DID becoming more popular

[MondayYogurt]

Possibly not the right place to post this but I just wondered if anyone else has noticed that DID www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/dissociative-disorders/ self-diagnosis is becoming more popular among teens (girls)?

It seems to be going the same way as other so-called social contagions - spread via popularity on tiktok, reddit, tumblr, twitter etc.

Re: the people who are just trying to get on with life (so true, & so touching to read)...

I remember someone discussing acting & saying that some actors play a drunk unconvincingly because they';re trying to appear drunk, whereas a drunk IRL is doing everything in his power to appear sober.

There is also an increase in the number of people claiming to have tiks/tourettes as well.

Anything to make themselves seem special, unique and standout from the crowd.

I don't think the people I'm talking about describing themselves as systems generally mean in the sense of the academic theory libertymole. They may have coopted terminology from it.

Totally anecdotally from a secondary school teacher’s experience, we definitely see ‘waves’ of students claiming membership of some troubled marginalised group or other. This is not to say that any of these issues don’t exist or that some students haven’t genuinely suffered, rather some teens can copycat behaviours and I’m convinced this comes from a slightly childish, narcissistic desire to be ‘interesting’. Waves have included eating disorders, depression, anxiety, a few years ago it was self-harm and more recently trans ideology. Haven’t heard of the DID thing in schools yet though.

Anything to make themselves seem special, unique and standout from the crowd.

Except it's not anything, ironically it's whatever the current in thing or passing bandwagon is. Just like being a Goth, Mod, Alternative, Emo or whatever – you assert your differentness by following a "differentness" trend that gives you a read-made community.

Well since it enables kids in school to say "I didn't do it miss, one of my alters did" or self-identifying into Tourettes can excuse what comes out of their mouths, you can expect this to be appearing in schools in the near future.

@Toughie please do post if it pops up.

My impression is that systems/multiples is to DID as trans or maybe nonbinary identity is to gender dysphoria. It started off as a last resort way of dealing with a difficult condition and has been coopted by a type of identity politics.

I think you've put it well. It probably got deleted when the conversation sidetracked. Which is understandable considering the huge amounts of real trauma this relates to. I have huge sympathy for genuine sufferers and that's partly why this appropriation of suffering is so worrying.

I would love to see some kind of serious comprehensive investigation with what is going on with young people and identity. Because I think there is something really seriously gone wrong.

@GNCQ
I read "Sybill" as a teenager and the details of her abuse are so upsetting I've never forgotten them.

I watched the Sally Field film in my early teens and the horror of it has never left me. Although I think her multiple personalities were later found out to be fictional?

@LibertyMole

As shown by people describing their experiences on this thread, the most common forms of dissociation are depersonalisation and derealisation. They are very common in DV and sexual violence survivors and as such are a feminist issue, not something to write off as attention seeking.

There are models of the mind that view the mind as plural and models that don’t.

Most people who view themselves as having multiple personalities, sub personalities, alters or parts do not have and are not claiming to have a dissociative identity disorder or mental illness symptoms.

In a dissociative identity disorder the different identities dissociate from each other; it is the dissociation that make it a mental illness.

That Twitter hashtag is a bunch of people claiming to have alters. They are not all saying they dissociate or are mentally ill.

Yes! Most people who have DID don’t know because that’s the point, It’s dissociated for protection! I see it a lot on online forums and tik tok glamourised where as someone who apparently has this disorder I can assure you it’s not fun! I’m mortified when I’ve lost time and other people have seen other parts of me. Why people would want to broadcast if for the world to see I’ll never know

The current crop of DID pretenders remind me of something my friends and I did after seeing Sybil on TV in the seventies. We made up a bunch of imaginary head friends and wouldn't answer each other if the other person used the wrong name, etc. That lasted about 2 weeks until it became too tiring for our 10 year old selves to maintain...and of course our parents refused to play along and we didn't push it with them. I suspect there is something in being validated online that prolongs this process, along with pressure for parents to cave to the ploy.

I've known a real DID person. She did not catalog her headmates on social media and if I ever saw her at a point where she was one of her alters or was switching, I certainly never knew. Real DID people, like other people with mental health issues, tend to get on with it and deal with life.

I am undiagnosed ASD. DS is Asperger's and I have been tested and told to get a formal diagnosis and yet I am hesitant. Part of it is the culture that I see emerging from it. My child was brought up without knowing his diagnosis until his teens. We both agree that not making a big deal of it was likely better in the long run in not forming a personality based on a single trait. I am pissed at the self-identifying activists who claim the 'born this way' as a 'get out of jail free' card to excuse bad behaviour and I feel I cannot access unbiased useful information on how to deal with my social and learning deficits especially at this late date. The funny thing is I probably need such support and spaces now as decades of masking in public have left me tired and worn and the old scripts don't work anymore.

@Toughie

Totally anecdotally from a secondary school teacher’s experience, we definitely see ‘waves’ of students claiming membership of some troubled marginalised group or other. This is not to say that any of these issues don’t exist or that some students haven’t genuinely suffered, rather some teens can copycat behaviours and I’m convinced this comes from a slightly childish, narcissistic desire to be ‘interesting’. Waves have included eating disorders, depression, anxiety, a few years ago it was self-harm and more recently trans ideology. Haven’t heard of the DID thing in schools yet though.

