that's yet again because of how dominant we are. We might be like a match like in the how powerful we are, I guess. So it's not very easy for her to push me out entirely and switch. Now vice versa, it also works the same way. But it's still pretty easy for her and for me to be exerting passive influence. And so after a bit of time, it was actually years and years of her being dominant in this body. Another trigger happened and I was brought into existence. And that's where it was really overwhelming because I wasn't in control for such a long time. So I saw all this life in front of me that I just don't understand how to live. You didn't identify my life. Yes, this is not my... To the very point as... You were saying that as we were talking before that like your age is different as well and your sort of physicality is different. Could you explain like about that? Yeah, that's exactly how you said, you feel like you're not in your own body. I actually just had the exact occurrence of people. I was at the customs with a customs officer checking. I was flying in a plane and a customs officer was to check my passport and right now I have two passports. One is with an embassy. That one was created like a year ago. And the other that I have is from six or seven years ago. And if I use that one, the customs officers literally call help. They stare at me for ages. They start telling me this is not my passport. They start asking me questions. They start trying to check how exactly is that my passport. They're asking me for another ID because I don't even look like my other self. And yeah, physically, we are very different. Well, from the research that I've seen and from what I know, there might be real cases where the physical like hormonal system works just very differently from identity to identity. I guess that's because everything is set in our brain and a lot of things are controlled by our brain. And somehow, as soon as I was there was also a very interesting thing. Our family, they started seeing changes in us, pretty drastic ones. They also couldn't understand what's going on. And some thought that we had a severe illness up to the point where someone even asked me if I checked myself for cancer, which I did. Because I started losing weight drastically, although my other self is known to everyone to have been trying to lose weight for ages. Whereas I just didn't do anything. It's just started just going down dramatically. They have like differences in like the appetite at whole mountains and stuff. I don't eat when I'm stressed. I can't. I just can't force food in. Whereas she was eating loads when she was stressed, she couldn't stop. So this is how different things are. And so it was pretty surprising for Vival to watch that. But eventually, yeah, so I was just faced with trying to understand what's going on and why I don't feel like I'm living my life, even though just days ago, it was supposed to be my life. So and not really like nothing really changed. It was it was a trigger. It was just something like not a traumatic experience per se, but something that triggered something in our mind. And it was just a one off event after which everything changed so drastically. So I was trying to figure that out and only a year later. So I was trying to live her life for a whole year. And only a year later have I finally realized that I need to go to therapy and to understand what's going on. And that's when I got diagnosed. And that's when it started becoming much clearer as to what those things were. You mentioned you mentioned to me that like you're of an altar. They already had like a sort of like an established life at that time. Like, I guess, you know, what was the process of like, did you tell them all? Did you like, was it met with understanding? Was it, you know, how did you sort of navigate that? Because I know from talking to you that sort of your interests and your desires for life are still very, very, very different. So how did you how do you sort of manage that with other people around you? I guess that was a very interesting thing, because there was basically a year where nothing made sense to anyone, including me. And to give you more of an understanding. So basically, my other self is an investment banker. She like a real one that worked on Wall Street, like a top notch one. She traded equities. And she was in love with her job. She is in love with her job. She like so passionate that everyone knew her as the like the very star of the industry. She had awards and everything like she featured on the TV. So like, to that point, she had a family and she had certain friends, hobbies and everything. She never listened to music. She never cared about lots of things like that that I love. And the funniest thing of all is that how she hated every like not not hated, but she was like, she was very, very scornful to all the creative people. Yeah, it's just sounds to be sort of more. I mean, it's it's a very sort of logical kind of pragmatic based sort of experience being like an investment banker. Whereas what what you do the furthest you can get from a creative person. So and I, I know that she always had those jokes about creative people because she knew there inside her head lives another one that she doesn't want to let out. And there we are when when when we switched it completely turned around, because I don't understand the thing about finance. I literally don't. I don't I don't care about it. I there is in my life, like, ever since I got these headphones, I'm just like in headphones all the time. Yeah. And I just can't I can't even imagine myself leaving the house without music on. And so from day one, I actually wrote my first song on on the, okay, second day of my taking over control. And ever since I, I installed my Ableton, the audio workstation where I create music on day three of my taking over. And ever since I never closed again, I wrote around, I don't know, at least 60 or 70 tracks since then in the three years. And I wasn't I didn't even know how to do that. I just started learning and I couldn't stop. And everyone was looking at me like what's going on with her. She is skipping her job, not working, not caring about all the people she kind of is supposed to care about. Like, all her friends were not my friends. I couldn't I had nothing to talk to them about. I even tried where where I had to meet some of them. Because, you know, trying to go on. And I couldn't find a thing I could talk to them about because everything I cared about, they didn't understand, or they were talking about things that I couldn't care less about. So I was finding it. Do they believe you? Do they? Do they like, sort of at least sort of acknowledge that you were different? They could feel that there was something different about me. They couldn't understand what was going on. And I can say that I didn't disclose my diagnosis with everyone. It's understandable. But with the people that I knew could understand, it clicked. It helped them understand and it was like, for some it was an eye opener. Like, oh, that's what was going on. But yeah, I mean, talking to you has definitely been an eye opener for me. I think it's hard, isn't it? Because you are sort of battling with people's ideas of what what is and sort of it's it's it's very, very different to a lot of other things. Like some people might be able to identify a bit with generalized anxiety disorder, you know, sometimes they feel a bit panicked and stuff like that. And then the same with depression, sometimes people feel really apathetic and, you know, like that. But, you know, things like autism, things like ADHD, things like DID, the the things that people don't really sort of understand or know about. And, you know, even even for me, it was, I think, when when we first started talking, I wasn't I wasn't too like, I didn't know enough about it. And I wasn't like, if I'm honest, I didn't really know how to sort of understand it and and react. I find it very hard to identify things when I don't understand things. I have to be honest, I think that's for the majority of people, but it's definitely something that, like talking to you, it's been much easier to sort of understand and wrap my head around it. But I am coming from a place of being different to other people. So I sort of get that sort of experience of, you know, perhaps, you know, life, life, life's not as simple and easy to understand as everyone would like it to be or everyone thinks it is. It's actually a lot more sort of complex. And there can be a lot of different people with different experiences of life. So so I kind of come from that a little bit, which I think helps. But I've just no idea how how you sort of navigated all of that, especially sort of being thrown into the deep end with a, you know, very intense job, a family, a social network, like it must it must feel just completely overwhelming. I wouldn't know where to start. Like if that was to happen to me, like it was... Well, it was clear to people in my, like in her work that something was going on because my performance or her performance, my performance... Did you go to the job? Did you go at L? Yeah, no, of course. It was a high paid job. I could do nothing with my music yet. I couldn't understand what's going on. The first year, the first year was very challenging. It was confusing as could be. And I was literally given like, this is your life, live it. And I'm like, this is not my life. Hang on. It's just something is wrong. And I was figuring it out along the way. I was realizing that I didn't want to go home because I was feeling that I am, I'm a stranger there in my own home. For weeks or even months, I was trying to find all excuses I could not to go back home in the evenings and just to go to sleep. I didn't care about my job. So like per job, I would just take my laptop with literally take my laptop to the trading floor, open it up. And with those headphones on, I would be writing music. I'm not joking. It was it was crazy. And so obviously, everyone started understanding that something is wrong. But everyone had their own explanation. And again, to some people, I would never explain anything because they would never understand. But some people, you know, that are just kind of the two clothes minded to solve. Yeah, they were just to say you're just mental. That's it. Okay, well, not news either. But the to some people, it explained everything. And it helped them understand basically what's to come just as well. Because I started well, after I had my diagnosis, I realized that I don't have to live someone else's life anymore. And I started slowly unraveling everything to make sure that I don't burn all the bridges, but that I'm allowed to do what I want to do because she had a chance to live her life. I never had it. And so this is my time. I do believe that that trigger that happened in 2020, it was not it was there for a reason. It was probably just my chance to to do what I am meant to do. And so yeah, I just started unraveling her life to build my own one. And my diagnosis helped explain to people that this is the reason this is why because obviously there were quite a lot of things that they were people who got hurt in the process. Because they were were hoping that they lived with one person, and then it turned to be another one. And so yeah, so that helped. But it doesn't end there. Still a lot to go through, like Yeah, my family that was in the very beginning of the story, that didn't want me to go through my emotions. I did eventually. So what I did, a year after I got my diagnosis, I went to get checked again by another doctor. To confirm. Yes, I chose the absolute, you know, a really, really a specialist. Not exactly a specialist. I wanted someone who's so educated that I could definitely trust them with the diagnosis, like, as I feel that as well, like, I can't I can't let anyone, anyone do any psychotherapy or cancel me if they don't like no tons of stuff that I don't know. Like, exactly. Yeah. So I was going via references from other people that I know, but I still I wanted like the most highly skilled professional. So, and I got a confirm. And that's when I told my family that this is the case. And that was the because there was absolute denial. And it was even funnier. I was given another specialist with some no medical education, right, but some sort of holistic, logical approach. Great. That's just what you want. Some