✦ So, what's the deal with IRLs?
01. —⠀What is an "IRL"?
⠀⠀" 'IRLs' are a common and episodic delusional occurence among individuals with psychotic disorders. As a subconscious, involuntary and dissociative coping skill for stress, anxiety, depression, overwhelming feelings and/or past trauma, the brain of an individual with a psychotic disorder may "latch", or form a deep connection with, the identity of a (commonly) fictional character or person."
⠀⠀⠀⠀— Taken from "Official IRL Info Carrd²"
⠀⠀This is the most accepted definition of what IRLs are. IRL is not a medical term. They are generally known to be delusions regarding one's own identity and existence. In this case, genuinely believing you are a fictional character or a real person.
02. —⠀What's the issue?
⠀⠀IRLs, as a community, have a history with feeding into and encouraging these delusions, whether it's themselves or others who weren't informed enough. Doing this is anti-recovery. Those who don't know better, especially those with genuine psychosis (as many former "IRLs" realised they weren't psychotic), it would be incredibly dangerous and harmful.
⠀⠀The term itself feeds into these delusions as IRL is an acronym for "In Real Life". So, if you were, let's say a "Mari IRL", that would be saying you're "Mari In Real Life". It's not an ideal term.
⠀⠀IRLs have also taken terms from systems (such as switching) and often acted like systems, entered system spaces, and want to be treated the same despite insisting they aren't systems.
⠀⠀IRLs have also used the proxy bot, PluralKit, to present as their "IRL" in Discord servers. Not only is this encouraging their delusions, but also overloading the bot and errors happening more frequently, which also affects systems. Using PluralKit may also lead to people thinking IRLs are the same as systems, and having people lump these two together would cause so many misunderstandings and problems for both IRLs and systems.
⠀⠀Not all IRLs exist to harm others, as just like many others, they may have been misinformed, confused, or not ready to recover. Many former IRLs found out they were either something else such as a system/pwOSDDID, simply identify with a character, etc. or realised they were genuinely psychotic and decided to not use IRL terms to refer to their experience.
⠀⠀A reminder that not all people who claim to have IRLs are ready to recover and it isn't anyone's place to tell them to. Please do not be rude or bash them for still using IRL as a term. Simply block and/or remove them from your space, and move on.
⠀⠀If you are an IRL, hopefully this information makes you realise that you may have interpreted your experience wrong or that doing this isn't good for you. If not, it's your decision. Take your time.
03. —⠀What other terms are available?
⠀⠀There are many other terms that people have coined as much better alternatives than IRL if you're simply trying to find a term for when you heavily identify with a character. Otherwise, most psychotic people refer to these as just delusions, identity delusion, delusional attachment, delusional misidentification, etc.
- ID / Identity: It is when you identify with/as something or someone, or feel aspects of your identity in something or someone. More specifically a character, animal, concept, song, etc. This definition is flexible and anyone who feels comfortable using ID as their term can use it. An ID is not inherently a delusion.
- Fictionkin: Fictionkin are people who believe that they involuntarily and immutably share the identity and ‘self’ of a fictional character. They believe that they are that character in some particular way.
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