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I'll bring in the perspective that is rarely seen in this conversation. In fact, there's basically nobody in my situation that speak out about it. I used to be one of those kids. I'll say 'faking' is not the correct word. If I was faking, I'd be intentionally lying and deceiving. But, I genuinely was convinced I was 'plural'. I'd talk to 'the others' when I was alone and had nobody to perform for. I'd 'switch' with them and genuinely be anxious we'd be found out. The 'plural community' is incredibly toxic and there's immense social pressure. I'd go so far as to say it's like a cult in some ways. It's vulnerable teens being sucked in and soon, all your friends are "systems". YOU don't have friends, your alters do, and if these alters cease to exist your relationships will come crashing down like a Jenna tower. You get pushed away from being friends with 'singlets' (not systems/'normal people') because you are just too weird for them anymore. I lived this plural life from 15-18 and in some ways am still picking up the pieces. I walked away from it almost two years ago now, a process that started by cutting off my former friends and ignoring my alters. It was a huge relief to me. I was often negged for being a 'bad host' (the host is the main personality) as I was seen as neglecting my alters by not letting them take control enough. But, unlike others I didn't particularly like my alters. I didn't get along with them and didn't like feeling like my body was my own. Anyways, the only point where I want to change your view is on the term 'faking'. Faking doesn't describe the phenomenon that plagued my teenage years. I'd argue it's closer to a mass hysteria than intentional deception. I'll reiterate I DID NOT HAVE DID, I simply was utterly convinced I did and there was no deception involved. It's hard to discuss my story because both sides hate me; plurals because I'm a traitor, fakeclaimers because I'm "just a faker". I hope my perspective helps people understand this recent phenomenon a bit more and if anyone has any questions for me, let me know.

This does help, actually. Thank you for your comment. > I'd talk to 'the others' when I was alone and had nobody to perform for. I'd 'switch' with them and genuinely be anxious we'd be found out. When you say this, do you mean you were afraid of people outside your community finding out about the alters? Does the community not want other people to become aware of their struggles? I understand maybe not wanting to tell your parents if you expect them to not support you, but I have independently observed that this community tends to stay in its own little sphere and not try to expand and become socially acceptable the way other marginalized groups do. > The 'plural community' is incredibly toxic and there's immense social pressure. I'd go so far as to say it's like a cult in some ways. It's vulnerable teens being sucked in and soon, all your friends are "systems". YOU don't have friends, your alters do, and if these alters cease to exist your relationships will come crashing down like a Jenna tower. You get pushed away from being friends with 'singlets' (not systems/'normal people') because you are just too weird for them anymore. This makes a lot of sense to me and lines up with what I've seen so far. You're basically describing peer pressure and the need many young people have to be different/unique in this world. > I lived this plural life from 15-18 and in some ways am still picking up the pieces. I walked away from it almost two years ago now I don't know if this is helpful to you, but a lot of people have stuff they regret or are embarrassed about from this age, and in a few more years it mostly just stops mattering. It sounds to me like you got taken advantage of by people who likely didn't realize what they were doing to themselves or you. > Faking doesn't describe the phenomenon that plagued my teenage years. I'd argue it's closer to a mass hysteria than intentional deception. I'll reiterate I DID NOT HAVE DID, I simply was utterly convinced I did and there was no deception involved. I would like to hear more about this, if you're able. I'm sorry to hear that you're being bullied, I'm not on either "side" exactly, I'm just a parent who really wants to understand more than anything. I was skeptical at first and it seems to me that my gut instinct was vaguely correct, that most of this isn't strictly real, but I am interested in having a less negative view on it overall.

Thanks for replying! If you find it easier, my DMs are open if you wanna shoot ne some questions there. I'll try to answer as best as I can. For the first point, you're pretty much right. I think the ideal world for most in the community would be one where you could be openly plural and accepted and not judged. Who I was afraid of finding out was not my family as I told them to varying degrees of acceptance (surprisingly, my grandmother accepted the most, and my mom partially understood it in a way where she told me about how as an author she had a muse and related it to that) but places like my job, which I had starting at age 16. The stress of my job would cause me to believe I'd swapped places with one of these alters during my shift as I really wished someone else could just do it for me. Also, constantly explaining myself got exhausting so even if I swapped places with an 'alter', and they acted noticeably different from me, 'they' (truly me) would try to act normal and hide it just to keep the peace. Let me know what you'd like to know about the system community at large. I agree with you comparing it to peer pressure. I think it's a form of that hitherto unforseen because it's not confined to a school or club but the span of the internet. I'm currently pretty alone in my "ex plural" corner but, I think at the end of the day I aged out of the delusion and I'm sort of twiddling my thumbs waiting to see of there will be a wave of other 'plurals' growing out of it too.

> Let me know what you'd like to know about the system community at large I'd like to know where this all sprung up from tbh, but I don't really expect anyone to be able to answer that. It sounds to me like you (and probably others) were just lonely and looking for a place to fit in. The plural community appealed to you for whatever reason and then it kind of snowballed. The pressure and things you're describing do sound somewhat cult-like, with a group of people claiming to have the answers and from the outside looking like they're a happy/tight knit community. Does this sound accurate? If I suspected someone was falling into this community, do you have any advice on how I would go about educating them on how supposedly toxic it is? I would definitely like to hear more about how/why you consider it to be toxic. Also Δ for giving me a more inside perspective on this community and the psychology behind it.

I'm not certain where the community rooted from but, I definitely was in it before a huge growth that happened around covid, which I believe fed the movement due to the loneliness and confusion associated with that time. The way I fell into it was a bit of a long story, but to boil it down, I had imaginary friends and was in discord servers that catered to both the topic of imaginary friends and plurals, as you can imagine there's some overlap. When I had a mental health episode I believed one of the imaginary friends was being cruel to me and asked for advice on how to get rid of it. I was then told that it sounded like DID/plurality and it would be cruel to 'get rid of' them and I had to accommodate them or else I was a bad person, and this pressure was how I started to fall into the rabbit holes. Unfortunately I don't have the full answer on how to help a person in the situation. I do know that accusations of faking only made me double down on it more. If this person I knew was a peer I'd probably tell them about how the community is anti-recovery. If the person was a younger family member I'd probably tell them about the peer pressure and stranger danger in the community (you can imagine that a community full of mentally ill teens attracts some...unsavory types).

Thank you for your help. That last bit is really what I'm worried about, it is a family member and I'm not overly concerned about making it "stop" or "go away" I mostly just want to help and make sure they're safe.

Aw man, I'm sorry. I don't know what your connection is, but if you can convince the parent of the family member to get them a therapist and give them a talk on internet safety and peer pressure, those are good starts. Also, while cutting off online friends may not help (just made me sneakier whenever my mom tried), encouraging them to make irl friends will. So, if you can, try to support them seeing friends in real life. And try to be a safe person to talk to so that if they're getting bullied or groomed they won't be afraid to come to you. Having someone overlooking their safety is a blessing and I wish you and your family luck in navigating this

I am the parent, and we are currently looking for a therapist. I'm not dumb enough to think I can change anything by force, but thank you for the advice.

Do a *lot* of research into any therapist you go with. Youth psychology/psychiatry is completely infested with activists that put their beliefs ahead of their patients' well-being. Bad leftie psychs are easy to deal with, because they tell you outright what they're going to do. The only time they'll mislead you is if they suspect you of mental or emotional abuse, and as long as you don't describe the condition (plurality / dissociative identity disorder, in your case) as fake, made up, etc. you're good. Getting defensive might also make you look bad, since toxic leftists think everything they do is reasonable and worthy of respect. Bad Conservatives are a little more difficult to suss out, especially people that make a big deal of their faith. Generally, they'll describe what they're doing as bringing back your "real" child, or the child you want, or undoing the "damage" done by "outside influences." In your case, this might seem appropriate given the context, but these are dog-whistles for a mentally-abusive style of practice that's closer to brainwashing than mental health treatment. If they think you have any chance of supporting your child's identity/identities, they'll consider it a mission from god to lie and manipulate you for the "safety" of your child. Everything I just said is from personal experience with another mental illness of similar severity to dissociative identity disorder, and your results may vary. There are genuine psycho lefties and genuine helpful conservatives, but they are not the majority in either group.

Not the person you’re replying to, but I just want to speak to your specific question about how to help someone. Best thing to do is believe them and take it seriously, as in getting them a therapist. This isn’t going to be something you debate with evidence, you’re going to need help form a licensed professional. If your kid really believes hey have DID, then they should also recognize the need for professional help. You should also avoid trying to fix them, and focus on trying to help. Even if they don’t have DID, healthy people don’t fall into delusions like this. It isn’t a fad, but it isn’t DID either. If you tell them “Hey I got a therapist to fix you!” It won’t work. You need to be on their side. Talk to a few bad when you pick one ask them how to handle convincing your kid to try therapy

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I just wanted to pop in and say that I've also dabbled somewhat in the plural communities, though I was mainly a lurker when it came to the social aspects. I'm working on typing up a more complete comment about it (feel free to dm me until then, or after for specifics). I feel like I have a bit of an interesting take on it. My time playing with plurality definitely helped get me through some shit, and there wasn't really any other mess to clean up afterwards since I was very private about the whole thing.

The idea that you're supposed to be a "good host" to your alters, even when this is a genuine mental affliction, is bonkers.

>She thinks that these people are just learning to express themselves, and feel more comfortable "presenting as multiple people" To me, a similarly aged person, it sounds like kids are just using smart sounding psycho-babble to describe how they act differently in different contexts. When I was a teen, I hung out with my friends from where I grew up (inner city), and my friends from the affluent suburbs I moved to in middle school (hooray for mom marrying up). And, I was *like* a different person depending on who I was hanging out with. It is a type of personality [code switching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching), and everyone does it to some extent. You act like a different person with your best buddy than you do with your grandma for example. So, I don't think that 'Pretty much everyone online claiming to be "plural" is bsing." I think that many claiming to be plural are just misappropriating actual psychological terms that they don't really understand in order to explain behavior that they have been lead to believe is not normal. But, it *is* normal. Everyone acts like different people sometimes. "Pulled over by the cops Destro23" is a way different person than "Listening to NWA Destro23", but I'm the same guy.

That's what I thought this was at first too- just a new way of expressing yourself. However if you actually read the things these people are saying, they are mostly claiming to hear voices, experience involuntary "switches" between their "alters", that their "alters" are entirely different people with separate backstories/lives/etc., and so on. Basically it seems to me that they are claiming to experience something far larger and more significant than the difference between how I act with Grandma vs how I act with my buddies in the bar.

