Achieving Happiness Despite Autism & OSDD With Self-Understanding and Meditation

Hello! Who are you?

Hello, my name is Thomas and I live in Utah. I have lived here my whole life and until I graduated high school, my dad had main custody over me and my siblings. I currently have the Luxury of working for the Jazz basketball arena. It works well for me.

While I don’t currently have any pets, pets have always been a part of my life and when I am at that point in my life, I plan to get my own pets. I play racquetball as it is great for strengthening my body in good ways. I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) and it can make simple things really rough on my body at times.

Despite the challenges, both good and bad and God awful, I would say I’m happy today. It’s had its struggles but today, in our current lifestyle, we are happy.

What is your struggle and when did it start?

Well, my struggles weren’t always straightforward or easily identified, especially by my adolescent self. But, let’s start with the point in my life where everything wrong started to flair up. I was 17, approaching 18 when my symptoms of both physical and psychological started to show.

The mask that I had lived behind my entire life had been destroyed the day I moved out of my dad’s house which was also the day I graduated high school. From there, me and my best friends moved into my grandpa’s basement where we paid rent.

While living here, I got into the job that was my dream job and one that I still miss. I got into HVAC and I wasn’t even 18 yet. That’s a good time to start a career and everything from the physical application to the thinking and planning that has to go into it, it was exactly what I wanted out of a job.

Plus it has great potential for good pay if you’re a business owner. That crashed and burned when about a month and a half, two months in, the burnout from working 8-12 hour shifts of usually intense labor burned my body out. 

Even making sure to eat to account for it and making sure to watch hydration and doing my best to use good lifting habits when moving equipment, I was just too burned out at the end of the day. I’d get home and shut down all forms of productivity as soon as I sat down.

Even more, the masks of my Autism, Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) had not only been shattered, but the exhaustion aggravated many symptoms of both.

Fast forward about a week after the worst of it had started, I ended up getting fired because in two days, damaged two floors on the same customer’s house in stupid ways as well as looked completely incompetent as the boss of the whole operation. That was the worst mental breakdown I’d had in so many years and I believe possibly one of my worst. It also paved the way for future meltdowns and panic attacks.

From there, I got a job at a place that wasn’t great for my body but was well within my range of abilities at the time. It was brainless and a warehouse job where everything was brainless to do. That is when my brain lit up with noise and when I started having anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes at a time at work where I would just black out and suddenly I was somewhere else in the building and recollection wasn’t there. 

This is when I started to recognize how much was actually going on with me, and even more, I realized that I really struggled with memories of my childhood at times and sometimes I knew literally nothing about my past except for the things that I could see to trigger enough memory to at least help me know how to be where I was, but it still left gaps.

And people were saying I was having the same conversations or rediscovering the same things multiple times. Some of the things, I still haven’t been able to recall today.

I knew there was a lot wrong with me as I was definitely dysfunctional. Depression that I was unaware of hurt my already dysfunctional executive function.

I became insufferable to a lot of people in my life and I removed myself both mentally and eventually, physically.

But it wasn’t to run away, it was to ground myself again and assess everything about myself in a place where I would be free of judgment and expectation for a little while and I had plenty of that from several people. For that, I am thankful. 

I also talked to my mom a lot about my childhood and her past and relationship and we addressed neglect and instability. We discussed how these things had hurt me, and she was able to share other information outside of my view up until that point and I was able to work on building up what I knew. We talked about so many good and bad experiences and then memories we weren’t talking about started to return as well.

All of my symptoms and my experiences recovering my memory revealed OSDD/DID. I haven’t sought a diagnosis since I initially had the problems and therapy betrayed me. At that point, I went down the rabbit hole of DID/OSDD. I found words that didn’t just sound similar to my experiences but that fully resonated and then I went and found support groups and articles and read scientific and psychological studies about all these things.

In a week, I spent about 20-30 hours online in communities or reading articles about it all because there was just so much to learn. Even further, I learned how to put it into words so that anyone can understand what I have experienced.

I addressed both the things that did traumatize me and that left me with deeply seeded negative and hurtful emotions. I addressed what was neglected that didn’t actively traumatize me, but that harmed my development as a social species, behavioral patterns, and even just attachment styles.

