Meet Art and Asher — two of at least 33 separate identities living within one body.
Brut spoke with both of them about what it's like to live with DID, a disorder formerly known as "multiple personality disorder."
Brut spoke with both of them about what it's like to live with DID, a disorder formerly known as "multiple personality disorder."
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi everybody, it's your friendly female alter artist.
00:01Hey everybody, it's Chris.
00:02Hey everybody, it's Alex.
00:04If you have DID, you've been through severe trauma,
00:06and you are more likely to be the victim of trauma, then cause it.
00:30Chris didn't find out until a couple of years ago.
00:42He was starting to understand the signs of dissociation and losing time and things like
00:47that, but it wasn't really until Alex yelled at him in the shower that it really came to fruition.
00:53All gonna be safe, and we're all gonna have a great time.
01:00So, uh, R is the Bucks fan.
01:16Hey guys.
01:20There will be some days where we have three switches all day,
01:24and there's some days where we'll go through 30 in two hours.
01:28Those are rough days.
01:29Rapid switching days are not fun, but it's as much as the system needs to.
01:38It happens when a child that dissociates to a high level experiences severe, repeated trauma.
01:46The brain basically goes, I'm not gonna handle this.
01:49This person's gonna handle this.
01:50One of the main questions we've always got, and one that is the most hurtful,
01:54is, oh, what trauma happened?
01:56When you have DID, something happened that was incredibly horrible.
02:00And just random people telling you, I want to hear about what happened to you that was so horrible
02:06that it made your brain a fragment into different parts.
02:09Like, I don't think the general public has the right to that information.
02:19Early in diagnosis, when there was only, there was four of us,
02:23we just happened to all start with A's.
02:24It was Alex and April and me.
02:27I picked my name, Art, and then Andrew.
02:30And it just happened to be all A's, so that's why it's the A system.
02:33This is me.
02:34We've been playing The Sims.
02:35This is on Sims 4.
02:37This is Chris.
02:39He has short hair in the inner world.
02:42I don't think anybody is gonna be surprised on how April looks, but this is how April looks.
02:47One of the biggest surprises we get is Alex's hair.
02:50Yes, Alex is a blonde in the inner world.
02:52I don't think anybody's ever ready for Asher, but this is Asher.
02:56I think he looks awesome.
02:57Front five is five alters that front 95% of the time in the life.
03:01Asher is in charge of most social media,
03:04most likely because he has no shame and doesn't care.
03:07He just puts stuff out because he's having fun with it.
03:10This is the product of childhood trauma.
03:15Cute, ain't he?
03:16April makes thirst traps, and that's just what she wants to do, and that's fine.
03:23I have recently taken over our YouTube, and I'm trying to do it.
03:29Hi, everybody.
03:30It's your friendly female alter art, and this is what it's like to be in a day in my life.
03:35Alex and Chris have really stepped away from social media because it was so toxic,
03:40and they're focusing more on the home life.
03:47Oh, God.
03:50What am I doing with my life?
03:51Good Lord.
03:52We had been diagnosed with DID for about a year at that point,
03:56and we were looking for a community that we could be ourselves in,
04:00and that's why we started making TikToks.
04:02You want to know what having DID is like?
04:05I have no idea where this came from.
04:07Why do I have a giant black streak on my face?
04:09It was so hard seeing fake being the comment.
04:24Sometimes hundreds a day, we were getting called fake and just getting hate,
04:28and people were saying horrible, horrible things about us for months,
04:32and we ended up in the hospital because of it.
04:35It took a massive toll on us as a system.
04:39Like, I'm shaking a little bit right now.
04:41Nowadays, we're fine.
04:43We're over it.
04:44For every hate comment that we've got and somebody calling us fake,
04:47we've got an email from somebody saying how we have helped them
04:51and how thank you for being representation.
04:53It affects how you interact with your friends,
05:05and we, as a system, are married to Sam, the system's spouse,
05:09our lovely spouse.
05:10She is amazing.
05:11It took her a minute to fully grasp what was going on,
05:16but when she did, she has loved us individually
05:19and got to learn about us individually and loved us differently.
05:23Chris and Sam are married,
05:24and then Alex and April are actually dating Sam.
05:27They have been dating for over a year now,
05:30and they all have different types of relationships.
05:37Hold on.
05:37I got...
05:38It's Asher.
05:38I got a ground.
05:39Hold on.
05:42Maintaining relationships with DID is incredibly hard.
05:45I've never been able to have long-term friends
05:47because one of my friends might text me,
05:50but Art is out, and she won't respond,
05:52and then I'll never get the message,
05:54so my friends think I ghost them.
05:56Hey, everybody, it's Chris,
05:57and this is day five of our trip, I believe,
06:00but it's the first one I've been out for.
06:01So it's super hard keeping external relationships,
06:05and the internal relationships within the system are...
06:08They're not going anywhere.
06:10How we communicate mostly is, unfortunately,
06:13and I hate it, but it's through Art.
06:17Art is the gatekeeper in our system.
06:19She is usually at least a little bit aware
06:21of what's going on at all times.
06:22Something positive about DID is there are headmates.
06:25There are system members that can help you do things
06:28that you can't do.
06:29I have severe ADHD.
06:31I can't sit down and do stuff,
06:32but I know April can sit down and organize stuff.
06:35She can do things that are really, really cool
06:37that I can't do.
06:38Somebody started making waffles.
06:42I don't know who started making waffles,
06:43but now I got waffles.
06:52Society as a whole has seen DID through the lens
07:02of horror movies like Split and things in Law and Order
07:07where people are doing horrible, horrible things
07:09that have DID.
07:10Orwell or Jade or Samuel or Heinrich had the light
07:14for a moment and emailed me.
07:17May I talk to one of them, please?
07:19That can't happen.
07:20Thinking just because somebody has DID,
07:22they're going to go out and hurt people
07:23and be this dangerous to society is just so rough to see.
07:27And it's such a huge misconception.
07:29I don't think art's going to go out there
07:32and do anything besides maybe hiss at somebody.
07:34Like we're not dangerous.
07:36So we are just going to show the general public
07:39this is how we live.
07:40This is what a day looks like for us.
07:43And anything else, if you want to go research DID,
07:46you can.
07:47If you just want to come say hi, come say hi.