hi! i read your piece on introjects and found it really helpful! ive been seeing a lot of people on social media recently coming out and saying they have DID, which is great. but part of me cant help but wonder of some are taking advantage of these people for their own claim to fame. i dont want to fakeclaim/invalidate, but can/should i believe everyone who says they have DID? ive seen some say that they have alters of murderers or 300+ alters and i dont know if im uneducated or if theyre lying
hey! i'm glad you found that post helpful. i have a lot of thoughts on this subject, too. please be aware that i’m not a mental health professional, i’m just some dude sharing his own personal opinion. i’d really encourage you and anyone else to always do further research outside of social media, especially when it comes to something like this!
anyways, this is gonna be a bit of a lengthy reply. hope you don’t mind!
- TW for various trauma types -
it's not impossible for someone to have 300+ alters or an introject of a murderer. it's important to remember that dissociation is a survival mechanism against psychological trauma. DID is a developmental disorder of dissociation. DID forms when trauma in childhood is so overwhelming and repetitive, that it literally impacts brain development.
alters are not collectibles or characters. they're parts of someone's whole identity which were heavily dissociated in order to stay sane during the trauma. that's why, the more alters there are, the more psychologically damaging the trauma was (which usually means the trauma was more sadistic, more long-lasting, involved multiple perpetrators, or other factors made the child more vulnerable to dissociation).
take jeni haynes for example, a person with 2,500 parts as a result of 7 years of sadistic torture and sexual abuse, which police described as one of the worst cases of child abuse in the history of their country. or take janice for example, a patient described in this book on DID, who developed at least 100 parts due to chronic illness in infancy, long-lasting emotional and physical abuse, and instances of sexual abuse.
if you need more information, though, here's a good summary with multiple references on this subject.
i’m going to guess that your ask wasn’t about what i talked about above, though. you’re probably talking about the people on social media who claim to have DID yet they’re also claiming things that are obviously not related to mental health. maybe you’ve stumbled across someone who claims that their entire system is just their favorite fictional characters and youtubers from content that didn’t exist until a couple years ago.
yeah... that isn’t what DID is like.
i know i’m not the only one who’s taken notice of the increase in people saying they have DID but are also claiming things which are really unusual or outright unrealistic for a dissociative disorder like this. there’s been this almost fetishistic focus on introject parts in particular lately, namely of the less common variety such as celebrities or fictional characters. it’s actually really shitty because it does a huge discredit to what DID genuinely is: a dissociative disorder that develops from childhood trauma.
so, it's up to you whether you want to believe everyone who says they have DID or not. if you really want my opinion, i personally wouldn't blindly believe everyone. that’s because believing everyone who says they have DID opens you up to being misinformed about DID by people who don't actually have it. it's not fakeclaiming to know that not everyone who says they have DID actually has it.
despite that, please don’t go and call people fake to their faces. there’s always a chance you could be wrong, and if someone is actually faking DID, they want that attention and they’re not going to stop just because someone caught them. the people who actually end up hurt by all of this are the people who genuinely have the mental disorder. the best thing you can do, imo, is give your attention and support to reliable, professional-created information on dissociation and trauma, and resources that help survivors.
DID is regularly disbelieved and misunderstood. that’s why you should always be critical about the information people are putting out about it. educate yourself from reliable, clinical sources outside of social media. don’t support the people who seem to be exploiting it for financial gain or to excuse their inappropriate behaviors.
i hope in the future everyone can understand that DID isn’t anything weird, evil, cool, superpowered, or fantastical. it’s just a disability, and very similar to complex PTSD. we are just survivors with dissociation struggles, not anything supernatural. that’s all.
hope that helps! thanks for sending the ask! c:
