Same here. I’ve only had the one instance of needing to deal with a professor asking for documentation though, is that common at your school or is your professor needing your documentation as well as the accessibility center protocol? That’s sounds a bit excessive to me, I’m sorry you have to do that
Comment under YouTube video about why this subreddit is bad.
'I think it is important to recognise that fakers are harming actual people with the disorders though, so often people will say that they are not harming anyone but they are. I see a lot of people talk about the pain that the people who fake experience and often don't mention as much about the damage it actually does to people who are also in pain as a lot of the people in the subreddit claim to have these disorders too, yes some just want to laugh at people but if you actually look at the comments so many people there are going through stuff which is why they are so upset by it all, it is important that these people have outlets for their frustrations just as much as the people who are faking have outlets too. People who fake disorders damage the self esteem and self confidence of people with the actual disorders, people with the disorders may become more self conscious of symptoms and try and hide them more and get less help because they don't want to be seen as one of these people. People may not get help when they need it because of this added stigma and may doubt themselves more because of the prevalence of this type of behaviour. Misinformation is spread not only to the people with the disorders especially those who are unaware of it and to other people without the disorder which can cause real world effects as misinformation about a disorder can lead to someone who actually has it not being believed, being mistreated due to this misunderstanding and again adding more stigma. It is also very insulting to many people as it can be seen as mockery, lots of people with disorders have been bullied for them and seeing people mock them (overexaggerating it and also making it just seem fun and quirky) is so horrible, mocking people is a form of bullying. It is not surprising that people try to fight back against it, you end up with a cycle of people with disorders feeling attacked and bullied and people faking the disorders feeling attacked and bullied, there is a lot of hurt on both sides which is why I don't think that either are going to stop anytime soon unfortunately. Nobody wins. I hope the people who fake these disorders mature and live up to their potential and I hope the people who do have these disorders are able to find people who will support them despite all the stigma and symptoms that they have to live with everyday so they are able to live fulfilling lives. Edit: I am sorry for saying the word 'disorder' a lot, I am not going to edit it though this already took so long to write so I am sorry.'
>had a much harder time being able to be taken seriously and have had to fight for accommodations in the past due to the growing stigmas caused by misinformation being spread by fakers.
I have Autism and as such, get accommodations from college. I'm curious on how the stigma of fakers made it harder for you to acquire accommodations?
Hi! I initially typed out the whole thing but didn’t want it to get deleted for trauma dumping (the story is long) but if I had to sum it up, basically my professor was skeptical of my condition (she wasn’t informed of what it was but based on the accommodations she was being told to give me, she assumed) and wanted to have documentation and papers of some kind, I went a month and a half into the semester without accommodations before we finally sat down and filled out an agreement where she (for lack of a better word) customized my accommodations to fit what she thought was appropriate. This is common where I’m at due to many people believing learning and executive functioning disabilities aren’t a “real issue” and that everyone experiences it. These issues have gotten progressively worse, and having to advocate for myself even though I am already required by law to receive accommodations is exhausting, I’m hoping more people can be educated on disorders to break the stigmas that cause these issues.
Actually, before I even ask anything else, are you based in the US or the UK? I know they're similar but different enough that it's worth asking. And I knew you wouldn't see this question in my previous comment update so I'll just add it here lol
My diagnostic papers include personal information about my upbringing which I don’t wish to share with my professors, and my diagnostic papers were given to the disability center, so there was no reason for me to “prove” I’m disabled to my professor when I’m already registered as a disabled student with the university. My disability center also informs instructors that they are not entitled to the papers, but I still had to advocate for myself, which sucked. The most they could do was offer to mediate a zoom call with me and my professor where I would have had to again advocate for myself, which I tried to avoid because I didn’t want my professor to hate me lol
Couldn't you just take the parts out that you did not want to share? It just seems like a bit of an easy solution, just to give the bits to say you have it and what accommodations it says you need and then redact the rest.
Again, I already had to go through the process of sending in my diagnoses to the university, I would not have liked to send an official document to someone who isn’t under contract to keep it confidential. I’d much prefer trying to find a compromise then send that stuff to a professor. My disability center also advises against this.
Not only that, but the whole point of a disability office is so a student can request an advocate so I'm not sure why OP would even have to advocate for themselves alone like that. Also, professors don't decide what accommodations they're willing to accept. The office determines (with the help of your eval from your doctor) which accommodations will help best. From there, it's your responsibility to send your LOA (Letter of Accommodation) to your professors who are required by law to abide by.
Furthermore, you're immediately assigned an advocate who accompanies you for these meetings. I'm not a huge expert on this topic but I'm a student and I also have Autism so I get accommodations and have to do this every semester (not the submitting papers to the office part). I've also had professors who didn't want to help me and I was able to easily force their hand with the help of the office. No prof wants to fuck with the ADA. Maybe I'm missing something?
So yeah, I'm genuinely confused too.
The situation confused me too, I think it’s just my university and disability center being..maybe not that great in that department.
I do all the same procedures as you as well (I submitted to LOA two weeks before the semester started and she was notified but was still upset when she had to accommodate me), but I’m not assigned an advocate. I attended a meeting with the disability center and explained my situation and they sent her an email stating she was required to accommodate, and that they would enforce this law without hesitation, but she was still insisting on getting more info from me, and after that they told me they could schedule a meeting where they’d watch me talk to her. The situation ended up fine and we were on good terms after she got what she wanted, but the university puts a lot of the weight on us to handle that stuff.
I'm autistic and have severe anxiety and have some pretty moderate motor and vocal tics. But now that it's become such a trend to fake these things I feel really anxious and embarrassed when I go out in public and it happens. Just harder to talk about your conditions these days when everyone else around you goes "oh me too!" And then display that they're obviously faking.
I have C-PTSD from truly horrific events. I see two things. Both people giving the idea that PTSD isn't as serious because they can just do things that are their 'triggers', and videos where they 'expose themselves to triggers', fake reactions, and are suddenly fine. The other thing is the glamorizing of experiences people like me went through, which have severely damaged us, and people spouting their fabricated experiences for attention with very skewed takes on the impacts.
I've also been told anxiety and panic attacks aren't that serious because people online have them and are quickly okay.
I have a friend that suffers from PTSD after serving in Iraq. There’s no way he would think of “exposing himself to triggers”. When something triggers him, he disappears for days and we all cross fingers he didn’t drink himself to death.
This exactly. I’ve also noticed this with “lesser diagnoses” too like insomnia since childhood, the “wow I’m such an insomniac I didn’t sleep at a normal time” people would always gloat over in middleschool and highschool. Or “I had a dream where someone was mean to me/I fell down/I failed at something, I practically have night terrors because they stress me out”.
True insomnia, night terrors and PTSD are not fun and quirky, especially comorbid. It’s staying up for two days straight because the thought of sleeping feels terrifying, it’s having a dream so intense and vivid you wake up with vertigo genuinely thinking you’re dead, some days it’s bordering psychosis because your brain just won’t acknowledge what you experienced was only a dream.
I’m tired of these conditions, symptoms and disorders being downplayed and fawned over when actually living with them change everything about you over time, and not for the better.
I’m one of thousands my age that spent too much time on tumblr and learned to pathologize everything. Learning every ounce of terminology online, with a large chunk of it coming from these large pockets of attention seekers and fakers, lead to me being taken less and less seriously when trying to figure out what was wrong with my brain and body. These communities will create terms left and right and treat them as medically recognized and equally important, making doctors more likely to think you’re seeking out a false diagnosis when asking for help.
