#factitious disorder

[histrionicfit]

to everyone who has ever faked an illness, injury, or disorder for attention: i love you.

i know you didnt have bad intentions. i know you probably didn't even know what your intentions were. i know you likely do have some type of mental illness. and i know it makes you need attention, or that you feel like you need to have something worse to be valid. i know you just want someone to see you. i see you. you are seen and you are loved. you are not evil. you are not defined by your actions. you will recover from the consequences you may have faced for what you faked. you will find new, better ways to cope. you will be okay.

[subsystems]

"This policing of illnesses online often verges on bullying, and can have serious ramifications for both posers and people with real-life conditions. It creates a 'boy who cried wolf' culture around health on social media, which subjects actual sufferers to skepticism and condemnation. . . . Feldman calls actual sufferers 'the real casualties of deception — because they are there legitimately seeking help. When the skepticism ends up undermining their efforts to get it, that's just deeply unfortunate.'"

Harriet Shepherd (2021) on the witch-hunting of people who fake disorders/illnesses. [Source]

[sophieinwonderland]

Hi sophie (again) one really quick note, the reason i read through your ENTIRE blog is because my dissertation is on facetious disorders portrayed and influenced by social media and the likes of such- it is literally a 250 page document about people like you. It's literally a part of my research to read long-winded things like this and write about them. My livelihood revolves around this. I don't expect to see a Dr. before your name, but you can damn well expect to see it before mine.

The only reason I sent that ask and wrote a targeted post was to get a response from you. The only reason. Had some writers block lol, I needed some material 😅😅

Another note to add to the grooming part was not about LGBTQ or transgender people as I am both myself. Please do not take it as a jab to your gender identity, and I apologize if it came off that way. It was in no way meant to insult you in that regard.

First, thanks for clarifying about the use of grooming. I don't mean to suggest you did intend it as a remark about my gender identity.

But I do think it's important to note in a "you are not immune to propaganda" way. Because I think, consciously or unconsciously, anti-endos have adopted transphobic talking points.

I assume and hope that this is unconscious. That rather than looking at how conservatives have used these talking points to harm queer communities and going "yeah, we can use that talking point too with these people we don't like," this absorption and repetition of these talking points is happening on a subconscious level. In which case, I think it's important to understand where they've originated and what the history is behind them.

As well as what misusing these terms normalizes. Because repeating them does contribute to a culture that is okay with using "grooming" this way to associate people they don't like with child abusers.

Now, allow me to first commend you on starting work on your dissertation so early. Working on it at just 20 is quite impressive indeed.

Although I have to question the subject matter.

A factitious disorder is when somebody is faking a disorder or pretending to have a disorder. It seems strange that you would seek to use examples of people who do not actually have a disorder and are not claiming to.

Even if endogenic systems were lying, unless they're presenting themselves as having a disorder they weren't, they wouldn't qualify for criterion B.

If you do want to write about people who have plural experiences without having trauma or a disorder, you might want to actually read my studies and research page. I'm sure that you could find stuff there that could help you on your journey.

And if you plan on writing about tulpamancy, specifically, Dr. Samuel Veissiere's Variety of Tulpa Experiences is probably most useful in understanding the tulpamancy community and viewpoints on the practice.

I would also recommend Learning to Discern the Voices of Gods, Spirits, Tulpas, and the Dead, as it offers a great comparison between tulpamancy and other forms of non-pathological voice hearing.

I imagine that these studies are much more productive uses of your time than scrolling through over 11,000 Tumblr posts, and would look better as sources in your dissertation.

Finally, if you are committed to doing a dissertation on factitious disorder, I would highly advise learning how to spell factitious. Because it's not "facetious" disorders, and spelling it that way might look a bit awkward on your dissertation about factitious disorder.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

==

If you're going to claim this is a strawman, I refer you to the retracted Boston Children's Hospital promotional videos where one of the "doctors" literally, verbatim says, "refusing to get a haircut" as an indicator of a child being "transgender."

This is child abuse.

