r/fakedisordercringe

Noticing a rise in people faking ASPD and it's honestly weird and gross. On top of that, they see it as some extremely edgy thing to set them apart from others. I've been struggling with mental health for over a decade, and nobody was really able to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with me. It took lots of medications, trial and error, big life events, etc. to even find out what is wrong and it wasn't till after I reached adulthood I was diagnosed with ASPD. My psychiatrist told me to do my research to understand it more, and to help seek treatment using diagnosis as guide. This disorder has ruined my life and has made things very difficult and honestly rather slow.

I'm no stranger to fakers, but it's really disheartening when you grew up having issues that nobody knew how to properly treat and people outcast you as such. It's annoying and a hassle and has ruined milestones for me due to so many issues disrupting my life.

For people to just come online, preach fake shit and even try to educate when they're incorrect and wrong, is ridiculous and annoying. I'm so tired, especially when these same people were the types to ridicule me for shit I've done in the past or for even being odd.

Even weirder when all they post about is said "disorder". I know there's 5 billion posts like this, but man.

It’s getting old seeing everyone adding, “autism” to posts, bios, etc. Percentage-wise the likelihood that everyone is now autistic is low (like. 2-3%).
I was a teacher who taught autistic kids that were all over the spectrum, so seeing goobers “fake-claiming” it is absurd. It’s becoming an excuse for certain behaviors, and has become a badge of honor. Do you really need to tell everyone you meet or put it in random posts, “I’m autistic”. Dude, I just asked your name, not your “diagnosis”.

I’m sorry/not sorry if I offend, it’s just old.

My sister-in-law is a narcissist who uses fake disorders and illnesses to manipulate people and get attention. I swear, everytime we visit and plan an activity such as a hike, bbq, camping, etc, she will not only refuse to come along, she'll call or email that morning to tell us that her doctor called her at 5:00 am telling her that some results came in and she may have cancer. She then expects us to drop our plans to go and be there with her.  We know her trick and tell her "Oh no! Ok, when we come back from our activity, we'll go visit you."  Guess what? Cancer all of a sudden disappears the next day and she doesn't mention it again. If we ask her who her doctor is to speak to them to know more about how to help and support her, she'll act dodgy and be all "Well, he's very busy right now and can't talk."

Technically, she has the magical ability to make her cancer disappear the next day, which is a medical miracle!

So far she's had "cancer" like 4 times. She also fakes autism, allergies, immune system diseases, injuries, covid, and a bunch of other shit.

The worst part of this? She's also putting her 16 year old son through the whole fake illness and disorder thing. She claims that he has asthma, autism, ADHD, depression, etc, and tries to always keep him close to her "for his own health". Munchausen By Proxy basically. The kid is healthy and likes doing outdoor stuff, and she's depriving him of enjoying activities outside or with us because "he's always sick and she needs to monitor his health". It's her way of controlling him. They live in Canada and we live in The Netherlands, and my wife and I have offered to have him spend a summer with us here, but she refuses saying that he's too sick to travel far. I train in Kung Fu and am working towards getting my certification to teach it, and do archery as well. I always wanted to take him under my wing and teach him martial arts and archery (which he is very interested in). She refuses, saying that I'll be "teaching him violence" and how he "suffers from traumas" and is a very sensitive soul who may experience further trauma if I teach him those things.

The cherry on top of this is that her husband (kid's stepfather) left her and moved out two weeks ago. He couldn't handle her shit anymore. She then sent a mass email to all the relatives - aunts, cousins, etc - saying that her husband left because "he suffers from schizophrenia", has "bipolar disorder", and even claims that his mental health problems occurred after "he suffered a stroke" (which no one knew about until now). So basically anyone who disagrees with her has some sort of psychological disorder.

A few years ago, I finally lost it and called her out on her bullshit, and told her what the rest of the family was dying to tell her for the longest time - that she was faking her disorders and the only health problem she has is constipation because she's full of shit. Guess what happened? She mass emailed everyone saying that I was a "violent psychopath" and how "she feared for her life". Luckily, all the relatives know me well and know she's full of shit, so they all quietly told me how they're glad someone finally called her out.

Anyways, I'm done venting.

Honestly I don’t know where I’m going with this, but this person literally stated that they’re an “endogenic” system, at first I didn’t know what that was, so I asked them. They said they’re formed without trauma, I didn’t wanna start a fight, so I didn’t go any further and just ended the conversation. This did happen a couple months ago, and unfortunately I do have to see them everyday at school. I only have about 2 weeks and I won’t have to see them again. This person also has a crush on me, of course I rejected them back in December when I was sick, but they still have a crush on me and hit on me constantly. Just thought I’d make a post here to get these feelings off my chest.

