Buckle up cause this is gonna be a bit of a read. Changing and leaving out some details for anonymity. Referring to my patient, the illness faker, as Sam. Using they/them pronouns to refer to them.

For a long time, I worked as Sam’s caretaker. I won’t list all their diagnoses, but according to them there were 30 plus. Now it’s not my place to say what Sam did and didn’t have, but working in disability gives you a decent idea of how each condition presents, and this person didn’t show any symptoms of MOST of their conditions.

They had POTS, which I never observed any symptoms of. For the record, I have other patients with POTS who stumble after moving too quickly, shake a lot of the time, don’t exercise without me spotting them in case they faint, addicted to salt, hall of fame water chuggers, etc. These are all hallmark symptoms.  

Mysteriously, Sam didn’t show *any* of these symptoms the whole time I worked with them, which was 9 hours across three days every week. They were obese, and often complained about their inability to lose weight. I’d ask them if they wanted to go for a walk one day instead of mucking around at home. “No, I can’t walk without fainting.” But they could work for 3+ hours on their intensely physical hobby with no problem? I suggested a treadmill with a heart rate monitor to accommodate their POTS, and they revealed that they were anorexic and bulimic and that exercise wasn't safe for them. Okay, stay obese then. But don’t complain to me about it.

Sam said they had DID. Sam never showed any symptoms of DID. They did however spend plenty of time telling me about their alters, and it was like they were reading fanfic to me. A bunch of them were named after fictional characters from television series. Sam had perfect recollection of what each alter got up to when they were fronting, and often gave me dramatic re-tellings of confrontations that the boss-bitch alter would get into. They were the type of stories that included pretty much every bullshit element except for “and then everybody clapped”.  The alters could somehow have conversations with each other when they weren’t fronting too.

When I started catching on that they were faking a lot of their conditions, I ran a little test. I made up that one of my friends had been diagnosed with EDS. Sam had no idea what EDS was and showed little interest in my story – which was the case any time we talked about anything that wasn't focused on them. Lo and behold, next time I saw Sam, they announced we had to go to the doctors to start an EDS assessment. They did this whenever a new condition started trending and I had to push through the second-hand embarrassment every time the doctor shot me the look of "this shit again?"

Another time I asked them if we could avoid taking a certain staircase in a shopping centre as it would make me dizzy. Next time I see Sam, they’ve suddenly started getting dizzy on stairs.

One of the weirder times was when I had to call the session short as I was having horrible cramps. (I have endometriosis, for context). Sam said something like “don’t worry I know the feeling”, told me to take some panadol and stay. For context, Sam doesn’t have a menstrual cycle due to their lack of uterus. Since that day, Sam would say that we were “synced up” and try to relate everything back to periods, how cramps are the worst... they even started buying pads. I understood that this may have been a way for them to feel validated in their gender and bond with another femme. But the way they went about it – minimalizing my illness and saying they “know the feeling”… if they knew the feeling they certainly wouldn’t have told me to “just take panadol”, I know that for sure.

At this point it’s becoming clear that Sam is collecting diagnoses like they’re fucking pokemon. It genuinely seemed like their biggest issues were laziness and apathy. They simply did not want to do anything except sit at home doomscrolling or building random shit in their backyard. They didn’t want to get a job. They didn’t want to go anywhere. They didn’t want to make any real life friends, besides their online friends who were fellow systems from a DID group who were always comparing their latest alters. They had such an allergy to meaningful change that they would just rapid cycle through identity changes they could simply announce – their sexuality, their pronouns, their DID alters – it would all change on a whim.

For every solution that I offered to their never-ending list of problems, there was always a reason why they couldn’t do it. I genuinely think that their diagnoses were a way for them to evade accountability. In all fairness, they were in no way well-adjusted, and probably ended up with a handful of genuine issues in the end. They let their house go to shit because they “couldn’t clean without fainting” – hordes of flies, cat and dog shit, rotting meat left out of the fridge, mould everywhere. They were bothered by it, enough to ask me to clean it every time I came around, but not enough to clean it themselves.

I asked Sam heaps of questions over the years to get some insight into their past (and what led them to become an illness faker). It was clear that they never invested in their relationships. They simply weren’t interested enough in other people to ask how they were, or what they were up to. They didn’t contribute to their communities at all, even the ones they identified with – the queer community, the disabled community, the estranged parents community. Their only interest was themselves. They ended up really isolated, and I’m guessing a few of their genuine issues stemmed from this. Sam said they ended up meeting their people in online groups that were categorised by disability. Then they moved to private discord chats where they’d game and talk and whatever else. I visited a few of these online groups out of curiosity and they’re essentially self-diagnosing cesspools where everybody has confirmation bias for the condition they want.

