My Tourette's recently came back from "remission" (unsure if that's the right term in context, but alas) and i am so pissed off thinking about fake claiming again.
To anyone out there discrediting me off the bat, yes, I have been officially diagnosed by medical professionals. I meet as many of your bullshit little criteria as your heart could desire for who "really" has Tourette's.
The truth of the matter is that you will never conclusively know if someone is "faking" any disability, but Tourette's is a good example here. There are so many things about Tourette's that make it a perfect disorder for fake claimers to sink their little teeth into. I've been perusing the fakedisordercringe subreddit, kinda trying to bait myself into getting angry, and I've been particularly looking at the traits they claim are telltale signs of a faker.
The catch: almost all of these traits are normal parts of the spectrum disorder that is Tourette's, or very easily explained in context.
"In this video they're ticcing every few seconds, but in their old videos they never tic."
1. Tics vary from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, etc. I had a year and a half where my Tourette's was almost non-existent. I very occasionally had minor facial tics, but that was it! Waxing and waning of symptoms is incredibly normal for tic disorders, in face, tic disorders very often go away with age, or at least get better. Some people's tics get worse with age though.
This isn't even to mention medication! Some people take medication for Tourette's, and this may heavily impact the severity/frequency of tics. It's rude asf to ask a stranger their medication status, but personally, I was prescribed Guanfacine for my tics. It made me sleep so much that it was a worse experience than having my full force tics. I went off the medication, and started ticcing more! It's also true that other medications not specifically prescribed in the aim of reducing tics can also have an impact on them. I have a hunch that the Abilify I was taking the last couple years is what might've put my Tourette's nigh fully into remission during that period. How medication intersects with someone's experience is very complicated and individual. You know what they say about assuming.
Another piece worth mentioning is the fact that Tourette's is a syndrome, as opposed to a disease. A disease has a known, single root cause for the condition, i.e. a bacterium, a virus, a known mutation. Syndromes are names for clusters of symptoms that occur together often enough to be recognized as their own things, but without a shared or known root cause. People have Tourette's (or any tic disorder really) for many different reasons! This is why no two people who tic do so in the same way, there are many root neurological/biological causes that are all producing the same general symptoms.
2. Tic disorders can have a very rapid onset, and they can appear at any age (although before late teens is most common). Mine started over a few days, from absolutely no tics, to uncontrollable and severe attacks.
3. Tics can be very dependent on environmental triggers. Stress, excitement, level of focus, repetitive noises (including other people ticcing!), energy level, et cetera are all common triggers for tics. One person's trigger might be another person's tic relaxant. It varies for each individual; I personally tic much more frequently at work as of late, because the environment is very stressful, loud, and repetitive.
4. If you're watching a video, you're seeing someone's curated public image. They might suppress tics for the camera. They might film on mild tic days. They might edit out tics. They might be ticcing just as often, but invisibly (e.g. right now I have several tics that involve my tongue, totally invisible to everyone else!).
"Their tics look forced though."
Lots of tics do look forced, especially complex tics (tics involving multiple muscle groups), but they are still unvoluntary or involuntary. You have absolutely zero ways to tell apart a tic that looks forced from a tic that is forced.
"They tic too much."
Discussing tics is a very, very common trigger for said tics. Filming yourself talking about your tics is likely to trigger them. Some people tic a lot, or very violently, all the time! Some people only tic severely occasionally! See above for the variability of tics, even within a single person.
Focusing on something, i.e. speaking to the camera, will reduce tic frequency or severity for some people. For some it makes it worse. Again, see above for the variability of tics!
"They have too many common/cute tics."
You can catch tics. If someone's involved with a lot of disability spaces or spends time around other people with a tic disorder, they'll likely pick up some of those common tics. Not everyone gets contagious tics, but most people seem to.
"Their tics are too convenient."
Many people with tics are able to redirect the premonitory urge toward a different, sometimes milder tic (e.g. one of my current tics is clenching my face, and shutting my eyes hard for several seconds. Driving seems to let me focus enough to not be too encumbered by tics, but when I do feel like I'm going to do an eye-shutting tic, I'll usually redirect it to a different body part, or sometimes just one eye instead of both). Not all people w/ tics are able to redirect tics and have absolutely no control over them. For those who can, though, this may cause their tics to look "convenient" in that they're keeping the reigns on the more inconvenient tics. See above for why someone might (or might not!) tic more on camera.
(Assuming they're faking already): "If they really understood Tourette's they wouldn't fake it because it's just so awful and horrible and impossible to live with, it's a curse that ruins people's lives!"
Most disabled people don't want your half-hearted pity. For the love of GOD, do not use the severity of some people's tic disorders as a weapon against that same community. Yes, some people are significantly impaired by their tic disorder; it's a disability. That doesn't mean you should treat the few disabled people you believe like sick little wet kittens with terminal cancer, and the rest of us like we're attention seeking fakers who are an acceptable target for absolutely vile harassment and dehumanization.
And some broader ones that are often used against many other disabled people:
You do not become disabled upon diagnosis. Diagnosis is descriptive, not prescriptive; your disability is no more or less real due to dx status.
"They already have sooo many disabilities though."
Disabilities are more common than you think, and tend to occur together. For example, Tourette's is heavily associated with Autism, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, and especially OCD. Please don't give me your amateur statistics work that assumes occurrence of disability is an entirely isolated variable.
"They have blue hair and pronouns."
Queer people are more likely to be disabled, disabled people are more likely to be Queer. For instance, Queer people are especially prone to Autism, among other disabilities, which puts one at a significantly higher predisposition to tic disorders.
"They talk about their disability/disabilities too much."
Disabilities affect people's daily lives, and if they want to talk about how that impacts them, stfu and listen! If someone wants to spread awareness or acceptance of their disability, stfu and listen! If you don't want to listen, stfu and go away.
There's more. There's a lot more. I could continue writing this for the rest of the afternoon, and I'd still have more to talk about. I've been thinking about Tourette's a lot more since mine came back just recently, and I think a well organized post like this is a good thing to put out there. The takeaway is really that you can never look inside someone else's head. The convolutions of others' minds are a lockbox to which they themselves are the lone key-owners.
I feel like the least we can do for each other is give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, I'm aware that some people do in fact fake disabilities. My point is not to refute the mere existence of people faking their disability, but to say we cannot know who they are. We must treat everyone as though they are being honest, because everyone is deserving of that kind of dignity by default. This paranoia about who is and is not "really disabled" does us absolutely no good, it hurts innocent people in the process, likely many, many more than any "actual" fakers (by whatever standard you even truly measure that).
As an aside, even if someone is honest to god faking, they're probably not doing just peachy. Someone desperate for that kind of attention probably needs that attention. Something is wrong, and this is their way to express their need for help. When has it ever done any good to shame and mock people who are unwell? Some people really truly do just want to feel justified in mistreating the most vulnerable members of society.