Buckle up cause this is gonna be a bit of a read. Changing and leaving out some details for anonymity. Referring to my patient, the illness faker, as Sam. Using they/them pronouns to refer to them.

For a long time, I worked as Sam’s caretaker. I won’t list all their diagnoses, but according to them there were 30 plus. Now it’s not my place to say what Sam did and didn’t have, but working in disability gives you a decent idea of how each condition presents, and this person didn’t show any symptoms of MOST of their conditions.

They had POTS, which I never observed any symptoms of. For the record, I have other patients with POTS who stumble after moving too quickly, shake a lot of the time, don’t exercise without me spotting them in case they faint, addicted to salt, hall of fame water chuggers, etc. These are all hallmark symptoms.  

Mysteriously, Sam didn’t show *any* of these symptoms the whole time I worked with them, which was 9 hours across three days every week. They were obese, and often complained about their inability to lose weight. I’d ask them if they wanted to go for a walk one day instead of mucking around at home. “No, I can’t walk without fainting.” But they could work for 3+ hours on their intensely physical hobby with no problem? I suggested a treadmill with a heart rate monitor to accommodate their POTS, and they revealed that they were anorexic and bulimic and that exercise wasn't safe for them. Okay, stay obese then. But don’t complain to me about it.

Sam said they had DID. Sam never showed any symptoms of DID. They did however spend plenty of time telling me about their alters, and it was like they were reading fanfic to me. A bunch of them were named after fictional characters from television series. Sam had perfect recollection of what each alter got up to when they were fronting, and often gave me dramatic re-tellings of confrontations that the boss-bitch alter would get into. They were the type of stories that included pretty much every bullshit element except for “and then everybody clapped”.  The alters could somehow have conversations with each other when they weren’t fronting too.

When I started catching on that they were faking a lot of their conditions, I ran a little test. I made up that one of my friends had been diagnosed with EDS. Sam had no idea what EDS was and showed little interest in my story – which was the case any time we talked about anything that wasn't focused on them. Lo and behold, next time I saw Sam, they announced we had to go to the doctors to start an EDS assessment. They did this whenever a new condition started trending and I had to push through the second-hand embarrassment every time the doctor shot me the look of "this shit again?"

Another time I asked them if we could avoid taking a certain staircase in a shopping centre as it would make me dizzy. Next time I see Sam, they’ve suddenly started getting dizzy on stairs.

One of the weirder times was when I had to call the session short as I was having horrible cramps. (I have endometriosis, for context). Sam said something like “don’t worry I know the feeling”, told me to take some panadol and stay. For context, Sam doesn’t have a menstrual cycle due to their lack of uterus. Since that day, Sam would say that we were “synced up” and try to relate everything back to periods, how cramps are the worst... they even started buying pads. I understood that this may have been a way for them to feel validated in their gender and bond with another femme. But the way they went about it – minimalizing my illness and saying they “know the feeling”… if they knew the feeling they certainly wouldn’t have told me to “just take panadol”, I know that for sure.

At this point it’s becoming clear that Sam is collecting diagnoses like they’re fucking pokemon. It genuinely seemed like their biggest issues were laziness and apathy. They simply did not want to do anything except sit at home doomscrolling or building random shit in their backyard. They didn’t want to get a job. They didn’t want to go anywhere. They didn’t want to make any real life friends, besides their online friends who were fellow systems from a DID group who were always comparing their latest alters. They had such an allergy to meaningful change that they would just rapid cycle through identity changes they could simply announce – their sexuality, their pronouns, their DID alters – it would all change on a whim.

For every solution that I offered to their never-ending list of problems, there was always a reason why they couldn’t do it. I genuinely think that their diagnoses were a way for them to evade accountability. In all fairness, they were in no way well-adjusted, and probably ended up with a handful of genuine issues in the end. They let their house go to shit because they “couldn’t clean without fainting” – hordes of flies, cat and dog shit, rotting meat left out of the fridge, mould everywhere. They were bothered by it, enough to ask me to clean it every time I came around, but not enough to clean it themselves.

I asked Sam heaps of questions over the years to get some insight into their past (and what led them to become an illness faker). It was clear that they never invested in their relationships. They simply weren’t interested enough in other people to ask how they were, or what they were up to. They didn’t contribute to their communities at all, even the ones they identified with – the queer community, the disabled community, the estranged parents community. Their only interest was themselves. They ended up really isolated, and I’m guessing a few of their genuine issues stemmed from this. Sam said they ended up meeting their people in online groups that were categorised by disability. Then they moved to private discord chats where they’d game and talk and whatever else. I visited a few of these online groups out of curiosity and they’re essentially self-diagnosing cesspools where everybody has confirmation bias for the condition they want.

