#faking tw

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

"But what do I do if I think I have spotted a faker?" Literally nothing beyond unfollowing, blocking and moving on with your day. Because once you start trying to police the experiences of strangers online YOU are objectively doing more harm to the community than this alleged faker. The culture of distrust, accusations and invalidation which these witch hunts result in are far more harmful than some teenager maybe being wrong about a diagnosis. Like if you go to them and you attack them and throw accusations at them based on your intuition or whatever YOU are the one exhibiting harmful behavior. Like at that point you're the asshole even if they ARE wrong about their label on some level

[multiplicity-positivity]

Shoutout to systems who think they’re faking!

Whether you’re a questioning singlet or have known about your system for years, it’s perfectly normal to worry that you’re faking your plurality! However, that does not mean that you actually are faking your plurality by any means!

It can be easily to feel like you’re faking, especially if you haven’t heard from any headmates in a while, but the fact that you feel like you’re faking likely proves that you’re not!

If you feel like you’re faking because you don’t remember your trauma: it is perfectly normal and common for systems to block, hide, or forget what caused them to split initially. That does not mean you didn’t experience trauma, and that does not make you less of a system!

If you feel like you’re faking because you consciously created your system: just because your headmates were created doesn’t make them any less real! You are still very much a system, and you belong in the plural community!

If you feel like you’re faking because you’ve only recently discovered your system: everyone has to discover their plurality one way or another! You can discover your plurality at any age or stage in life. Just because you’ve just learned about your systemhood recently doesn’t make it any less valid!

If you feel like you’re faking because people in your life don’t believe you’re a system: no one knows more about what you experience than you do! Just because you don’t show as many outward signs of plurality, or the people in your life don’t want to see you as a system, doesn’t mean you’re not a system! You are still a treasured member of the plural community, and are not faking your plurality!

If you feel like you’re faking because you don’t have all the symptoms of DID: multiplicity is a vast and diverse spectrum!! Just because you don’t match all the DSM criteria for DID/OSDD does not mean you’re faking your plurality! Whether or not you experience amnesia, switching, heavy dissociation, or anything else - if you feel like you’re plural than it’s more than likely that you are plural!

Imposter syndrome is almost impossible to avoid. Please know that you are real, your headmates are real, and your plurality is real! You will always find love and support here, whether or not you’re faking your plurality or worried that you are!

[system-of-a-feather]

Not at all meant to throw shade at the previous post, cause I am assuming benefit of the doubt and that it is a bad take with decent intent, particularly because they’re relatively young, but honestly I really am fine with people implicating or thinking or assuming we are faking, because we are far past the whole “denial and doubt” aspect of this all.

Plus its pretty laughable since we really really really do not fit the demographic of people who are / would be faking - particularly since we have a relatively textbook path of diagnosis save for that we were slightly young.

None of this makes us more valid than others, but simply just how it makes it ridiculous and almost funny when someone claims something “isn’t possible in real DID” yet its something we definitely do

Were in therapy primarily for OCD and PTSD for like 2-2.5 years before that couldn’t progress more due to excessive dissociation

Saw a dissociative specialist after that because I got frustrated with the wall we hit and ended up getting diagnosed with DID

Have been in treatment for 4+ years with said specialist

Were diagnosed in 2018 prior to the whole COVID shitshow

Have only introjects from stories we wrote and then one (technically two because its the same character split into two) from a thing we relied on to cope in childhood (me lol)

Relatively small system / easy to buy system size (14-18~ known)

Literally working towards final fusion and I think it would be really weird for me to be faking a disorder and wanting to aim towards having all my parts harmoniously melded and working together to have a cohesive life, cause man if it was as easy as just stopping, man I would have done that a while ago

Like if there is anything I learned over my time of being online with DID / OSDD and having been in treatment, it is that the experiences of this weird disorder is extremely vast

-Riku (Host)

[plurals-helping-plurals]

I used to think I was a system of some sort, but I went into denial and it cut off my communication with the alters. I thought I was faking for a while, but after a bit of processing everything there's just other things that are hard for me to deny. I met the first alter in the psych ward when I was 12-13, she kept me safe in there. There's others but I feel nervous getting into more detail. I just dont know what to do? I see syscourse everywhere and it sends me into a denial and self hate spiral, so i'm starting to look into the endogenic community to try and find some closure. What can I do to really know?

