 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 illuminating for me was that there's a specific way that diagnosticians within 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. So with major depressive disorder or clinical depression, 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 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 diagnostic rate is just a lot more successful for DID, I feel like that was a real solidifier in me when I was 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 particularly 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 grownups one. And so 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. Lighting up for different cues. 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 some 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. And 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. 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 kind of seeing people or they see someone in the news who has a child altar 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 altar or someone going to jail or someone faking the idea 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 on to 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 because 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? Good day, viewers and listeners. Apologies for my very rude introduction 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 that 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. I think 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... Yeah, people can 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 gonna go and find some superpowers in me. Because 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 sort of 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 is just stopped there. And I guess maybe maybe the problem was solved like as in 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. 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. And there was this one particular YouTube channel which was talking about sort of, well, obviously, they weren't very sure because 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 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 the 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. If I discovered someone big, we're 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. 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. 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 managing your life and finding ways to grow and to live life. The fact that people do that kind of thing, I think it's not something that people should do. They shouldn't be pointing out. 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. 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. I feel like it's hard for me because it's a very stigmatized area of things and it's not something that as researchers things like major depressive disorder but I don't feel like just because it's something that doesn't seem congruent 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 like 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 is fake. Now and again, people... Wait, wait, you don't look autistic. 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 and 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, you know, I think that's a good comparison to make. 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 anything else that you wanted to say on that? Yeah, I think if people listened to this point in the podcast, I think they probably have very... In order to listen to it, 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.