Thaltro

I love these free passes..thank you..please give me more 🫶🏽

Spending my pass on a rant about the online perception of DID/OSDD

One thing I find interesting is the concept of fake claiming and how that’s affected the community. In 2020 there was a large increase in mental health “awareness” online- mass vague posting of common symptoms and connecting it to larger disorders. This eventually lead to a lot of people misdiagnosing themselves with DID/OSDD. And Contrary to popular belief, I actually think most misdiagnosing was in good faith- younger teens for the first time connecting to disassociation, maladaptive day dreaming, emotional swings, PTSD, and derealization- and genuinely believing they had it. It’s more likely they had more common disorders like maybe Bpd, DDD, depression, psychosis- because there is a huge overlap in symptoms. (It’s also important to note it was also a huge awakening for actual systems too- because I’m definitely not saying everyone who had did/osdd in 2020 was misdiagnosed, in a lot of cases people were right!)

Buttttt

The internets reaction to this wasn’t with reeducation or kindness or even respectful criticism- it created a whole list of “faking signs”. I personally think the people who misdiagnosed themselves harmed the community much less then the people pushing for constant fakeclaiming. And now these arbitrary concepts plague actual systems pushing them into a deeper denial and opening them up to waves of unwanted harassment. Like ok, here’s some common misconceptions you’ll see (all the ones I’m listing are just bullshit and are contradicted with actual medical research)

-Systems can’t have fictives

-Systems can’t unmask

-Systems can’t have littles

-Systems can’t have factives

-Systems can’t have internal relationships

-Systems can’t have high amnesia

-Systems can’t have rapid switches

-Systems can’t have faceclaims or go by different genders/sexualities

ALL OF THIS IS BULLSHIT! None of these actually are backed up with medical research! And the worst part is I see groups of people just harass normal systems who show these normal symptoms and constantly fakeclaim them. I see cringe compilations, r/fake disorder cringe, tik toks, and video essays just spewing this nonsensical shit and it genuinely hurts. (It’s SO ANNOYING when they say shit like “people who do this hurt actual systems” YOUR HURTING ACTUAL SYSTEMS SHUT UP 😭) but Yes I do think there are people out their who do fake this disorder and use it to hurt and manipulate people. But I don’t think that’s the majority of misdiagnosed people. Even if someone was wrong I think it’s safer to just ignore them then to spread misinformation about DID/OSDD and encourage the possible harm onto genuine systems. (Also being wrong and admitting you are wrong is fine)

But yeah I’ll end my rant by saying If you support this weird online fakeclaiming witch hunts then I don’t want to associate with you. And to the self diagnosed systems or suspecting systems, it’s incredibly hard being in that position- harassment is almost guaranteed online and that sucks. Self diagnosis is valid especially if you can’t afford DID specialists- however with that statement If you do self diagnosis its necessary to do research. Don’t look at plural pedia or random websites- I recommend reading the DSM and The haunted self (it explains the fundamentals of structural dissociation)

PDF for the actual book ^^ (it’s also good for self diagnosed systems because it can help you weed out any other possible disorder overlap with BPD and PTSD)

But yeah 🙁 sorry for the rant I’m just really frustrated with the current climate of the internet especially for systems.