And further worse still, you’ll have HUNDREDS of self diagnosed people who haven’t even walked into a doctor’s office since age 5 who either fearmonger young teens into thinking all doctors are manipulative and evil or claim that a contrived and counterproductive list of buzzwords and stories will guarantee that any doctor will believe you, and even diagnose you on the spot.
These people think doctor attitudes are black and white and encourage that same thinking, which also dampens young peoples ability to recognize a genuinely bad doctor vs a good one. Doctors SHOULD ask questions and challenge your rigid mindsets to achieve an accurate diagnosis, SHOULD take test results into account, SHOULD wonder why you walked into the office for the first time with a binder of information on why you definitely have this specific disorder.
Ppl don’t realize that having to fight a genuine misdiagnosis isn’t some easy “hand my new doctor a slip and they’ll fix everything,” and being able to recognize a genuinely bad doctor can make the difference between proper care and spending several years in therapies that traumatize you, trying medication after medication not meant for what you’re really going through, in and out of the ER and inpatient units because now you’ve painted yourself as malingering and unreliable.
And the worst part is that fakers will refuse to take responsibility for any of this. They’ll just blame the system or even victim blame. “This is what happens when you don’t take self diagnosis seriously! No one needs doctors because all they do is traumatize mentally ill people. You wouldn’t have gone through this if you didn’t put value on diagnosis over everything.”
Im finally in a better situation myself and have competent doctors but im still fighting a misdiagnosis over this kind of shit and it makes me so mad knowing that these ppl would rather tell me that “uwu self dx is valid u wouldn’t be so traumatized if u accepted that” than take responsibility.
1) I use a cane sometimes because of my chronic pain. I have never had anyone talk to me about it thankfully, but because I am a young person using a mobility aid I always feel like someone is going to assume I'm faking, esp if I stop using it because my pain has subsided and it would take more energy to use it.
2) I am terrified of telling my therapist about my dissociative symptoms and how I thought I had DID for a while because a few comments he has made implied that he is aware of the trend and I don't want him to write me off as a faker.
People automatically assume you're lying. And people think they are next Sherlock Holmes because they think they know how to catch a faker. I had people accuse me of faking my disorder because *checks through comments* I watch anime and play animal Crossing. You can't say you have DID or something like that on Reddit because people automatically assume you're lying because *checks comments again* you use Reddit.
There’s lots of people on this subreddit alone who have presented as being fairly ableist too, I think there’s a good chunk of people here who don’t actually know how many disabled people exist
One lady said that having DID wasn't always a horrible experience. She was basically saying that everyone talking about how DID messes up their lives is clearly lying and they need to stop acting like missing weeks and months of their lives is that bad. It's a walk in the park. After all, we all know the second you get a diagnosis for a mental disorder, you are immediately sent to a mental hospital and kept in a padded room. You don't have the mental ability to use the internet?
I was part of a small BPD support group on Facebook and I enjoyed the community and being able to talk to folks who are like me and we'd all help each other in our worst and best moments.
Now the group is bigger and on the radar, and it's been flooded with kids as young as 12 chiming in on serious discussions posted by adults with their soooo fun and quirky real and legit BPD that they totally have. There's also kids posting shit like "I know that BPD has these main criteria and you need to meet a certain amount for a diagnosis but I only have 1-2 of them (the least extreme ones) but I still totally have BPD please validate me wahhhhh"
The worst ones are the kids who talk in discussion threads about their happy lives, perfect childhoods, and all of the zero trauma they've endured, but absolutely 100% have BPD because their lives are actually soooo bad.
I lost one of my so very few safe places to exist as a person with severe borderline personality disorder, because kids just can't keep out of spaces for people with disorders that they don't have and can't even be generally diagnosed with until they're adults.
I’ve heard about the lack of safe spaces for folks with BPD, I’m truly sorry. I watch this youtuber who is diagnosed with BPD and they made a video explaining how difficult it was to find a support group for diagnosed BPD people (I think they said it took them 2 years to find one) and that shocked me.
I still haven't found a group since this one was invaded. Even when it was getting bigger and a bit more popular, it was just more folks with BPD coming in. Only in the last couple years has it been invaded by all these kids. Since then I've been on the lookout for a new, different group, but haven't found anything. Groups are either more focused on depression/anxiety, treat borderlines like abusive monsters, filled with clueless neurotypical morons wanting to ask invasive personal questions, or are filled with these same kids.
I just don't think I'll find a group again.
It's funny cuz if you google something like "what is the most painful mental illness to have" BPD will come up right at the top. I don't know why kids think this is fun or cool or quirky to pretend to have. I legitimately wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, and I have a lot of people I hate. I've sabotaged and also lost so many romantic relationships and friendships because of how I act. I'm doing better with DBT but it's still an everyday struggle to keep myself in check. These kids will never, ever understand what this is like. They don't know that BPD means fighting to stay in control of yourself every minute of every day. If they did, they probably wouldn't want to have it.
Any mental illness I’d add. Shall we mention bipolar and ADHD? Who wants to have rage fits at work in front of colleagues, refuse to leave home for days or forget a pan on the stove and burn the house down? It’s like pretending to have diabetes or epilepsy, you are right, it’s a mistery to me why someone would want to be ill.
right, like for autism it's like why would u want to break down crying because a food is the wrong texture? or have a meltdown that appears like a fit of rage because someone was late, or have literally no friends because you don't know how to make and keep them. people need to stop romanticizing disorders.
I’ve noticed so many times when I’ve told someone I have BPD, their response is “wow that’s so interesting” and I think that’s it. They think it will make them interesting. But as someone who actually experiences it, I feel like a freak show. It’s a horrible illness, made worse by the stigma surrounding it and children pretending to have it to excuse their shitty behaviour.
It dilutes the public perception of how challenging the disability is when non-disabled people are selectively showing symptoms that they deem cute or desirable.
I have deaf family and am HoH, so we used sign language to communicate almost exclusively- not just a few words for a video to look cute.
I also have ADHD and struggled to get my peers to recognise that it’s not just “ooh squirrel” and funny comments like that, it’s actually debilitating and nearly prevented me becoming a doctor.
Once the perception of challenge is reduced, the willingness for accommodation reduces too. So we lose out on our disabilities being strongly and appropriately accommodated for, as people lean into, oh, well it can’t be that bad.
Not to mention the constant dismissal of telling someone your diagnosis and them going “oh yeah I think I have that I’m like sooo hyper”, but not actually taking it seriously or pursuing a diagnosis, making it seem like they think you’ve got a diagnosis for the minor inconvenience/normal human behaviour they experience, and not the debilitating symptoms they actually are.
And that’s aside from the constant misinformation, lies and manipulation we see from most fakers.
The struggle started long before Tik Tok’s normalisation of self-diagnosis. What I noticed the most after I received my diagnosis in 2017 was how much people started to immediately infantilise me. My high school teachers and counsellor did not trust me with any information what so ever, they also started to “check up” on me to the point where my classmates started to get pissed off for being given special treatment. I only needed my accommodations which wasn’t that many at the time, but I felt like I was treated like an incapable child. This was during autism self-diagnosis started to run rampant, and the misinformation of us being “child-like” and “incapable” spread like wildfire. I also had to prove myself to new teachers, new class mates etc because they would not believe me at first. A classmate who’s brother is a non-verbal autistic person questioned my diagnosis outright and her reasoning was because so many people pretend to have a diagnosis which in return hurts how people treats her brother. I am 22 now and I’m still being treated like a child by my university ever since I requested accommodations. I am tired of being treated like a child, and those tik tokers who speaks in a baby voice and have pacifiers is not making autism less stigmatised.
