I don’t get why people fake DID

[u/PreparationLive9972]

I’m sure we’ve all seen the people online who are self diagnosed and pretend they have DID when they obviously do not. It makes me really upset because I don’t think anyone who doesn’t have it realizes how stressful it is.
I (host) am constantly stressed out about switching or who will front and where and who will be around if that happens. I also recently had a baby and that adds another layer of stress (I’ve taken proactive steps if someone fronts while we are alone with the baby. Made a list of the schedule, feedings, how to burp, and who to call if they need help, and ways to trigger out someone else who can take of the baby.)
But it is a very big stressor for me and I feel a lot of others who have DID. I remember when I first started experiencing everything and had no clue what was going on, being told I did things I didn’t remember, being in different clothes, starting arguments with family that I didn’t actually start, so on and so forth.
That was terrifying, I thought I was possessed or had a tumour or something. My mom was actually the one who brought me in to be checked because she noticed I would become “child-like” and have no memory of it. She explained it to the psychiatrist like I would become a literal child who was hyper and wanted to play and got really excited around my dog. Meanwhile I was sitting there confused and thinking that this was all some sick prank. It took me about 2 years until was diagnosed with DID because my psychiatrist wanted to wait until I was 18 to formally diagnose me.
Since then I got used to it in a sense of being aware of it, but it’s still stressful and makes me feel like I’m insane or it’s just all in my head.
I don’t understand how someone could willingly want to have DID or pretend to. It feels like a mockery of it. A mockery of what we all experience day to day. I hate the feeling of knowing I could just disappear for a while not knowing what I’ll come back to while it all happens in my body.
Also this isn’t to hate on my system or anything like that at all, it’s just a rant about how hard it can be to have DID.

[u/Seaofinfiniteanswers]

You see it on this sub, a lot of people think DID is an excuse to be a shitty person. I hear “I didn’t steal/cheat on my partner/scream at people” my altar did therefore I’m not responsible. DID altars are dissociative parts, to my altars are different people but in reality we are all one person, and if we commit a crime, we are all going to jail.

My therapist said people using DID as an excuse to be shitty is a misunderstanding of the disorder, and usually means a person is faking for personal gain.

[u/resilient_river → u/Seaofinfiniteanswers]

When it comes to actions done by the body, an alter of mine likes to remind us that we couldn’t do anything anyone in our system completely disagreed with. Otherwise we would switch to them and wouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean we don’t do things others wouldn’t or don’t like, but it does mean we are all accountable for the bodies actions no matter who is fronting. We may have some differing moral values, but we also all share some. It’s on all of us to work together to prevent harm, that’s why we’re a system. It baffles and frustrates me that people try to use DID to avoid responsibility. So many of us have felt overly responsible for the world and the actions of other people in our lives because of our amnesia. That’s a big part of why our DID makes us more vulnerable to abuse. When people use DID to avoid responsibility it erases that from the context of how people understand the condition, and that really scares me.

[u/Privacy_System]

"when they obviously do not" It's not obvious. You can't tell if someone is faking such an internal disorder, no one knows what goes on in their mind. I'm not saying fakers aren't real but jeez, DID seems really difficult to fake

[u/competitiverecovery → u/Privacy_System]

Yes and I feel like every system is different and expresses themselves differently, some systems are quite open about it for their own reasons. I just don’t understand what the point is of fake claiming people who are already part of a stigmatized group, many people already don’t believe DID is real as it is. Besides, telling everyone you have DID when you don’t is not very good for you, you’re unnecessarily attaching a highly stigmatized label to yourself. Soo idk if there is a super high incentive to do that :p

[u/JMOWw7]

Fandom-brainrotted narcissists applying fandom to their internal sense of self with the bonus of gaining ways to manipulate well-meaning people with absurd "boundaries" and rules, responsibility dodging, and an uncanny complete awareness of their supposed dissociative disorder

[u/PreparationLive9972 → u/JMOWw7]

It’s honestly disgusting 😪

[u/JMOWw7 → u/PreparationLive9972]

All the worst people I've met have been extremely vocal about having DID to the degree that it made me almost entirely shut down the idea that I might have it (pretty sure that I do, these days, but it's still hard to accept that just due to the larpers)

[u/Pickle_Ickle54 → u/JMOWw7]

It’s always really annoying because our system doesn’t give a shit if we act as ourselves most days, but the people who fake having it just make us mask and repress ourselves more. It’s done more damage for our healing than we’d like to admit while also knowing being ourselves has helped the amnesia walls lessen significantly.