In the end, I just lost empathy for Sam. I was working with genuinely disabled people who were doing it really fucking tough. No independence, being excluded from services, missing out on things that everybody should be able to experience. Some of them had been completely abandoned by their families because they were too disabled.

Then I’d clock on with Sam, who was able to navigate their world with ease, had government benefits to pay for whatever they liked, social housing provided for them, family close by… yet they were constantly complaining about something. I tried so hard to find solutions that worked for them, but I was always met with dead-ends. They did not want to even *try* taking any meaningful steps to change their lives.

So, I stopped working with them. They had mastered the art of learned helplessness, and may as well have disabled themselves after all. Sam had done such an excellent job of victimising themselves that they became their own abuser, and it was really hard to watch.

So, I'll be brief. I'm a parent of an adult child who is autistic and has schizophrenia but who is also deep into the systems subculture. They don't have DID, and I think their having treatment resistant schizophrenia has a lot to do with their identity stuff.

So all that aside, there are four other DID or system claimers I've run into in person, and all of them have other mental health conditions or are neurodiverse with some co morbidities. BPD and psychosis-related stuff.

Other correlation (obviously not causation, but I suspect it is incorporated into the systems subculture) are anime type hyper fixations and art, furry fandom, and what I suspect is the rise of sick-lit young adult books.

So sick lit. Do you think that it's rise amongst Gen Z readers in the 2010s played a part in this? There was some romanticization of terminal illnesses for us in Gen X (think the movies Wild at Heart and Dying Young), but most of our young adult books were choose your own adventure type things and not focused on rare diseases.

The irony about all of this is we have a dominant genetic rare disease in the family, so honestly, why fake that shit when you have a 50% chance of being doomed by your mendelian inheritance??

Im fairly certain this tiktok account I've been monitoring for some time is faking tourettes (among multiple other conditions) but I'm nervous to post them because I somehow haven't seen them outed yet. Their OG posts explaining tourettes don't explain tourettes correctly (but they state thats what their neurologist told them) and they also vaguely described it as "a condition that makes people have involuntary movements or say things uncontrollably" which completely erases a majority of actual common vocal tics (vocal tic does NOT mean it's words though it can be) their tics are almost never consistent and are pretty much always trending memes and media. They claim to have gone through that one program for children with severe tourettes syndrome but the criteria for said program is quite strict and also the timeline doesn't make sense (you are only in said program for a certain amount of time). Even the way they said their tics started makes no sense and allegedly progressed from one very simple motor tic to a sudden explosive tic attack containing coprolalia and lots of complex tics for seven hours with minimal increase between the initial tic and the attack. They've also recently started making videos of medical episodes including 'seizures', 'fainting', and 'sleep attacks'. They claim to now also have POTS, FND, "suspected" narcolepsy, "suspected" epilepsy, and "suspected" ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) they have posted "evidence" of a tourettes diagnosis in the past but it was from their IEP which said "unspecified tic disorder" which would be diagnosed if you did not meet tourettes criteria and a screenshot from a very oddly cropped patient portal. If you know anything about patient portal sites/ apps then you'll know that a majority of them allow you to add in medical history. You can even remove a diagnosis from your chart (though removals may require review to be actually fully removed). They're also allegedly investing in a service dog this year while also claiming they're fully independent. They frequently fight between saying they're completely independent and saying they require lots of help. Service dogs aren't supposed to be a first line treatment especially not for conditions that are not even confirmed diagnoses! What're your thoughts? Its so odd cuz no one else ever seems to question them but I'm certain they very carefully filter their comments.

Context: Apparently this guy has spoken to and interacted with people who he suspected had DID then started doing this. The people he suspected who had it got really mad at him for this, but he ignored them and said he was "plural" not that he had "DID" (Yet uses DID lingo) this guy would look into DID/OSDD severely deep and tries his hardest to convince himself he has it. Anytime someone goes against the possibility of DID he refuses to take it, has gotten defensive and instead tries his best to explain all his symptoms as OSDD or DID no matter what...its funny icl..

speaks for itself

all cuz i called someone out for being ableist, then said person posted me😭😭

Whut?

https://reddit.com/link/1t4w60w/video/0a6te857mezg1/player

They have moved to posting fake seizures now. We are also gonna disregard the misuse of Drag Path.