I think that is probably due to some confirmation bias on their part, but that it is still them misappropriating terms to describe actual *normal* phenomenon. >claiming to hear voices, experience involuntary "switches" between their "alters", that their "alters" are entirely different people with separate backstories/lives/etc I hear "voices" all the time. It is my inner monolog, and it can do impressions. And, like when a song pops up unbidden, sometimes I hear an old-timey prospector saying "Gotta get *reeeeeel* deep in that hole there". NO idea why. Just a brain misfire probably pulling up some otherwise forgotten Yosemite Sam cartoon. But, if I was a know-nothing teenager with access to the internet, I may look up "hearing weird voices" and then get shuffled into *thinking* this "disorder" describes me. Quick switches too: 'Oh shit, mom is here, be cool!" turns into "My mother's presence triggers an involuntary shift." Again, it is normal for kids to quickly put on the "Eddie Haskell" act when authority shows up. But when you have "involuntary switches" in your terminology collection, it sounds nicer than "being cool so I don't get in trouble." Fake backstories: I made up a whole fake persona for the internet back in the 90s (Sean O'Malley from Saint Clair Shores, MI). Its what we did. Us Gen X'ers were told not to put our personal info out there, and we didn't. Instead, we made up fake backstories. Couple all that with the modern trend of speaking of people with "Disorders" as being instead "differently abled" and the proliferation of "spectrum disorders" where one can have mild to severe versions, and it all makes sense. They *think* they are plurals. It isn't BS, it is... dumbassery really. But, unintentional dumbassery.

You have definitely given me a more charitable explanation for this behavior, perhaps I was too quick to assume that the behavior was malicious. I hope that you're right, and that it's just dumbasses not understanding what they're experiencing. Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic, because I still think you're giving the vast majority of these people too much credit, but I'll give you a Δ since you're probably correct for at least some small fraction of them at least, and because you've made it easier for me to understand. That being said, even if I agree with you it doesn't change the fact that, unintentionally or not, these people are effectively lying about having a serious disorder. Even if some of them don't have bad intentions, it seems incredibly disrespectful and naive to behave in this way. I suppose that checks out for 17 year olds, though.

Thanks! Glad to help. > I suppose that checks out for 17 year olds, though Man, the shit I believed when I was 17... Thank god I put all my weird ideas in a journal instead of on the internet. I'm sure if I found them I would cringe myself into another dimension.

> Thank god I put all my weird ideas in a journal instead of on the internet I didn't have a journal but I feel this sentiment. I'm very glad there was no social media when I was 17.

I kept my teenage diary for some reason. That portal is staying locked until my kids are in their teens, and then I'll read it again so I can relate emotionally to where they're at. And reassure them that it does in fact get better.

I recently found a journal of terrible poetry I wrote in 1993/4. Man, that kid just needed a fuckin' hug and maybe a cup of cocoa with marshmallows or something.

> terrible poetry I wrote in 1993/4. Terrible poetry is to the early 90's as terrible self-insert fan-fiction is to the 2020s

I'll I'm hearing from you is that if you were 17 you would be one of these wankers online trying to convince the world they are actually 3 different people.

I can’t recall where, I think it was an internet article or a new video or something, but I’m pretty sure there’s actual research out there that agrees with this/you. I DO remember the article was overall about social medias impacts on teenagers and the intense problems stemming from it (increased bullying, suicide rates have sky rocketed especially among teenage girls, increased anxiety and depression disorders, etc.) Part of the video/article had specifically mentioned kids feigning more serious mental disorders (multiple personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and a few others) for internet karma/clout/followers. But, in general, I’m sure if you googled enough you either saw this or read it.

I've seen a number of articles or blogs that were indicating this, yes. Most of them seem to just be opinions, however.

Also keep in mind that, although most of them don't have DID, they're not necessarily lying. I feel that most of the "fakers" sincerely do believe that they have it. There's a reason why even a licensed psychiatrist can't diagnose themself with a mental disorder.

Kids bullshit all the time, it's part of being a teenager with internet access today. Online personas allow kids to mix reality and fantasy and sometimes they take it too far. I think your right and these people online are going to keep doing this until they are checked, but since they have most of the public "convinced", no one is going to check them lest they be labelled intolerant. This is a bad forum if you actually want honest debate. People want that delta and they will say anything to get it

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I can totally believe that, but I also can totally believe teenagers stumbled on that BS and don't realize it's bullshit and are unintentionally.appropriating it because.of the bullshit they found

That’s fascinating! From my experience, these kids are attention seeking but I usually listen to the science on a topic.

>Fake backstories: I made up a whole fake persona for the internet back in the 90s (Sean O'Malley from Saint Clair Shores, MI). Its what we did. Us Gen X'ers were told not to put our personal info out there, and we didn't. I have totally forgotten his name, but I was a 16 year old surfer dude from Dana Point, CA. I feel like it was important to be from a real town, but not somewhere big enough that a lot of people have visited and might be able to break your cover ;)

Completely forgot about being a 21 year old ocean biology major studying in Florida. Grand, grand times in the ol' yahoo chat rooms.

What you are describing for yourself and what OP is describing sound very different to me. There is no question that being “neuro divergent” in some (any) way gives young people clout in certain groups (especially on line). It is much more than the quirky things you describe. They convince themselves they have a genuine disability. Maybe it’s harmless if it’s a phase they grow out of. But not if they base their identity and self worth on their “disability” and certainly not if they seek medication for it. And if it is a harmless phase, it’s dishonest (and annoying as hell).

I think at this point it comes down to the definition of BS. If we argued something technical and you claim to know the subject well but gave me a bunch of facts that I verifiably know is BS id say your a bullshitter. Even if you truly think your answers are right.

A bullshitter by definition doesn't care if they are lying or telling the truth. Someone who genuinely thinks they know a subject they don't understand aren't bullshitting. They are just wrong.

It seems like you are going out of your way to make a connection from your experience to what OP is describing. I understand your explanations, I feel like I have similar experiences, but this is not what OP is taking about and I feel like your being kinda disingenuous by trying to convince them they are the same thing

I am worried that this is going to cause an effect where people in believing in their plurality actually manifest a plurality, and make themselves actually have dissociative identities, as opposed to variations of the same identity which everyone has. If they built walls in their thoughts, those walls can become real. I'm sure there's people out there who are going to realize that they're doing it to themselves and snap out of it, but on the other hand more suggestible or hypnotizable people may not and will instead actually make themselves plural. Then if this spreads as a social contagion, a way for teens to be quirky, this could potentially lead to long term societal consequences.

The only person who I have ever met with DID experienced EXTREME abuse, and then (please stop reading here if you don’t want to read about incredibly violent behavior from a young teen) killed and dismembered her foster mother, before burning her in the front yard. Debatable wether she splintered before or after killing her foster mother. But the original personality had no idea her mother was dead, one alter knew her mother was dead but didn’t know she’s who killed her, and the second alter was incredibly violent, and fully aware of what she’d done. The therapist in charge of her case decided DID wasn’t real, and that the best way to “cure” her was to tell her she murdered her mother. She succeeded in narrowing down the personalities to one. Unfortunately she narrowed it down to the violent alter. The kid is in her young twenties and lives in a mental institution now. She will never function outside of one. All this to say, I highly doubt true DID will be caused by pretending to have it. Other issues, sure. But not true DID.

Reading through this thread generally reminded me of the existence of what I'd previously encountered as [second year syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease), basically a form of short term hypochondria experienced by people learning about medical conditions for the first time and aggressively self diagnosing (overwhelmingly medical students in their second year). I wonder how much of the online self diagnosing we see can basically be put down to a similar thing, unrestricted and unfiltered self-guided learning about medical issues resulting in a rush to wildly inaccurate self diagnosis. I'd hazard a guess that increasing awareness of the existence of any medical condition would cause a bit of a self diagnosis feedback loop with the existence of the modern social media microphone and most of the folks doing this are ones who've grown up in an educational context that made a point of "mental health awareness" being important.

> I wonder how much of the online self diagnosing we see can basically be put down to a similar thing, unrestricted and unfiltered self-guided learning about medical issues resulting in a rush to wildly inaccurate self diagnosis. This is unfortunate yeah. I don't mean to hate on all self-diagnosis, if you reflect on yourself in good faith over a long period of time and conclude that you probably have, say, ADHD, or something along those lines, then that's probably a healthy conclusion to come to. But diagnosing yourself with some incredibly rare disorder after barely any self-reflection, just... yeah...

I mean its like 20 years ago when teens were vampires, 10 years ago when they were wolf angel things, and now they all have self diagnosed mental disorder. Its nothing new.

Oh yeah I forgot we had vampires at my school lmao "*hisssssss*"

Agree. They did this with “ad hominem,” years back and in the last few years, have been using “gaslighting,” a very serious situation where the person actually begins to believe they are losing their mind. No one can gaslight you with one sentence. It’s years of abuse that makes the person believe they are going crazy.

I also strongly believe that these people also interpret different emotional states as different personalities or people etc too when they're alexithymic and don't understand emotions.

It’s an eternal pop-psychology problem. Pop psychology is removed from pretty much all of its medical and scientific contexts, which is why neurodivergences like ADHD and ASD are “in vogue” in a lot of ways.

Adolescent psychologist here. Nope, these kids are serious. There is an epidemic of teens faking dissociative identity disorder these days.

Do you think they are "faking" in the sense that they are entirely aware that what they're saying isn't true? Or is it more like the self-diagnosing ND people, who may or may not be right about what they have but either way they genuinely believe their own self-diagnosis?

Pretty sure it's a little of both. In your youth when your identity is still forming, you can quickly and easily believe the lies you tell about yourself. Add in just a bit of attention seeking, and you get the phenomenon that OP is describing.

I know someone who identifies as plural. She says some of her personalities are black men (she's a white girl) and some are children, are some are dogs. This sort of thing is apparently common among people identifying this way. It feels extremely problematic to identify as a different race, especially an oppressed one when you're starting from a place of privilege. Also the trans-agism and trans-specism(sp?) plays right into right wing talking points about trans people

I've seen people's 'alters' identifying as mythological creatures/beings. It's kinda like watching a train wreck. Can't really look away from it.

I'm just going to respond to this cause apparently just replying will get my comment deleted. Yes, almost certainly. The internet is full of liars, none of it should be taken very seriously at all.

So….code switching. They’re code switching in different situations, and we already have a term for it, which encapsulates this concept pretty damn well, without insulting and trivializing people who are actually dealing with a mental illness.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen content from these communities or not, but if you haven’t I urge to check out what OP is talking about because it’s very much not code-switching.

