When did various illnesses become identities?

CBT? Cock and ball torture? Seems overly excessive.

Just what the doctor ordered r1!

When an absence of empathy is part of the illness, it isn't surprising that they will fight acknowledging how they affect others.

No, OP. When CBT is correctly applied, it is very therapeutic. However, in recent years it has been widely inappropriately prescribed as a cost-cutting measure and to save time and trouble. But I assume you knew that and were trying to evoke hatred and ignorance anyway.

Hmm. I have sincere ideas about this that won't be appreciated on DataLounge, but I'll share anyway. This will be a two-part TL;DR post, so go ahead and skip ahead to troll me without reading it. :)

I have a chronic illness called mast cell activation syndrome. It causes anaphylaxis pretty much at any random time, and it can be life threatening. I could die from asphyxiation or my heart could stop. I carry two epi pens, I take five allergy medications a day and I get a monthly biologic medicine shot to prevent anaphylaxis.

I had regular anaphylactic episodes for a decade or so before the diagnosis, induced by exercise, heat, aspirin and who knows what else. I was covered in hives and had flushing episodes every day at the same time. I also had spontaneous "panic attacks" at times, including in the office, and felt like I was dying and my coworkers had to coach me through them—as it turned out, I was having anaphylactic events, basically hives in my digestive system and my heart, and not emotional panic attacks with no basis. But I felt and acted like an insane person.

All of this is completely life affecting. It takes over your whole life, particularly when you don't know what is causing it, when doctors don't know and can't figure it out and suggest it's all in your head, and when you make plans to do things with people, for example, and then ruin those plans by canceling because you are sick or ruin everyone's good time because you are sick or having weird symptoms.

So you end up thinking about it all all the time and talking about it a lot to explain to the people around you why you act the way you do, why you miss so much work or school, why you cancel plans or hesitate to make them, or why you appear to have sudden symptoms that no one can see and therefore people end up doubting and thinking you're doing things for attention.

I am literally allergic to exercise when I am not medicated adequately and I wasn't diagnosed or medicated for a decade. There were times outside in the summer heat when I had Parkinson's-like convulsions and had no idea if I was having an epileptic seizure or what, and I knew doctors had no explanation and people I was with were worried and bewildered but after the events never thought about it and I would have to remind them I have to avoid high heat and high exertion—it makes you seem and look crazy, but then you know it's a physical reality, however mysterious, and have to tell people about it.

Cont.

My job is having a staff retreat outdoors in Virginia in late August. It is practically guaranteed to be over 90 degrees and humid. I have had to announce reminders that I have a disorder that makes me allergic to heat and that I likely will have to go indoors somewhere to cool off. So now we're talking about affecting my livelihood and having to make 'a thing' about it for the sake of avoiding a potentially life-threatening health crisis and carrying my epi pens everywhere I go on stupid obstacle courses etc.—I am a 44 year-old man; I can't hide them in a purse.

This is all because my immune cells are fucked up, and I can't just carry on with life and pretend it's not real, and yet I realize it sounds fantastically crazy and I end up over-explaining and telling people it IS real despite sounding crazy, and I am sure some people think I doth protest too much as crazy people do. I'm certain some people wish I would shut up about my health issues, and I try to, but I end up in situations like this where I have to say, "Guys, I can't get drunk with you because alcohol makes me physically sick, and I may not be able to do an all-day outdoors obstacle course in the late August heat even though it is being assigned by my boss because, despite looking able bodied, there's a chance it could literally kill me." Sounds crazy. I know.

All this shit takes over a person's life. It can't be kept private, and bringing it up as often as it has to be brought up to explain why I am the way I am, I'm sure, makes people think I have some kind of victim complex and I'm a hypochondriac and my whole identity is mast cell activation syndrome. This is not how I want to live my life but what other choices do I have?

Beyond this inevitable reality, yes, we live in a time during which people assume one aspect of their identity as their whole social being. Whatever about you is most marginalized is played up by a lot of people these days. Honestly, gay men have been "guilty" of building whole identities around being gay for decades. I live in a gay area of DC and constantly see gay men with YAAAS QWEEN! tank tops, etc., and rainbow flags are hung proudly everywhere. White ladies can't feel special by being able to proclaim themselves marginalized POCs or marginalized LGBTs and so if they have MS or EDS or some other chronic illness, identifying with it may be exploited as a way to tell people, "Don't think of me as some average white lady Karen; think of me as working every day to overcome the obstacles presented by illness!"