natural, perfect medicine. We had such a good time together. It was just amazing because I was by that time, I've already had I've already read a specialized medical literature and research about my case. And I was just what did she say? Say that like, like, oh, you must be a Gemini, like she felt my energy. Oh, she felt your energy. She didn't even ask you. She didn't even ask questions. She actually told me and said, like, you know, she put your hands over your head and like, no, it wasn't even a video call. I was hoping at least for a video call. She just told me and she said that. Oh, so she didn't even see you like in person and she felt your energy. She said that by the energy that she hears in my voice, she can say that I'm fine. Good day, viewers and listeners. Apologies for my very rude interruption to our regularly scheduled broadcast. I just want to remind you that if you have enjoyed the podcast this far, please make sure to rate, subscribe, like, comment and share. All of these actions are pretty much the lifeblood of a small independent creator like myself. And it will help me get most of my work, more of my work to people who really need it. If you want to stay up to date with my life, get behind the scenes content, check out my daily blogs, head over to the Instagram at Thomas Henley UK. You'll find a link to that down in the description, alongside my range of neurodiversity clothing, just like this strong, powerful autistic hoodie. I love so much. And my website, of course, where you can find a contact email to book me for one-to-one autism coaching, interviews, workplace training and speaking. So thank you very much for listening to this very annoying self advert. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. How many issues? And oh, yeah, because another diagnosis that I did to my family was that I actually, at that point in time, that was a few months ago, like five or six months ago, I had depression, like, again, diagnosed. Is this something that only you experience, or is it kind of? Yeah, yeah, that's the funny part. Different authors can have different, again, sorts of. You've got all the bad, all the negative experiences. So I am prone to depression. And I knew that before, because before she started controlling this body, I had depressions back then, that my family also absolutely disregarded that and said, like, no, you don't have depression. So yeah, so I was diagnosed with depression too. And I passed that on. And yeah, so that holistic specialist said that, no, you don't have depression. I can feel it. You're a strong woman. You're a strong woman. Wow. And that's when I actually realized that everything, everything is coming exactly from there. Maybe if things were different, maybe if I was diagnosed with depression, if I had a proper specialist console me back then in my teenage years. An actual licensed professional. Yeah, I might have not had this condition at all. Which is why raising awareness is so important and why it, like, everyone should know what to look out for and what to try to go to and seek health for. So Well, I know we've talked a lot about sort of when it came on and sort of the experiences with your family and social networks and things like that. But what about like the medical system? Because I know you talked about the holistic, natural, naturopathic medicine person, but like, for you, were there any roadblocks or were there any difficulties within sort of going for that diagnosis? Or is there some things that you could talk about that other people might experience? Well, I was super nervous when I was confiding in to the people that found me the specialist, like the second doctor, because they, those people were also in the in the psychiatric and psychological, psychological industry. So I was not sure if I should or shouldn't confide in them because I didn't know how exactly they would see that. But instead, they were very understanding and found me the very doctor who also, I wouldn't say that she specializes in it, but it was part of her medical education, which I was very happy to know. So that is certainly something over relief, I guess. So I might have been lucky to never come across anyone who would be doubtful of my condition. But yeah, so that holistic specialist was the only thing. Yeah. Well, I guess another aspect of that is sort of misdiagnosis, because all sort of similarities and differences with other sort of conditions, because you mentioned that there was specific trigger triggers or specific traumas that kind of started or made the split. Just trying to think about the terminology that I'm using. So I don't want to, I have a tendency whether I'm talking about something that I don't know a lot to use very immature, childish language, like how did that pick off for you? No, actually, that's a very interesting question. So basically, as my doctor explained to me, there have to be three different sets of factors aligned together for a mind to split. Basically, those are sociological. This is all my native language, if someone hasn't understood that yet. So sociological, then psychological and physiological. And so all stars align together, and there we go, the mind splits. So sociological is exactly the trauma, the traumatic experience. It triggers it. And would that be classified as a sort of PTSD? I wasn't diagnosed with PTSD, and I don't think I have it. I think those things don't haunt me. So I think So there was a trauma, but it's not specifically like the consequences of that trauma are different Yeah, I wouldn't say so. So basically, I think my mind coped with it by doing so. So I did live through it, but in a very particular way, which is my condition. So sociological is the very trigger, I guess. Then there is a psychological is the way, I guess, the mind responses to certain triggers. As I was also told is that, for me, that is BPD. So I was already, I already had BPD. A lot of people who have the idea also have borderline personality disorder. A lot of them, not everyone, but a lot of them, but the reverse isn't true. So that's kind of characterizes like having a swings in emotions, very intense swings in emotions. Very, very, very emotional. Things are more impactful negatively on