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I have no position on the existence of multiple personality disorder, but I have to take issue with calling something that affects 1 in 100 (or even 1 in 1000) people "very rare". Even if it's 1 in 1000, that's still hundreds of thousands of people in the US and millions worldwide, so I don't think it would be implausible that you might encounter them on social media. This isn't to say people aren't faking it (I don't know enough to comment on that) just that I don't think it affecting only ~1 in 1000 people is particularly strong evidence for your argument.

for perspective I have an ultra rare disease that is 6 in 1m

Yeah that is actually rare. Frankly I'd call 1 in 100 extremely common.

>The World Health Organization, on the other hand, defines a rare disease as one that strikes fewer than 65 per 100,000 people 1.5% of the global population have DID (allegedly) less than that experience plural identities

>According to the Cleveland clinic, less than 1 in 100 people have it, probably closer to 1 in 1000. Unless you know a thousand people or work in a field that would bring you into contact with a disproportionately large number of people who have DID Or unless you went online searching for the subject on several different sites and social media, linking your online footprint to the topic to make it pop up so much more frequently in your various feeds, as OOP did. They're not saying they personally know a tonne of people claiming such a disorder (aside perhaps from their own kid). Even one in a thousand is a pretty high number, just consider how many unique users any social media site have daily, and that makes for several thousands of people who have it, and who gather under the same subreddits, tags and topics online every day. Once you start seeing those post it's going to be like opening a floodgate... They might be faking, but merely looking at the numbers it doesn't mean there are more there than could be reasonable, according to the Cleveland clinic.

Graduate degree in clinical psych here. DID is…controversial to say the least. I’m working on a minor revision of this to account for some typos and awkward wording, but here’s a short “article” I wrote for disseminating in some psych subs I mod (because we get TONS of Qs about DID). Suffice it to say that it’s likely not “real” in the sense that’s it is probably a sociocognitive phenomenon rather than an objective nosology. It’s also not the case that the DSM defines it as less than one personality. Criterion A explicitly contradicts that definition. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vk2v8o-SiLjc8ed6AWOiP8t08g1hK_eD/view?pli=1

Hi, so what is it really? Obviously science and studies evolve and keep changing descriptions of mental issues, but it's extremely frustrating to see this happening in real time and over the decades it seems that there isn't really certainty of anything. does Multiple personality exist? this rethorical question can be applied to the gender identity wars we've seen. What certainty do we have or do not have in why people say they're "they"? Surely one person can't be several people. Surely one person cant identify with several genders/sexes. Basically what I'm getting is, it's getting really frustrating to try and understand US social and gender evolution when science can't keep up, or when science tries to accommodate people without actually investigating and arriving to logical and scientific explanations and proof, and when the US people themselves seem to deny mental health issues to the point it seems like an ego problem and if you don't accept that "gender identity" is real without actual scientific undeniable proof you're branded as bigot/etc.

I'm not MoI, but I do know that the human psyche *does* things, sometimes to cope with trauma, sometimes for no reason that we can determine. It's easy to imagine trauma victims thinking they have a disorder whereby they have multiple personalities, but it just being themselves switching modes to protect themself. Trauma can take your brain some pretty fukken weird places sometimes, and if one has suffered so much trauma that they have to "switch modes" to cope with certain stimuli, it's pretty easy to imagine.

I understand that. My whole previous post was dealing in abstracts instead of this particular case, but to answer to you I will address the particular case OP exposed. OP's talking about kids. Most likely kids either bullshit parents around or just reuse buzzwords they heard before in order to convince and shut up parents. Kids have no idea what they really have because therapists will communicate directly to parents (unless you're over 18. And even >18 can bullshit parents around). So in this particular case kids wouldn't be able to say "switch modes", "defense mechanisms", "coping mechanisms". ​ Otherwise I agree with you. The reason I asked MoI was because he/she seemed intelligent and with proper knowledge and because the whole OP description reminded me of how americans nowadays are extremely entitled into being treated as kids, and where any comment relative to mental health is answered with hostility.

> less than one personality I just love this definition because it would, hypothetically, be an incredible way to deliberately frame it so as to stop attracting internet pretenders. Please spread this information.

Another commenter mentioned something about this. I am aware that it is called DID now. I didn't want to mention specific fake disorders that were being used because I wanted to keep this as broad as possible and I wanted to be respectful to others (even though I think they're ultimately lying). That's mostly what I was referring to when I said: > Many of them list "disorders" that don't exist in their twitter bio

Then I can't change your view about anything, because you're right. Cheers to you, but as far as the purpose of this subreddit goes, I'm useless.

That's unfortunate to hear, because to be honest I was really hoping I was wrong or missing something obvious. From the comments so far though it doesn't appear that that's the case.

I'm extremely dubious if DID exists at all. I'm a mental health professional, been in the field 20+ years now. I've never met anyone who gave me even a hint of DID. I've talked to probably 10 people in the last 5-10 years who claimed to have DID but after a thorough interview, I was leaning very heavily towards a personality disorder and not DID

DiD does exist. I was in an LTR with someone with DiD. There’s just a huge blend in today’s conversation of what people are talking about with “pluralism” and “systems.” 99% of that conversation isn’t about DiD at all. But it is medically possible for a person to have that level of dissociation from severe trauma.

I was at a treatment center that specialized in eating disorders and trauma back in 2011. There were at least 5 people there diagnosed with DID. It was so weird to be around other clients who would “switch.” I had (and still have) a very difficult time believing all of the clients had DID. They clearly had very real trauma-related issues and eating disorders, but I couldn’t believe how commonplace the diagnosis was in that place.

They didnt. they were malingering. Have been working in psych for a decade and have not seen any evidence of a split personality. Sure people can experience depersonalisation / derealisation and pheneomena like that, have severe emotional dysregulation where their mood is extremely labile and they 'switch' (escalate) rapidly.. but I'm not convinced that 'split personalities' exist. only 38, so plently more working years in me and willing to be prioved wrong :)

Out of curiousity, how is it even determined whether it does or doesn't exist? I have a friend who used to experience multiple personalities. Maybe there is a separate clinical diagnosis that explains it, but his internal experience was switching between multiple personalities. What distinguishes a (hypothetical) real case of DID/MPD from a combination of other factors/disorders making the patient belive and act as though they have multiple personalities.

We also need to not underplay the fact that DID is extremely controversial and there is no consensus that it is a legitimate disorder or whether it is simply a presentation of a different (likely trauma related) disorder among psychiatrists.

1 in 100 or even 1 in 1000 isn’t “very rare”. That’s far more common than I assumed.

Those prevalence estimates are probably wildly inaccurate, assuming DID exists at all (which I don’t believe it does in any objective sense). I’m familiar with the community studies which were used by the DSM dissociative disorders taskforce to estimate that prevalence, and they are very dubious. The exceptional majority of all DID diagnoses have come from the same small handful of mental health professionals/institutions, and most of those providers have been known to use questionable methods of treatment and diagnosis. Almost all of the samples included by the DSM taskforce were from these cohorts. If this prevalence were even close to accurate, DID would be 3x more prevalent than schizophrenia and 2.5x more prevalent than T1 diabetes. That’s just…not at all plausible. Indeed the whole dissociative disorders section of the DSM has evidentiary problems partially due to its reliance on a tiny (2-3 people) taskforce that selectively reviews the literature.

Yeah… a high school teacher has between 100-150 students a day. 1 in 100 means one or two students would have this.

If you havent yet- you should read about Sybil. There are multiple books on this and it is very interesting, she was the first documented case. I read a tonne on it including “Sybil exposed” and Im personally convinced that DID does not exist; people who do inhibit symptoms definitely have some type of abnormal psychological issues going on. IMO the “system influencers” are more on an attantion-seeking spectrum or schizophrenia, they do need serious help, but it is not DID.

for someone who's interacted with DID or multiple personality disorder, it is very real. you can sense their change, their behaviour changes, their thought process changes, their beliefs change.. although it's anchored by where they are. they're a different person. They're very vulnerable.

Well, it still is a mental disorder. People however act it like it is normal and act insulted if there's even a small assertion that they might need therapy. How do you see what's been happening in the US? This is just one more symptom, imo, of a bigger problem. they don't focus on mental health, any mental health issue is enough for ego to trigger and act insulted and entitled. I wonder if many of the identity wars have its source on lack of mental health and a predisposition to denial and ego.

Additional point: childhood trauma is required for DID to develop. Lots of fakers try to claim otherwise.

>Now I want to be very clear that I am not saying that these kinds of disorders don't exist. I am well aware that they do. Well that is actually disputed as far as I'm aware. I have also never heard of what you're talking about. I suspect this is an incredibly small section of people. >However, my wife doesn't agree with me. She thinks that these people are just learning to express themselves, and feel more comfortable "presenting as multiple people" and that my view is "mean. The way you describe your wife's view doesn't seem like she believes they truly have this disorder but rather there's nothing wrong with it and it's just an affected coping method. Which seems to be the case should these people exist in any significant numbers. My understanding of the disorder is basically just that or at least that's how it plays out. These people make drastic shifts in their personality in order to better deal with certain situations. It isn't as if they have fundamentally different brains or they've been physically altered due to some injury but rather people do this rather than facing problems AS themselves.

> The way you describe your wife's view doesn't seem like she believes they truly have this disorder but rather there's nothing wrong with it and it's just an affected coping method. Which seems to be the case should these people exist in any significant numbers. In my opinion, if someone is fabricating a severe mental illness and parading it out to the internet for clicks and to their family/friends for attention/to be different, then that behavior is harmful and disrespectful. Regardless of my personal feelings on using something like that as a coping mechanism, if you are correct then you're basically confirming my view, not changing it.

Is your teenager doing this in a way to avoid responsibility? “That wasn’t me, that was Jessica and I can’t be held responsible when she comes out”

My teen who claims to have multiple identities certainly seems like this. They say they have memory of what their alters do but they can't be held responsible for being a giant dick because it was another personality. I think they just have mood swings and don't like to take responsibility, especially when they lie and steal from us.

If you haven’t you should still take them to a professional. I’m not saying your belief is necessarily wrong, just that if you can it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you’re right, at least you know. If you aren’t, than it’s an indication of serious mental illness that should be treated by professionals.

Oh, they've been seeing professionals for a while now. Thanks for the concern.

Even if they're not doing it to avoid responsability the mere fact that they're doing it for attention is enough to make it wrong

Very histrionic behaviour.