I think that is an unfortunate outgrowth of identity culture. When my dad (74) was a young professional working for the federal government, he said his boss told him explicitly that he wouldn't be eligible for most promotions because women and black people were being specifically selected to advance in the interests of socioeconomic equity. Then in the 90s/00s, gay people were identified as the special group to be extra nice to and to advance at work. Then it was transgender people. Special treatment to smaller and smaller subpopulations has made larger populations feel disadvantaged and so they search their identities for something 'special' to identify with and demand their share of special treatment. Liberal white women in particular know they are seen as bland nothings and so they may latch onto a marginalized illness as a defining aspect of who they are. Perhaps this originated with AIDS and how gay men were seen as agents of the disease first and then later as victims of societal discrimination—Philadelphia, etc. made the gays-are-vulnerable-to-AIDS-and-to-mistreatment a thing for decades. This both helped gay men advance societally and ended up objectifying us in a patronizing way.

It's a conundrum. It'll work out over time (if our country survives the GOP).

Cont.

So I think there are two discrete things at play: people who have serious, life-affecting, invisible illnesses really have to tell people that they have restrictions on their abilities despite not being in wheelchairs, and they know people see what looks to be a healthy person and assume they are crazy or seeking attention, and all this compounds into frustration and sometimes results in hostility.

And then there's the current phenomenon of an individual's worth in society being equated with their greatest disadvantage. People who are just blandly white and healthy and not poor don't feel like they have any way to be seen as special, and everyone searches for aspects of themselves that are special, especially when a culture embraces and advances people based on special qualities like minority skin colors, religions, genders, illnesses. This is also the reason people are inventing new genders to identify as. They're trying to show the world what makes them unique *and* what makes them disadvantaged because being unique means being an exceptional star in your personal life and being disadvantaged can be advantageous in school and at work today.

Since the days of typhoid fever.

[quote]When did various illnesses become identities?

When people started saying "I'm ADD."

When they invented the term "nonbinary".

I asked my students the same thing last year. "Why do you all introduce yourselves by your mental illnesses?" and they replied that it helps them find a community. I suggested trying to find a community based on their strengths, like art or music, or favorite books, and one girl said, "Those things take too much time." SO apparently the TikTok/YouTube gen prefer to have "influencers" tell them what their illness are and we have to accept it.

I received mood disorder diagnoses and have t1 diabetes. The most liberating thing I’ve ever done for myself, after leaving therapy and eventually coming out the other end of decades of suicidality, was to stop talking about all of my maladies. I have good days and bad days and have a drastically reduced circle of contacts because of my challenges and a variety of other reasons, but in the end I’m just like any other person, complicated. My medical record isn’t me. I highly recommend this outcome for all, though I hope they can skip the suicidality and the diabetes to get here.

R12, haven't you heard? Autism is a superpower.

Seriously, I am actually surprised you weren't fired for for implying that metal illness isn't a strength.

I work with a 26-year-old who says she has borderline personality disorder. (She seems way too decent of a person to have it legitimately, and I've told her so.)

She told me last week that she was raped during college and went to therapy because of it and ended up talking about much more than that and her tharapist told her she has BPD. She says she's medicated and that has helped a lot, and she spends her daily life reminding herself not to feel like she has to be the center of attention or else feeling like everyone hates her and is out to get her.

She said when she was diagnosed with BPD, "I was in love with the idea of being mentally ill, and it was my whole identity. I'm still working on overcoming that."

Maybe there's hope.

r15 great story. I think (as an aside) that BPD has been overdiagnosed, especially in women.

It's also interesting that some illnesses are more en vogue than others. I've known a number of people with schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder over the years, but it really isn't worn as a badge of honor like some other diagnoses.

I can see where this thread is going. It will be littered with the term "frau" and degenerate into extreme misogyny. I know how you boys operate. I won't stand for it, so I am giving you fair warning: if this does turn in a female-hating thread, I'm out of here. I will be treated with the respect and dignity I deserve, and if you won't give that to me, then I will be forced to stop posting here.

R14/R15/R16 it's the disorders with unsexy or scary PR that people don't want. Schizos are considered nuts (like, "stay away from me" nuts), while Bipolars can just be wild and crazy fun. Depressives are considered a buzzkill and antisocial, where Anxious people are just highly-strung and adorably hyper. And it's not all stereotyping--I had to drop a Schizophrenic friend, some years back, who I loved dearly but was breaking my heart and running my nerves ragged with her constant suicide attempts, sectionings and bouts of mania.

I really turned a corner, psychologically, when I started inwardly calling myself 'depressive' or 'tending to be down' rather than 'Depressed(TM)'.

[quote]When did various illnesses become identities?

When it became an excuse for poor behavior and when it became a source of attention for people who lack any real accomplishments or other attention worthy qualities.

