'I faked having multiple illnesses for years. I almost convinced myself.'

Nine years ago, Belle Gibson went viral when it was revealed that she wasn't actually dying from brain cancer, as she'd claimed. Last year, Amanda Riley was the subject of podcast series Scamanda, which detailed Riley's own faux cancer journey.

Often, these stories gain traction because the faker has been leveraging their faux illness for financial gain. Gibson had her cookbook and app; Riley was receiving donations from her church.

But beyond the money, there question often still remains: what is it that prompts people to start lying in the first place? Is it just for the money? Or is it something deeper? And what are the people who fake illnesses without the fraudulent activity getting out of it?

In a Reddit post, one former 'illness faker' has spoken about her experience faking multiple illnesses online. It's her hope, she wrote, that her story will "give some insight into the mindset of fakers", as well as "the online faker community which enables this behaviour".

At the time of posting, the author said that they were an 18-year-old girl who faked having dissociative identity disorder and other specified dissociative disorders, as well as autism and tics for around two years.

Watch: Belle Gibson rehearsing her cancer claims. Post continues below.

What is dissociative identity disorder?

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, is a complex psychological condition that's characterised by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personalities within a single individual. People with DID often refer to their separate identities as "alters", and these alters often have their own names, ages, histories and characteristics.

Common symptoms of DID include severe memory gaps, like the inability to recall everyday events, personal information, or traumatic events. People with DID often feel disconnected from themselves and/or the world around them, and the disruption between identities can involve marked differences in behaviour, cognition, consciousness, memory and basic functioning.

DID is a very real, very, complex mental health condition that is thought to be brought on by severe and repeated childhood trauma. The condition is thought to develop as a coping mechanism, when the person is being subjected to a situation that is too traumatic to process consciously. Treatment of DID involves specialised trauma therapy to understand the cause of the condition, as well as strategies to help reduce and cope with the symptoms.

DID is often associated with severe trauma during early childhood, usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. The disorder is believed to develop as a coping mechanism where the person dissociates themselves from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with their conscious self.

In popular culture, DID is often misrepresented, which can lead to controversy and misconceptions around the disorder.

Why she faked it.

"I was going through a rough time, and I didn't feel like I was good at anything or important to anyone," the poster shared.

In a state of loneliness and vulnerability, she came across a community of people who she now refers to as "the online DID (dissociative identity disorder) faker community".

After being "given a lot of misinformation about DID (dissociative identity disorder) and autism", the poster said she was "encouraged" to diagnose herself, rather than seeking professional medical advice.

"'Having' these disorders was a way to make me feel special, interesting, and valid," she said. "It was also a form of escapism, and a way to find a community."

She continued, "As for the tics, I wanted to 'be interesting' like TikTokers I saw with quirky tics. My obsession with wanting tics led to me manifesting them... every time I would feel the urge to make a weird movement or noise I would convince myself it was a tic. Eventually it became automatic for me to give in to these impulses."

While the poster knows now that she doesn't actually have any of these illnesses, she said that at the time, she truly believed she did.

"I deluded myself into the entire thing," she added.

How it happened.

After being "exposed to a lot of DID fakers on TikTok", the OP said she "developed a false idea about what the disorder was like".

In the midst of "an identity crisis", which sometimes made her feel like she didn't have much of a personality, she found that she was vulnerable to suggestion. Soon, she began to think that her "mood swings" were actually alternate personalities and a symptom of DID.

"It was very easy for me to 'pick up' a new personality from my favourite characters," she explained. "The DID faker community convinced me that this was me getting 'fictive' alters (alters based on fictional characters). I also caused myself to hear voices and have a 'headspace' by imagining these things and daydreaming excessively about them."

After convincing herself that she had DID, autism and tics, life became complicated in the years that followed.

"Maybe 25 percent of the time I was euphoric and completely convinced I had DID," she wrote. "I could tell apart my alters easily, I could hear their voices very clearly, and my headspace felt so vivid and real. It was like being part of a sitcom with a quirky cast of queer anime characters."

The rest of the time, however, "was awful".

The poster described feeling "blurry", which she said is "faker-lingo for not being able to tell which 'alter' you are". The symptoms she had manifested, "like the voices, dissociation, tics, [and] headaches" were making her miserable.