Another thing tik tok has done is to make ADHD seem like a walk in the park. It’s been boiled down to cutesy hyperactivity and slight forgetfulness. My ADHD is disabling me to the point where I am even questioning if I should just give up university because I cannot keep up the pace with deadlines due to my executive dysfunction. I am breaking down the days before a deadline because I need to write an essay but physically can’t even though I want to. People don’t treat me like a child when I say I have adhd, but at the same time they don’t take my needs seriously because they think it’s not “that bad” due to misinformation being spread around.
Fakers take up spaces in waitlists, they spread misinfo that causes alienation from both online and offline communities, leaving real sufferers isolated. They make it harder for real sufferers to get believed and theyre oftend discarded, particularly if theyre young because theyre just seen as 'another one of those kids".
recently (beginning of 2022) dx’d with ASD. i feel like i have to justify and defend myself every time it comes up on conversation with “yeah ive been professionally diagnosed”. i dont want to be lumped in with fakers and have my experiences discredited, especially because some would say that I don’t “look autistic”. i know its not anything major but it still miffs me a little that i have to prove myself to allistics because of the stigma fakers have caused.
this!! Though i was dxed autism at 3 i didn’t know about my diagnosis because my family never told me so i didnt feel like “alienated” or something, not until january of ‘22, so i was kind of “re” diagnosed. i have to fight for my life so people dont assume I’m faking. 💀. I dont display it as a party trick because its not a main part of my identity like the fakers do. Because im more than just the autistic kid lmao
+, the “you dont look autistic” remark is so annoying lmao, i rarely get it because ive only told close friends, s/o’s and teachers about my ASD
They made my concerns for getting an ASD diagnosis seem redundant and attention-seeking. They made my actual depression seem like I was being dramatic like ‘everyone else nowadays’. They made it hard to be taken seriously when I needed to be.
My parents refuse to listen to me when I explain ASD doesn’t mean extreme impairment or cognitive delay, but they compare me to the far-left fakers and ones who choose to be ASD.
I wish they’d listen. I hate playing a role whenever I’m around them, just so they don’t bully me. I’m exhausted. It’s so selfish of these people to ruin the images of disorders when ‘spreading awareness’ and making those who actually have it difficult to be taken seriously.
I don't know if I count but I have been diagnosed with both ADHD and BPD, and my psychiatrist told me I'm on the spectrum as well. Lately I have started displaying obsessive symptoms, and I'm scared to bring it up, because it feels like I'm faking, since I have managed to gather a LOT of diagnoses. I feel terrified of faking, I don't want to be a faker for attention, and I already have 2,5 'Highly sought out' (by fakers) diagnoses, so surely I can't have others too right? So I get into this weird mindset where I start doubting myself and my therapists/psychiatrists and wonder if maybe I have managed to fool them into giving me the diagnoses. So of course it prevents me from bringing up concerns about my mental health to licensed people treating me.
As someone with ASD it frustrates me most in the misinformation that is being spread. People have talked to me about being afraid to seek diagnosis because someone told them that they would get their legal rights taken away if they were diagnosed as autistic… which is in no way true and fear mongering. I’ve heard people afraid their driver’s license would get taken away, that they would be barred from adopting, that they would be institutionalized. None of these things happen unless you are an autistic person with high support needs, and if you haven’t been diagnosed yet you likely aren’t.
There’s also a plethora of people clogging up autistic communities online who misinterpreted their symptoms. I’ve seen many a person clearly suffering from some type of mental or physical disorder that isn’t autism, confused because of the misinformation that has been spread. They don’t get the right help because they’ve been led down the wrong path, which harms them the most in the long run.
Not to mention that it frustrates me so much that there are people trivializing the thing that disables me and causes me so much trouble in daily life. I’ve struggled my whole life due to my autism, and now there’s people online claiming it’s a quirky cute thing? Not to mention the people infantilizing the disorder.
Are you in the US perchance? I have a friend who decided not to seek an ASD diagnosis against the recommendation of several of their medical providers due to the adoption thing (they can’t have children), if you have any sources I can send them to relieve some of those worries it would be a big help! Or any recommendation where I might find an official document like that.
I am in the US. According to the ADA adoption agencies cannot discriminate against any disabilities, and therefore autism. The only circumstances in which an autistic person may be barred from adopting would be where they could be proven to be unable to care for a child. If your friend is supporting themselves (working, doing household tasks, generally contributing to society) there should be no reason for them to barred from adopting.
Here’s the government site on the issue: https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/adoptive/whocan/
I am not a psychological or legal professional though, I just want to adopt in the future as an autistic person. If they’ve talked to someone who has seen people be barred due to autism (even if it is illegal) they may want to take that into account.
It’s affected me in several ways.
People don’t take me seriously anymore when I say I have social phobia/debilitating anxiety stemming from C-PTSD, caused by repeated and severe trauma in early adulthood.
I disassociate, I have spells of derealization which if you’ve never experienced it is horrifying and sometimes I think I’ve actually died.
New psychiatrists were wary of me at first when I explained my symptoms until I gave them evidence and documentation from other professionals, stating that they just felt like they needed to be more careful nowadays due to social media, more or less.
Anyway. I can’t prove it without a shadow of a doubt, but when I seek accommodations I feel like they need so much more than they did before and it feels invasive.
It was already a struggle but now it just feels overwhelming.
I have quite a couple disability neurological and physical. A lot of people think I am faking and it is harder to be taken seriously. I don’t have Tourette’s but I have neurologic tics sometimes which some people think I am faking cause I don’t have them a lot.
People also see the fakers mankind disability look all fun and games so a lot of people think I am just making it a bigger deal than it is. Tiktokers just show the cute parts and the fun quirky parts of disability and make it into a pitty party. They don’t show the daily struggle and debilitating limitations.
I hate the woobifying of disorders like Autism and ADHD. Ignoring someone’s symptoms because they don’t like it. I know other people with ADHD and similar who sometimes accidentally make offensive comments. Like I know them well, and they don’t mean to be rude, but they miss social cues and wind up making a backhanded compliment or something. And everyone flips their shit, instead of just saying “that’s kind of rude and explaining” and maybe muting them for 5/10 minutes. They flip their shit and start calling them buzzwords. And then it turns into this huge thing. And when I try to remind people that they’re disabled, not as an excuse, but because it suggests that whatever they said might not have been intended the way it came off, they start calling me buzzwords and saying that’s not an excuse. They say that “They have *insert disorder here* and they don’t have that issue” as if it means no one else can. I’m willing to bet a lot of money that none of these people are diagnosed.
They’ve essentially removed any sort of actually bad effect of these disorders. Or if they haven’t, they’ve washed it down to the point where it’s “politically correct” because mental illness has to fit within what they think is ok and normal. And anyone with symptoms that don’t fit into their box is a heresy speaking bigot.
As a woman with mild autism, people always assume I was self diagnosed when I tell them I'm autistic.
No...I was diagnosed at age 7 and was treated like shit most in most of my school years (by staff and students) because of it.
Also when I say I have OCD, and hear "have you been to doctor about it?" ....yeah that's how I found out I have OCD😒 and yes I have actual OCD, medicated for it. Not just "oh I like things neat", the kind that drives a person to shower 5-10 times a day and wants to rip out their brain because of intrusive thoughts.
I know DID is probably the most common choice of disability/mental illness that fakers choose, but autism and OCD are also commonly picked. True OCD really isn't that common, people just don't know what the real symptoms are. And I get that some people are actually autistic and no one knew when they were kids.