[buggingme]

BTW FOR THE LURKERS

If your educated enough it's not a surprise that even with or without emotional empathy, that someone with the disorder can display and feel cognitive empathy. (THIS IS MEANT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE ANTI-BIID OR SOME SH/T)

[thecorporatetower]

TW : Syringe

Factitious disorder(s) flag!

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Factitious disorders, according to Cleveland Clinic, is "A mental disorder in which a person acts as if they have a physical or psychological illness when they themselves have created the symptoms. People with this disorder are willing to undergo painful or risky tests to get sympathy and special attention."

This is a disorder flag, not a MOGAI label

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Decided to coin some flags for it, because we were told there wasnt any ^-^' (we're also going to make a palilalia flag soon too !!!) flag colors are inspired by the awareness flag for factitious disorders. Syringe symbol rep is pretty obvious...

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@ghosting-plural-userboxes | sorry, we're a big liar. we had to get started on the flag as soon as we could because this is what unmedicated ADHD does to a bitch

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DO NOT REPOST ANYWHERE WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION

[yrfemmehusband]

Destigmatize Munchausen syndrome

This take may be too nuanced for the Internet right now, and that's okay but.. Instead of calling out people who seem to fake any type of illness, instead of complaining about how annoying they are, and ALSO instead of pretending that these people don't exist- what if we just destigmatized Munchausen syndrome??

It seems like everyone is all for mental health until it comes to Munchausen syndrome. And, extra nuance here, we should destigmatize this debilitating mental illness, while still allowing space for chronically ill, disabled people, and those hurt by people with Munchausen syndrome to speak their truth about it.

At the end of the day, those with Munchausen syndrome deserve help as much as anyone with depression does and if they could feel less shame about it they could get help sooner and create less harm to themselves and others.

(I am only talking about Munchausen inflicted on self because destigmatizing M by proxy is a very different type of issue)

[yellowyarn]

if your "transabled", "transnuerodivergent" or any other kind of thing like that go read about what Factitious Disorder is please for the love of god.

[the-bottle-system]

i want to try and edit the wikipedia page on DID because it has a misinformed section about faking

if you click enough FAQ boxes this shows up and it could easily misinform people. i’m trying to find any sources on DID faking, factitious disorder and fakeclaiming

and obviously if anyone is more informed or skilled at writing please feel free to edit it yourself! HUGE disclaimer i don’t have DID myself so i might not be the right person to do it, i’m just trying to see what i can do. i might also look at the pages for OSDD

what i have so far:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/factitious-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20356028#:~:text=Factitious%20disorder%20is%20a%20serious,being%20ill%2C%20injured%20or%20impaired.

[gonzogodzilla]

CHRONIC PAIN DIARIES #1

I used to want to be a writer & then I was told I use too many words so I became an artist. it's still there, and still leaks into everything I do. right now I'm in too much pain to do any drawing, or really making of any kind, so words are still my comfort blanket.

I can type, even if I can't hold a pen properly.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

==

It's so weird because I was told this never happens.

[aformentionedfreaksterspider]

Intro post??

Hello, we're Astinfected on this account and go by it/its and that/thats. This account is for out system to talk about issues we have, so I suppose consider it a vaguely vent account? We are a bodily/chrono minor and don't want chrono/bodily adults interacting with us on a Romantic or Sexual level. We are Profiction and Propara. We are vaguely radqueer, which we'll explain below the line. This is not us feeling forced to explain ourself but rather genuinely wanting to be able to explain ourself for once. After this post we will be making a post talking vaguely on our transid identities, disorders we feel are necessary to be shared, and similar things. After that post we will make a "DNI"/Block list, meaning a list of people we are more likely to block than others. These two posts will be tagged respectively "Labels and Disorders" and "Whos unwelcome?" (CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of self-harm/mutilation, mentions of munchausen syndrom/factitious disorder and BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder), and mentions of intrusive thoughts or harmful ideologies.)