None of those things really severely hurt or traumatized me, but it’s clear that it did have a negative impact on my development. It’s what I have personally turned to call silent trauma, which is also what I call my instability because I never felt directly impacted by all the moving and inconsistent parental connections.

But when I look back over it, I see that it was as a result of my OSDD that I never felt bad about these things and just continued to be a strong little trooper.

Despite the bad things, I still like to say I enjoyed my childhood because I can remember the good. And because instead of fighting with each other, we were able to work through the damage that was inflicted by some of my coping methods. 

The autism and OSDD combination was misdiagnosed as BPD and when they tried to treat it as such, it made things worse, resulting in me taking things into my own hands.

How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?

When living with my grandpa and sharing the rent on a room with my best friend, I started to crumble and while my grandpa did his best to support and help despite it not being understood or relatable to him, my friend was grudgy and bossy and eventually, I could not physically speak.

I could not behave in any way that showed him I care at all. I was genuinely trapped in my body watching a disaster go from worse to what I feared would be unfixable. I actually had given up on anything being fixed shortly before it actually did fix itself. 

I was either empty, angry, severely dissociated, or so anxious my limbs were begging to explode and my heart hurt from its beats. I would panic shut down and hide in dark, quiet spaces or stay up late in silence and sleep through the day. The night was the only time I felt happy, sometimes.

When I was happy, I would actually be lost in some happy memories not normally accessible. Hell, I even behaved differently through my own eyes. That nighttime was a part of my healing journey that nobody but me understood, tolerated, and accepted as needed. I was alone here.

Luckily, my protectors, Shadow and Levi, brought our mental health struggles to people that needed to know about them. The pressure they put on me is actually what pushed me to figure my shit out. So for them, I am so grateful, both for the alters and people in my life.

But at my worst, I felt utterly alone and that’s when the life lesson really hit me hard, only you can work on yourself and only you can heal yourself, everyone and everything else that you use to do so is a tool that can help you along the way, but it takes you and your will power.

So I do believe that my worst moments in life have resulted in the greatest life lessons that have actually led me to the happiness I possess today.

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Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?

The first moment I felt a positive change within myself was when I moved out of my grandpa’s and to my grandma’s (on my other parent’s side.) I started to build a foundation for myself to rebound. That was an uphill change and was the result of the actions of my protector and parental alter, Remi.

She remembers more about that time than any of us because that’s when we were all crying out for help the most. That was also the moment she made her presence in our system known. She was always listening and was our last resort and she did us very well. She still comes out and does her own things at times but she mostly lives to serve as our backup when things are too much. It’s her role and she owns it.

Honestly, as soon as things started going downhill I was determined to resist. Even at their worst, even when I couldn’t express it as a singular soul, I was fighting and trying. I was determined to make progress as fast as humanly possible and I was ready to learn about myself and how to respond to all these issues that were destroying my life. 

My biggest challenge was joining Reddit. 80% of what I know about my EDS, OSDD/DID, ADHD, Autism, and the other bullshit conditions that come with EDS has come from being in communities where there are hundreds of thousands of people with information about all of these things.

I spent months asking questions and reading other people’s questions and then, I started being able to answer questions and just share my experiences from a perspective of ‘I understand this about myself’, and maybe my understanding can help you understand yourself.

I’ve stopped trying to place an expectation of severity or conditions that have to be met cause in all truth, for conditions that are complicated and vary severely from case to case, you can’t hold those things over yourself.

You have to see yourself for your experiences, not what people only think these conditions have to look like. You only have to understand the shape that you take. It’s like telling someone with CPTSD that it’s not valid because they weren’t in the military. This person experiences all the symptoms but it takes a shape that is the polar opposite of war PTSD.

You can only understand your own experiences. It’s probably why I won’t seek a diagnosis because I understand my experiences and can respond to them and can make my own accommodations without needing to get it from people.

What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?

I tried therapy and it didn’t work. It made things worse for me. I took things into my own hands. Meditation was one of the biggest help. Whether it was at night to destress myself, or at the middle of the day, or in a shower and I had spare time.