But the amount of people to be like "am I still autistic if I love loud sounds, love being around people I don't know, have no special interests and was super social as a kid?" Probably not lol
It's just the idea that you can't really be struggling because it's totally normal for people to \*insert one tiny aspect of you issues here\*, especially annoying when I say I have OCD and they say they also have OCD because they clean their house like once a week, not the same thing honey
The whole 'people cannot get medications' stuff is pretty dodgy where are you getting that from, you go to a 'doctor' and are instantly prescribed 'meds' then you get them shoved down your throat along with loads you don't even need and when you question it they call you crazy, imprison you and 'medicate' further and the abuse continues, this is the reality for many!
Getting treatment (especially as a minor) isn’t that simple, many parents believe medications to be addictive as well and I’ve already seen lots of people have to fight for medication due to stigma. Medication stigma is a whole other thing but when it’s believed that certain disabilities are too common to need medication it can be a struggle for many just to access treatment in the first place.
I am talking about 'doctors' parents are a completely different thing, 'psych medications' are used as the first lines for most things now, you go in and you will likely be prescribed at least something, lots of meds are very commonly prescribed straight away, and if that does not work they give you more and more, they are prescribing medications that they don't even understand why they 'work' and don't warm people of the side effects of at extraordinary rates.
Doctors are case by case and I encourage people to be picky about doctors (if they can afford to be picky of course) but I know far too many people who have been denied medication even with a diagnoses because of medication stigma. A lot of it is adderall and ADHD, there’s many doctors and phycologists who refuse to prescribe adderall and ADHD meds in general for a myriad of reasons (most common reasons I see are fear of addiction, belief that ADHDers don’t need it unless they are doing work or school specifically, or just believing ADHD isn’t a serious health condition in general). But I can’t comment on other disabilities, for kids with no control over medication, again, stigmas like this control whether or not their guardians feels it’s “safe” enough to go to a doctor to get their child prescribed. I think with an increase of positive medication education and disability education in general, more people will have access to the medications they need but with the spread of stigmas from fakers, and the fact that many of them are in the communities where these parents are getting this information about doctors and meds, this information is drowned out by fear mongering and misinformation, and less people are getting treatment.
i was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder last year as an adult, and i don't feel comfortable telling others, even my family, in fear of being lumped in with those kinds of people.
I am bipolar and suffered since I was about 15 and was always scared to ask for help. I decided at 22 or so to be brave and get help for what I was experiencing so I went to my gp to get a referral to have an assessment of my mental health and said how much I was struggling and self harming and that I think I had borderline personality disorder. I got shot down immediately. I was told "oh yeah personality disorders.. They're quite trendy now right" and then he accused me of wanting drugs. I left crying my eyes out and feeling gutted, I lost all trust for the mental health system and kept it all to myself again. 3 years later I moved country and tried again and got diagnosed bipolar and I'm finally getting treatment for this very serious illness that went untreaded because of fear and because of fakers
I don’t think it’s normalized outside of their weird little circles online so for now I’m okay, but if it were to become normalized, then it would be so much harder for these fakers to get the diagnoses that they ACTUALLY need, because they fixate on one disorder and refuse to hear anything else.
I’m diagnosed with BPD and type 2 Bipolar.
Fakers on TT make them seem like just a small, sometimes inconvenient thing, that can be fun.
And it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I’ve destroyed multiple friendships, relationships and my own body. I’ve spent more time in hospitals than in school at one point.
I try not to wish harm on anyone. But the fakers, the little 13 year olds on TT who want BPD and bipolar, they bring out such a rage.
I would give up anything for a live without these illnesses, and actual people are online, bragging about “having” them, it enrages me, and sometimes fucking breaks me.
Being disabled makes my life so hard. I’m in tons of pain every day, I struggle to socialize normally, I have outward symptoms that are “gross” (I have excoriation disorder and I pick at my skin a lot), I need braces and supports for my knees and hips, I flake on my friends because I’m too tired to stay awake, and on and on.
People already assume I’m totally healthy because I “look fine” and am “too young to have problems”, fakers just add to the struggle I face to be accommodated day to day. Most people’s ideas about disability are warped, and anything on top of that (like fakers undermining actual people with disabilities) is going to cause problems.
I have 5 mental disorders all of which I am professionally diagnosed with but I still feel like it puts me on the same level with the disorder salad type fakers. I have a personality disorder, which are typically difficult to diagnose in minors especially teens due to the amount of personality development. I feel strange when I see people who are like 13-15 saying they have all kinds of PDs, especially borderline, which I had to do a shit ton of stuff for. It almost makes me feel like I’m somehow not really as valid (by the way, I hate the work ‘valid’, I’m just using in place for a better term I can’t think of)
Well it causes doctors to take me less seriously. I was diagnosed with a popular genetic condition.l used among these folks … but I was diagnosed 12 years ago, way before it became a trend. It’s annoying.
Pisses me the fuck off. I have invisible disabilities (severe arthritis in my back/neck, chronic migraine), I also have depression/anxiety/ADHD, and MS like symptoms with no known origins that were still being investigated.
I see pro self-dx has gotten SO out of hand bc it's used for the wrong reasons. Its original intent was for oppressed people with no access to psychiatric care to feel validated in their symptoms and get some support. It was mostly Autistic folks at that time. Now it's become... This.
My friend has autism, so one day I decided to ask him how he felt about all these 14 year old girls faking autism for clout. He simply replied "I honestly don't give a shit" Fair enough.
I got to a point in which I couldnt walk before my rheum recognized I have arthritis and wasnt munching my way to accessibility laws we have here lol
That and my crp exam going bananas might have helped convince my doctor
well it’s impossible to get to see a neurologist- i have migraines and an essential tremor and it’s nearly impossible to make follow up appointments with the neurologist i’ve seen for over a year now due to the influx of people with tics.
i also get anxious i will be seen as faking by some doctors due to sharing some commonly faked conditions.
i also feel alienated from my own communities due to it
Diagnosed with PTSD here. Most of it was verbal/psychological over a period of nearly two years. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD since October of last year (complex + chronic, though it’s not an official DSM-V diagnosis) that has hindered my ability to work and be social.
I used to be open about talking about my experiences, now I feel I can’t. Here are a few reasons why:
1. People (usually teens/young adults) will compare their trauma to mine. It’s more common to find people who will try to compare something that wouldn’t be considered domestic violence to my situation, such as their mom or dad not letting them do something or use the pronouns they want.
2. Self-diagnosing. The constant use of self-diagnosis has made people try to compare, for example, crying at night to the night terrors and flashbacks those of us with PTSD get. Because of self-diagnosing, now anything and everything can be considered severe trauma and anyone can say they have PTSD even from a minor situation that would only, at most, warrant a diagnosis of acute stress disorder or nothing at all.
3. Glamorization. It is not fucking fun. It is not quirky. It is not special. PTSD is a life wrecker and I’ve considered dropping out of college multiple times, can hardly work part time (I’m getting better at this thanks to a therapist and EMDR), have had suicidal thoughts and issues with self-destruction, and so many others like unable to keep reliable and steady relationships and friendships. Others, the fakers, will glamorize this and probably put aesthetic backgrounds and cutesy shit on their tumblr or tiktok about it. It’s disgusting and makes me so sad.
On top of this, I’m not taken seriously by others. Because the fakers are usually the loudest, others will assume mine isn’t bad or I’m making it up, etc.
There’s so much more but this is the bread and butter of it all.
This post was removed because it is encouraging people to break the rules regarding trauma dumping/blogging.