We suffer from consistent and intense thoughts, both intrusive and otherwise, which cause us to have a constant need to be worse than we currently are. While we have gotten better at getting past these, this doesn't mean they don't continue to affect us harshly. We suffer from BIID and possibly also Munchausen syndrome/Factitious disorder. We very consistently have needs to act out/pretend to have issues we know we do not, or even just act out certain symptoms we don't actually display from disorders we are unsure of having, including but not limited to violent anger issues, OCD, BPD, AVPD, and multiple sleep disorders. We have yet to cause any serious issues with this problem, but there is always a constant lingering need to pretend to have these disorders or act out symptoms from them. This likely comes from a place of trauma and having our already real disorders ignored, denied, or treated as lesser issues. We also, again, do suffer from BIID and have a constant and consistent need to worsen physical disorders we already have. This includes an intention to remove our eye(s) and/or further blind ourself, to deafen ourself further than we already are, and to remove certain limbs (usually one arm and one leg, often entirely) This explanation is not made to placate antis or anyone else. This is made purely to explain why we use transid labels, and to also specify why we call ourself a "Somewhat radqueer", as we do not entirely agree with radqueers but feel safer within the community than anywhere else, and prefer the labels given from the community despite having no fully conscious intent to "transition" to anything.

[4ga1n5t-4ll-4uth0r1ty]

im 90% sure I have (a) (I'm not quite sure the correct grammar) factitious disorder, and now I'm not sure if im actually autistic

[weirdstrangeandawful]

TW: factitious disorder

Two whumpees.

One who was the victim of FDIA (factitious disorder imposed on another), but received unnecessary treatment.

Another whose chronic conditions were dismissed as FDIS (factitious disorder imposed on self) but were in fact real.

[printedword]

Some classic techniques to elicit evidence for medical deception appear in a book by Sir John Colie—enormously valuable today though it was published almost a century ago. Dr. Colie’s observations, amassed from the tens of thousands of physical examinations he had performed, still apply to patients in whom the diagnoses of authentic and fabricated illness appear hopelessly intertwined. Some examples from Dr. Colie’s “hands-on” practice, which mostly targeted pain and neurologic syndromes:

Patients claiming to be unable to walk unaided forgetfully leave their crutches or canes behind in the exam room.

Individuals barely able to move their arms and hands briskly get dressed after the physical.

Patients’ medical signs (e.g., contorted faces with every movement due to excruciating pain) miraculously improve when they are unaware of being observed.

They may be found in incriminating postures (e.g., tying a shoelace while claiming to have unyielding back pain) if the doctor walks into the room unannounced.

A nonhealing wound on an arm or leg promptly heals after being placed in a cast that prevents the patient’s engaging in medical mischief. Removal of the cast results in recurrence of the wound.

Patients are unable, with their eyes closed tightly or blindfolded, to point reliably to the sites of greatest pain or, alternatively, trace the area of loss of sensation. These sites and “maps” may vary by many inches as the test is performed several times during the course of the exam.

A doctor’s quick pinch of areas of supposed loss of sensation, performed while the patient is distracted or (in the hospital) asleep, results—inconsistent with the claim—in instant startle or awakening.

Patients complaining of chest pain may howl when their ribs are directly pushed by the hands of the examiner, but remain undistressed when undergoing a lung or heart exam during which they are pressed just as forcefully by the stethoscope.

Forcibly moving a painful limb may result in protests, but not the increased heart rate or pupil dilation seen when people are in genuine acute pain.

With eyes closed or blindfolded, patients unintentionally reveal that they can feel a sensation even when they claim the body part is totally incapable of feeling. For instance, they may promptly answer “no” when asked if they can feel a pinprick or light touch to an area of allegedly lost sensation. If they truly had no sensation, they wouldn’t even have known that the stimulus had been applied when it was; they would have said nothing. Thus, they betray their true capacity to feel.

Such procedures and observations, ignoble though they may seem, can neatly demonstrate that a sign or symptom is at least partially psychological. Still, they do not necessarily indicate whether the initiation of the symptom is conscious (factitious or malingered) or unconscious (conversion disorder).

— Marc Feldman, from Playing Sick?: Untangling the Web of Munchausen Syndrome, Munchausen by Proxy, Malingering, and Factitious Disorder

[mentalblockblog]

gypsy lies behind prison - the tangled webs that miss Blanchard has spun