you. Your emotions and your expressions are very intense. Because I think, isn't it also that BPD has some influence on like relationships and stuff, like how you relate to other people? Things within that relationship can sort of become bigger than it would with most. Exactly. Yeah. It's just a very, very, very enhanced emotional turbulence within one's brain. But yeah, so basically I was already BPD. It's something hereditary. It's something that runs in our family. And I already had that. And so basically when the traumatic experience happened, it created a way much more of turbulence in my brain. But also because of not being able to cope with that, again, that was how it happened. And also physiological, well, I don't really know, I didn't go too far into that. But apparently the worst must have been some factors that have impacted it in a certain way. So all those factors together would have made me more prone to getting the idea than some other people. I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's another parallel that I could possibly make. Me trying to chip in my takes. But as you were talking about sort of being or having BPD made you sort of more sensitive to those events, I was kind of thinking of the podcast that I did with Megan Neff from Neurider Virgin Insights, because we were chatting about PTSD and CPTSD. And she was mentioning that there's certain aspects of PTSD that are not always present in autistic people, specifically and significantly traumatic events. And like we were talking about the difference between PTSD and CPTSD is the CPTSD sort of being a diffuse sort of over a long time kind of trauma. Like and for autistic people, because we're all, you know, we tend to be a lot more sensitive to our environment and feelings and not really have a good grasp on the social landscape and things like that, that we can take things a lot more intensely into us. So smaller traumatic things can have bigger traumatic impacts on us. So would you say that that's kind of like a similar sort of comparison to make like? Yeah, sounds right. I'm trying to because as I said for myself, it's important for me to understand things. You can tell that my brain's a bit funky today. I guess another really interesting part is sort of about how DID sort of inter plays with the music that you create. As I said before that I very much like the whole dark trap stuff, the emo rap, the metal, the dark side of life, dark side of the music. I guess what I want to know is why has or how has DID sort of inspired your music? I know that for you yourself, you know, your other altar was sort of very logical and pragmatic and like sort of went for those sort of more step by step process-based things, whereas yourself you are more sort of creative. But do you think there's any aspects to your experience of life that have influenced the way that you make music or the genres and things like that? Totally and entirely. The very interesting thing is that as I mentioned, I created like an insane number of songs over the past couple of years and I keep on creating stuff without even thinking. It's just like it's just bursting out of me and people who know me and like my fellow artists and people who understand what I do, they are all surprised at how this keeps on going and I just can't stop and I just create thing after thing after thing after thing. That's because all those things, all those dark things were stored in this container that I am for so long without any sort of release that all of that material is now being processed. I sometimes go back in time and I process things that I wasn't able to because it was just retrospectively. Yes, it was just dumped into this container without any release and so it's now getting that I'm now letting that out and so it's just amazing to see how that process goes. It's just endless. It's just going and going and going. Because it's not just music, is it? Because you do a lot of stuff in terms of visuals. Yes, lots of visuals. They're just there in my head. I just let them out. That's all I do. The interesting part here is that, which is also very, very explains a lot, is that since I started, I had multiple goals at trying to create something positive. Yes. There are definitely things like positive things that I like in music and in art, but whenever I try them, they just don't work. To the point where I even funk is one of the little subgenres of what I do. I love funk. Yes, everyone does. It's very bouncy and it's funky and it's fun. It's just the beat for me. It's just the perfect sort of bassy tone. I don't know how to describe that, but there's certain bass aspects of songs that just hit right and then there's other ones that just don't at all. I tend to find them more often in funk music and stuff like that. Well, I cannot do that. No. Why not? Why not? I try. It's way too positive for me. I'm actually releasing one funk track very soon. It's not produced by me. It's the very rare track that is not produced by me, but it's produced by another person, but I am the vocalist there. But then I was once asked by a friend to just write the song again for someone else's production, but write a song and write some lyrics and sing on a track. It was just a beautiful track. They asked me, can you please make sure that no one dies in there? I'm like, wait a second. What? No one dies in there? Are you serious? How can I do that? And I couldn't. I did eventually write a song. It was called Acceptance. It was about accepting someone's departure. So they didn't die in the song. They did before. I identify so much for that. It's like, I mean, obviously my writing, you know, I talk about, I try to end things on a very positive note, but I feel like yourself, you know, I've had some difficult experiences throughout my life. That were from different areas of life and also different times. I struggle to think about it, but I've always just gravitated towards all of the negative emotions. Like, I'm a massive just goff in my heart. I love the melancholic. It's like, I find the beauty in the negative experiences in life, which it's also my downfall as well because it means that my brain's always wired to be focused on the problems and the negative things. It's