In the end, I just lost empathy for Sam. I was working with genuinely disabled people who were doing it really fucking tough. No independence, being excluded from services, missing out on things that everybody should be able to experience. Some of them had been completely abandoned by their families because they were too disabled.

Then I’d clock on with Sam, who was able to navigate their world with ease, had government benefits to pay for whatever they liked, social housing provided for them, family close by… yet they were constantly complaining about something. I tried so hard to find solutions that worked for them, but I was always met with dead-ends. They did not want to even *try* taking any meaningful steps to change their lives.

So, I stopped working with them. They had mastered the art of learned helplessness, and may as well have disabled themselves after all. Sam had done such an excellent job of victimising themselves that they became their own abuser, and it was really hard to watch.

Im fairly certain this tiktok account I've been monitoring for some time is faking tourettes (among multiple other conditions) but I'm nervous to post them because I somehow haven't seen them outed yet. Their OG posts explaining tourettes don't explain tourettes correctly (but they state thats what their neurologist told them) and they also vaguely described it as "a condition that makes people have involuntary movements or say things uncontrollably" which completely erases a majority of actual common vocal tics (vocal tic does NOT mean it's words though it can be) their tics are almost never consistent and are pretty much always trending memes and media. They claim to have gone through that one program for children with severe tourettes syndrome but the criteria for said program is quite strict and also the timeline doesn't make sense (you are only in said program for a certain amount of time). Even the way they said their tics started makes no sense and allegedly progressed from one very simple motor tic to a sudden explosive tic attack containing coprolalia and lots of complex tics for seven hours with minimal increase between the initial tic and the attack. They've also recently started making videos of medical episodes including 'seizures', 'fainting', and 'sleep attacks'. They claim to now also have POTS, FND, "suspected" narcolepsy, "suspected" epilepsy, and "suspected" ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) they have posted "evidence" of a tourettes diagnosis in the past but it was from their IEP which said "unspecified tic disorder" which would be diagnosed if you did not meet tourettes criteria and a screenshot from a very oddly cropped patient portal. If you know anything about patient portal sites/ apps then you'll know that a majority of them allow you to add in medical history. You can even remove a diagnosis from your chart (though removals may require review to be actually fully removed). They're also allegedly investing in a service dog this year while also claiming they're fully independent. They frequently fight between saying they're completely independent and saying they require lots of help. Service dogs aren't supposed to be a first line treatment especially not for conditions that are not even confirmed diagnoses! What're your thoughts? Its so odd cuz no one else ever seems to question them but I'm certain they very carefully filter their comments.

So, I'll be brief. I'm a parent of an adult child who is autistic and has schizophrenia but who is also deep into the systems subculture. They don't have DID, and I think their having treatment resistant schizophrenia has a lot to do with their identity stuff.

So all that aside, there are four other DID or system claimers I've run into in person, and all of them have other mental health conditions or are neurodiverse with some co morbidities. BPD and psychosis-related stuff.

Other correlation (obviously not causation, but I suspect it is incorporated into the systems subculture) are anime type hyper fixations and art, furry fandom, and what I suspect is the rise of sick-lit young adult books.

So sick lit. Do you think that it's rise amongst Gen Z readers in the 2010s played a part in this? There was some romanticization of terminal illnesses for us in Gen X (think the movies Wild at Heart and Dying Young), but most of our young adult books were choose your own adventure type things and not focused on rare diseases.

The irony about all of this is we have a dominant genetic rare disease in the family, so honestly, why fake that shit when you have a 50% chance of being doomed by your mendelian inheritance??

So I’ve seen a lot of people online/in real life hate on Gen Z for constantly having “Victim mentalities” where they constantly find reasons why they’re a victim of something.

I feel like this naturally ties into faking disorders, as this is the “ultimate” way to gain a victim status.

However, I find this disdain for victims (real or imagined) is a slippery slope, and I find myself ashamed of my own “victim” aspects of my life.

For context/example I’m a 20 (F) with PTSD, due to being a “victim” of abuse. Despite this I have been able to work a job, go to nursing school, volunteer in my community, and otherwise be productive through hobbies and whatnot.

I think a lot of the disdain of fake victims stems from judgement of people using their trauma/diagnoses as an “excuse” of why they cant work/improve their lives.

It’s agreed that most people with disabilities or trauma are able to live fulfilling lives, but we still gauge the “severity” of a person’s suffering based on how much they contribute to society.

If I were to suddenly be unable to work or drop out of nursing school due to some kind of mental health complication, I would absolutely be accused of having a “victim mentality” and that has always haunted me.

I feel a pressure to constantly be as productive as possible. At the same time, this may be a positive force, as my life is genuinely better due to this “pressure.”

Any thoughts on this are very welcome! I find this topic interesting.