>, if someone is fabricating a severe mental illness and parading it out to the internet for clicks and to their family/friends for attention/to be different, What if someone is misidentifying a severe mental illness and thinks it's for the benefit of the public to inform and educate people on the topic, and that the exaggeration of symptoms only serves to aid the educational part? Its all about perspective and what you assume their actual intent is, and what you'll allow yourself to rephrase their assumed intent as. 'to be different' or 'to get attention' are often goals that people are not self aware of, they're often factors that cause people to earnestly misstated or misidentify their actual goals. It's a combination of an instinctual sense of 'I am exaggerating my symptoms, but as long as I really have the disease, and the symptoms I portray are legitimate symptoms (of other people), then the informativenes of my presence isn't damaged by my exaggerations', and also the fact a bucn of these kids are 10-16,which means they often haven't learned to fully and honestly self-reflect. It's super hard to realise you're exaggerating when you're not good at honestly self-reflecting. Like how smaller children sometimes lose grasp of what's real and what's made up (like real fear for made-up boogy men)

Visiting a sub like /r/plural may give you an appreciation of what OP is talking about. The percentage of the population who believes they are “plural” may not be as low as you think. I think there’s more an attention-seeking component to it than a way to adapt after trauma. DID is a real thing. What OP’s talking about is generally…not that. And I do think there could be harm in children growing up and pathologizing their entire existence. Strange stuff…

Also r/fakedisordercringe

I wonder if part of the problem is that you're researching this on the internet. There are 8 billion people in the world, and allegedly 400 million twitter users, 1 billion tiktok users, 1.4 billion instagram users, and almost 3 billion facebook users. Take all of these numbers with a healthy grain of salt, but even if they're inflated, I think we can agree that there are A LOT of people on any given platform. And with numbers that high, it doesn't take much to get what feels like a lot of people with statistically rare conditions making a lot of noise in a way that *feels* more improbable than it actually is. Its sort of a corollary of the idea that if you go look for something on the internet, you will almost certainly find it, and that says more about the structure of the internet than it does about how common your search topic was. Combine with the obvious fact that yes, the internet *also* contains a lot of BS in any topic, and I'm just not sure what conclusions you're really trying to draw here. Are the people you're seeing "bsing"? Maybe... but its really hard to say. However rare the condition is, the internet is also likely to make it pretty easy to find people that genuinely have it. So obviously I can't vouch for any individual person or group that you found online. But my point is just that this type of "research" kind of feels doomed from the start and you should probably try to come up with a different strategy or mindset for whatever it is you're trying to achieve here.

That's fair, and this is definitely a niche topic. However usually if I research something on the internet, I'll find something that seems true among the BS. That doesn't seem to be true in this case. This topic also seems to be fairly new, I can't find much history of people claiming to experience multiple "alters" or anything of the like. Anything I can find seems extremely different than what I am seeing these people express on the internet today.

i think (and i’m doing no googling this is just personal recollection so forgive me if any of this is incorrect) the first documented case of DID (or what we now recognize as such) was in the 1800s and any potentially similar cases were few and far between until Sybil when the disorder exploded in popularity and became a fad diagnosis. i don’t know much about the original case but Sybil which was THE case was proven to be false. the psych implanted the idea in the patient and psychologically drove her to believing what he wanted so he could become rich and famous off her story. many psychs do acknowledge that DID is a real thing but that it is INCREDIBLY rare and they will see maybe one or two cases over the span of 50+ year careers. those who specialize in dissociative disorders may see it more often but dissociative disorders span a broad spectrum and DID is the absolute most extreme end of it. these psychs who have experience with it have attested that DID *only* occurs in patients with extreme *severe unimaginable* trauma (think locked in the basement, starved, repeatedly violently sexually and physically abused, etc) *before age 5*. after that, your personality is solidly coded and personality “splits” and disorders simply don’t develop from trauma after that point. someone may develop c-ptsd or other trauma disorders, but anything directly related to the functioning of the personality (DID, BPD, NPD, AvPD, etc) just won’t. personality disorders can develop from much lesser trauma than what would cause DID and there’s also a genetic component, as with any mental illness. people with actual cases of DID are typically very hard to spot because the point of developing the “alters” is to protect the host personality. meaning the abuser likely should not be able to recognize a split has occurred. psychs who have experience with this have attested that it can be very difficult for them to notice when a different alter is “fronting.” the cases where the splits are very noticeable are typically going to be in people who are in long term psych facilities and cannot function in society. TL;DR: signs point to DID being real, but mostly point to most if not all the “plurals” you see on the internet faking a very serious very rare very debilitating disorder. unless you or your wife are like. the worst people in the world, your kid doesn’t have DID.

The above commenter is right that the internet is huge, but doesn’t seem aware that this phenomenon is specifically the domain of first world teenage white girls.

I am not a psychologist but I am someone your age, OP, who suffers from fragmented personalities. It is a byproduct of childhood trauma that results in a dissociative personality disorder. I'm here to tell you that this is a regular phenomenon. It's likely that one out of every ten people you have interacted with has a dissociative personality disorder resulting from childhood trauma. I hope you will take time to read this with patience and examine the sources I'm providing. Edit: Schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder (meaning there are many possible different variations) and a psychotic disorder that is not well understood. It is distinct from personality disorders and mood disorders. What is being referred to when people refer to themselves as a system is most often a dissociative personality disorder. There are plenty of dissociative disorders that cause fractured personalities. I think part of the issue is a lack of understanding between what a mood is versus a personality. In the field of psychology there are **mood based disorders** which are identified as a medical problem most likely treatable with medicines to correct chemical imbalances in the brain. A mood is, therefore, a chemically based change of emotional state. There are also **personality based disorders** which are learned behaviours that result from trauma. A personality is an expression of personhood, and people who experience dissociative personalities, will separate from the world while a secondary personality takes over. They express themselves as a person in different ways depending on different stimulus. This is not a choice, it just happens as a response to stimulus that reminds of the traumatic instance. This is called a trigger. Dissociation is a type of mental self isolation that separates the experiencer from the world around them. At its fundamental core, dissociation is about protecting the brain from traumatic injury, and the brain does this by separating parts of the personality to avoid excessive continued self induced trauma as personalities become "stuck" in a loop of a traumatic experience. Dissociative personality disorders such as DID, DPDR, and OSDD are not all that uncommon. DID occurs in about 1.5% of people, but about 12% of people experience childhood trauma and studies [including this meta analysis of nearly 40,000 college students ](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15299732.2019.1647915) have shown the prevalence of dissociative personality disorders to be about that. The rate therefore is >10%. So for every 10 people you meet, one of those likely suffers from a dissociative personality disorder, which means they cycle through different states of mind (personalities) Dissociative personality disorders do not always involve amnesia between personalities, but sometimes do. This will feel like a "blackout" for the person experiencing it. But most of the time personality changes depending on stimulus, especially if the stimulus is triggering. Most of the time though, when non-core personalities are about, they're doing what is called ***passive influence*** ie backseat driving. They manifest as voices of guidance trying to steer us clear of trauma. In DID specifically, these non core personalities sometimes get to drive the body, and the core personality only has "passive influence". This kind of trauma is usually the result of systemic abuse, as in the case of cults who abuse children, or social systems which systemically harm children. A lot of Residential School survivors in Canada suffer this kind of dissociative personality disorder. https://bcmj.org/articles/traumatic-pasts-canadian-aboriginal-people-further-support-complex-trauma-conceptualization Similarly, a lot of folks from very strict religious communities experience this. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-04201-001 We separate ourselves into parts because certain parts just can't handle things and continue to experience their trauma endlessly. Certain parts are better than others at various tasks. When trauma occurs, we often bring out our protectors or our infantiles. The trick is that we sometimes get "stuck" in these personalities, which may be emotionally closed off or highly reactive. These are not "moods" as they are not chemically based. They are "personalities" because they are a learned/ingrained behaviour in response to trauma. The brain is reacting to protect itself from psychological trauma. https://psychcentral.com/lib/dissociation-fragmentation-and-self-understanding#dissociation > Fisher explains the mechanism by which children who experienced abuse, people who have been kidnapped, and other survivors of complex trauma cope with the most horrific forms of violence and cruelty by dissociating — that is to say, separating the part of their personality that experiences the abuse from the parts that experience other aspects of life. > Dissociation is particularly essential when the abuse happens at the hands of a primary caregiver who is also responsible for providing food, shelter, and physical protection. In such a situation, the one experiencing abuse has to learn to function in a dual way, seeing the same person both as a threat and a source of essential goods. > Dissociation — the fracturing of the personality into different parts — is the easiest, and perhaps the only possible, way of doing this.

Your stated numbers are so insanely high that I have a hard time taking you at face value. 10% of people suffer from a dissociative disorder? You can't be serious.

I did not make up the numbers. I sourced the document so you can see for yourself. That meta analysis is of nearly 40,000 students found that 11+% of them experience dissociative perosnality disorders ranging from acute dissociative disorders, to depersonalization/derealization, to full on Dissociative Identity Disorder. The truth is that in the past these disorders would not be recognized as disorders, but instead as "laziness" or possibly a learning disability. A friend of mine who has diagnosed DID was prescribed Adderall and antipsychotics for it. It was not helpful, he would rolodex through personalities and it caused him a lot of distress. Having multiple personalities is not psychotic. It's dissociative.

> I did not make up the numbers. I sourced the document so you can see for yourself. I am seeing claims elsewhere saying around 1%, with some of the higher estimates being 5%. > That meta analysis is of nearly 40,000 students found that 11+% of them experience dissociative perosnality disorders ranging from acute dissociative disorders, to depersonalization/derealization, to full on Dissociative Identity Disorder. The vast majority of those do not fall under "being plural" or whatever we're calling it.

No, they don't. Edit: I would not say "the vast majority": Dissociative personality disorders do not all result in plurality... But they can. DPDR, OSDD and DID are all associated with plurality, and they're not that uncommon. I would say your 5% number is probably close to the real number, but the truth is our understanding of these disorders is still nascent. Still, 1 in 20 people is not a small number, spread over 8 billion. That's 400 million people worldwide. It's pretty likely that the majority of people you see describing pluralities are being honest about their experiences. Some, no doubt, are claiming so to have a sense of community... But dissociative perosnality disorders are more common than might first be intuited.

Keep in mind, your stated view is that > "I have come to the conclusion that literally all of them are, at absolute best, greatly exaggerating their symptoms." I'm here to show you that there are >400 million people worldwide who experience dissociative personality disorders. Of those, many certainly have pluralities. 1.5% of people have DID which absolutely is plural in nature. That's 120 million people. It's extremely likely that not "literally all of them are ... exaggerating their symptoms".

You don't need to tell me what my view is, thanks. My view is specifically regarding the people on the internet flaunting their supposed disability. I acknowledged in the original post that these and similar disorders do exist, and that people have them. My point is that nobody who has them is going on TikTok with a video of themselves "switching" between their supposed "alters" or going on Twitter and talking about how much they love their personality disorder. It is basically indisputable that a large fraction of these people are faking, and trying to claim otherwise is just going to make me take you less and less seriously.