like, someone comes up to me and shares positive news with me about themselves. I'm not really sure how to process that and react to it, but if someone comes up to me and shares some negative news, I am just immediately just enthralled with just feeling that and what that person's saying to me. It goes so far, especially when I used to do my depressing poetry when I was a bit younger. That was definitely the case. And even go so far as the first sort of YouTube videos that I made, though, they were always about difficult things. And I think, because people don't really want to... For me, my ideal is to express the darkness and the pain and the negative experiences to their fullest. But I found that over the years of trying, testing things out, that not many people do want to hear the reality of how hard life can be. And I think whenever I play dark trap music or my email rap, it's kind of like a space that I can have that's outside all of the mainstream world. As I said, I mean, quite sort of outwardly positive. But that's only because I like to be a positive thing for other people and not necessarily because I feel positive. So it's kind of like, I'm happy that other people are not experiencing what I have experienced. And I have that sort of space in my mind where I enjoy watching combat sports and doing combat sports and listening to dark music and having all sorts of gothic items and jewelry and clothes around my room. But it's always just such in contrast to how I present that it kind of... I think it catches a lot of people off guard, especially if they've sort of seen me about and haven't talked to me. I come across as quite sort of... I don't know how I go across, but I've been told that I come across quite sort of dismissive and perhaps a little bit grumpy. But then as soon as they actually talk to me, it's obviously different. So I do, I empathize a lot with that feeling of just wanting to express the negative things because we're not living in a society as much as we would like to say that wants people to talk about things in a completely raw way like that. Everything's filtered, everything's... All the words are cut out. If you want to make stuff for people online about negative things, that the algorithm is going to shove them back into a corner, only perhaps a few people will see it and then it kind of goes back and you realize that it just doesn't do as well. So I think having spaces for creativity, like as you said, through your music and the graphics and things like that, that it can be a really important outlet for a lot of people, especially when you've been sort of, you yourself sort of been sitting with that for years and years and having to just absorb all of that, it must feel somewhat liberating to be able to have control over your life and have that outlet. Well, the other thing that my condition, Russia conditions impact in my artistic choices is, well, with BPD, because I experience emotions differently and in a much enhanced way, that's basically why emo rap is something that drew me as an artist. That made me so involved in it. It's crazy, isn't it? The first time that you hear something like that and they're just, they're like, they're rapping about it and they're making a music song and they're just, it was like the first time that I actually felt validated by the music that I was hearing. It just, you know, that feeling that people get where they just feel the music and it's like, oh, this represents me. I was like, I got that with emo rap. I was just like, this is just so me. And then I'd show it to other people and let them listen to it. And they'd just be like, oh, that's a bit too out there. It just can't relate to it. To me, it was in reverse. I was just looking for how exactly I can express my feelings the best way for them to be heard and for them to sound right and coherent. So this is why I went in that direction. And apart from that, well, my mask is also the, my condition that has me do that because I need to protect my identity at all costs because I never know when the switch might happen again and when the full switch might happen again and when I might have to give up control again for her. And she doesn't like outspokenly doesn't want me to, to, she actually is against my whole music career altogether. To her, it's not worth our time. But at least she can have that as in, we kind of agreed that if she ever comes back, she will want to reinstall her past life and for that to happen, she might be, she needs to be able to hide what's happening with me right now. You have to have the mask to protect their image because I imagine that if they're an investment banker and they sort of, I feel like there's such contrasting worlds in terms of employment that I feel like it could impact their career prospects with that maybe. That's also why I can't have tattoos, for instance. That's very funny because like it's also her passive influence has been so strong. I was so many times since I've taken over control, I was wanting to just go there and do it. But again, before I had my diagnosis, I couldn't understand what's going on. And I couldn't understand that there's someone in my head just talking to me like, no, no, no, you're not doing this. So I was like, why? People asked me like, oh, why don't you go to get tattooed? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Something is stopping me. Like literally something inside is stopping me. And I want to. This is my thing. It's like, I love it. And I can't. So this is just, yeah, I just can't do it because it's not only my body. