Can a person have Aspergers and DID?

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I'm curious, because I've recently become aware of likely having Dissociative Identity Disorder. Can a person have Aspergers in one or two of their personalities? It seems as if that's the way it is with me, and it's just really odd. I don't know if it's really possible even though I'm the one experiencing it. It explains why sometimes I think like an NT and other times like an Aspie.

I wasn't aware you could be aware that you had DID unless someone diagnosed you with it first. DID causes amnesia etc. so when you are using these "other personalities" you don't know what you did, amnesia. So how could you know unless you are forgetting things like where you were for days?

AS is a result of neurology, not personality. No matter how many personalities you have in you, they're all using the same brain. So no, I don't think you could have some neurotypical personalities if you have a dual diagnosis.

as well as the memory lapses, usually a person with DID will have a "host" personality which is usually unaware of the other personalities, and the "switching" is uncontrollable. Rather than a deliberate/aware switching of identity between two. just what I recall from psych undergrad.

i did go through an adjustment of NT/AS in the year after diagnosis (still going, less so). i would call this an identity crisis such as teenagers go through when they are developing their independence, or learning the boundaries of who they are/what they like, but i wouldn't call it a personality disorder.

the point about neurology affecting all personalities is a great one, forgot about that. perhaps it's important to note that AS may look like a personality difference, but actually there are shy, loud, cold, bubbly, loving, indifferent, controlling, submissive, etc aspies. ultimately, AS is a neurological disorder.

Technically ASDs can co-exist with any other disorder/medical condition (it's called co-morbidity) some secondary conditions are pretty common and others pretty rare, the disorder can also accure alone.

Well, afaik Schizophrenia isn't usually diagnosed if AS is present (possibly due to an overlap of symptoms), but I don't see why DID couldn't be co-morbid with AS.

I once read a memoire of a DID male who had a co-consciousness and thought everyone was that way until he was diagnosed; but from my understanding they are rare among DIDs, whom are quite a rarity anyway...

Yep. You will all be autistic, though some of you might be more extroverted or less socially anxious than others, or more focused on learning to "pass" for NT. Some may be downright schizoid (as in extreme-introvert) while others might want to spend all their time with people. Personality definitely affects Asperger's presentation.

Yes, it is possible to become aware of your other personalities on your own. It is just less likely than someone else noticing it.

Don't confuse DID with mood swings or with tailoring the personality you express to the situation you are in. DID universally involves amnesia even if you are aware of the other personalities; for example, you may know that they exist, but not have direct memory of what they experienced. It is however possible to develop, as a person (people?) to the point where all the personalities can handle all the available memories... at that point, some re-integrate; others don't. That's a personal choice. One can be considered "recovered" if all the personalities are psychologically healthy and cooperating with each other to the extent that the DID does not cause distress of impairment in daily life.

The idea that people can be induced to have DID by their psychologists... Yes. I think it could happen. It would have to be someone who is already very suggestible and very prone to dissociation and to repressing memories, though. Once the DID is present, though, the symptoms are real, wherever it came from.

Here's a blog from somebody (or three somebodies, depending on how you look at it) who has the DID/autism dual diagnosis. They will know a great deal more about what it is like than I do because I have only academic study and that is no substitute for direct experience.
http://athenivanidx.wordpress.com/

This jumped out at me, because I always assumed "schizoid" was simply another word for schizophenic. I am an extreme-introvert, though, so I thought I'd look up "schizoid" on wikipedia. Wow! A lot of that stuff really does describe me to a reasonable degree--at least how I perceive myself. I'm not sure if anyone else perceives me that way, though. No one has ever said so. Very strange.

there is a fair amount of overlap and it is rare, but possible. it was suggested that i did, so i brought it up with my therapist. turned out i don't have DID, but had a lengthy discussion on the topic. typically, amnesia accompanies DID. do you experience that?

Yes, I do and have experienced mild to severe amnesia, especially in regards to school. I used to term it off as forgetfulness, but it got a little past that. I apparently am aware of having multiple personalities, but I don't know which is which. I can somewhat tell when I change now, because I prefer a different style of things, easier to diagnose by my sexual preference, and that I suddenly cannot easily remember what I was just doing. I find that after I switch, the memories come in as if they were chopped up and selective. I get only vague images of what I was doing. It's been like this for a long time, so I've naturally adapted to it. I've known something was abnormal with me, but haven't been able to figure it out until hopefully now. When I need to remember something, I'll subconsciously change personality again to access the memory. There have been instances where I can't figure out which personality was experiencing it, and I can't remember come hell or high water.

It seems recently that an NT extremely extrovert personality has become dominant, but I definitely have an Aspie or two that emerge from time to time, making me suddenly very introverted. I'll go from hanging out and laughing with friends, to secluding myself in a dark corner imagining patterns in the air. It's just odd, and I guess I'm glad it's not totally unheard of. I'm just looking for an explanation so I can know what I'm working with, and how to deal with it properly.

NT isn't synonymous with "extroverted, no social anxiety"... Aspie isn't synonymous with "introverted, withdrawn". One can be Asperger's and be extroverted and have very little social anxiety, in fact.

Exactly.

AS was something I was born with.
DID was caused by the abusive environment I was in as a child.

All my personalities had Asperger's traits but they dealt with it differently. The dominant extrovert alter was having anxiety and tried to pretend to be NT. An introverted alter drew pictures with a mad zeal to deal with anxiety/pant up energy. The forgetfulness comes with the DID package and was direct contradiction to our eidetic memory. As a child I used remember every word I ever came across (read or spoken) and would remember exactly when/where I first heard it and who spoke it. So my forgetfulness was out-of-character. People could not believe I forgot what my body did days ago when 'they', who did not have my eidetic memory, could remember.

Of course, I later read up that children are commonly recorded to have "eidetic" memory for linguistic adaptation that tends to disappear when they reached adulthood. Which explains. My eidetic memory disappeared as well.

As of today, I've merged my multiple alters so the forgetfulness ... sort of ... receded, though people would comment to me about what I supposedly said or did that I don't remember.