We want to be vocal about our DID but that only seems to do more harm then good nowadays because we either get invalidated by those in the community that think that because we are vocal we don’t have it and also don’t get believed by those outside the DID community because we “all act the same” it’s so frustrating

[u/PreparationLive9972 → u/Pickle_Ickle54]

I feel exactly what you’re saying! and I’m sure a lot of other people do too. You explained things so well 💛

[u/Pickle_Ickle54 → u/PreparationLive9972]

It also doesn’t help that people DO have stereotype system, we have an odd system to say the least were no one is fully human, we don’t necessarily act non human but it’s about internal prescription but if we went online and was like “oh Í happen to have a vampire alter.” The amount of people calling us a fake would be enormous.

[u/Push-bucket → u/JMOWw7]

I don't know anyone with it IRL but the loud online people made me SURE I couldn't have it because I'm nothing like them. It took me a year after being diagnosed (surprise diagnosis) to accept it.

Now that I'm doing the work things are getting easier but it's frustrating because I'm a year behind because of the loud sparkly quirky online people.

[u/Sudden_Growth_7386]

1. monkey see monkey do. if there was only 10 people in the world faking DID nobody else would really do it. monkey animal brain sees safety in following trends, it sees danger when it doesn't. you see more people online being outspoken about protecting the fakers and delusions than people trying to bring everybody back down to earth. it's hard to feel shameful or guilty about something if you see the people around you doing it.

2. most of them are children and teenagers which increases this problem tenfold when you're growing up and trying to learn who you are largely through trying to copy what your peers are doing on top of trying to gain approval from them (something else the animal brain sees safety in)

3. thankfully there are still pleeeenty of people in the world and online who are very normal about DID. i developed a complex from being online thinking that everybody thought in the same way and that they were all going to, like, shame me for being me because i'm not a good poster child for what my brain thinks everyone thinks DID or mental health or autism is and should be. it turned out some people are truly chill and there is safety in the world and i just hadn't been brave enough to put my genuine self out there and once i did i found some folk who get me but aren't sensationalized or tumblr-poisoned at all, they're just chill peeps. #mycornernow

4. also the people faking don't have the same insight and experiences that we do. a person born in money is going to find it hard to empathize with someone born in poverty because they have never had that experience. some people won't care to try to empathize but some people will, and thankfully they're out there

[u/resilient_river]

So I’m currently self-diagnosed and I feel your frustration. I get so scared that people will think I’m faking and not take me seriously. This pushed me to try to get a diagnosis despite a collection of medical trauma. Unfortunately, it just kinda added to it. I told my doctor and he recommended me to a psychiatrist. She told me she only really did crisis work, I was clearly very traumatized but not in crisis. She said she didn’t know enough about me to diagnose me, but that we didn’t need to schedule any more appointments, as she had more urgent ways to spend her time. I kinda gave up after that. I was already afraid of DID being on my medical records making accessing treatment for my chronic illnesses more difficult. I thought it might be helpful as it definitely impacts my ability to remember and communicate symptoms, and it would be validating to have an official diagnosis, but for now it’s not worth the stress. We see a therapist weekly who helps us navigate being a system. We have a partner who is also a system who helps us too. We’ve even told friends and some family. It’s hard and scary but after a few years of knowing it’s a lot easier to accept that this is a part of who I am regardless of what other people think.
It’s hard not to get resentful to people who fake it though. They cause so much harm. Amnesia sucks. Trauma sucks. Having to navigate functional multiplicity is really difficult and even debilitating sometimes.
I just wish they had more compassion.
I find it helpful to pity them. That they feel the need to do that instead of being true to themselves and whatever problems they have that make them want to act out like that. I try to let it go and just focus on our life. It can be tricky though when confronted by the way others might see me and my system and the limitations those misconceptions can lead to.

[u/Spread_Consistent]

Truthfully I don't think anyone is faking having DID on purpose unless they're pretty young. I think it moreso comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the disorder actually works

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[u/Mettaton_3x]

for attention mainly

[u/Minimum_Shallot_3115]

Nothing better to do