[quote] I have had to announce reminders that I have a disorder that makes me allergic to heat and that I likely will have to go indoors somewhere to cool off. So now we're talking about affecting my livelihood and having to make 'a thing' about it for the sake of avoiding a potentially life-threatening health crisis and carrying my epi pens everywhere I go on stupid obstacle courses etc.—I am a 44 year-old man; I can't hide them in a purse. This is all because my immune cells are fucked up, and I can't just carry on with life and pretend it's not real, and yet I realize it sounds fantastically crazy and I end up over-explaining and telling people it IS real despite sounding crazy, and I am sure some people think I doth protest too much as crazy people do. I'm certain some people wish I would shut up about my health issues, and I try to, but I end up in situations like this where I have to say, "Guys, I can't."

R6 invisible conditions really are misunderstood, aren't they? I can relate, I have B12 deficiency (possible due to MTHFR mutation or Pernicious Anaemia) that is treated with regular shots of cobalamin that I need to have, otherwise I end up partially immobile with whole-body nerve pain and half out of my mind in some kind of fugue state. But from the outside, I look young and healthy, and when medicated it seems there's nothing wrong with me. No-one gets why I need to go to the extreme of literally injecting myself weekly (or daily, in times of stress). But the consequences if I don't are very real.

R16 There's a good reason for that: Schizophrenia is a serious, life-limiting disease of the mind that plagues people who have it. And it can't really be faked, not for diagnosis and not over a long term. It is a radically different thing—a mental disease—than a personality disorder like BPD, which is really just a clinical pathology of a really horrible human being.

Anxiety and depression, schizophrenia and bipolar mania, personality disorders, autism are distinctly different classifications and they should not all be grouped together into "mental illness."

That's like grouping the common cold, syphilis, multiple sclerosis, ALS and lung cancer into the same group.

I am JAZZ

The woman OP linked to pops up in my Twitter feed from time to time with idiotic takes on illness. One day I was so irritated by something she wrote that I looked through her older tweets. She has somatization disorder; she even shared a photo of her medical record reflecting that (she, of course, disagrees with that assessment).

I have had a severe chronic illness for most of my life, long enough that I don't remember any other kind of existence. The disconnect between the mundane experiences of "real" people with chronic illnesses and/or physical disabilities, and what these overly online cosplayers portray on social media, is vast and ever-widening.

There's no easy way to discuss it without being ripped to shreds by them. And that's intentional on their part, at least for some of them. They're drawn to easily weaponized identities (medically and sexually) like personality disordered moths to a flame. It can become very disruptive in online support group settings, which makes me glad my illness is both unromanticized and one you can't self-diagnose.

r21 I've read a lot about factitious disorders over the years, including Ganser syndrome (a type of factitious disorder in which patients feign mental illnesses).

One interesting study found that patients who faked schizophrenia had a worse prognosis, after something like ten years, than actual schizophrenics.

Narcissism.

Only in Fat America where fattards wear their disease IDs as a badge of honor. I don't know, maybe it's ego defense thing or a convenient excuse to fuck up.

Hi, I'm Maddie. I'm a morbidly obese, alcoholic, schizophrenic, OCD with Crohn's disease and alzheimer's and prolapsed anus.

When critical thinking and intellectualism was snuffed out. The youngs are empty, vapid and lost. They shoot up schools and proudly proclaim their pseudo-mental ailments because in their eyes it’s what gives them substance and makes them feel special. They have been lobotomized from staring at a screen and have been convinced by Instagram they are victims of everyone else. They are malignant little narcissists.

The symptoms and behaviors and perceptions that cluster together and result in a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia can be caused by physical illnesses, including cat-scratch fever, aka Bartonella henselae, and it's not as rare as one would think.

Patients who have the infection and have been diagnosed with schizophrenia can be treated with antimicrobials and their schizophrenia cured. Permanently cured. But treatment is not as simple as a few shots of penicillin like with syphilis or popping a zithromycin pack; it can require months of intravenous antibiotics and other antimicrobials to treat a case that has infected the central nervous system.

This is relevant to note because it's a brand-new discovery.

People can fake having the flu but generally would not and could not fool most doctors, and people can outwardly act like they believe schizophrenic people act but they can't do so convincingly enough to fool a psychiatrist and can't do it over the long term.

People who really have serious mental illnesses don't have fun with them. They are tormented by them like a person with a chronic physical illness.

Some attention seeker may pretend to have MS but no one with MS would ever pretend to have MS knowing how fucked up it is.

Grouping mental illnesses with physical causes that can be potentally cured with antibiotics or successfully controlled with antipsychotics with personality disorders that can't be treated because an asshole is an asshole is really irresponsible.

This is why news organizations should invest in actual medical and health journalism rather than just reporting about diet fads and "this new study says wine is good for you" bullshit. People have no understanding that mental illness and being a jackass are not the same thing.

