Alterpathy: The practice of identifying, categorizing, and identifying with fictional and imagined illnesses due to a disconnect between your external and internal understanding of yourself - while also not intending to appropriate, romanticize, or cause harm to a minority group.
identifying, categorizing, and identifying with: making flags, coining terms, and posting about your experience. alterpathic conditions can also be divided into a couple of categories, which are detailed later in the post.
disconnect between your external and internal understanding of yourself: for some reason, even though you're aware that this isn't how conditions that affect the body work, you experience a reoccurring condition that is serious to you. this can be because of atypical dysphoria, delusions, alternate beliefs, delusions, or anything else similar.
appropriation, romanticism, causing harm: this doesn't mean that actions you take are automatically excused of harm, but it's a silent agreement and nodding between yourself and others that you're not trying to come from a place of ableism/bigotry.
ignoring/excusing bigotry: examples of ignoring/excusing bigotry would be implying that someone can "coin" a real mental illness/other condition in the same way you can coin a gender, implying you can "transition" into a congenital condition with subliminal videos or otherwise, and anything else that goes against science's understanding of illness and neurodivergence. there's nuance to this, of course, because the psychology field isn't an absolutely perfect field that can do no wrong. it's up to the person coining/the person identifying to look at the situation and act accordingly. this part is like a sort of disclaimer. someone using alterpathic terms is nodding and saying "yes, i know, i know, just let me talk about my experiences and have a space to feel accepted."
examples of situations that might bring you to identify this way:
being a fictive/kin/introject/etc of a character who had a disease or type of injury that was invented for their media, like zombie diseases, cyberbrain sclerosis, the cutie pox, hanahaki disease, etc, and feeling affected by it in any way
experiencing something in your system's headspace that's like a reoccurring illness
feeling like you are afflicted with a condition that's not known to affect human bodies, only animal ones, due to atypical dysphoria, delusions, alterhumanity, or any other situation
having limbs like wings, tails, horns, etc in your headspace with some kind of damage to them that causes you phantom discomfort
feeling anxiety/frustration because you're experiencing something on a metaphysical level which you know your physical body isn't experiencing, but it's still very serious to you and possibly even hurting your quality of life
grammar:
alterpathy: 1) the practice of naming/making flags/categorizing these, "here's my mogai blog and here's my alterpathy blog"; 2) this kind of condition. "my depression and my alterpathy make it hard for me," "i might have an alterpathy but i'm not sure"
alterpathic: descriptor that describes these conditions. "it's alterpathic," "how to cope with alterpathic..."
inspiration and some context on why we're coining this
this was largely inspired by the r*dqueer term of x*nomalady, because after the system looked into it, we did see a lot of cases of people who were genuinely experiencing something serious, but didn't seem to think that there was any space other than the rqc that would be accepting of someone identifying with a disease that technically didn't exist. these cases were mixed in with genuinely ableist people who displayed the behaviors i listed above in "ignoring/excusing bigotry," which feels wrong to me, and i think that people who aren't intending to harm anyone deserve their own terminology and space.
crossover
there is some crossover with dissodic, desirdae, intusui, ethix +etc good faith terms related to feeling like you have, internally have, desire, or identify with something you technically don't, and i think that's fine. you can identify with an alterpathic term and the equivalent of it in another term umbrella (that is not r*dqueer, MUD, or x*nomalady), that's fine. do whatever fits best to describe your experiences. just please respect that this was not conceptualized as falling under MUD and you're all good.
so, is this just x*nomalady but Good?
not exactly, i don't want this to be thought of as a 1-to-1 anti rq equivalent, because again, some x*nomalady people are just coining """disorders""" for fun because they think you can do that in the same way you would a gender. this is both an identity/experience, and a silent agreement to be critical of what you're putting out into the world. this is also not focused on "coining" new conditions unless that's really necessary. (not necessary = making up a new illness for funsies. necessary = putting a name to a reoccuring condition you've been experiencing in headspace, etc.)
in the same way that terms like dissomei and intusui aren't 1-to-1 r*dqueer terms but Good and are separate term umbrellas that have their own nuances and notes, this is a good-faith alternative for people genuinely experiencing this kind of thing.
can i coin my own?
yes, this is open to everyone to coin! here's the svg and here's a psd.
TDLR: considering yourself to have a condition that's not possible in reality because of some internal identity, but not in a fashion where you ignore/excuse bigotry.
