Michelle Mana is getting ridiculous...
If you don't know who Michelle Mana is, she's a very popular YouTuber on the "other" side of the DID and mental health community (the other side being the angry gatekeepy one). She got popular making videos talking about controversial people as well as systems, but mainly systems. Her videos, as she puts it, are for educational purposes. So... I respect that. I respect the spirit of her work in trying to expose malicious people because she has, in fact, talked many times about people who were genuinely malicious, problematic, and/or had done very bad things.
But I had to stop watching her channel because it was seriously getting ridiculous. It reminded me of a tiktoker who poked fun at fakeclaimers by saying "I'm defending the DID community from misinformation by spreading more misinformation!"
Now, she says that her work is to make commentary educating people by talking (mainly) about DID and other mental health issues. She says she doesn't have the disorder, but that she knows people (or a single person, unsure if she knows one person with it or more) with it and talks to them and that she does her research. But more and more I'm finding out that there is likely either a hard limit or a bias to that, or both.
I've seen her speak with so much confidence, so much certainty and authority that I genuinely thought at first that she actually had the disorder herself, that she's had it and known about it for a long time and was very educated on it and active in the community. So, though she claims to be correcting misinformation and to be on the side of people who actually have DID, she is doing a whole lot of the opposite.
I have seen her make some WILD claims that are simply not true... And straight up make no sense. Like calling into question people's own individual experiences as something to be suspicious of regarding whether or not they actually have DID (and from my read of what she's hinting at: if they're presenting DID correctly). Now, I'm not going to put actual names, I don't remember most of them and what they've done, because God knows I've forgotten even my own name many times, but I've seen it so often that it had been driving me insane as I watched her videos.
She called into question the most random, the most normal, and the most innocent things. She called into question things that I have experienced myself and have talked about with other diagnosed systems who have also experienced it themselves many times. It is a long, long laundry list of things.
So that aside, she is also saying some frankly ridiculous stuff about how rare the disorder is. She makes it out to be like a unicorn, that it's vanishingly rare. She says it's an extremely rare and very severe mental disorder, which... It is severe, though there's more to say on that...
But saying it's extremely rare when it is just as rare or, alternatively, just as prevalent as the most or one of the most common neurological disorders out there, that being epilepsy, that's just very, very, very, VERY bad faith. And with how severe she makes it out to be, she tends to call into question people's ability to literally do anything functional - and yet be suspicious when they're not able to do something?
She says that you have to have gone through extreme, severe, prolonged trauma. And she says it in such a way that she seems convinced you had to grow up in Black Dolphin or at Rikers or a gulag in order to actually develop real, actual DID instead of just growing up in an abusive, unstable or simply unsafe household where you're isolated. Her channel was legitimately driving me insane and causing me to spiral into denial of my own experiences, despite me literally being in therapy with a DID specialist. I thought I was getting educated and ✨ broadening my horizons ✨ by watching her channel. Which is crazy to me. It is very weird to me how she talks with so much certainty about people's individual experiences and throws shade and calls into question things that are so incredibly common.
An example... Like when we first found out that we were a system, we legitimately thought - just because of how dissociated and how different we felt - that we would each need our own college ID, which, I know, is very ridiculous in hindsight and stupid. We're all obviously just one person. But it goes to show how intense the dissociation can be.
And of course, Michelle calls into question something like having your own personal items as an alter, when to me it's like, well, of course, this to a system who feel as if they are completely different people is normal. To a system, the experience is very much like having roommates. And if you were in a situation where you felt as if you had roommates, you'd obviously want your own separate items (either that or learn to share the hard way, and it's very difficult to learn to share).
Another thing is masking.. While it is true that some systems are covert and others are overt, she tends to misrepresent what it's actually like. She misses the nuance that some systems are only covert because they mask or they don't feel comfortable being themselves - or are just missed by people. For us at least we are extremely overt. Though it's missed because people make assumptions, because people live in a world where everything goes on as usual. People think "Well, they're probably just having a bad day. They're probably just sleepy right now. Maybe they're grumpy. Maybe today they're in a good mood. They're excited about something. Or maybe they're just shy right now or anxious.". It gets so easily interpreted as something else, something normal.
There's a lot of ways that a system can be missed in normal context can be almost invisible to an outsider what with people's assumptions. Meanwhile, friends and family of a (known) system can usually spot a switch themselves before the person even realizes they've switched. For example, my friend can tell that I've switched. My therapist can tell that I've switched through a single text. My boyfriend can even tell that I've switched. All both in text, in calls, and in person. And this extends to other systems, too. So it just bugs me how she's lacking so much nuance and is misrepresenting reality and lived experience, and is boiling it down to "Covert systems are just so rare" And that's not the case at all. As I have just explained.. We even say it to reassure ourselves: DID is almost completely invisible to the average person in an average social interaction. People who don't know will almost NEVER have their first thought be "This person has DID and I'm literally speaking to a different alter now." Never. People will assume it's just mood shifts, and that's how the so called covert system appears as common.
