Faking D.I.D.

[Cammy]

My therapist told me that through the decades that she has been working with trauma and D.I.D. patients, every so often she comes upon individuals who visit her trying to fake D.I.D. I asked her why on earth anyone would want to do such a thing, and then I suggested that either they think it might be a 'fashionable' disorder to have, it also might be a way in which they think they can get out of being responsible for some of their actions, or they simply are looking for attention.  She told me that all the above have been true with the various individuals she has dealt with. 

The real tell is how eager they are to be diagnosed with D.I.D. I remember how I refused to accept my diagnosis and how it took me a full two years to finally accept that I was a multiple. She notes that most multiples generally hide their multiplicity from the world, and focus on appearing as normal and stable as possible in order to blend into the sea of mono-minds. Not so with the fakers - they are literally 'aching' to be diagnosed so that they can announce their multiplicity to anyone who will listen. Amazing. Truly, if they had to live in the mind of a multiple, I doubt that they would find it very comfortable, and once they found out the amount and type of stigma that this disorder carries, the novelty would quickly wear off. 

Until i had this conversation with my T, it never occurred to me that someone would actually want to be classified as having a dissociative disorder. I suppose, however, that there will always be those who think that if there is some practical or social use for brandishing a mental illness, there will always be people ready to claim they have just about anything. I firmly believe that if such an individual showed up in a room full of multiples and began to engage any of them in conversation, they would almost certainly have their cover blown within minutes. 

Just goes to show that it takes all kinds. Of course, anyone making these type of claims to a therapist for whatever reason is at least in the right place to get help, because they definitely have some kind of issue that most likely needs addressing, but it's not likely to be anything as chic as they imagine D.I.D. to be. If they manage to persist in their ruse, I suspect that the first time someone insists on trying to perform an exorcism on them, or their employer attempts to dump them as an employee, or their friends stop calling, or their doctor asks that they find another family physician, what first seemed to them to be deliciously novel will suddenly become bitterly noxious, and the whole misguided notion will be dropped quite quickly.

Just when I thought I had heard everything.