I agree, and the Internet makes it worse because one teen who wants to be anorexic/trans/depressed finds another, no, a whole group, of teens who want to be anorexic/trans/depressed much more easily than they would in real life and they co-ruminate and encourage each other.

I think this has got much worse during lockdown because teenagers are spending less time talking to their real life friends, who and more time talking to online friends. It can become a bit of a competition of who is the most anxious/depressed etc.

Sybil has indeed been debunked:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4268459

[quote justawoman]Sybil has indeed been debunked:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4268459[/quote]
The writing style portrayed in that article put me off, for a start. I won't be reading the book for that reason.

One thing I'd like to know, if it's all supposed to be fantasy/invented, is that in the film the therapist speaks to Sybil's childhood doctor, who confirms that he saw her internal injuries: was that made up? Because if it wasn't, then surely the story is true/more likely to be true.

I often think of a line from another MPD book & film, 'When Rabbit Howls'. Stanley (the name the patient gives to her therapist) is with a group of people who are suggesting any number of possible reasons for MPD & Stanley says something like, "People will look for any reason other than child abuse'.

@ifIwerenotanandroid

Asfaik, the I haven't read up on it as I don't want to go back down that rabbit hole, the abuse and probably some mental illness was true, but the multiple personalities weren't?

Ah, OK.Thanks.

Thinking back to other MPD books I read (a long time ago), how about 'The Three Faces of Eve' written by her therapists, I think, which portrayed her as being cured, & Chris Sizemore's book the name of which escapes me, in which she reveals that she is Eve & she isn't cured?

IIRC, she went to other therapists but was rejected by them on the grounds that she must've seen the film of Eve & was pretending that it was about her. Even bigger

www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/us/chris-costner-sizemore-the-real-patient-behind-the-three-faces-of-eve-dies-at-89.html

Book is 'Eve' or 'I'm Eve' by Chris Costner Sizemore

The treatment of Chris Sizemore by her therapist described there is utterly horrific.

Kim Noble is a British artist with DID.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Oh1L1aN8M&t=2s

“Tik-Tok Tourettes” is worrying enough trend (no pun intended) to have got a mention in the BMJ recently. There’s understandably cautious language used, and there’s a definite question about it being stress + suggestibility = a kind of communicable FND (for want of a better description) rather than sheer calculated fakery (though there would appear to be some of that, FND doesn’t guarantee motor tics wouldn’t be harmful & some people on The Curséd Clock App manage some quite remarkable feats without injury ).

Online!DID is a whole other kettle of murky grimness in which no fish could survive. DID is a controversial diagnosis (with no disrespect intended to any MNers with first hand experience) & the only things agreed upon are basically that it’s incredibly rare & comes from exceptionally severe early childhood trauma. But now you’ve got people contradicting all that & of course railing against the oppressive expectation you actually be diagnosed with something before you set up your stall as an expert on the matter &/or demand people accommodate related needs. Absolutely accessing diagnosis can be harder in the US, but a lot of the people who bang the “my self-diagnosis is valid” drum loudest are from privileged backgrounds & have access to the healthcare/insurance needed; or indeed are from countries with socialised medicine. As PPs have said there’s a lot of crossover with the idea of Otherkin; & people know everything about - & interact with - the cast of up to 100s of people (& animals, & fairies, & whatever else) they share their “headspace” with. Huge HUGE issues with people letting “littles” front publicly & interact with other people, too. An awful lot of the people claiming to be “systems” are trans &/or non-binary. Or claim at least one of their alters is. It’s possible that some, at least of them, have BPD/EUPD - it does occasionally get mentioned then hushed up. That can cause dissociation & also issues with how people form a sense of self - as well as feeling emotions to incredible extremes. Traditionally poorly received, too, so wanting a different label makes a kind of sense. But for a lot of them... write fanfic (oh yes, some of them have alters that are characters from fiction)/original fic! Do colouring in & buy soft toys if it makes you happy - just don’t claim it’s because you’re a five year old. (Or indeed I suppose there’s the whole DDLG thing if have consenting partner you trust & that’s what it’s about, but I really can’t think about that.)

Sometimes it seems as if Tumblr - the very worst of Tumblr - is seeping into the real world & not only polluting the water it’s making giant monsters that coming flailing out of the murky depths.

The way I think about it is that some people have a condition which they need coping strategies for and some people have problems and their coping strategy is to develop a condition.

‘An awful lot of the people claiming to be “systems” are trans &/or non-binary. Or claim at least one of their alters is.’

But they are not all claiming to have DID or any other mental illness. From the links provided on here to Twitter hashtags and Reddit, it’s a bunch of people who believe they have summoned Tulpas or have personality symptoms or sub personalities or schemas, none of which are really anything to do with DID.

Multiple personality stuff is popular at the moment. Jordan Peterson is popular and he promotes Jungian sub personalities. IFS is growing. Guardian Angels are a popular idea, as are tulpas.

I may be biased here because I use IFS myself. But the stuff linked to on here shows links to people talking about having plural personalities, sometimes in quite an irritating manner, but they are not all claiming to have DID, which is a serious and controversial diagnosis because of the level of dissociation.

I don’t see a rise in people claiming to have dissociative experiences. If anything dissociation is the opposite of online life where people seem to be engaging in some kind of hyper reality, not dissociating from it.

What is IFS?

Internal family systems.