Zanity's Response to "Fakers"

We don’t talk about “Fakers” or “Faking” disorders in our community. Not on stream, not in discord, it’s not a conversation that Zanity System wishes to entertain. 

Here is why, for those people who feel the need to understand in-detail. Please keep in mind that any vitriol and hostility read in the tone of this is partially why our system cannot entertain this discussion. This should be the only time and place that this will ever be explained. Common participants of the Zanity System community should have the capacity to respect boundaries without this explanation. 

The discussion of “fakers” is rarely productive, beneficial, or safe. These discussions can send those in a sensitive space into a crisis. There are real-world impacts to those who witness such conversations. Suicides, plural, have occurred as a result from these conversations let alone the accusations that these conversations revolve around. We will not be having an environment that breeds lethal self-doubt and denial. 

Where it comes to certain mental health disorders in particular, denial is an incredibly common feature. Many people can be in denial about their depression, anxiety, ADHD, Autism, etc. Dissociative disorders AND childhood trauma are two conditions involved with Dissociative Identity Disorder which separately face skepticism, criticism, erasure, and neglect. (Stigma, in less words). With Dissociative Identity Disorder it’s possible that this particular individual experienced an extraordinary amount of gaslighting, internalizing this, and denying their own health, well-being, needs, identity, boundaries, etc. The development of PTSD precludes a failure of the environment to provide a safe, validating, and contextualizing landing from a high-stress experience. 

A common argument we have experienced within the DID and OSDD communities presenting with plurality as the main focus is “Well they admitted that they were faking the whole time”. Our shortest response is honestly that I don’t want to hear it. Within a traumagenic plural system there is an incredibly high chance that there is at least one alter who either constantly or intermittently goes through intensive denial. This, at the core, functions as a self-preserving feature, however maladaptive it might be in that individual body’s current life. There are traumas, experiences both internal and external that can not be safely tolerated by the conscious mind, forcing the memories, thoughts, sensations, and behaviors into a removed compartmentalization of the consciousness often guarded by a dissociative barrier of amnesia. It is not something that can be contained in working memory without the cause of severe distress or the trigger of a lethal crisis. 

The investment of strangers into the inner mind and the entitlement to a permanent, never-changing image of someone else are both “mega weird-sauce” to put it nicely. (and hopefully bring some levity). 

To make this short and sweet:

We hold the stance that Fake-Claiming (to accuse or speak on an individual faking a disorder) is inherently harmful, misinformed, and potentially fatal. Due to the high risk of danger with the incredibly non-existent amount of benefit (as we see it), Fakery and Fakers will not be discussed in our community. 

TL;DR - Not here, not cool. Stop being weirdsauce.