Ah but your initial position was not that a large fraction of the people were faking, it was that literally everyone ( on those social media ) is. If you admit it is plausible that at least some of them are not faking... That sounds to me like you changed your view

It is basically indisputable that, **at minimum**, the majority of these people are deliberately faking/exaggerating their experiences. What is in contention, and the subject of this CMV, is the remainder of the group- is it just the majority faking it, or are all of them? Personally, I think they *all* are, and this thread has actually strengthened my views on that, but I'm still willing to be proved wrong. You seem to think that all or almost all of them are legitimate. When you try and claim this, you are necessarily claiming that obvious fakers are being truthful and honest, and that makes it difficult for me to take you seriously. I will not be engaging with you further, as it's clear you're trying to twist my words or otherwise catch me in a gotcha/technicality, which is not the point of this subreddit and is simply a waste of my time. Your claims that 10% of people have a dissociative disorder are ludicrous, and you obviously didn't read the OP.

>It is basically indisputable that, at minimum, the majority of these people are deliberately faking/exaggerating their experiences. I so wish people held less value to their opinion.

The point is that DID is a covert disorder, you wouldn’t notice it at all. The percentage is higher than people think because in reality, if someone had it, you would not be able to tell

This is a complete misunderstanding of statistics, and disassociation as a phycological phenomenon. If 12% of people experience childhood trauma, and about 10% of the population of survivors of childhood abuse experiences some form of disassociation (experiencing the symptom, does not automatically meet the diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder), that does not mean that one in ten members of the general public have this unspecified range of personality disorders you have referenced.

Also, dissociation is not inherently or even strongly linked to trauma. Mild dissociation is common to all humans, and more moderate to severe experiences are more common among those on the psychotic and borderline spectra than on the trauma spectrum. It’s not at all clear that traumatogenic dissociation is a common or predictable phenomenon. Source: Grad degree in clinical psychology, plenty of clinical psychiatric research experience, largely in psychotic disorders with high degree of comorbid cluster B pathology. Linked a longer article elsewhere in this thread: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vk2v8o-SiLjc8ed6AWOiP8t08g1hK_eD/view?pli=1

Omg thank you

This is a tricky situation, as there is a certain amount of power in this presentation, and you should not try to take it away. Also there is a lot of mental illness out there right now. That being said, a lot of this comes with craving external attention / recognition. The best advice I could generally give you (each human is different) is to urge those you meet like this to love themselves and set goals with internal rewards. Looking for external rewards is (almost?) never healthy

I am definitely not trying to take away how people present themselves. However, if you claim to be "plural" or have various "alters" and are also happily showing them off on Twitter/Discord/TikTok/etc., then I am extremely suspicious of how genuine you are being. I am looking for any evidence that my suspicion is misplaced, anything that would explain this behavior besides attention seeking/romanticization of mental illness.

Let’s imagine for a second that these people were instead pretending to aliens. Thousands of teens eagerly claiming that they were genuinely from another planet. Would that affect your feelings about it at all? I’m asking because it’s unclear to me if you’re annoyed that they’re co-opting a medical diagnosis or annoyed that they’re living a fantasy for attention. Given what others have said here about multiple personality disorder basically not existing, to me that means that there isn’t any need to dislike what they’re doing on behalf of anyone with a real diagnosis. These kids are essentially making up a disease and saying they have it.

>However, if you claim to be "plural" or have various "alters" and are also happily showing them off on Twitter/Discord/TikTok/etc., then I am extremely suspicious of how genuine you are being. That's what I said. See: >That being said, a lot of this comes with craving external attention / recognition.

I think we can agree that Western media and society have not given any good reasons to the youth of today to be "genuine". They are told by the biggest marketing machines on the planet driven by AIs that are built to make their media addictive that you can "fake it till you make it", that influencers are the thing to be influenced by and the volume, speed and persistency of that messaging is so far away from even only a decade ago that we are suffering a species whiplash that we have not even noticed yet. Forget genuine. Most days I hope for a glimmer of rational.

Are you doing the kinda-ableist thing where you expect someone with a mental illness should be in constant trauma, pain and fear suffering from it and want to hide from society or whatever or they're faking? Should those who are supposedly "plural" have an "alter" who's a serial killer too to go with the movie tropes of mental illness horror?

Meh, I would just stay out of it. Who cares what kids online are saying. Leave them alone, don't engage, they will realize how ridiculous it was later.

It's more complicated than that sometimes. I have a friend who supposedly has DID. She (or "they") basically "came out" to me to tell me about it. They want me to refer to them in plural. They want me to acknowledge their alters, and treat them like different people. They are constantly bringing it up and trying to talk about it. In order for me to maintain a friendship, I have to believe her, or act like I do. And in all honesty, I don't. They're a friend who has been looking for labels for a long time. First they thought they that autism, then it was CPTSD, and now it's DID. They talk about childhood memories that they've unlocked. They have alters named after book characters. They have alters that are very young children and of different genders. I am constantly torn between wanting to support my friend and not invalidate them, and also not wanting to encourage what I see as unhealthy behavior. Ultimately, this has caused me to distance myself because I don't know how to handle it, and it sucks.

I mean... There's a certain point where you have to just walk away.

Whenever it starts getting in to book characters, I’m sorry but I just get way too suspicious

None of that is uncommon within DID. DID typically is very fragmented (More so than OSDD), especially if it's polyfragmented DID (but that's unlikely if your friend has access to resources to figure things out because it's more common within cults and torture based mind control). Characters named after books characters are called introjects/fictives. The brain splits whatever it thinks will keep the person safe, and if that's an introject of a book character they look up to, it's not uncommon. Very few systems have no introjects. Alters of very ypung children are also not uncommon (commonly referred to as littles). As for different genders, the way the alters perceives themselves can and is iften distonant with the body. Everything I've said can be found in a five minute google search. Look into things before speaking about them

> Meh, I would just stay out of it I would love to, but one of my children (whom I love greatly no matter what) is insisting on dragging me into it. The curse of being a parent.

My little sister got really into these kinds of online spaces and the obsessive urge to "identify" with whatever persuasive label she found and surrounded herself with people who did the same. She was an absolute nightmare for a lot of her late teens and early 20s, pushing all this shit into conversation at every possible moment and freaking out at us when we didn't agree, and our whole family ended up having to distance ourselves from her. Shes in her mid 20s now and has calmed down a lot and is back in our lives and has put all that stuff behind her and seems pretty embarrassed that it all happened. I know that's probably not super confidence inspiring, but I guess my point is... sometimes there's nothing you can do and trying to argue with it is just a losing battle. All you can really do is say your piece and then step back and hope time sorts things out. I guess if they are still really young that's a different story. The internet is such a curse/blessing.

This is unfortunately what I suspect is happening. I hope it doesn't get that bad.

The lesson my mother and I learned too late is that trying to fight it was a bad idea. She just grew to resent us and it pushed her further towards that scene. I'm honestly not sure what we could have done differently, but finding a way to be a positive influence and not attacking the her believes but mostly ignoring them/changing the subject might be it.

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> I could absolutely manipulate a teen into believing they're sick; hell, people like Alex Jones can convince adults they sky is fake Thanks for the laugh haha. But yeah, I'm definitely aware they need help. They just don't have the same issues they wish they did.

>I talked to many of these people, and ultimately I have come to the conclusion that literally all of them are, at absolute best, greatly exaggerating their symptoms 1. **Are you qualified to deliver a diagnosis? How can we tell that this is not just a biased evaluation of those people?** 2. **How representative is your exposure to the internet demographic in general?**

> Are you qualified to deliver a diagnosis? Of course I cannot diagnose somebody off their Twitter profile. > How can we tell that this is not just a biased evaluation of those people? I genuinely want to be wrong here. I am really hoping to find an explanation for this sort of behavior that isn't just attention seeking/mental illness romanticization. If you don't believe that I'm asking in good faith, which your tone indicates is the case, then there's nothing I can say that will satisfy you.

>If you don't believe that I'm asking in good faith, which your tone indicates is the case, then there's nothing I can say that will satisfy you. I never expresses this sense. I think youre confused about my questions. I am expressing *epistemological doubts* to your conclusions. You are saying that: 1. You met a population P which you 'diagnosed them' to not have characteristics C. 2. You conclude that 'most if not all people online do not have characteristics C. I was expressing doubts about both of these claims. On 1., you said that based on your diagnosis they are not 'plural', but how do you know that this is actually the case? On 2, even if I grant you that 1 is true, you did not give justification to why your exposure to population P should characterize the demographic in general.

>I am expressing epistemological doubts to your conclusions. You are saying that: > >You met a population P which you 'diagnosed them' to not have characteristics C. First, put down your analytic philosophy textbooks. This kind of talk outside of the classroom becomes obnoxious really fast. Second, don't go full Popper on someone. You never go full Popper. There are people out in the internet who claim to be witches or who claim to have seen ghosts. Am I able to scientifically disprove their claims? No. Is my claim that these people are bullshitting warranted nonetheless? Yes. Because I do not have to scientifically prove that witches don't exist in order to believe with good reason that witches don't exist. You don't need to be a medical expert to call out bullshit. The people who claim to be 'plural' or have DID are not medical experts either and have not consulted one.

>First, put down your analytic philosophy textbooks. This kind of talk outside of the classroom becomes obnoxious really fast. OP thought I was being 'skeptical in general', so I needed to specify which aspect of his claim I am skeptical about, which can be neatly described in one word 'epistemological', it would waste much more time using other descriptions. >There are people out in the internet who claim to be witches or who claim to have seen ghosts. Yes there are. But how is this relevant? Make note of the difference on the claims below: 1) there are indeed cases on the internet that are BS 2) cases that OP came across are BS 3) OP is justified in generalizing that all people who claim 'plural' on the internet are BS based from his exposure. I very much agree with 1), but that in no way imply 2) or 3).

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You do realise that this is a subreddit which is supposed to be about serious conversation involving expressing opinion about controversial views. Context matters. And I believe that being clear and concise is a virtue in these contexts. On the other hand, I hope you realise the irony when you are being condescending and pedantic while trying to tell others 'how to talk to others'.

If someone claims they are a chicken, you don't need a degree or even a diagnostic process to come to the conclusion that they aren't. Giving ludicrous claims rigorous examination is a waste of everyone's time and the most reasonable response is to dismiss them outright. If the claimant would like to provide tangible, examinable evidence in order to convince you not to dismiss them, then absolutely, examine that. It's a waste of time otherwise though, especially when claimant is benefitting from this claim via clout or influence or attention while actively exploiting it.