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, I think it would be good to kind of wrap things up. I mean, it's been amazing sort of your story. I don't have many podcasts where I'm, where I'm this quiet. So you can take that as a good thing. It's, I really appreciate how open you've been. I guess the, you know, the last things that I really want to touch on is because, you know, I mentioned at the start that the idea is probably one of the most stigmatized disorders out there and conditions out there. So I think it would be really useful to talk about the controversies. Because I did some research into it. And what I really found to be quite eliminating for me was that there's a specific way that diagnosticians within like the psychology field sort of create diagnoses. And the way that they do that and the way that they can create these criteria, they have to be solid enough and picked up enough in enough people to be considered to be diagnosable. Like so with major, major depressive disorder or clinical depression, you know, they should be able to pick up a certain percentage of people as faking it or pick up a certain percentage of people who actually have the condition. And if they can't, then it can't really be a thing that they regularly diagnose. And it was really, really interesting looking at those sort of percentages, because those diagnosticians, those psychologists who diagnosed DID in individuals actually showed that they were more successful in diagnosing correctly with DID than with major depressive disorder, which is just absolutely insane. Because it just pretty much just spits in the face of people saying that it's not real. Because now just thinking about it, I mean, a lot of the psychological, if not all of the psychological based disorders are or conditions, they are subjective. There is always a wall between one person and the diagnostician. There's always a person who can experience things and explain it in a different way or choose to omit certain things or choose to over exaggerate certain things. And so just knowing that, along with the fact that that sort of diagnostic rate is just a lot more successful for DID, I feel like that that was a real sort of solidifier in me, when I was sort of researching around it and such. So probably the best question is, is DID real? And I know, I obviously know what the answer is, but... Well, as far as I understand from research, I won't use my particular example there just because you can listen back to what has been said today and you can take your own decision whether that sounded real or not. But as for the things that I read, and as for the things that are out there in the public domain, as for the research and all the works that have been done by the scientific community, it's more than real. I think because of how stigmatized it is and because of how many people are actually putting it in doubt, because there certainly are such in the scientific community too, I think it already proves that it exists, that no one has been able to disprove it just yet, because there have been lots of attempts. But yeah, because of that, also there's additional scrutiny and there is even more research done just to make sure that all those claims of it not being real are met and proven to be real. Because as you said, sort of you having the physical differences, the hormonal differences around your weight, as well as the things that you gravitate towards in life being so different. I think if I'm right, there are people who have particular things that could just have particular aspects of their altered personalities or their likes or their skills that just couldn't be replicable in any circumstance. They're always like this and they always have these skills and they have IQ differences and they have different postures and have different speaking patterns and such. Obviously that I feel like is enough for me and obviously talking to you and understanding it, it's enough for me. There's also the factor that with technology where it is right now, brains can be scanned. So as far as I could read is that some people have altars that are different in age and up to the point where there are kids living in their brains and you can easily track a child's behavior and a child's brain behavior as opposed to a grown-ups one. It was also researched. So people who have child altars have been scanned, their brains have been scanned while they were having those altars in control and they did have different brain waves or different behavior of the brain at that time. Different things lighting up for different cues and yeah. It's really interesting. I think there was a point that I was going to make that completely forgotten. What was I going to say? There's always one part within the episode that my brain just flumps. When I was looking up other stuff around DID, there was a video of this case of a criminal who they weren't sure whether it was genuine or not, but they basically leaned on a DID diagnosis in order to avoid serving jail time. I can't remember the exact specifics of it, but they were inconsistent. We were talking about how the changes and the altars were very consistent for a certain personality or behavior or brain pattern or hormone or look or things like that and he wasn't very consistent with that. There were a lot of things that across, because he was institutionalized instead of sent to prison and there were a lot of cases along that journey where he said that one of his altars could speak, Spanish or something and he couldn't write that. I think things like that, specifically in the media, in the real life media, I think it can be quite stigmatizing in nature because obviously people can fake anything if they want to and they know the ins and outs of it and they've practiced it. If someone could fake autism if they really wanted to, I can imagine. Not saying that anyone else would want to, but it's something that people can do and it's that existence of people having that sort of confirmation bias about things because they're seeing people or they see someone in the news who has a child alter and they're like, what? That doesn't make any sense to me. This must be fiction. This is unbelievable. What is this? It must be wrong and so they just ignore all of the information that just confirms that it is a thing and wait for something just to happen like someone having a child alter or someone going to jail or someone faking DID in order to avoid jail time. People very much have the, for some things that they don't understand, it's almost like they're clinging onto something in order to not agree that it is a possibility because it's so far out of their field of view of how reality can be for them. I guess it is stigmatized in the media and as you said, within the scientific community, which is a really, really big issue, but what about mainstream film? What