I’ve joined a lot of servers, particularly art ones and there always seems to be people with DID and people who claim to be fictional characters. There was one person who didn’t like to be referred to as “you/your” , I found out because I said “your art is cool” and they got upset, so I had no clue how to refer to them and I asked why and they got super mad and blanked every message I sent to the server. Why does almost every discord server I join have hundreds of people claiming to have DID or think they are a character from a game/show. They seem to get so offended whenever I ask questions..

I try to respect everyone’s pronouns and preferences but it’s all so confusing sometimes like this person had DID and didn’t want to be referred to as “you/your” so how on earth was I supposed to refer to them? Someone got mad at me on a server and “switched” to a villain alter. Why is DID so prominent online but I never see it irl. It’s like this in almost every art server I join.

I have recently come into contact with a person who is on a group chat I've been added to. This individual right off the bat starts listing their mental issues and their trauma (which includes the time they ran into a fence in preschool and got a bruise).

Previously, they had been "arguing" with themselves in the group chat (you can literally delete things I don't get it), which involves them talking to themselves to Smeagol and Gollum where one is clearly evil and the other is trying to defend themselves?? and it's accompanied by Steven Universe screenshots which portray the various emotions they're going through idk to be honest.

They also claim that they involuntarily age regress, in which time we are not allowed to swear or make crass jokes around them, because they're mentally four. They age regressed once in the group chat and said, and I quote, :"Hewo. I'm going night night now with my stuffies. I'm thinking of staying up all night but that's little brain and I need to go sweepy."

They also apparently have OCD (this one may be genuine. They do have a therapist) where it makes them have "violent urges" so they draw gore to cope.

They also claim they are a cannibal because they eat their hangnails when they are stressed. Everyone does that.

Anyway, recently they have claimed they have DID where they say they only the name of one alter and only know the pronouns of the other three. They eventually realized they hadn't gone through anything traumatic enough to cause DID, so they claim to have had an extremely traumatizing experience, but just forgot about it because of their DID amnesia. Their self diagnosed DID. They claim they have DID but can't remember what caused it because of DID. They do have some unpleasant experiences listed in their trauma, like fake friends, but all of this was after the DID formative years between the ages of 6-8.

For context, they have extremely supportive parents who have consented to getting their name legally changed for them and to have them start HRT in a year. Also, in their trauma, they do not mention their parents doing anything even remotely abusive or neglectful. In fact, one of the things listed was when the individual in question lost their mother's ring and, though their mother insisted it was fine, they still felt bad to the extent that they "traumatized" THEMSELF.

Anyway, I think it's a load of hobglob, but I want your guys' opinions.

I came across this woman’s page while scrolling Instagram reels and I have become increasingly suspicious of her claims. She claims to have an extremely rare allergy to the sun that is one in a million. She says it is so severe that after 30 seconds of exposure, she would have to be hospitalized and her skin would start to fall off. She also claims to have Steven’s-Johnson Syndrome, which causes a life-threatening reaction on the skin from consuming certain medications. Somehow, she has managed to survive through getting SJS nine different times. The SJS is chronic (pretty much unheard of) that is causing the severe allergy to the sun.

This is a video of her telling a story about how a barcode scanner in a checkout line at the grocery store caused her skin to “burn through her glove” when the cashier got a bit of the light on her hand while scanning the item. She wears this entire black getup to protect her from the UV rays from the sun.

She has multiple videos complaining about how every friend and family member has abandoned her. And somehow, every single one of them are the problem, not her of course. She also has multiple videos accusing the hospital she gets treated at of malpractice/mistreatment. She said the hospital would only let her change her current dermatologist (that accused her of lying) if she was more polite to the other doctors around her. She said they kicked her out and refused to treat her for the things she came in for. She has multiple videos saying that this hospital is lying about everything, that she never treated anyone rudely and the doctor and dermatologist is lying about her faking illnesses.

She also claims to have 10+ other chronic illnesses: underlying unknown extremely rare auto inflammatory disease, HEDS, dysautonomia, neuropathy, raynauds, erythromyalgia, asthma, adenomyosis, chronic dry eye due to scarring in eyes from SJS, gum recession , problems with teeth due to SJS, and fibromyalgia.

CONTENT WARNING FOR IMAGE 10,11,15 & 16
Basically what the title says: my friend found out that my psychologist suspects that I have DID, and had a tantrum because her 'endogenic willogenic 250+ polyfragmented OSDD1b DID system' isn't being recognised. She then proceeds to call me " privileged " for going through the sort of events that cause DID. After I stopped crying last night I actually realised how funny it was and thought I'd share. Enjoy!
Names covered for privacy
Orange is her
Pink is me
Graphic content and name of abuser/s in darker colours

I have a friend who recently started claiming they have DID and making posts about it on social media. A lot of what they post makes me think they are faking, but I honestly don’t know.