Hello anon,  Most systems will find themselves torn between the divisions currently established in the Plural Community.  Here is the thing though:  These divisions are Recent. They come on the wings of the rising pressure within our social climate to Always Know What is Right and Never Be Wrong, Especially about ones own identity. Which, by the way is an impossible standard to set for anyone. Nobody is perfect, everyone goes through rotations of knowing and not knowing. Identity is so nebulous, especially when it comes to Plurality. Hardly anything is a Fixed Point that will Never Change.  It’s becoming quite suffocating out there, isn’t it? Everyone demands that everyone else both know and offer up that precious information. To us, we find this to be quite an interesting shift from the older days of the Plural Community when most of these terms did not exist. Don’t get us wrong, these terms are absolutely invaluable and hold a great deal of meaning to the community. The problem isn’t the words, it’s the way they’re used. The conditioned response that many have is a to try to push everyone (including themselves) into cramped but “palatable” boxes. This is not the way we should be treating one another, or ourselves.  We wish that there was more ability for Plurals to Just Be. Instead of practically forcing each other to categorize ourselves into boxes that were meant to be willfully chosen self-identifiers but have now become peer-pressured mandatory stamps that convey who’s clique you’re allowed in.  We find that placing a definition on something can be limiting, just as it can be also be liberating. Definitions are generalizations, language is fluid, research is ever-evolving. Experiences are unique. Do not allow yourself to be washed out. Your experience is yours.  On another note, we must remind you that Faking is something that is Consciously and Willfully Pre-meditated upon. It cannot be done by accident, and it cannot be done without the decision to do so. If you did not consciously and purposefully decide to pretend to have plural traits, then you are not faking it.  Generally speaking, the fear that you may be faking is, ironically, proof that you are genuinely experiencing something. The thought process that one is faking a disorder they actually experience may be tied to having been Gaslit in the past, an experience that I would argue a large portion of the Plural Community struggles with.  You are not alone. Call yourself whatever you please, you do not have to conform.  - Mod Contagion 

[pluralsys-confess]

none of us but the host have ever fronted. most we've achieved were very short periods of blurriness... makes us feel like a faker, even though that's clearly not the case, even though other systems with only one fronter do exist.

🌨

[systemdiscourseiguess]

i used to be on friendly terms with a system. they had a "super evil" alter (their words) that would pull a knife on us. and them and their partner said they could make that alter "go away for good" but it would "destroy" the system if they did and they would probably be catatonic if they couldn't handle it. that's BS right? i don't want to assume fake but i really felt like they were using DID as an excuse for their behavior. my own system has never experenced this but i know its not universal.

Um yeah absolutely that is BS. It is of course possible for there to be an alter who treats others badly but the system must always take responsibility for it and abuse is still abuse and there is never an excuse. 

As for making alters go away “for good” and all the rest, this is not at all how systems work. It is possible that they are a real system and did actually believe that this was how systems work or they could have been lying, it’s not for me to say. Either way they were a toxic person with some horrible views and you are wise to be suspicious and stay away from them. 

Also idk when I got this because tumblr didnt notify me, sorry if it had been a while.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

And maybe, just maybe, that person isn't faking it. Maybe their experience is just significantly different from yours. Maybe you just can't relate to them. And maybe that doesn't invalidate either of you. Maybe there is room for both of these experiences within the same category/label.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

"But what do I do if I think someone is faking?" You acknowledge that you are not their psychiatrist and that you do not even know them and you will mind your own business by virtue of not being in a position to either validate or invalidate their experiences and you will just not go there because it isn't your lane