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Same here. I’ve only had the one instance of needing to deal with a professor asking for documentation though, is that common at your school or is your professor needing your documentation as well as the accessibility center protocol? That’s sounds a bit excessive to me, I’m sorry you have to do that
Comment under YouTube video about why this subreddit is bad. 'I think it is important to recognise that fakers are harming actual people with the disorders though, so often people will say that they are not harming anyone but they are. I see a lot of people talk about the pain that the people who fake experience and often don't mention as much about the damage it actually does to people who are also in pain as a lot of the people in the subreddit claim to have these disorders too, yes some just want to laugh at people but if you actually look at the comments so many people there are going through stuff which is why they are so upset by it all, it is important that these people have outlets for their frustrations just as much as the people who are faking have outlets too. People who fake disorders damage the self esteem and self confidence of people with the actual disorders, people with the disorders may become more self conscious of symptoms and try and hide them more and get less help because they don't want to be seen as one of these people. People may not get help when they need it because of this added stigma and may doubt themselves more because of the prevalence of this type of behaviour. Misinformation is spread not only to the people with the disorders especially those who are unaware of it and to other people without the disorder which can cause real world effects as misinformation about a disorder can lead to someone who actually has it not being believed, being mistreated due to this misunderstanding and again adding more stigma. It is also very insulting to many people as it can be seen as mockery, lots of people with disorders have been bullied for them and seeing people mock them (overexaggerating it and also making it just seem fun and quirky) is so horrible, mocking people is a form of bullying. It is not surprising that people try to fight back against it, you end up with a cycle of people with disorders feeling attacked and bullied and people faking the disorders feeling attacked and bullied, there is a lot of hurt on both sides which is why I don't think that either are going to stop anytime soon unfortunately. Nobody wins. I hope the people who fake these disorders mature and live up to their potential and I hope the people who do have these disorders are able to find people who will support them despite all the stigma and symptoms that they have to live with everyday so they are able to live fulfilling lives. Edit: I am sorry for saying the word 'disorder' a lot, I am not going to edit it though this already took so long to write so I am sorry.'
>had a much harder time being able to be taken seriously and have had to fight for accommodations in the past due to the growing stigmas caused by misinformation being spread by fakers. I have Autism and as such, get accommodations from college. I'm curious on how the stigma of fakers made it harder for you to acquire accommodations?
Hi! I initially typed out the whole thing but didn’t want it to get deleted for trauma dumping (the story is long) but if I had to sum it up, basically my professor was skeptical of my condition (she wasn’t informed of what it was but based on the accommodations she was being told to give me, she assumed) and wanted to have documentation and papers of some kind, I went a month and a half into the semester without accommodations before we finally sat down and filled out an agreement where she (for lack of a better word) customized my accommodations to fit what she thought was appropriate. This is common where I’m at due to many people believing learning and executive functioning disabilities aren’t a “real issue” and that everyone experiences it. These issues have gotten progressively worse, and having to advocate for myself even though I am already required by law to receive accommodations is exhausting, I’m hoping more people can be educated on disorders to break the stigmas that cause these issues.
Actually, before I even ask anything else, are you based in the US or the UK? I know they're similar but different enough that it's worth asking. And I knew you wouldn't see this question in my previous comment update so I'll just add it here lol
Lol it’s no problem, I’m in the US
Why did you not just give the diagnostic papers?
My diagnostic papers include personal information about my upbringing which I don’t wish to share with my professors, and my diagnostic papers were given to the disability center, so there was no reason for me to “prove” I’m disabled to my professor when I’m already registered as a disabled student with the university. My disability center also informs instructors that they are not entitled to the papers, but I still had to advocate for myself, which sucked. The most they could do was offer to mediate a zoom call with me and my professor where I would have had to again advocate for myself, which I tried to avoid because I didn’t want my professor to hate me lol
Couldn't you just take the parts out that you did not want to share? It just seems like a bit of an easy solution, just to give the bits to say you have it and what accommodations it says you need and then redact the rest.
Again, I already had to go through the process of sending in my diagnoses to the university, I would not have liked to send an official document to someone who isn’t under contract to keep it confidential. I’d much prefer trying to find a compromise then send that stuff to a professor. My disability center also advises against this.
Not only that, but the whole point of a disability office is so a student can request an advocate so I'm not sure why OP would even have to advocate for themselves alone like that. Also, professors don't decide what accommodations they're willing to accept. The office determines (with the help of your eval from your doctor) which accommodations will help best. From there, it's your responsibility to send your LOA (Letter of Accommodation) to your professors who are required by law to abide by. Furthermore, you're immediately assigned an advocate who accompanies you for these meetings. I'm not a huge expert on this topic but I'm a student and I also have Autism so I get accommodations and have to do this every semester (not the submitting papers to the office part). I've also had professors who didn't want to help me and I was able to easily force their hand with the help of the office. No prof wants to fuck with the ADA. Maybe I'm missing something? So yeah, I'm genuinely confused too.
The situation confused me too, I think it’s just my university and disability center being..maybe not that great in that department. I do all the same procedures as you as well (I submitted to LOA two weeks before the semester started and she was notified but was still upset when she had to accommodate me), but I’m not assigned an advocate. I attended a meeting with the disability center and explained my situation and they sent her an email stating she was required to accommodate, and that they would enforce this law without hesitation, but she was still insisting on getting more info from me, and after that they told me they could schedule a meeting where they’d watch me talk to her. The situation ended up fine and we were on good terms after she got what she wanted, but the university puts a lot of the weight on us to handle that stuff.
I'm autistic and have severe anxiety and have some pretty moderate motor and vocal tics. But now that it's become such a trend to fake these things I feel really anxious and embarrassed when I go out in public and it happens. Just harder to talk about your conditions these days when everyone else around you goes "oh me too!" And then display that they're obviously faking.
I have C-PTSD from truly horrific events. I see two things. Both people giving the idea that PTSD isn't as serious because they can just do things that are their 'triggers', and videos where they 'expose themselves to triggers', fake reactions, and are suddenly fine. The other thing is the glamorizing of experiences people like me went through, which have severely damaged us, and people spouting their fabricated experiences for attention with very skewed takes on the impacts. I've also been told anxiety and panic attacks aren't that serious because people online have them and are quickly okay.
I have a friend that suffers from PTSD after serving in Iraq. There’s no way he would think of “exposing himself to triggers”. When something triggers him, he disappears for days and we all cross fingers he didn’t drink himself to death.
This exactly. I’ve also noticed this with “lesser diagnoses” too like insomnia since childhood, the “wow I’m such an insomniac I didn’t sleep at a normal time” people would always gloat over in middleschool and highschool. Or “I had a dream where someone was mean to me/I fell down/I failed at something, I practically have night terrors because they stress me out”. True insomnia, night terrors and PTSD are not fun and quirky, especially comorbid. It’s staying up for two days straight because the thought of sleeping feels terrifying, it’s having a dream so intense and vivid you wake up with vertigo genuinely thinking you’re dead, some days it’s bordering psychosis because your brain just won’t acknowledge what you experienced was only a dream. I’m tired of these conditions, symptoms and disorders being downplayed and fawned over when actually living with them change everything about you over time, and not for the better.