When I first started, sometimes I would switch between alters. Some alter would front for the first time, we’d feel completely disconnected from the body and our eyes would hurt. Sometimes, we’d have to figure out how to move and walk, and one time, we took way too long in the shower because someone was struggling to simply stand up from the floor of the shower for like 20 minutes. 

As far as our OSDD and anger and hatred, meditation addressed those the most.

After meditation, we started listening to the emotions we had. When our emotions surfaced, we’d stop what we were doing and listen and sometimes those emotions were so strong it would bring tears and a paralyzing feeling to us.

But eventually, we had alters coming to the strong emotions and sharing the memories that they had attached to these emotions and oh my god, I had no idea we were so deeply twisted up. We spent a lot of time just sitting and listening to and tidying emotions and working with anyone that needed help working through it.

Now, we can identify our emotions easily, we don’t get attacks of emotion so overwhelming we just have to pause the world. We do have feelings that creep up and we do still have some things to work over, but also some of that is caused by the emotional dysregulation caused by our neurodivergence.

Having a place to talk about it on Reddit was helpful.

So, going around and understanding the broad shape of things helps me figure out what I’m experiencing, even if it’s completely new to me. Understand thy self. That was the next biggest help. Do research, go down those rabbit holes of information, and learn how it can help you.

Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?

I told a few people but due to their lack of taking it into consideration, I stopped trying to make them aware of it. Literally, I’ve stopped trying to fit in everywhere and started trying to live how I want, and it’s doing me well.

But just because that’s my lifestyle, I do have to fit in other people’s worlds because mental health and physical health complications make it feel like I almost live in a different world than most people. So I have to adjust to other people’s level at times, but I sure as hell ain’t gonna break myself doing so.

I tell my mom about it though because a lot of my conditions are from her gene pool. EDS, autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression, all things that are susceptibilities on her side, and some of that is from generational trauma that is broken more and more each generation. 

So, we have talked a lot about psychology and Ehlers Danlos Syndrom and when we find something useful for one of us, we share it because there’s a good chance it’ll help the other too. We also have casual discussions. We both have OSDD/DID and it’s nice to not see this thing that we both happily live with be talked about like it’s a disorder.

Now that I am able to have happiness and that I’ve put the work into myself, I would not call my plurality a disorder. It’s a way of life and it’s the only way of life I have lived my whole life, even if I didn’t realize it yet.

By analyzing and remembering things, so many memories and experiences have been associated with an alter at this point. We’ve done a little integration and merging and we’ve also done some splitting. This is who we are and we aren’t disordered anymore, just living a way of life we have learned to navigate and still are learning to navigate.

If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?

Know thy self. Everything that we ever do to know something about ourselves or the world around us gives us insight as to who we are or even gives us a chance to craft this aspect of ourselves into what we want it to be.

If you live in a place where you feel like you are being traumatized, violated, hated, or unwanted, then you’re either in the wrong space, have a bunch of shit to work on yourself, or a combination of both.

Don’t let yourself be unhappy. And if you have regret, either figure out how to atone for them or figure out how to let yourself move in and heal from the damage that regret and shame can harbor. Always grow, always learn about yourself, and don’t stop fighting against your struggles.

It takes fighting but if you’re just fighting without moving towards a goal, then you’re just a soldier that’s going to burn out eventually and be defeated. You also have to work against your problems and towards your goals. If you have a goal, then you know what that victory will look like. Acknowledge and accept this.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?

• The character Jane from Doom Patrol: A piece of media that I feel accurately represents what DID can look like. The theory is a little outdated but it’s fairly accurate.
• Tertiary structural dissociation:
• Various discussions in r/DID, r/OSDD, and r/Plural on Reddit. There are a lot of helpful resources there.

Where can we go to learn more about you?

There is only one place where I have any kind of mass information available about myself as I really don’t use much social media and that’s Reddit.

If you look for the account u/AppropriateKale8877 and look through my posts and comments, there is plenty of information as well different kinds of advice and even just some stories and experiences. A lot of it is oriented around my journey so far but is not limited to it. I am also of course always available for questions via direct message via Reddit.

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💡 By the way: If you want to start feeling better and more productive, I’ve condensed the information of 100’s of our articles into a 10-step mental health cheat sheet here. 👇

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Continue reading our inspiring case studies and learn how to overcome mental health struggles in a positive way!

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