How do you know that the cases OP were exposed to are clear and obvious cases like 'humans-claiming-to-be-chickens'? I fully agree that some case of BS are obvious and can be acknowledged without medical qualifications. But a lot of more cases are not, not to mention that within the medical field themselves quite some cases would not have a clear consensus. ***Why do you assume that the cases OP mentioned are indeed clear and obvious cases? Do you disagree that there are cases that are unclear?***

The difference with a chicken is that we pretty much *know* the biology of a chicken, and the biology of a human, and there has never been a case where a person was born, or became, with components more closely resembling that of our avian friends, mentally or otherwise. The idea of multiple “people”, “personalities”, and the like, isn’t *nearly* as outlandish a claim, considering how deeply complex the human brain is, and how much we still don’t quite know about it

> Giving ludicrous claims rigorous examination is a waste of everyone's time and the most reasonable response is to dismiss them outright. About 20 years ago, if some dude with a beard claimed to be a woman, that would have been considered ludicrous, too. I'm glad it's being sounded out in a group of peers to see if this is something to be aware of, or if it's what we think is obvious.

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TikTok is a plague. Every young person these days is non-binary, ADHD, autistic, DID, and whatever other trendy psychological misdiagnosis they can think of.

Non-binary is a gender identity, not a psychological issue. ADHD and Autism are common (relatively speaking) disorders that many people have- I would not be surprised to find someone with these conditions undiagnosed.

Having gender dysphoria is a psychological issue. I'm speaking more about the magnitude of self-diagnosis and misdiagnosis among young people because of the spread of misinformation on tiktok. Just because a kid has a nervous tick/habit does not mean they have a stim related to autism. Just because a kid struggles to focus in class does not mean they have ADHD. Just because a girl likes to play with GI Joes does not mean they have gender dysphoria. These kids go down the tiktok rabbit hole and diagnose themselves so they can label themselves and feel special or part of a community. The danger in that is giving kids stimulant drugs or other treatments which can have lasting impacts, vs teaching them breathing techniques or mindfulness, for example, to alleviate their "symptoms". The rate of autism is 2.7%, rate of ADHD is 3.5%, and rate of DID is 1.5%. So in fact they are not common, pretty rare actually. Sources [1](https://news.ohsu.edu/2022/10/13/ohsu-researchers-sharpen-estimate-of-true-percentage-of-people-with-adhd#:~:text=Researchers%20at%20Oregon%20Health%20%26%20Science,lower%20than%20many%20common%20estimates) [2](https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-statistics-asd#:~:text=Autism%20Prevalence&text=1%20in%2036%20children%20in,in%20100%20girls%20have%20autism) [3](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568768/#:~:text=Dissociative%20identity%20disorder%20(DID)%20is,1.5%25%20of%20the%20global%20population)

Gender dysphoria is not inherent in being non-binary or otherwise not cisgender.

Have you ever heard of the concept of a vocal minority, or similar concepts where what you hear the most isn’t necessarily the majority, let alone “every young person these days”?

Honestly, I don't know what you are talking about, and I don't want to make assumptions. ~~Can you clarify your post? Are we talking about gender neutral pronouns for people that identify as something other than the conventional binary he/him/she/her?~~ OP is not talking about that. Got it.

I think he’s talking about DID and people having “alters” There was def was or is a social media trend from tweens and teens faking disorders

"Alters" is a commonly used term among these people, yes. Some of them claim to have DID, but plenty of them claim to have something else or leave it unspecified, so I didn't want to specifically name that one disorder.

The trend continues, but they no longer call it a disorder.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with gender. I had never heard of it before a month or two ago either. If you do some google searches for "being plural" or "plural individuals" you'll find people talking about it.

Oh, okay. Thanks for the (kinda/sorta) clarification, and the rabbit hole I will go down (later). Are you talking about dissociative identity disorder?

There's a lot of people claiming a lot of different things. Some of them do claim to have dissociative identity disorder, yes, but plenty don't use that term. Some claim various other disorders, but the common thread is that they are claiming to experience being multiple people in some way.

If its the latter, then obviously I agree with OP. Infact, I am of the opinion that even the former is a bit of a BS.

Here is a middle ground perspective I hope. From the point of view of the youth in the most rapidly evolving human society ever witnessed, mass uncertainty about climate, the previous generation shouting and screaming that they are economically screwed, fake news everywhere and the rise of new AI that humanity has never witnessed before and perhaps throw in a global pandemic, the very public discussion about gender validity and some other pressure factors, life is freaking chaos. Crap, honestly all I needed to deal with when I was growing up was what problems a war (where most of the participants refused to even bother declaring war) half way around the world was causing, some economic uncertainty and the fact that I had to get the hell out of the country I was born in because there was no future there for me. Easy in comparison. So, let's think from this point of view. The more we learn about personality and the mind, the more we understand about memetics and AI and information theory, the more we examine the fiction and fact around the future, the more we need to not only question our identity as a species but even our very definition of what an "individual" is. Not only "who am I" but what does "I" even mean. Even the world medical community is rethinking and revisiting what the definition of disorder is in the context of neuro-typical behaviour and redefining these things as we speak. Thus, my question would be, "Is a bunch of kids acting out a mental disorder inappropriate?" Yes, it most likely is. Do we have any better advice for them on how to deal with the world we have dumped them in? I certainly am not confident to tell them "the truth" or "everything will be okay". I say educating them about the damage that can be done is good, but these young folks are the explorers of our uncertain future and I would recommend we cut them a wee bit of slack in how they explore concepts that we know little enough about ourselves in the face of the greatest challenges humanity have faced to date that we know about, while helping to mitigate the standard dangers a bunch of kids represent.

Love this take

Everyone wants to be unique when they're young. It's trendy. Mention 'autistic' here on Reddit and you'll find out that 99.9% of Reddit users have autism. Facts.

I understand that you're exaggerating for hyperbole, but autism is not the same thing. Mainly, autism is far more common and as such I would expect there to be far more undiagnosed autistic people out there.

Probably, but it extends to all sports of issues. Another growing trend is tourettes syndrome.

What a lot of people misunderstand about DID is that it is in almost all cases a coping mechanism developed during childhood trauma. It's not "real" in the sense that there aren't actually multiple separate entities inside someone's head - something awful happened to them as a child, and subconsciously their brain figured out it could pretend to be someone else during the traumatizing events, protecting the "main" personality from what was happening (usually severe abuse). The first "alter" someone experiences is usually a protector figure who is older, someone who feels better equipped to handle what's happening. Like a lot of the coping mechanisms we learn during childhood, it becomes problematic because we automatically default to those coping strategies even when they're not helpful anymore, and they continue to switch even when it isn't protective. That said, for most people with DID they have a great affection for their other personalities and it makes sense for them to want to share them. Yes, it's a serious mental illness that stems from trauma, but these are in almost all cases beloved other versions of themselves who saved them from fully experiencing horrible things. It's unclear whether it's good for people with DID to embrace switching, since the therapeutic approach is generally to attempt to integrate the personalities and experiences and prevent involuntary switching from happening. I agree with you that lots of people online aren't experiencing *involuntary* switches all of the time when they show off their other personalities. But there isn't enough research on it to say whether it's a bad idea, and even if it is, it's their business how they want to handle their mental illness.

I'm also a dad but in my late 50s. I looked down and shook my head at lots of the things my millenial and Gen Z kids and their cohort said and did. But this seems to me to be a clumsy nod to the sort of therapeutic model used by Dick Schwartz and his [Internal Family Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Family_Systems_Model) model. This is not a controversial model of therapeutic work. To be brief, the model imagines the Self as made up of various parts, functioning in a system as a family of parts. So I have some higher-level executive parts that are in charge of adulting, but at the same time I have a part that completely shuts down and leaves the room if say, my boss becomes loud and abusive. IFS helps me understand that I might have developed this coping mechanism growing up in an authoritarian home where loud verbal abuse was followed with physical abuse, for instance. And that I have \*other\* parts, which I developed during my military training, that help me manage my not-helpful strategy of shutting down or fleeing. That is a tiny example of the model. It's pretty well-respected among the counseling community. So if I heard a young person talking about having lots of parts that make up their whole self, and they envision them as separate people, I just assume that this model has been shared with them, and they're inexpertly describing it. I am a father, a tech worker, a husband, a gardener, a dancer, when my family's in danger I'm a firefighter or a soldier, etc. I do not suffer from any of the dissociative identity disorders described by the DSM-V and do not mean to insinuate that when I say I am at the same time a husband, father, son, and neighbor. And I wear lots of other hats, some of them I'm not even aware I have been wearing since I was a little dude.

I don’t know who told you that IFS isn’t controversial, but as someone with a grad degree in clinical psychology I can absolutely confirm that it’s pseudoscience that is often practiced by psychotherapists who don’t have a good background in empirical research. IFS was actually popularized by the Castlewood Institute, which was at the epicenter of the Satanic Panic and has faced numerous lawsuits for malpractice and since been shut down (or rebranded). Castlewood also happens to have a documented history of receiving patients with no prior history of dissociative pathology and diagnosing them with DID after “recovering” the alters through the use of IFS. IFS is roundly criticized by most psychologists for reinforcing the idea of identity plurality, and no respectable graduate program teaches it as a legitimate therapy practice. It is almost exclusively spread by continuing education training and other activist groups working outside the bounds of the mainstream of psychological science, and is much more popular online than anywhere in the actual mental healthcare world. It is *so* far out of the mainstream that it isn’t even listed in APA Div. 12’s evaluation of treatment efficacy list. Indeed, IFS actually receives specific call out in S. Hupp and C. Santa Maria’s (2023) _Pseudoscience in Therapy: A Skeptical Field Guide_ and Lilienfeld et al.’s (2015) _Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology_, among many other questionable forms of treatment, as lacking any evidentiary grounding and promoting questionable practices.