about the films like Split? What do you think about that kind of representation? Do you feel like it's accurate? Do you feel like it's good or bad? I think, yeah, a lot of DID people have issues with Split. I can't say that I am on their side because to me, it depends on what conclusions people take from there. Apparently, people do take the very, very raw conclusions, but that's what people can do in every... People can't do that from any sort of thing. What I saw in Split is that it actually shows you that there are so many different ways that DID person might be like because I keep coming back to this example of just a household with people in it. How many combinations of people living in one house could there be? Millions. There could be evil people in that house. There could be absolute angels in that house and all of them might be saints. And everything in between. Yeah, and everything in between, exactly. And so if people didn't get that from Split, then, well, I'm not sure who can help there, but I did like it for explaining again that DID people might be very different from others and the elders can be so dramatically different from each other and that is just a pretty unique condition in that way. So they did really point that out there. But yet again, if people think that that's exactly how every DID system should be like, then, well, cool, I'm going to go and find some superpowers in me. I found it very hard to grasp that you only have two altars. Because in my mind, when I think of DID, I think of people within the film of Split, they have 10, 12, 20 different people living in it and there's just constant switches back and forth throughout the day. And that's how I pictured it in my mind when I was trying to understand it. Just two people in this house. We don't invite anyone over. No, actually, I know that some DID people develop more personalities with time. I'm not sure if that's because of continued exposure to traumatic experiences or not, or is just brain just continuing to develop in that path. With us, it's just stopped there. And I guess maybe the problem was solved. The case was solved. This container was created, everything fit there, nothing else was needed, and so it's just stopped there. I hope that that will still be the case forever because that's actually manageable. Yeah. There's one last thing that I want to touch on before we try and wrap things up. I follow a lot of varied different YouTubers. I like to, personally, I like to watch people from all angles of life, whether that be politics, whether that be opinions, whether that be disciplines and personalities. I tend to follow a lot of different people. There was this one particular YouTube channel which was talking about, obviously, they weren't very shocked. They're not an expert in the idea. They have no personal experience. But they were talking about how people were faking it on social media for attention. I obviously just was pretty taken back by some of the things that they were saying. But I... Do you think that some people could do that? And do you think that even if that's the case that... Well, I'm kind of doing a loaded question, but even if that's the case that some people do fake it and other people don't, that it's worthwhile for you to comment on them and say that they are faking something? Very loaded question because obviously you can tell what my opinion is. But yeah, what do you think about that? Do you find that that's something that anyone's mentioned to you before? That's funny because it was just the other day when I was discussing someone with someone and I was expressing that person as someone I really don't trust and I would really... I would be very disappointed if I found out that they're actually faking it because it would be a huge blow. But it's just ugly and I'd rather people didn't do it because it's just ugly. It's just like, well, again, there are people faking cancer. There are people faking that they're cripples. There are so many ugly things in the world. Unfortunately, that won't make people stop believing that cancer exists. That won't make people doubt that cripples exist. But with DID being as under-researched as it is and under-discovered as it is, it obviously will be damaging to those who are trying to get diagnosed and trying to find their place in the society with how they are. So, yeah, if I discovered someone big were faking it, it would be a very, very big ethical dilemma. I really don't want to think about it because it's just ugly. It's just ugly. But I'm mentioning this because I feel like there's a lot of people out there who are very quick to give their opinion on something and they see something that doesn't necessarily align with their view of what's possible and what can happen and they think it's their responsibility to point it out. And I think in any case, if someone is... I was watching another sort of a doctor in psychology and that he was talking about the facts that actually coming out and displaying yourself to the world as your altars and sort of letting people know is one of the first steps in processing what's what's happening to you and sort of managing your life and sort of finding ways to grow and to live life. And the fact that people do that kind of thing I think is it's... I think it's not something that people should do. They shouldn't be pointing out people even if they are very strongly inclined and they feel like this is something that they should talk about and it's something that they feel is wrong and they feel like they're faking it for attention. You've got to think of the type of people who would fake that kind of thing. They're probably not very mentally... Okay, like they're probably not doing very well. On one hand, you could be really sort of denying the reality of someone with a very complex and stigmatized condition and on the other hand, you are bashing someone who is in a very vulnerable and sort of delusional state. And that's not really something that I think people on the internet should have a say in really. I think in as many cases as possible, you should always take people's word for it. And I think just as I was talking about the diagnosis success for major depressive disorder