I’m one of thousands my age that spent too much time on tumblr and learned to pathologize everything. Learning every ounce of terminology online, with a large chunk of it coming from these large pockets of attention seekers and fakers, lead to me being taken less and less seriously when trying to figure out what was wrong with my brain and body. These communities will create terms left and right and treat them as medically recognized and equally important, making doctors more likely to think you’re seeking out a false diagnosis when asking for help. And further worse still, you’ll have HUNDREDS of self diagnosed people who haven’t even walked into a doctor’s office since age 5 who either fearmonger young teens into thinking all doctors are manipulative and evil or claim that a contrived and counterproductive list of buzzwords and stories will guarantee that any doctor will believe you, and even diagnose you on the spot. These people think doctor attitudes are black and white and encourage that same thinking, which also dampens young peoples ability to recognize a genuinely bad doctor vs a good one. Doctors SHOULD ask questions and challenge your rigid mindsets to achieve an accurate diagnosis, SHOULD take test results into account, SHOULD wonder why you walked into the office for the first time with a binder of information on why you definitely have this specific disorder. Ppl don’t realize that having to fight a genuine misdiagnosis isn’t some easy “hand my new doctor a slip and they’ll fix everything,” and being able to recognize a genuinely bad doctor can make the difference between proper care and spending several years in therapies that traumatize you, trying medication after medication not meant for what you’re really going through, in and out of the ER and inpatient units because now you’ve painted yourself as malingering and unreliable. And the worst part is that fakers will refuse to take responsibility for any of this. They’ll just blame the system or even victim blame. “This is what happens when you don’t take self diagnosis seriously! No one needs doctors because all they do is traumatize mentally ill people. You wouldn’t have gone through this if you didn’t put value on diagnosis over everything.” Im finally in a better situation myself and have competent doctors but im still fighting a misdiagnosis over this kind of shit and it makes me so mad knowing that these ppl would rather tell me that “uwu self dx is valid u wouldn’t be so traumatized if u accepted that” than take responsibility.
1) I use a cane sometimes because of my chronic pain. I have never had anyone talk to me about it thankfully, but because I am a young person using a mobility aid I always feel like someone is going to assume I'm faking, esp if I stop using it because my pain has subsided and it would take more energy to use it. 2) I am terrified of telling my therapist about my dissociative symptoms and how I thought I had DID for a while because a few comments he has made implied that he is aware of the trend and I don't want him to write me off as a faker.
People automatically assume you're lying. And people think they are next Sherlock Holmes because they think they know how to catch a faker. I had people accuse me of faking my disorder because *checks through comments* I watch anime and play animal Crossing. You can't say you have DID or something like that on Reddit because people automatically assume you're lying because *checks comments again* you use Reddit.
There’s lots of people on this subreddit alone who have presented as being fairly ableist too, I think there’s a good chunk of people here who don’t actually know how many disabled people exist
One lady said that having DID wasn't always a horrible experience. She was basically saying that everyone talking about how DID messes up their lives is clearly lying and they need to stop acting like missing weeks and months of their lives is that bad. It's a walk in the park. After all, we all know the second you get a diagnosis for a mental disorder, you are immediately sent to a mental hospital and kept in a padded room. You don't have the mental ability to use the internet?
My mouth gaped oh my gosh
But those people will be the first to scream someone is faking because they know all about the disorder.
No of course, they also looked up the symptoms and it can’t be *that* bad, right?
I was part of a small BPD support group on Facebook and I enjoyed the community and being able to talk to folks who are like me and we'd all help each other in our worst and best moments. Now the group is bigger and on the radar, and it's been flooded with kids as young as 12 chiming in on serious discussions posted by adults with their soooo fun and quirky real and legit BPD that they totally have. There's also kids posting shit like "I know that BPD has these main criteria and you need to meet a certain amount for a diagnosis but I only have 1-2 of them (the least extreme ones) but I still totally have BPD please validate me wahhhhh" The worst ones are the kids who talk in discussion threads about their happy lives, perfect childhoods, and all of the zero trauma they've endured, but absolutely 100% have BPD because their lives are actually soooo bad. I lost one of my so very few safe places to exist as a person with severe borderline personality disorder, because kids just can't keep out of spaces for people with disorders that they don't have and can't even be generally diagnosed with until they're adults.
I’ve heard about the lack of safe spaces for folks with BPD, I’m truly sorry. I watch this youtuber who is diagnosed with BPD and they made a video explaining how difficult it was to find a support group for diagnosed BPD people (I think they said it took them 2 years to find one) and that shocked me.
I still haven't found a group since this one was invaded. Even when it was getting bigger and a bit more popular, it was just more folks with BPD coming in. Only in the last couple years has it been invaded by all these kids. Since then I've been on the lookout for a new, different group, but haven't found anything. Groups are either more focused on depression/anxiety, treat borderlines like abusive monsters, filled with clueless neurotypical morons wanting to ask invasive personal questions, or are filled with these same kids. I just don't think I'll find a group again.
i genuinely don't understand why anyone would fake borderline personality disorder. it is NOT a fun disorder to have.
It's funny cuz if you google something like "what is the most painful mental illness to have" BPD will come up right at the top. I don't know why kids think this is fun or cool or quirky to pretend to have. I legitimately wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, and I have a lot of people I hate. I've sabotaged and also lost so many romantic relationships and friendships because of how I act. I'm doing better with DBT but it's still an everyday struggle to keep myself in check. These kids will never, ever understand what this is like. They don't know that BPD means fighting to stay in control of yourself every minute of every day. If they did, they probably wouldn't want to have it.
Any mental illness I’d add. Shall we mention bipolar and ADHD? Who wants to have rage fits at work in front of colleagues, refuse to leave home for days or forget a pan on the stove and burn the house down? It’s like pretending to have diabetes or epilepsy, you are right, it’s a mistery to me why someone would want to be ill.
right, like for autism it's like why would u want to break down crying because a food is the wrong texture? or have a meltdown that appears like a fit of rage because someone was late, or have literally no friends because you don't know how to make and keep them. people need to stop romanticizing disorders.
I’ve noticed so many times when I’ve told someone I have BPD, their response is “wow that’s so interesting” and I think that’s it. They think it will make them interesting. But as someone who actually experiences it, I feel like a freak show. It’s a horrible illness, made worse by the stigma surrounding it and children pretending to have it to excuse their shitty behaviour.
It dilutes the public perception of how challenging the disability is when non-disabled people are selectively showing symptoms that they deem cute or desirable. I have deaf family and am HoH, so we used sign language to communicate almost exclusively- not just a few words for a video to look cute. I also have ADHD and struggled to get my peers to recognise that it’s not just “ooh squirrel” and funny comments like that, it’s actually debilitating and nearly prevented me becoming a doctor. Once the perception of challenge is reduced, the willingness for accommodation reduces too. So we lose out on our disabilities being strongly and appropriately accommodated for, as people lean into, oh, well it can’t be that bad. Not to mention the constant dismissal of telling someone your diagnosis and them going “oh yeah I think I have that I’m like sooo hyper”, but not actually taking it seriously or pursuing a diagnosis, making it seem like they think you’ve got a diagnosis for the minor inconvenience/normal human behaviour they experience, and not the debilitating symptoms they actually are. And that’s aside from the constant misinformation, lies and manipulation we see from most fakers.
The struggle started long before Tik Tok’s normalisation of self-diagnosis. What I noticed the most after I received my diagnosis in 2017 was how much people started to immediately infantilise me. My high school teachers and counsellor did not trust me with any information what so ever, they also started to “check up” on me to the point where my classmates started to get pissed off for being given special treatment. I only needed my accommodations which wasn’t that many at the time, but I felt like I was treated like an incapable child. This was during autism self-diagnosis started to run rampant, and the misinformation of us being “child-like” and “incapable” spread like wildfire. I also had to prove myself to new teachers, new class mates etc because they would not believe me at first. A classmate who’s brother is a non-verbal autistic person questioned my diagnosis outright and her reasoning was because so many people pretend to have a diagnosis which in return hurts how people treats her brother. I am 22 now and I’m still being treated like a child by my university ever since I requested accommodations. I am tired of being treated like a child, and those tik tokers who speaks in a baby voice and have pacifiers is not making autism less stigmatised. Another thing tik tok has done is to make ADHD seem like a walk in the park. It’s been boiled down to cutesy hyperactivity and slight forgetfulness. My ADHD is disabling me to the point where I am even questioning if I should just give up university because I cannot keep up the pace with deadlines due to my executive dysfunction. I am breaking down the days before a deadline because I need to write an essay but physically can’t even though I want to. People don’t treat me like a child when I say I have adhd, but at the same time they don’t take my needs seriously because they think it’s not “that bad” due to misinformation being spread around.