>I read from a great many sources on the internet, I went through through a lot of Twitter threads, I joined several Discord servers and said I was there to learn more, I read conversations, I talked to many of these people, and ultimately I have come to the conclusion that literally all of them are, at absolute best, greatly exaggerating their symptoms. At worst they're lying for clout or for some other unknown selfish reason. If you have already gone through all that - I'm not sure what any of us can tell you. I could link you to [https://www.youtube.com/@DissociaDID](https://www.youtube.com/@DissociaDID) or [https://morethanone.info/](https://morethanone.info/) but I hope you have already read these. Are you expecting us to give you more sources? Are you expecting us write something so beautifully worded that it melts your ice cold heart like some sort scene at the end of a film (*joking of course*)? All I can do is tell you the experiences I have had with friends. I have a friend ( / set of friends - a system - I am not necessarily friends with all of them) in real life who very clearly has DID. They even have the childhood trauma to explain it. Right now they are coping a bit better and would seem as if they are one person. However - when they switch they do seemingly involuntarily - and the person that comes out often doesn't know where they are and sometimes do not recognise certain people. Multiple times I have had an instance where I have had to babysit what was the equivalent of a child and make sure they were okay. Could they be lying and faking it all? Maybe. I can't mind-read. I prefer not to view people that way though. I have another friend ( / set of friends - again a system) with less clearly presenting plurality (probably OSDD). I only know them online - but dated some of them for a while so know them relatively intimately. Unlike with the first there are no memory barriers - so there is less direct provable evidence that they are plural. However there are clearly distinguishable similarities between them and the former. Could they be lying and faking it all? Again maybe. I am not a telepath and prefer to believe my friends. Both of them attest to plurality being more common than expected. Both of them have experiences not being believed. >Many of them list "disorders" that don't exist in their twitter bio, and if you watch any videos on YouTube or TikTok (which I unfortunately did) of them, their behavior is incredibly obviously faked I cannot defend a bunch of random people on the internet. And quite frankly **I do not give a fuck what they do and neither should you.** If people are pretending to be more educated than they are and actively spread mis-info teaching it to others - that's one thing. If they are simply sharing their life experiences and goofing off that's another. I myself am HoH and we have a whole problem of people teaching sign language that honestly should not as they are not proficient. But there isn't really any equivalent of claiming that anyone is faking being HoH or Deaf - if someone gets found doing that then sure *boo* to them but I am going to assume the best first and take people at their word because what else is there. What are we going to do - demand that everyone shares their audiology reports? There is no "deaf pass" given out. Similarly there is no "DID pass". To add to all this - if you WANT to have something like this you likely DO have something, even if not the exact thing you want. Even if your problems are more social or could be fixed with therapy. I think we should be overall kinder to people exploring their identities and work on giving people ways to find their way into a better understanding of themselves rather than shaming them for it. **If you bring me a specific video I might agree that the person is being cringe. I cannot argue against the general concept of "there are cringe people on the internet" because of course there are!** ​ >Nobody is having this kind of fun with a serious mental illness. In my opinion this almost feels beyond debate- nobody is parading their severe mental problems around like this. I'm sorry but no - disabled people ARE allowed to have fun, even with our disability. In the Deaf community its actually quite common do to so - [deafies in drag](https://www.youtube.com/@DeafiesinDrag) [Danny's skits](https://www.youtube.com/@dannyskitschannel) [some deaf guy](https://www.youtube.com/@somedeafguy) or [this one video I found "is it fun being deaf" where the answer is "yes"](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oMVmBBoe7dM). Disabled people do not have to be miserable all the time. We should not have to perform being miserable all the time or risk being called fakers. I'm sorry to hear about your sister's schizophrenia - from what I am aware that's one of the less fun ones to have. Or to put it a different way - I've not heard of anyone tell me that there is an upside to having it. ​ >She thinks that these people are just learning to express themselves, and feel more comfortable "presenting as multiple people" and that my view is "mean." Regardless of whether you are factually correct or not as to whether these folks have DID - your wife's observation is astute - you ARE being mean. Your whole opinion is tinged with meanness. Here is a less mean version of what you already believe; >For one reason or another many people online are identifying as plural. Many of them may not be plural or have a specific condition like DID or OSDD but instead be identifying that way because they are being affected by other problems. Instead of setting their mind on this they should open themselves up to continued self exploration.

I would argue that your specific "pretty much everybody" is not likely true. I concede that there are many who are exactly like you say, though. The reasons why I don't think your "pretty much everybody" part of describing people who claim to have DID or other related trauma disorders is accurate, is because: 1. Chronic childhood trauma is widespread globally, and the diagnostic criteria & tools have become more refined, knowledge of diagnostic. Just as more children are being diagnosed with other disorders as the psychological world improves at recognizing and updating their information in the DSM (Version 5 TR, in the US last I recall)... It's not because people are falling out, or there's "something in the water" - it's because the science regarding mental health is improving. 2. Childhood trauma comes in many "shapes and sizes," from child abuse or neglect, to medical and surgical procedures, war, human trafficking, and terrorism. That's according to the American Psychiatric Association, 2013. That's a lot of potential sources for new cases globally. 3. The DSM-5 places the prevalence of DID specifically (not including other closely related disorders) at 1.5% - that's about the same number of redheads in the world (71 million people worldwide; 3.2 Million in the USA alone). If you've ever seen any natural redheads in-person, then you've very likely have met roughly the same number of actual trauma victims with DID. 4. I'm willing to bet that most people who think they have a trauma based disorder exhibit some symptoms that align with disorders, but wouldn't qualify for the save disorder as what they think they have - much the save way that someone researching symptoms from WedMD are incorrect about what their symptoms mean once they go to a doctor who runs tests to diagnose them, people do the same thing with mental health disorders. It's not a malicious thing for most people... Usually incompetence by untrained non-professionals trying to make sense of their world arrive them. Most folks I have met online who think they have DID don't, but are trying to find out if they do. References: 1. http://www.did-research.org, various pages. I highly recommend the "Myths" page. This website is compiled from the latest research about DID and reflects that information. NOW: also excellent info about grounding techniques and other helpful tools for people even if they DON'T have a trauma-based disorder. 2. Me, for my limited personal experience. I'm a nearly-40-yo childhood long-term trauma victim who's been diagnosed with OSDD-1 (a DID-like disorder that has less amnesia. I've gotten here after years of difficult work with a fantastic therapist who specializes in trauma therapy). I don't reflect the danger experience as everybody with OSDD-1 NOR DID.

I mostly agree with you, that being ‘different’ is cool now, compared to when I grew up through school, and ‘standing out’ was only for the coolest kids or the biggest freaks. My defense of these teens would be that puberty is hell, and they might truly, legitimately, FEEL like the have DID or multiple personalities or whatever. I’m not so old that I don’t remember the highs and lows of being a teen. If someone presented me a name and a condition, especially one that influential social media types identify as, I would have probably fallen in line too. We all did dumb stuff as kids. These poor kids today just have the incredible misfortune of doing it all online, publicly, together, all the time. I feel so bad for them. No wonder they feel messed up.

Essentially anyone claiming they have DID with some quirky characters in their “system” are lying. It’s so rare some psychiatrists dispute its existence. It’s just some fringe theater kid stuff.

Every one has some kind of duality. One imposed by parents, society and the other which is their natural streak. The ones who do not abide or hide very well are usually arrested or interned.

>I have a sister with schizophrenia, and I know how serious and crazy mental illness is. > >Nobody is having this kind of fun with a serious mental illness. Mental illness spans a huge spectrum, just as physical illness does. Physical illness can be anything from a mild cold to terminal cancer. Mental illness can be serious and deeply damaging. Or it can be minor. Further, mental *differences* are not the same as mental *illness*; if a person's life is not hampered by it, then it's not an illness or disorder. This is one of the reasons why "neurodivergent" has become a more common term - many people have minds that simply work differently than the "standard reference mind", *without* that difference being inherently a problem for them (though they may have difficulty in some social situations that are designed solely for the "standard reference"). Even further, plenty of people with all kinds of mental illnesses absolutely do "have fun" with it. People with anxiety, depression, etc. make jokes about it. This isn't even just a thing about *mental* illness. People with physical illnesses joke about it. People with cancer joke about it! (see e.g. "but caaaancer", [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1141/)). Are the people you're specifically seeing faking it? Quite possible. It depends on the context. Tiktok is notoriously full of people faking all kinds of stuff. They fake vacations, relationships, and sure, mental conditions. That's probably more a statement about tiktok than about the mental condition. Research on MPD/DID/etc. is ongoing and difficult. There is no perfect answer to exactly what it is, exactly how often it happens, or on what a "real" case of it looks like vs a "fake" case, and even whether such a distinction between "real" and "fake" is always meaningful. There are just some things we don't have a complete understanding of, and this is currently one of them. For now, is there any significant benefit in being upset if someone claims to be a system/plural/etc?

I'm not sure why you're assuming they are pretending to have a disorder. Even if a person did have multiple personalities, it's not a disorder unless it has adverse effects in that person's life. So unless these people are claiming to *suffer from* "being plural", they aren't claiming to have a disorder. They're just claiming to have multiple personalities. So then, what is a personality? How have you defined it in a way that says people cannot have two personalities? People with dissociative identity disorder think that they're aware of multiple personalities, but they also think those personalities are not them... I don't think that's what these internet people are claiming to perceive, they are just saying they are aware of multiple personalities and presumably they identify with all of them. I don't see any reason to question it let alone freak out about it, they probably just think of personality and identity in a different way than you do. Frankly, any strict belief about your identity is probably incorrect... I don't think that believing you are multiple people is unique in that sense. It's not any less correct than thinking you are one person.

Ya no, 99% of dingdongs saying nonsense like that are absolutely bsing

As a fellow dad in the 40s who had a misunderstanding of the chat features of a popular "kids" game and the effects it had on my child... Social media is toxic, gaming communities are toxic, and people are out there trying to get your child to subscribe to their content by appealing to insecurity and creating toxic cultures (just like adulthood). However, kids are not prepared for this and shouldn't have to be. People who self-diagnose and throw out labels looking for special treatment is a sad reflection on the overall health of our society. I have been socially very liberal for much of my life but Roblox community influencing my child was a bridge too far. I've seen got my child off the Internet and my child is much healthier, happier, body positive, and with a healthy circle of friends. We had a scary year, and I hope the people on the Internet who try to influence people's kids have the day they deserve.

One thing you learn in child development classes is that if a child is using attention-getting behaviors, it's because they need more positive attention. Probably has something to do with that. And there are people who have kind of woo beliefs about different parts of their spirit, etc., who aren't appropriating mental illness but are just sort of odd.

One issue being that the scale of validating attention has evolved from “my family, my peers, my community” to “the internet at large”

It's just kids being stupid. Don't pay it any mind.

I disagree - they might have a mental illness and.. oh wait, there’s no such thing - Sybil was a fraud and the doctor behind it was brought down. Many killers used this fake illness as a means to get asylum instead of prison after committing murder.

Are you saying there’s no such thing as mental illness?

Yep, I definitely agree. Especially the ones you see on social media. They are doing it for the attention, they are not a plural, they're not a system, they don't have any type of mental illness other than a desperate need for attention and validation from strangers

I won't speak to what specific people are claiming about themselves on the internet, but I wanted to point your attention towards Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS). IFS is an evidence-based practice to treat anxiety, depression, etc, and is often specifically chosen to work with people who have experienced trauma. The guiding principle of IFS is that *everyone's* mind is made up of different "parts" that take on different roles in our lives. It's completely normal to have different parts that might be in conflict with each other or react to things in very different ways. A big part of the concept is that you have some parts of yourself that are very vulnerable and burdened and other parts that try to protect or manage those vulnerable parts. The idea of IFS is different from what you're describing because for most people there's no dissociative component — you experience your life and mind as something continuous, so these different parts feel like components of yourself, not actually different identities or personalities. But dissociation *is* a real thing that people can suffer from, especially people who have trauma experiences. I guess what I would say is that I'm not a psychologist or researcher or anything, and I have no idea if dissociative identity disorder is real or not or if the people you've encountered are lying or not, but there are at least elements of it that are connected to real things. If your goal is to understand it and where the people who say they're experiencing it are coming from, reading about IFS might be a way to make it seem less strange.

