Trisha Paytas made her entrance to the Youtube world in 2007. In the past decade she’s established herself as one of the most open and controversial content creators on the platform. From her hysterical personal vlogs on her kitchen floor to marrying a cardboard cutout of Brad Pitt, to identifying as a “chicken nugget”, every now and then she manages to cook up a scandal that angers and confuses everyone.
The recent instant that really caught my attention was her announcement that she suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Unfortunately it’s hard for me along with millions of other viewers to find the truth of anything Trish announces to the world. I mean, she does have a pretty extensive trolling history. Like remember in 2017 when she decided that she no longer identified as a person?
And even a few months ago she claimed to be transgender, which although I am no position to confirm or deny her gender, it was quite problematic how she expressed why she feels she is trans. Her poor delivery caused large amount of distress for the transgender community and she received some brutal backlash. But alas here we are in March 2020, in the midst of a life-changing pandemic and Trish still remains to fire up the internet. What exactly was the issue with the video, you might ask? Well, if you weren’t as bored as me and didn’t watch the 20 min obscure “Meet My Alters” video, I’ll break down a couple of its main problem areas for you.
Trish Doesn’t Seem to Understand What Alters Exactly Are
If you’re not already familiar with DID (or your only knowledge of it is based on the 2016 horror film, “Split”), DID essentially is a severe form of dissociation, “a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity”. One of the main roots for DID to develop in the brain is an experienced trauma at a young age.
Trish’s first error is in the way that she explains what “alters” are, which she describes as people who have multiple personalities. For her, they are Trixie, Tyson, Tierney, T, and Tobotler. In reality the term ‘alter’ actually stands for altered state of consciousness and so they are the several personalities that make up a system. The person that is at the front most often is referred to as the host.
You Can’t Have DID Without Dissociation
Trish also mentioned how some of her alters dissociate and others don’t, but it’s not possible to have DID without complete dissociation.
Multiple Personality Disorder and DID Are Not Different From Each Other
She goes on to say that the closest thing to DID that she has self diagnosed herself with is multiple personality disorder. Trish seems to think that multiple personality disorder and DID are two separate disorders with some “similarities and differences” …which is really awkward because they are actually the same disorder. In fact multiple personality disorder is just a highly outdated term to describe DID.
The most hurtful part of her video had to be how loosely she threw the term crazy around when describing those with DID. It’s a deeply insensitive term to describe someone with a mental illness who is already part of a misjudged community.
So what’s going on here? She’s clearly very uneducated on the disorder that she claims to suffer with and you would think that someone who supposedly suffers from DID themselves would have better knowledge on the most critical components of it.
Yes being emotionally vulnerable on the internet is a scary and bold thing to do and can often help viewers dealing with similar demons, but is Trish doing more harm than good? At what cost does her ignorant oversharing harm the representation of not only the DID community but other communities she’s offended in her past scandals? I don’t blame the people who are skeptical of Trish’s morals, but sending her death threats is definitely not the solution. The backlash she gets is pretty brutal and while yes she’s definitely responsible for every position she’s been in I think we might be witnessing someone’s mental health completely deteriorating right before our eyes. Trish is most definitely NOT okay and I think for the sake of our mental health and hers, it’s time for her to take a brief hiatus from the internet and receive consistent professional help.