and diagnosis for DID, people fake depression, especially during in work situations, family situations, in legal situations either with organizations, if they say that they're depressed, they're automatically a vulnerable group. You could take that anyway and you could go about and say you don't exist because you're depressed. So I feel like it's hard for me because it's a very stigmatized area of things and it's not something that's as researched as things like major depressive disorder, but I don't feel like just because it's something that doesn't seem concurrent with your worldview that you should immediately pointing out as something as being fake or unreal or not valid. It really annoys me. It really angers me when people just feel that need to be like, hey, no, not real. Just like, great. Do you want to write a thesis about it and post it? Do you want to give them a diagnosis by talking through their life and their experiences and stuff? It's ridiculous. I'm thankful that I don't get a lot of people saying that my being, me being autistic, fake. Now and again, people wait, wait, you don't look autistic. Well, yes, there's no look to it. It could be anyway, I could be faking everything. I mean, it's just as valid as any point about the idea I think in my books. But anyway, I just wanted to get off my chest because it is like, it's something that I've been thinking about and sort of thinking about how in general people react to things like that. If there's a lot of people who think that autism doesn't exist, and I think if you're listening to us talk, you're hearing about no tricks as experiences, and you're thinking, hey, that sounds a bit too far fetched. Think of all the people in your life who don't think that autism is a thing and think how that made you feel. And I think that's a good comparison to make that's that's you could very well be doing a lot of personal emotional damage to a lot of people by being that sort of close minded about stuff. But yeah, was there was there anything else that you wanted to say on that? I think if people listened to this point in the podcast, I think they probably have very in order to listen to they need to be at this point in the podcast. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They probably have little doubt remaining about how real that is. But yeah, otherwise, I think we have done a good job explaining. You've done a great job. Yeah, I really appreciate how open you are. And also considering the time difference, it's it's very late for you. And I know that you're probably itching to get into bed and sort of wind down and stuff. So I appreciate you coming on. It's such a such a late time. It's usually for me, it's usually the opposite. Because I'm, you know, interviewing someone perhaps in like US. So I'm like interviewing them at like midnight and stuff. So I know how it can feel. But I really appreciate it. So I guess, you know, where can where can people find you? Where what can what's what's your like a preferred landing page for people to go to? Well, Instagram is number one. But otherwise, I'm trying to be active and on as many platforms as I can. And I'm no tricks with a zero and double X on each one. Cool. And I will put that down in the description, as per usual. I realized that going over my past couple episodes that I forgot completely about Song of the Day, like the past two episodes that I've done, I just haven't talked about that at all. And I didn't even ask you what you would like to be your your Song of the Day today. There was a song just just to make an offer that I found to be quite insightful and impactful. The one about your conversation with your altar. What was the name of that? There are two songs that I made about DID or about my case. One is Dreadful Future. Is it just about how it feels because I wrote it straight after having a huge storm in my head and a very rough conversation there with with her. Dreadful Future, it's because that's how she views where I'm going, basically. And Split, it's called Split, is the one where where I recorded all the conversations, all the all the things that she says to me when she's not happy with me. So yeah, probably that's the very one. We'll go with that for Song of the Day, I found it. It was, you know, obviously it might not be your taste in music, but it might be, I think it's about two minutes long, give it a listen. Perhaps get it again inside the head of the experiences of No Tricks. If you have enjoyed this episode, make sure to like, subscribe, follow, share, do all the buttony things and make sure to rate as well, please, if you are on Spotify, Apple, Google, all of that stuff really, really helps out me a bunch. It is pretty much the lifeblood of a small independent creator. It's much sharing, it's much following and much rating as you can do. Well, it will always help me get these messages, get these stories like No Tricks is out to the world so that people can have better awareness of different neurodiversities and how people may experience life. So if you want to stay up to date with the stuff that I do, I do a daily Instagram blog, very active over on there. I do daily reels and also little sort of sandbite shorts of the podcast episodes over on there. And you can find that at Thomas Henley UK. If you want to get in contact for public speaking events, want to book me for them, I want to book me for some modeling. Perhaps you want to book me for some autism coaching. Go over to my website, The Autism Coaching is still in the works. I'm hoping that it's going to be sometime around April, but there has been some events that have happened recently, which may have to push that back. But if you get in touch, send me an email, I can add you to the list and get back in touch once the service is live. Crazy. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. No tricks. How are you feeling? Are you okay? I'm really good. I think we did a brilliant job here, raising awareness and explaining the case of dating. Brilliant. Well, it's been really lovely to chat. And thank you very much for tuning in to this week's 40 Autie podcast episode. And I very much, I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next one. See you later, guys.