Hello all.
I would like to make a few points that seem to be lost somewhere in this discussion.
Body Identity Integrity Disorder is a real illness. It's not Munchausen's (nor by Proxy) and it's not hypochondria. It's an inexplicable desire for disability that in the vast majority of cases goes back to very young childhood. (see http:/www.biid-info.org )
Someone asked what the medical community "thinks" of BIID and what resources there are. To be quite frank, there are NO resources available to sufferers of BIID because it is so rare that the vast majority of doctors and mental health professionals haven't heard of it.
A lot of people have said "those people are mentally ill, that's disgusting (or creepy, or whatever other derogatory term used), they should go get help." I agree, we are mentally ill.
However, mental illness is not "disgusting." I have a real condition. Having any kind of mental condition (be it BIID, or schizophrenia, or Alzheimers, or depression) doesn't make a person any more disgusting or creepy than you are for being deaf. We all have our issues. I have mine. You have yours. How is one person's health issue "better" than someone else's? Do you subscribe to the disability heiriarchy? It's ok to be deaf, but it's not okay to have some rare neuropsychological condition? Seems hypocritical to me.
Secondly, the vast majority of us have seen shrinks. The three that I've seen had never heard of BIID and basically all told me "I can't help you, there's no treatment protocol for that." That's not just my experience, that's basically the response we all get when we try to get help. It's not that we're not trying to get help. It's there there's no help available. We've exhausted all our resources.
That leaves us in a very difficult place. Feared and reviled and called creepy and disgusting, but nobody can help us. We live with demons in our head and the only way we have to still them is to pretend, or actually try to accomplish our desired disability.
Do a little research online and you'll find that BIID sufferers who have actually acheived their goal are in the vast majority very satisfied with the results and the obsession goes away, allowing them to get on with life.
Those of us who don't want to or can't go that route are left with pretending as the only way to deal with the obsession and feel somewhat mentally normal. I am still in therapy, and my psychologist is very supportive of my pretending. For those of you who have said we should "get help"...I did get help, and the help I got was for my therapist to encourage and support the only way I have ever found to deal with BIID...to use a wheelchair.
Pretending: therapy prescribed by psychologist » transabled.org » Blogging about BIID