Reply to Dissociative Identity Disorder and TikTok

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[quote=Anonymous]I do think there is increasing pressure on young people to have a special identity. It's the same problem teenagers and young adults have always had to define themselves, but I think the combination of social media and our current politics are making it more intense. I hate the term "identity politics" but I don't know how else to describe it.

Kids want to find their thing, and they want to be special and have meaning, and they crave attention. We are dismissive of these needs, especially the one for attention, but it's super normal and probably biologically programmed to some degree. As you move from your parents'/family's protection into adulthood, it is normal to fear getting lost in the shuffle. It's like fearing that you will cease to exist. It's very intense for teenagers, but also you adults. I remember it being particularly acute moving from high school to college, throughout college, and then post-college.

I think the focus on sexual and gender identity is part of this. I don't think kids are "faking" different gender expressions or sexuality. They are exploring and I think it is so great that there is now more openness and acceptance of non-binary and queer identities so it is easier (though by no means easy) for kids to find an identity that feels most authentic to them. It probably also results in more kids experimenting than would have in the past. I probably would have experimented with non-binary identity as a teen/young adult if I'd grown up int this environment, even though I'm a cis woman. I had a lot of issues around femininity and the degree to which I wanted to embrace feminine expression and how much of that was me and how much was responding to social pressure to look and act feminine, and being able to explore a non-binary identity I think would have helped me figure that out earlier in life.

But I agree with the PP who points out that when you are talking about psychological disorders, it's different because these are not things you can just figure out for yourself -- they are diagnosable issues. But I still understand the impulse. It's partly because we've done a good job of building awareness around disorders like ADHD, which used to be really under diagnosed in certain populations (especially young women) but now are more widely accepted. I think if I was a teenager and I had a friend who was diagnosed with ADHD and I saw how that diagnosis helped them make sense of their lives, and in particular how it helped them reframe things they'd previously struggled with in a way that is not exactly positive, but no longer evidence that they are bad people or something, that I would crave a similar kind of diagnosis. I think that's part of what you see here. Some of it might be people trying to take advantage, but some of it is I think people looking for an identity and simply wanting to feel seen and understood.[/quote]

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