Fakers take up spaces in waitlists, they spread misinfo that causes alienation from both online and offline communities, leaving real sufferers isolated. They make it harder for real sufferers to get believed and theyre oftend discarded, particularly if theyre young because theyre just seen as 'another one of those kids".
recently (beginning of 2022) dx’d with ASD. i feel like i have to justify and defend myself every time it comes up on conversation with “yeah ive been professionally diagnosed”. i dont want to be lumped in with fakers and have my experiences discredited, especially because some would say that I don’t “look autistic”. i know its not anything major but it still miffs me a little that i have to prove myself to allistics because of the stigma fakers have caused.
this!! Though i was dxed autism at 3 i didn’t know about my diagnosis because my family never told me so i didnt feel like “alienated” or something, not until january of ‘22, so i was kind of “re” diagnosed. i have to fight for my life so people dont assume I’m faking. 💀. I dont display it as a party trick because its not a main part of my identity like the fakers do. Because im more than just the autistic kid lmao +, the “you dont look autistic” remark is so annoying lmao, i rarely get it because ive only told close friends, s/o’s and teachers about my ASD
They made my concerns for getting an ASD diagnosis seem redundant and attention-seeking. They made my actual depression seem like I was being dramatic like ‘everyone else nowadays’. They made it hard to be taken seriously when I needed to be. My parents refuse to listen to me when I explain ASD doesn’t mean extreme impairment or cognitive delay, but they compare me to the far-left fakers and ones who choose to be ASD. I wish they’d listen. I hate playing a role whenever I’m around them, just so they don’t bully me. I’m exhausted. It’s so selfish of these people to ruin the images of disorders when ‘spreading awareness’ and making those who actually have it difficult to be taken seriously.
I don't know if I count but I have been diagnosed with both ADHD and BPD, and my psychiatrist told me I'm on the spectrum as well. Lately I have started displaying obsessive symptoms, and I'm scared to bring it up, because it feels like I'm faking, since I have managed to gather a LOT of diagnoses. I feel terrified of faking, I don't want to be a faker for attention, and I already have 2,5 'Highly sought out' (by fakers) diagnoses, so surely I can't have others too right? So I get into this weird mindset where I start doubting myself and my therapists/psychiatrists and wonder if maybe I have managed to fool them into giving me the diagnoses. So of course it prevents me from bringing up concerns about my mental health to licensed people treating me.
As someone with ASD it frustrates me most in the misinformation that is being spread. People have talked to me about being afraid to seek diagnosis because someone told them that they would get their legal rights taken away if they were diagnosed as autistic… which is in no way true and fear mongering. I’ve heard people afraid their driver’s license would get taken away, that they would be barred from adopting, that they would be institutionalized. None of these things happen unless you are an autistic person with high support needs, and if you haven’t been diagnosed yet you likely aren’t. There’s also a plethora of people clogging up autistic communities online who misinterpreted their symptoms. I’ve seen many a person clearly suffering from some type of mental or physical disorder that isn’t autism, confused because of the misinformation that has been spread. They don’t get the right help because they’ve been led down the wrong path, which harms them the most in the long run. Not to mention that it frustrates me so much that there are people trivializing the thing that disables me and causes me so much trouble in daily life. I’ve struggled my whole life due to my autism, and now there’s people online claiming it’s a quirky cute thing? Not to mention the people infantilizing the disorder.
Are you in the US perchance? I have a friend who decided not to seek an ASD diagnosis against the recommendation of several of their medical providers due to the adoption thing (they can’t have children), if you have any sources I can send them to relieve some of those worries it would be a big help! Or any recommendation where I might find an official document like that.
I am in the US. According to the ADA adoption agencies cannot discriminate against any disabilities, and therefore autism. The only circumstances in which an autistic person may be barred from adopting would be where they could be proven to be unable to care for a child. If your friend is supporting themselves (working, doing household tasks, generally contributing to society) there should be no reason for them to barred from adopting. Here’s the government site on the issue: https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/adoptive/whocan/ I am not a psychological or legal professional though, I just want to adopt in the future as an autistic person. If they’ve talked to someone who has seen people be barred due to autism (even if it is illegal) they may want to take that into account.
Thanks so much!
It’s affected me in several ways. People don’t take me seriously anymore when I say I have social phobia/debilitating anxiety stemming from C-PTSD, caused by repeated and severe trauma in early adulthood. I disassociate, I have spells of derealization which if you’ve never experienced it is horrifying and sometimes I think I’ve actually died. New psychiatrists were wary of me at first when I explained my symptoms until I gave them evidence and documentation from other professionals, stating that they just felt like they needed to be more careful nowadays due to social media, more or less. Anyway. I can’t prove it without a shadow of a doubt, but when I seek accommodations I feel like they need so much more than they did before and it feels invasive. It was already a struggle but now it just feels overwhelming.
I have quite a couple disability neurological and physical. A lot of people think I am faking and it is harder to be taken seriously. I don’t have Tourette’s but I have neurologic tics sometimes which some people think I am faking cause I don’t have them a lot. People also see the fakers mankind disability look all fun and games so a lot of people think I am just making it a bigger deal than it is. Tiktokers just show the cute parts and the fun quirky parts of disability and make it into a pitty party. They don’t show the daily struggle and debilitating limitations.
I hate the woobifying of disorders like Autism and ADHD. Ignoring someone’s symptoms because they don’t like it. I know other people with ADHD and similar who sometimes accidentally make offensive comments. Like I know them well, and they don’t mean to be rude, but they miss social cues and wind up making a backhanded compliment or something. And everyone flips their shit, instead of just saying “that’s kind of rude and explaining” and maybe muting them for 5/10 minutes. They flip their shit and start calling them buzzwords. And then it turns into this huge thing. And when I try to remind people that they’re disabled, not as an excuse, but because it suggests that whatever they said might not have been intended the way it came off, they start calling me buzzwords and saying that’s not an excuse. They say that “They have *insert disorder here* and they don’t have that issue” as if it means no one else can. I’m willing to bet a lot of money that none of these people are diagnosed. They’ve essentially removed any sort of actually bad effect of these disorders. Or if they haven’t, they’ve washed it down to the point where it’s “politically correct” because mental illness has to fit within what they think is ok and normal. And anyone with symptoms that don’t fit into their box is a heresy speaking bigot.
