Do you ever feel mad at people who fake having DID and try to make it not a trauma/dissociation related phenomenon and instead make it into a roleplay thing?
I don't have DID but i do struggle with trauma. And I feel very offended on behalf of people with DID when I see it made light of by those people, but I also feel like it's not my place and I may be emotionally inserting myself for no reason
Obviously you're not a speaker on behalf of all people with DID, but I'm genuinely curious what your opinion on people like that is? If this is too contentious of an ask feel free to ignore it!
from what i can tell this ask was sent in good faith/with good intentions so i will give you a genuine answer but i need to be really clear upfront: i'm not comfortable with fakeclaiming behavior and do not support fakeclaiming/accusing people who identify as having DID with roleplaying/etc whatsoever. i understand that you are trying to be a good ally to your fellow traumatized folk (and traumatized people without DID genuinely do have a lot in common with people who do have DID!!) but i hope that you can understand that trying to sniff out who's faking and who isn't like... isn't achieving what you probably think it is. this is going to get long sorry in advance, i have no idea how to keep this concise while also expressing everything i want to say
all that fakeclaiming does is make things harder for people with DID. it puts us in a position where we have to performatively behave within certain narrow expectations to be considered valid in the eyes of the public, despite DID being a highly individualized disorder that can encompass a vast array of personal experience and presentation. it puts us in a position where if we are accused of faking we have to divulge our sensitive trauma information to prove we aren't faking, if we even remember our trauma in the first place, because a lot of us do not remember our trauma yet - the DID brain hiding the trauma is a very common part of this disorder. when there are people trying to sniff out who's real and who isn't, especially as non-medical professionals and people without the disorder (though people with DID and doctors can be shitty too), it further stigmatizes already stigmatized experiences and makes us fearful of persecution, even in survivor spaces where we hypothetically should feel welcome. there's the common notion from people with PTSD that "people say they support trauma survivors but if they actually knew what being traumatized was like, they'd run for the hills. trying to be a 'good survivor' is exhausting." well the same applies to DID. and the cherry on top is it shoves people away from seeking help/a DID diagnosis even if they need one.
i'm going to use myself as an example. you believe that i have DID, but would you still believe me if i talked more openly on this blog about my history as a teenager where i used to sincerely believe that i was a ton of fictional characters in a past life and this was how i interpreted my inner experiences because i didn't know i had DID yet? when i used to be 16 years old and thought i was anime characters in real life and i presented as such on the internet? i probably fit right into that stereotype of people who you think are roleplaying. i didn't have access to proper medical care and was still enduring ongoing abuse and i had no understanding of what was going on in my head, and on account of not remembering my trauma and sincerely believing i was "not traumatized enough" to have a disorder, i interpreted my experiences spiritually. it was how i made sense of my symptoms. obviously i know better now and i have been professionally diagnosed with DID for nearly a full 6 years now, and have been in therapy with a DID/dissociation specialist for that amount of time. but it was not always like that and this is what i mean: if i didn't fully understand my own internal experiences there is absolutely no one online who would have known better than me. and people telling me i was making shit up or saying "people with DID have SERIOUS TRAUMA and you're ROLEPLAYING their experiences for fun" put me even further off from trying to seek medical help. by the time i was able to seek medical help, the only reason i did it is because a loved one at the time pushed for me to, because she believed me and my experiences but thought it was DID. turns out she was right and i have an extensive history of childhood sexual trauma to boot. i just didn't remember it.
ultimately i think a lot of traumatized folk who try to seek out and combat "fakers" are punching down to try and feel more secure with their own experiences. i say this with love because i will admit i personally had my own phase with this that i eventually healed from where i was really personally bothered by people talking about their DID experiences in ways i did not personally relate to or i thought weren't true, and pointing at examples of the people who were "less real" than me made me feel more real. it's kind of like when queer people punch down at those with "weird" identities to try to look better for cishet people, i was trying to validate myself and get approval from singlets/non-traumatized people. because being traumatized fucking sucks and the stigma is horrendous and people do not understand and treat you like dirt. so if i could cling to being one of the Real Ones so that others would believe me, perhaps i'd have it easier. at the end of the day though, the people who would toss you out for not being a "good survivor" aren't your friend anyway and performing being a "good survivor" for them isn't going to help in the long run. and believing your own trauma and working on yourself is something you ultimately have the primary responsibility for. i learned this the hard way myself.
ultimately if anyone wants to be a good ally to those with DID, i think people should spend time spreading information about what DID is instead of what DID is not. i think instead of interrogating or hunting down the fakers we should lift up the voices of people who can speak clearly about their experiences and listen to the stories of the people who remember their trauma. we should provide resources to survivors. and we should leave space for people to remember their trauma in the future if they have it, and we should let people make mistakes or be eccentric online. we should even allow people to end up being wrong about having DID, because sometimes people are earnestly wrong and them struggling to figure that out isn't a moral statement. and if someone really truly is faking DID - well that's a disorder in itself and needs treatment.
i hope this was able to convey what i'm trying to say. i don't want people to look up to me as "one of the good ones" because i want to opt out of that race entirely. i don't think it's productive and i don't want to be surrounded by people who are narrowing their eyes at me and waiting for me to be too cringe or weird to have a believable diagnosis. people faking DID or people being weird about plurality online are not even close to my #1 issue when people still think that people with DID are inherently dangerous/violent and accessing healthcare/getting a diagnosis for this disorder took me just slightly under a decade of actively being in the mental health system, which is a common amount of time for it to take. there are bigger fish to fry and we can only fry those fish by supporting each other.