It just blows my mind how she misses so much nuance and individual variety between people, between humans who are not standardized, who are unique, who are all very, very different, who all grew up in wildly different environments with wildly different cultural backgrounds and upbringings and very different people around them. She makes a lot of blanket statements like "Someone living with DID wouldn't want to do this." Or "Someone with DID probably will not go through the effort of doing/making/posting something like this."
And nine times out of ten here I am having said and done all of those things. And nine times out of ten I know many people with DID who have also said and done all of these things that she's claiming somebody with DID wouldn't do. So like get it together, girl.
She doesn't get the nuance that systems are allowed to be creative and funny despite the trauma, that people don't actively go through a hell they keep quiet about 24/7 and would never make jokes about, or draw or be creative with - God forbid you try to be human with something going on in your life? With your lived experience? There is no "correct victim", there is no "standard victim model" that people adhere to. We're human, we get to be creative, we have variety by nature, we get to do and say and make things and talk to people and make jokes, art, skits, stories, comics, everything - about our own life.
There's no "Victim template", there is "Person who happens to live with a disorder" like any other. Being a system doesn't mean you're suddenly devoid of a personality and a sense of humor! Not fitting your preconceived notion of a "DID haver" doesn't make people an edge case.
And one other thing she also doesn't seem to understand: The minimization of trauma. It is so common and so normal for systems (and traumatized folk in general, actually) to minimize and normalize their own trauma and not see it for what it is, for the things they've gone through and the things that have been done to them to not be seen for what they are: horrific events. It's extremely difficult for the average someone who's not in therapy or not seeking an outside perspective to see their experiences as anything other than "normal", because that's literally what they grew up with. That's all they've known.
To me, the horrific things that have been done and said to me that never fail to shock people and make them wonder "How the hell could someone even do that?!" These are normal to me. And so, I, as weird as it is to an outsider, feel normal making jokes about those things I've been through. I feel like it's an average, like it's the norm, when it really isn't. But then that's what gets called into question. That's what becomes suspicious. It's what people mark as a red flag for "They might be faking. How dare they make light of such events!" Minimizing your own trauma because you have never had a regular frame of reference for what's "normal" is literally one of the hallmarks of having gone through abuse. And with the internet making it easier to see how horrific someone else's life is, it's so easy to look at your own (after a traumatic event when the dust has settled) that they have it worse than you. It's difficult to accept that you've been through something horrific. So why is that suspicious to somebody on the outside looking in?
"Edit: Hullo, other guy in the head here. I read all that and noticed some things I wanted to add, it bugged me like hell, too. I recall instances where she was very insistent that people can't switch on command. That's... Not really true though? Being able to switch is a skill, and sometimes there are hard barriers for switching, but it comes with better communication, and with being able to put aside the fear and denial that comes from living like this, especially for us. There's also situations where, yes, systems will switch because the situation calls for it or the alter specifically requested to be present for certain events (like me for rain and d&d... I like d&d).
As a commenter said, she's very confused on how identity confusion and amnesia works, of course someone would be inconsistent when living with DID. In memory continuity, recollection, time, identity, personality... What's odd to me is that she does identify core symptoms and struggles of DID, yet questions them as markers of faking when they show up. Inconsistent memory? Probably faking. A different style of clothing? Yeah, probably faking, I'm sorry, person who's a system and is not showing me your medical history, but all these symptoms of a disorder that you're showing up with are just 😬 I dunno, man, you seem like a faker, I'm going to make a video nitpicking everything you do and say with you in the thumbnail and "FAKER" written under you in big bold red letters. I don't recall the specific system and this isn't me absolving the person of sin (I recall they were nasty), but she said that two alters remembering where an ingredient is in the kitchen after the first of them was told where it was is... Suspicious? Like. Sorry. But. Do you think we have the memory of a goldfish?
Again. Not me absolving the person, they did terrible things, and I'm not defending that, but just pointing out that this kind of recall is normal.
Oh and another thing... Alters in systems can have interpersonal relationships, and that does include romantic feelings. It's just a form of self love, and it's very common.
Same goes for fictives, we're common, people! The subconscious mind has no idea what's real and what's not, it just introjects based on needs in times of trauma. There is so much more I'd like to add but I fear I'd be here all day 😅
On and.. Michelle, please don't mention r🍇 as a talking point in the intro then switch up and go "Hit like and subscribe 😜 I won't beg you" as we said... Have some tact.
So that's my edit finished, I'll let you go back to host's conclusion :)"
So. Michelle. If you're reading this. Please stop misrepresenting the disorder. You're doing so much more harm than good. And so much more harm than you can possibly imagine with those inflexible, broad, generalizing standardizing views. And it's extremely frustrating as someone who has been legitimately harmed by it and is seeing it continue.
Edit: And stop speaking for us!