r/fakedisordercringe

I belong to a Disability Support group in my province.

At the last meeting, one of the coordinators said, "We also recognize self diagnosis as a valid form of diagnosis".

I don't know if this is part of a disability rights movement or something, but it made me pretty uncomfortable.

It isn't that I don't want to be inclusive, but I don't feel like self diagnosis is a evidence-based form of diagnosis. You can totally suspect you have something, or be investigating the possibility of having something, but unless you have a medical/graduate psychology degree, you don't have the expertise to definitively diagnose yourself.

Am I being unreasonable by thinking this self diagnosis support will just lead to fakers taking advantage of the support provided by the group?

I used to be much more open about certain symptoms/diagnoses etc. I've experienced; with the amount of fakery I've seen, I now largely no longer discuss certain things on a public platform unless within a support group catered towards it, or with very roundabout and specific wording (e.g. changing 'likely diagnosis of x' to 'experiences in common with potential/possibility of x but not formally diagnosed').

Also curious around how fakery may have changed your experiences e.g. at the doctors, especially with 'trendy' diagnoses, and if it's impaired the care you've sought.

This will likely be long but it’s something I’ve never spoken about in the years since it happened and I would really like your opinion or take on it. So if you feel like it, please read and comment!

I have a multitude of chronic illnesses including life threatening ones that were genuinely diagnosed through testing. No faking or “self diagnosis” here. My life revolves around chronic illness as I’m sure many of yours do too.

Years ago, when I was first started receiving all of my diagnosis’, I discovered the chronic illness community on Instagram. I thought it was a God send and I was finally able to talk to and become friends with people who actually understood what the struggles of my life were. Because they were struggling too. It was beautiful and I loved it. I eventually become a pretty semi-well known figure in certain circles of the community and even branched out to helping others. I almost daily posted pictures of my life whether it was good or bad, at home or the hospital all in order to keep my followers up to date because they did truly care about me which was so inspiring for me to continue.

After many years however, I started to realize that not only was it obvious that some in the community were either faking, exaggerating or straight up lying about their conditions or what they were going through, but I noticed a huge shift in the community. A toxic one.

It somehow became a competition of who could be hospitalized the most. Who could get more diagnosis’ in total or more severe diagnosis’ than everyone else. Who could get the sickest and spend the longest time in the hospital. Who could get the most lines and tubes sticking out of them.

The behavior actually disgusted me because when the community first really became a thing, we were all truly posting just to share our experiences, support one another and be amongst people who understood what living with chronic illnesses was like. I don’t know how the change happened, who helped it become that way or why being the sickest was now the whole point of the chronic illness community.

So I left. I stopped posting on my account which had close to 20,000 followers. I stopped interacting with others in the community except for a rare few, because I couldn’t trust if they were truly ill or not. I quit my chronic illness based business. Just like that, a huge part of my life was gone. I was devastated to have lost the true love and support that I originally had at the start.

Recently after a multi year hiatus, (minus many, many followers) I’ve started posting again occasionally. But only pictures of my dog. I actually worry that if I were to post about my health again, I’d be viewed as trying to compete again and I definitely don’t want to be viewed like that.

So, I know that was a lot, but it was basically to be able to ask a few things.

1) Do you yourself suffer from chronic illnesses?
2) Were you around at the start of the chronic illness community on Instagram?
3) Did you notice the toxic change like I did?
4) Did you decide to leave altogether or do you still post about your health journey?
5) If you do happen to post about your health journey still, do you worry that you might be labeled a faker even though your conditions are very real? That’s a fear I have. Do you notice other creators trying to compete or one up you?

Anyway, thanks for reading and thanks for any answers! I’m just curious. And I’d like to know if others noticed the toxic change like I did. I wish the community wasn’t so competitive, toxic or full of fakers anymore. I miss the good ole days.😞

Guys, I'm (30F) afraid that my 19 year old sister is randomly starting to fake having autism. I'm not sure how to call it out, or if I even should, or if I am even accurate. I don't want to think she's faking. Personally, I feel annoyed to witness it and just simply don't acknowledge the "symptoms". She gets very upset very quickly when I am not accommodating her symptoms like if she is having a "breakdown" it's as if she wants me to baby her.

Okay so obviously I've known my sister her whole life. She's always had a very calm and stable manner of doing everything. Well, she now has her very first boyfriend, and along with this boyfriend came some very loud "symptoms" of "autism". Nobody in our family has ever been diagnosed with autism, but we do have bipolar in our family very heavily.

These symptoms include baby-like behavior, like needing a "blankie", needing headphones to do literally anything, unable to touch anything without gloves all of a sudden, needing help cooking the simplest meals since the cooking devices are too loud, and very exaggerated fake crying fits and exaggerated gagging at random objects. Among other things. I don't know. Can all of these symptoms be masked and then abruptly start showing like this? She was also caught in some lies not too long ago that she was being hit by a roommate, and admitted to this when family stepped in trying to help press charges or yell at the guy. She's only known that roommate for 2 months, he is her friends new boyfriend.

I don't know guys. It's embarrassing as fuck for me to watch. It pisses me off too. All of these symptoms escalate when she is around her boyfriend. I can't tell if she's just trying to convince him mostly or what. Does this all sound very weird to you guys? Should I take this seriously? How would you respond if your sibling randomly started claiming to be autistic and display symptoms that they've never had before?

EDIT: I've also asked our other siblings about this, and all of them were completely unaware that our sister was autistic. (5 siblings and we're all very close, I'm the oldest, the sister I am referring to in this post is the youngest)

They’re all white, young woman who looked like they came straight off of nonbinary tiktok. Why is that?

The past year or two I've come across a growing amount of autistic people (how many of them actually are I don't know, some really are I think but trying to be more "severe" it seems) claiming that in their adult years they become minimally speaking or non speaking. I'm not talking about verbal shutdowns, I'm talking about them claiming to supposedly lose the ability to speak permanently. Often they seem to describe it as a result of (autistic) burnout from memory. As far as I am aware, if you lose the ability to speak as an adult, it is not autism related... (I am saying this in a snarky/cynical way)

But yeah, I haven't seen as many this year as I haven't really been in online autism communities so much for various reasons, but I got a reel on insta a few days ago claiming this shit and it reminded me of all the other similar people like them. A lot of them also seem to really forcefully stim in stereotypical ways on camera (really forced rocking and hand flapping) and love to go on about how super stereotypical their traits are. Honestly in general it seems a growing amount of people want to be more severely disabled by their autism than they really are + more stereotypical (or maybe I just found myself into weird corners of the internet).

Someone recently went viral for walking after using a wheelchair and the rest of the channel is them having tics, seizures etc. The tics are always "cute" and they faint gently onto their knees? What the hell and why are so many peoppe believing this person?

I've noticed that when these people have all their "disorders" listed they always leave out schizophrenia, but why? It's a very serious disorder was more than GAD but they all list that. It also seems way easier to fake than DID or seizures.

Edit: okay I hear you all it's not 𝓺𝓾𝓲𝓻𝓴𝔂 enough, but wouldn't it be cool if these people faked seeing a giant dragon in their classroom. That sounds way cooler than anime boy alter x.