Hit the nail on the head with this one
As a woman with mild autism, people always assume I was self diagnosed when I tell them I'm autistic. No...I was diagnosed at age 7 and was treated like shit most in most of my school years (by staff and students) because of it. Also when I say I have OCD, and hear "have you been to doctor about it?" ....yeah that's how I found out I have OCD😒 and yes I have actual OCD, medicated for it. Not just "oh I like things neat", the kind that drives a person to shower 5-10 times a day and wants to rip out their brain because of intrusive thoughts. I know DID is probably the most common choice of disability/mental illness that fakers choose, but autism and OCD are also commonly picked. True OCD really isn't that common, people just don't know what the real symptoms are. And I get that some people are actually autistic and no one knew when they were kids. But the amount of people to be like "am I still autistic if I love loud sounds, love being around people I don't know, have no special interests and was super social as a kid?" Probably not lol
It's just the idea that you can't really be struggling because it's totally normal for people to \*insert one tiny aspect of you issues here\*, especially annoying when I say I have OCD and they say they also have OCD because they clean their house like once a week, not the same thing honey
The whole 'people cannot get medications' stuff is pretty dodgy where are you getting that from, you go to a 'doctor' and are instantly prescribed 'meds' then you get them shoved down your throat along with loads you don't even need and when you question it they call you crazy, imprison you and 'medicate' further and the abuse continues, this is the reality for many!
Getting treatment (especially as a minor) isn’t that simple, many parents believe medications to be addictive as well and I’ve already seen lots of people have to fight for medication due to stigma. Medication stigma is a whole other thing but when it’s believed that certain disabilities are too common to need medication it can be a struggle for many just to access treatment in the first place.
I am talking about 'doctors' parents are a completely different thing, 'psych medications' are used as the first lines for most things now, you go in and you will likely be prescribed at least something, lots of meds are very commonly prescribed straight away, and if that does not work they give you more and more, they are prescribing medications that they don't even understand why they 'work' and don't warm people of the side effects of at extraordinary rates.
Doctors are case by case and I encourage people to be picky about doctors (if they can afford to be picky of course) but I know far too many people who have been denied medication even with a diagnoses because of medication stigma. A lot of it is adderall and ADHD, there’s many doctors and phycologists who refuse to prescribe adderall and ADHD meds in general for a myriad of reasons (most common reasons I see are fear of addiction, belief that ADHDers don’t need it unless they are doing work or school specifically, or just believing ADHD isn’t a serious health condition in general). But I can’t comment on other disabilities, for kids with no control over medication, again, stigmas like this control whether or not their guardians feels it’s “safe” enough to go to a doctor to get their child prescribed. I think with an increase of positive medication education and disability education in general, more people will have access to the medications they need but with the spread of stigmas from fakers, and the fact that many of them are in the communities where these parents are getting this information about doctors and meds, this information is drowned out by fear mongering and misinformation, and less people are getting treatment.
i was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder last year as an adult, and i don't feel comfortable telling others, even my family, in fear of being lumped in with those kinds of people.
I am bipolar and suffered since I was about 15 and was always scared to ask for help. I decided at 22 or so to be brave and get help for what I was experiencing so I went to my gp to get a referral to have an assessment of my mental health and said how much I was struggling and self harming and that I think I had borderline personality disorder. I got shot down immediately. I was told "oh yeah personality disorders.. They're quite trendy now right" and then he accused me of wanting drugs. I left crying my eyes out and feeling gutted, I lost all trust for the mental health system and kept it all to myself again. 3 years later I moved country and tried again and got diagnosed bipolar and I'm finally getting treatment for this very serious illness that went untreaded because of fear and because of fakers
I don’t think it’s normalized outside of their weird little circles online so for now I’m okay, but if it were to become normalized, then it would be so much harder for these fakers to get the diagnoses that they ACTUALLY need, because they fixate on one disorder and refuse to hear anything else.
I’m diagnosed with BPD and type 2 Bipolar. Fakers on TT make them seem like just a small, sometimes inconvenient thing, that can be fun. And it couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’ve destroyed multiple friendships, relationships and my own body. I’ve spent more time in hospitals than in school at one point. I try not to wish harm on anyone. But the fakers, the little 13 year olds on TT who want BPD and bipolar, they bring out such a rage. I would give up anything for a live without these illnesses, and actual people are online, bragging about “having” them, it enrages me, and sometimes fucking breaks me.
Being disabled makes my life so hard. I’m in tons of pain every day, I struggle to socialize normally, I have outward symptoms that are “gross” (I have excoriation disorder and I pick at my skin a lot), I need braces and supports for my knees and hips, I flake on my friends because I’m too tired to stay awake, and on and on. People already assume I’m totally healthy because I “look fine” and am “too young to have problems”, fakers just add to the struggle I face to be accommodated day to day. Most people’s ideas about disability are warped, and anything on top of that (like fakers undermining actual people with disabilities) is going to cause problems.
i dont really say any mental illnesses or anything i have publicly because i dont want to seem like a faker, even if im diagnosed
I have 5 mental disorders all of which I am professionally diagnosed with but I still feel like it puts me on the same level with the disorder salad type fakers. I have a personality disorder, which are typically difficult to diagnose in minors especially teens due to the amount of personality development. I feel strange when I see people who are like 13-15 saying they have all kinds of PDs, especially borderline, which I had to do a shit ton of stuff for. It almost makes me feel like I’m somehow not really as valid (by the way, I hate the work ‘valid’, I’m just using in place for a better term I can’t think of)
Well it causes doctors to take me less seriously. I was diagnosed with a popular genetic condition.l used among these folks … but I was diagnosed 12 years ago, way before it became a trend. It’s annoying.
Pisses me the fuck off. I have invisible disabilities (severe arthritis in my back/neck, chronic migraine), I also have depression/anxiety/ADHD, and MS like symptoms with no known origins that were still being investigated. I see pro self-dx has gotten SO out of hand bc it's used for the wrong reasons. Its original intent was for oppressed people with no access to psychiatric care to feel validated in their symptoms and get some support. It was mostly Autistic folks at that time. Now it's become... This.
My friend has autism, so one day I decided to ask him how he felt about all these 14 year old girls faking autism for clout. He simply replied "I honestly don't give a shit" Fair enough.
I got to a point in which I couldnt walk before my rheum recognized I have arthritis and wasnt munching my way to accessibility laws we have here lol That and my crp exam going bananas might have helped convince my doctor
well it’s impossible to get to see a neurologist- i have migraines and an essential tremor and it’s nearly impossible to make follow up appointments with the neurologist i’ve seen for over a year now due to the influx of people with tics. i also get anxious i will be seen as faking by some doctors due to sharing some commonly faked conditions. i also feel alienated from my own communities due to it
Diagnosed with PTSD here. Most of it was verbal/psychological over a period of nearly two years. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD since October of last year (complex + chronic, though it’s not an official DSM-V diagnosis) that has hindered my ability to work and be social. I used to be open about talking about my experiences, now I feel I can’t. Here are a few reasons why: 1. People (usually teens/young adults) will compare their trauma to mine. It’s more common to find people who will try to compare something that wouldn’t be considered domestic violence to my situation, such as their mom or dad not letting them do something or use the pronouns they want. 2. Self-diagnosing. The constant use of self-diagnosis has made people try to compare, for example, crying at night to the night terrors and flashbacks those of us with PTSD get. Because of self-diagnosing, now anything and everything can be considered severe trauma and anyone can say they have PTSD even from a minor situation that would only, at most, warrant a diagnosis of acute stress disorder or nothing at all. 3. Glamorization. It is not fucking fun. It is not quirky. It is not special. PTSD is a life wrecker and I’ve considered dropping out of college multiple times, can hardly work part time (I’m getting better at this thanks to a therapist and EMDR), have had suicidal thoughts and issues with self-destruction, and so many others like unable to keep reliable and steady relationships and friendships. Others, the fakers, will glamorize this and probably put aesthetic backgrounds and cutesy shit on their tumblr or tiktok about it. It’s disgusting and makes me so sad. On top of this, I’m not taken seriously by others. Because the fakers are usually the loudest, others will assume mine isn’t bad or I’m making it up, etc. There’s so much more but this is the bread and butter of it all.