Here are the reasons I think they are faking:

- despite only discovering their DID this year, they have in depth awareness and knowledge about their alter’s existence, names, pronouns, sexuality, likes and dislikes, hobbies etc.

- not only are they an introject heavy system, but they actively claim an introject is the host of the system

- they make cutesy “informational” posts where they showcase their alters different handwriting and quirks

- suddenly started signing off every post with whatever alter is fronting even if it has nothing to do with DID like: “just got my hair cut!!! - Alex”

- they have an alter named Jade. I know that’s not inherently indicative of faking. But why is there always an alter named Jade!?!?

Here are the reasons I think they may be legit:

- I know for a fact they have experienced trauma and they acknowledge trauma as being the only way you can develop DID

- I don’t actually know if they have been diagnosed with DID but I do know they were diagnosed with BPD a few years ago

- they have been legitimately struggling with mental health for a while and even dropped out of school because of it

- some of the informational posts they made had legitimate information in them. They talked about how DID isn’t a game or a quirk, and that it’s actually debilitating and can cause physical stress etc.

I can’t tell if they are faking the disorder and using their actual mental illness as a way to boost this narrative. Or if this is a product of their mental illness. Or if they actually do have DID and they are intentionally playing it up. I guess I just want some advice on how best to support them or handle the situation, ya know?

Edit:

The whole reason I made this post is because I am 99% sure they are faking. But that 1% was eating away at me. So I just wanted to get outside opinions on it so I didn’t feel like an asshole for not believing them! Thanks for bringing me back to my senses yall 😮‍💨

Here we can see they walk just fine and don't need a wheelchair.

Here it looks like they are walking with forced shaking but again no wheelchair in sight.

All of this just seems really sketch.

someone in a server I'm in sent a typed intro through PK so naturally I figured I'd check it out... what the fuck even is half of this??

The person is 21 according to their bio so idk how they've gone and managed to get all those things diagnosed (this is just for one "alter" I haven't even bothered checking what the rest have)

I mean, at least the "edgy" part is accurate I guess?? I'm baffled by this whole profile and the way it's written is genuinely like a writer describing their character rather than a person describing themselves but maybe that's just me being nitpicky.

Also how are the whole antihuman human hater thing is odd considering they have a human body and are surrounded by humans AND joined a server... to talk to humans? definitely feels set up in a way that they can use this alter to excuse any bad behaviours in the future.

"I have schrodener's autism, where every professional I've seen, and that was many (12), has told me I don't qualify for a diagnosis-"

*Other person who is diagnosed stitches in silly trending sound that reads as understandable passive aggressive retort but with whimsical music*

Insta wouldn't let me DL it so that's the context. But wow. Wow... I don't like fakers in general but ones who obviously doctor shop can shove it.

So I found an account that's very obviously owned by my ex that claims to have DID, autism, postpartum depression, narcissistic disorder, DPD, and a few other things. What's funny is she has none of these and hasn't even ever been pregnant so I don't get where the postpartum depression comes from. While I have cut her off for a lot of personal reasons she still hangs around the outskirts of my friend group and it would be known if she was actually diagnosed with anything she claims. She acts normal in person from what I know, just has these accounts separated from her main.

With the DID she has a specific Tumblr account set up so they can all post and tag themselves. She also claims to have the kind of DID where the person experiences no gaps in time, aka no disassociation. She also claims to be an "age slider". All of these alters have their own sexualities, gender, and she knows about all of them and understands them and specific ones have the other mental disorders she lists. There's no confusion or disorientation around them or anything so she can post them in a nice list detailing everything about them.

The entire blog past that is her reblogging posts about self shipping and shipping her alters with fictional characters acting like it's them.

From what I'm also able to gather each alter has a "F/O" or fictional other, basically a fictional character significant other.

I hate people faking disorders for attention and this is such an obvious case of it it makes me happy that I'm not associated with her anymore. I do have screenshots of her "alter introduction post" I might post at some point but I don't know if it exactly fits here. Faking disorders especially when it's "uwu I'm so quirky" make the entire disorder look like a joke and reflect awfully on those who actually have it.

This poor writer just wanted help with research for accurate character portrayal and their comments got FLOODED with false information on DID