But there was also a lingering sense of self-doubt.

"I had created all these neat little boxes for my personality to fit into, and when it didn't, I was distressed and confused, obsessing over trying to figure which 'alter' I 'was,'" she said. "I... became obsessed with the idea that I might be faking, and I was so reliant on the online faker community to validate me and tell me I had DID."

Despite her own doubts, the poster said that she "would literally cry over the idea of being fake claimed" — a term for when someone is accused of faking their illness.

During this time, the poster said that she used her illnesses as a way to ignore and explain her real-life issues.

"Faking encouraged me to neglect my IRL life and ignore the root of my problems by blaming everything on my fake disorders," she wrote. "I was confused about my sexuality? Must be because I am co-conscious with an alter who's a lesbian! I was suddenly struggling in school? The previous host (the main personality of a person with DID), who was smart, must've gone dormant! Meanwhile, all the problems were still there, just buried under denial."

The online community that kept her 'sick'.

For about a year, the poster was an active member of an online community of people who identified as having DID. She now believes that they were all faking, too, and said the community was "toxic".

The members had a "self-diagnosing mindset", where they were "constantly enabling each other's bulls**t" and "never let anyone become self-aware".

"If you ever questioned if you had DID, immediately you would have people telling you that you had it," she said. "Every symptom you experienced could be twisted into evidence you have DID. Every time I was close to getting out of my faking, the people on the server would convince me... "

She added, "I can't even blame them, because I engaged in this same kind of toxic behavior."

The moderators and staff of the community, she said, would act "like they were better than psychologists and doctors", and encourage members to "defrag". To "defrag" (which is short for defragment) in this context is the process of "making your alters even more distinct and separate", which the poster noted is "pretty much the opposite of integration/healing".

"Gaining more alters was treated like a good thing, and people would brag about their alter counts," she said.

The staff of the community, she said, would refer to themselves as "unlicensed doctors" and offer medical advice to members, as well as performing "hypnosis" via voice message.

How she stopped faking.

For this poster, becoming aware was a process that began with frustration.

"After the 'tics' started becoming automatic, they became really annoying, really fast," she wrote. "I put active effort into suppressing them and not giving into the urge, and after a while the urges went away almost completely."

This was the beginning of the end. Soon, she realised she "didn't actually have tics" and had just "tricked" herself into believing she did. The revelation prompted her to re-evaluate the validity of self-diagnosing oneself with mental illnesses.

"I saw how easy it was to cause yourself symptoms of a disorder you don't have," she said.

With her newfound scepticism, the posts on Reddit sub-forums about illness fakers prompted her to second guess the things she'd been told by other "DID fakers".

"I began to wonder if the fake-claimers were right," she said. "I wanted to refute the things that fake-claimers said with evidence, and I realised... I didn't have any actual evidence about anything."

It was then that she began "using Google Scholar to read actual case studies about people with DID", and soon enough, she realised she didn't actually have it.

"I actually even read a study about imitated DID and I realised that I was exactly like [those people]," she said.

Once she was "no longer stuck in the faker mindset", she quickly realised that the online community who had been validating her were not "reliable sources of information", and in fact, were "really sketchy and manipulative".

Coming to terms with it.

At the time of posting, the user said that she was "still in the process of undoing all the harm" that the online community and her "own attention-seeking stupidity" did.

"I can't stop thinking that everything I do is a symptom of some disorder," she admitted. "I still sometimes hear the voices or get the urge to tic. Every once in a while I will become convinced I've switched or something and I'll have to talk myself out of it and remind myself that all of my 'alters' are really just my moods and adapting to different environments, and the 'voices' are all my own thoughts."

She continued, "I've seen a neurologist and I've been diagnosed with ADHD, which explains my forgetfulness, my daydreaming, and my mood swings (all the things I used to think were DID symptoms). I'm taking medication for it now and trying to repair the life I've been neglecting."

Now, she feels "so ashamed" to have ever been a part of such a "toxic" online community.

"Honestly, I think most young DID fakers are victims of internet misinformation, and then become part of the cultish online community and can't find their way out of it," she said. "But that doesn't excuse the harm fakers do to people who actually have these disorders."

Ending her post, she wrote, "I hope by posting this I am undoing some of the harm I've done."

Feature Image: Getty.

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