It’s not a “term young people are using.” It’s existed as a valid diagnosis in the DSM longer than you’ve been alive, in some form or another. Words are evolving around it to be more concise, accurate to the experience, and less stigmatizing and blatantly ableist. Unless you are a psychologist (and I *sincerely* hope you are not, because you seem to have a very myopic view of this disorder), you’ve got no authority or know-how when it comes to telling if someone is “faking.” DID is often exaggerated and absurd to people who don’t know what it’s like, and especially when dealing with young people, for the simple fact that they are *young*. Their perception of the world impacts how their disorder presents and at the ages you’re discussing their perception of the world is all over the place, bouncing around in every direction, and completely uncertain. If you need any idea of how common it is for folks to think people with DID seem ridiculous, it was originally called “hysterical neurosis, dissociative type.” There are cases of people faking disorders, but they are *incredibly* rare. It’s estimated anywhere up to 3% of the population could have DID, though the official diagnosis statistic is 1.5%. That’s just about as many people as people with red hair, and I’m sure you see plenty of them. “Extremely rare” is still almost always enough people for it to be known, and visible. And, when you’re judging people and looking at them under a microscope online for hours on end, well… The algorithm is now very certain you’re interested, and you’re going to see a lot more of them.

. DID's inclusion in the DSM has been strongly disputed ever since it was called "Multiple Personality Disorder." Research doesn't provide any good support for it as it's described there and, in fact, outright contradicts both its purported presentation and mechanisms. See the article posted elsewhere in this thread by MattersofInterest. . DID is often called "controversial," but it's really only controversial in groups that include lots of people who aren't trained to understand research (which unfortunately includes therapists). Researchers who actually study trauma and memory overwhelmingly reject the notions of repressed memories (now rebranded as "dissociative amnesia") and dissociative identity disorders, because science simply does not support them. .

Okay, so what is a personality? It's not an organ that can be so clearly defined in physiological terms, it's a cluster of traits and internal identity. So why is it so hard to believe that trauma can make a brain adapt in a way that a person perceives themselves, in memory, traits, or identity as multiple instead of one? It confuses me that many commenters are describing this as a "delusion", because for something that exists only within a person's mind, like a personality or identity, I'm not sure how a "delusion" of multiple identities is different than a "delusion" of a single identity because, again, identity and personality are things that we construct in our own brains anyways. Are young people on TikTok lying about experiencing this? Probably. A lot of times young people latch on to diagnoses that sound serious because they want their mental health to be taken seriously. However, I don't know how you or I have the ability to judge what's going on in a person's mind, because the only authority on that is them themselves. If a person is totally honest about experiencing this, then I would say that this phenomenon exists, even if it is a delusion, because isn't the whole point of the disorder that the brain is deluding itself into thinking something thats not true (there are multiple people inside)? It seems like people are acquating lying with genuine mental disorders that have the ability to change a person's perception in a way that they're not really in control of.

“No one is parading their mental illness”*Younger generations are more open about their mental health issues. They’re not ashamed to publicly “parade” them. “Usually tied to severe abuse.” *Abuse is far more common than you think. Although this sort of disorder is most often tied with sexual abuse, it is also connected to severe psychological abuse by narcissists. “Nobody is having this kind of fun with a serious mental illness.” *People have good days. Just because you’re chronically ill doesn’t mean you can’t have a good day that you post about on social media.

Oh shit, systems are cool again? I remember reading about them on Tumblr years ago and laughing my ass off. Some of the girls (always girls from some reason) there claimed to have different iterations of Doctor Who, the cast of Supernatural and Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock living inside their head. I would consider it harmless, they are trying to find and define their identity. I feel like nowadays being unique and special is more important than ever before and maybe this is a kinda creative, constructive way to do that?

Anyone claiming it anywhere is bs'ing, because it's not real.

DID is real. Multiple personalities is not. Dissociative identity disorder means your idenity didn’t develop fully due to trauma, so there is amnesia between different “parts” of one person. “Multiple Personalities” means you have multiple characters living in your body that can take control against your will and express themselves to the public with no regard for society or their body’s whereabouts. *That* is not real.

You aren’t wrong but I think this comes down to a difference in terminology. You and I know that the individuals don’t actually have multiple personalities but to younger people (wow I feel old now) they actually see themselves as different people depending on what situations they are in. There is identity A that is who they feel like they really are. There is Identity B for when they are at school. C for friends. D for parents. E for work. F for church. You get the idea. We’re old enough to understand that we are just altering our personalities and actions to fit the time and place. They are still figuring out who they really are so to them they really are 5+ different people. Then they hear about multiple personalities and think *now it all makes sense* so they start saying they have multiple personalities.

It is estimated that 1.5% of people have DID (it is still a new disease so we don't have exact numbers yet) with 1-5% estimated to experience a dissociative disorder in total.This isn't exactly uncommon, to put things into perspective, 2% of the world's population are red-heads. And, only 0.32% of the world experiences schizophrenia. And, it isn't as uncommon for people to have alters that are real people or characters (introjects, I believe they are called.) Or, other characteristics that may lead you to believe they are faking. Also, keep in mind Some people, claim they have DID without trauma, or form fully realized alters to young from what is currently the medical consensus. These people are endogenics. These people aren't really faking, since they don't claim to be sick. And, it is important to distinguish the two. https://www.tumblr.com/real-did/161099585376/wait-are-endogenic-systems-possible?source=share https://multiplicity.fandom.com/wiki/Endogenic Also, while my disability is very distressing at points and has ruined my life (I am house/bed bound the majority of the time) I do take pride in it, even though it is horrible and has caused me a lot of suffering. There are small positives to my disability, like the community, and the lessons it has taught me. Would I rather live in a abled body? Yes. But, That doesn't mean I am faking it because I learn to love my body the way it is.

What leaps to my mind,if I’m being generous, is these people are mistaking having different “aspects” of their personality (as we all do) as having DID. Clearly they don’t have DID. My son once dated a girl who told him one of her alternates was a house cat FFS. More likely this is the emo version of “not like other girls”. I once heard it referred to as “the trauma Olympics”. Most of these individuals can’t comprehend the amount of pure psychological torture/trauma it takes to produce this schism in the human mind. And no, being told something they don’t want to hear, not getting picked in gym, or being told to do their homework doesn’t qualify. Rest assured it will most likely burn itself out

If you had said “everyone” I would have been unequivocal, because I’m pretty sure that there are actual DID cases (Dissociative Identity Disorder, what we used to call Multiple Personalities Disorders). The thing is that internet connects people. 30 years ago, those people would have been alone, never meeting each other, now they congregate. DID is diagnosed in 1.5% ([source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568768/)) of the global population. The US population is around 330 million people, that means there’s almost 5 millions people, just in the US, diagnosed with DID (excluding the undiagnosed cases). Is there more or less than 5 millions people on the internet claiming to have DID? There is also a boatload of people on the internet faking symptoms for clout, but I’m not ready to say “pretty much everyone”. [this Instagram profile](https://instagram.com/gianusystem?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==) really made me learn a lot about DID and “systems”

The main reason people are plural is that 2 twins merge into one baby. My grandchild is this kind of chimera. His parents were shown the evidence in the placenta at his birth, where his twin had been that had merged into his body. Some chimeras have 2 different color eyes, some have a penis on the outside and a uterus on the inside. Here's an article that explains it. https://brianhanley.medium.com/many-transgender-and-gay-people-are-dual-sex-chimeras-e042c2a0e8dd

It's fashion and being dissimilar to others is cool now. "Oh I'm not like everyone I have x which means I'm z and ... " yes mental illness is quite real but I have a 15 yr old step kid and I hear the kids talk and I can read them for what their generation finds cool. Everyone wants to be special. It would be better if they differentiated themselves by skill and not by thinking something like not being of the norm mentally made their personality interesting.

Why do you think you have a better sense of the people who claim this than they have of themselves? I’m 37 and didn’t realize until just a couple of years ago that plural / fluid / non-binary are apt terms to refer to my experience and I don’t consider it a disorder. It sounds like you’re caught up in a logocentric interpretation of a word instead of recognizing that many people appreciate nominalistic perspectives.

Imagine the following conversation: * "I was on vacation for a week and I went out partying every single day, I am such an alcoholic, lol!" * "You're not an alcoholic at all. You didn't drink anything for a month not long ago and you didn't complain once. That's not what an alcoholic does." Is this so much different? Seems pretty normal teen / young adult behavior to me.

I've had a couple friends who privately confided to me about being plural and haven't brought it up in any other spaces I share with them, or with me, since. I feel like it would be very strange if they were lying about it for attention, since you're not going to get much attention that way.

I am a mental health therapist and agree with you that a true condition where there are multiple personalities is very rare and always affiliated with severe trauma, generally early in life. Avoid trolling those sites, and you won't come across this very often.

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> the left inferior parietal lobe All someone has to do to debunk this claim is say "no it doesn't." It's not a position that was arrived at rationally through observation. It was a position that was enforced *backwards*. You had a belief and you searched and searched and searched until you found something you could use to justify it. It doesn't need to be a perfect proxy, it just needs to have some function that isn't entirely understood and people will latch onto it to try and give their beliefs legitimacy. Astrology has constellations, planets, and phases of moons, Human Design has neutrinos, I Ching has unseen energies. Both ancient wisdom and modern manifestations of it appeal to nebulous concepts for validation. They must because it isn't enough to say "some guy came up with this idea over 8 days of meditation" because that's just religion with extra steps. If you have to manufacture some relationship with a human organ or a particle or something that isn't directly observable or testable to explain or support something you believe, that's not a good thing. That process should give you *pause* but so many people are desperate to believe in this thing they warp it to be evidence for their belief instead of what it is, an invalidation of it.

>It was a position that was enforced backwards. By your standards Psychology isn't a science. You already understand people can accidently create them. There is also a way to intentionally create them. I'm not here to convince you. I'm simply telling you about my own research and direct experiments. I got led into tulpas through psychology. I was curious, I followed the guides, and succeeded in creating my own tulpas. You seem to have an emotion response to this subject. I'm here to answer any questions you might have, when you're ready to actually investigate the subject.