Some of you might like the podcast Sympathy Pains, about a prolific illness faker. In one of the final episodes a psychiatrist explains what's actually wrong with such people, and how they really are terribly sick in their own ways.

They've always existed but the Internet has made the problem infinitely worse, which could be the subject of another book or podcast entirely. There's a huge overlap between illness fakers and the bizarre illness-as-identity phenomenon.

r29 did they interview Dr Marc Feldman? He's written a lot about factitious disorders (and coined the term "Munchhausen by internet")

"When we talk to God, we call it 'prayer': when he talks to us, we call it 'schizophrenia'" RD Laing

This approach to aberrant (for the sake of argument) mental issues isn't that new.

Some of the shift has to do with a loosening in other areas of social norms; Laing's quote is from the 1960s.

". . . Taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness, Laing regarded schizophrenia as a theory not a fact. Though associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Politically, he was regarded as a thinker of the New Left. . . ."

And there you have it.

I thought it an interesting observation until I met the sister of a friend who had exhibited attachment issues and other signs of schizophrenia when still an infant. I had known that the friend had an institutionalised sister, but did not meet her till she was about 22, released for a few days to spend a bank holiday weekend with the family.

Five minutes in her presence, and I knew Laing was full of shit. Some aberrant landscapes really are, the labels may need refining as research uncovers more, and I wouldn't wish poor Erica's fate on my worst enemy. Joy, attachment, curiosity, learning, et al, were all closed to this young woman.

The urge to escape the knowledge that one is "damaged" or out of sync with the rest of society is quite understandable.

I'm not sure what the answer is, except to find some sensible middle ground between the denial of reality and demonisation, and to recognise that some "aberrations" are far more extreme than other.

And, as an eldergay, I have always to remind myself of what history's aberrant judgement has meant for us.

R5 R6 Thank you! What you've been through! I think it's especially hard with conditions that aren't very apparent, first to diagnose and then to communicate. You're right that it's probably an offshoot of identity politics. And R29 yes exactly. The answer to why some people even go as far as to fake an illness they don't have is easy: because they benefit, at least emotionally, and if it's about monetizing channels or getting certain jobs, even financially. Most of the people who claim to be, e. g., autistic on Twitter aren't autistic. What they do is detrimental to the ones really suffering from an invisible condition.

" a personality disorder like BPD, which is really just a clinical pathology of a really horrible human being."

Exactly. In most cases, someone who says they have BPD is just saying "I'm an asshole, and if I call it something vaguely scientific, I don't have to try to change."

R30, Dr. Feldman would've been a great choice, but it was Dr. Stuart Eisendrath. His interview's a short but crucial part of the fifth episode.

Thanks r34!

R5 r6 r8 stop your posting! My god just write a fucking book and sell it to a reject of society

Yet again, borderlines are painted as "horrible human beings" and downright evil, when the correct diagnosis for actual "horrible human beings" is ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER.

J'suis fibromyalgia!

OP does have a point, but so does the woman whose tweet he linked. Most so-called "therapy" is useless. I mean, if you suffer from something as simple as isolated arachnophobia, you might benefit from it. Anything more complex, forget it.

R15 if she *truly* seems like a decent person I would wager that she might actually have complex ptsd. There are some similarities to bpd but they don't have BPDs psychotic level of aggression. I'm sorry for any BPD who doesn't fit this description but almost every one I have met is a shit stirring bully. The bullying aspect of their behavior is seldom discussed but once you see it you can't unsee it.

R6 I'm so sorry for your heartbreaking struggles and I salute your courage. I mean, you have to deal with DC gays? Shudder...

But in all seriousness, thank you for the insight. There's definitely got to be a halfway point between illness as an identity and acknowledging that some people really do need to make lifestyle accommodations for chronic conditions. Rather than just be told to tough it out. What might be mundane for one person can be life threatening to another.

There are genuinely lots of "psychic maladies" that can't just be fixed with CBT. Some personality disorders are untreatable, schizophrenia needs drugs, and so on. Anyway, the person you linked to was talking about pain and has a wheelchair icon in her profile so it sounds like she has some sort of physical condition.

My heart bleeds purple piss for you

Since Ginny in Billing came down with Fibromyalgia.

Children of divorced parents grow up with a much higher rate of mental illness as adults.

I'm in my 40s with bipolar disorder and I have spent my years just trying to get the highest quality of life possible and NOT be defined by my mental illness. I think it's just victim culture - people with genuine conditions don't behave that way. I find it annoying when people who obviously don't have a mental illness go around desperately pretending they do. I'd more than happily switch so they could experience the real thing - I predict that would change their minds real fast.