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interstellarsystem · 2 months

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Endogenic Systems and Experiences in the Neurodivergent Community

We tend to stay mostly on the fringes of syscourse nowadays without directly interacting with it too often but I'm going to post this more broadly and less focused on our specific instance of this because community-wise I think it's important to talk about.

Endogenic and other non-traumagenic systems are so commonly excluded from so many neurodivergent-safe spaces where they would otherwise be able to gain knowledge about the disorders they might have, share experiences and coping strategies with peers, or at least have a sense of community that is so commonly valuable to disabled and/or neurodivergent people. In a lot of cases, even people who only support non-traumagenic systems get shoved out.

[Continued under the readmore as it's long.]

This obviously harms non-traumagenic systems, but I have to point out that when people sit there and say "we care about REAL disabled people!", I have to say.... Do you? Because if you did care about those with mental illness, physical disability or neurodivergence, you in my mind wouldn't exclude them based on something unrelated to the topic itself which might even be something as small as holding an opinion that other people get to be the judge of their own experiences. You can say that you care about "real" disabled people, but what about when a traumagenic DID system also has a tulpa that they consider just as valid and real as their alters? What about when a system labels themselves as quoigenic because in reality, you owe no one the knowledge that you are vulnerable and traumatised? What about when a system starts out as endogenic but gains so much trauma later on that they develop dissociative symptoms?

We're quoigenic because while yes we are diagnosed with DID:

DID does not have trauma in the diagnostic criteria so our diagnosis doesn't mean anything by way of origin. Nontraumagenic is not the same as nondisordered the same way that traumagenic isn't the same as disordered.

We cannot remember a time before we were plural so we cannot say with accuracy what our actual origin was.

We have headmates we consider to be from both traumagenic and endogenic origins and it feels unfair to pick one.

We don't owe anyone a quick little "hey, we have trauma!" flag on our pinned post which can easily paint us as a target. This is the exact reason we don't share our triggers online--it's not safe.

You don't owe anyone personal medical information including your diagnostic history, your trauma history or lack thereof, your current medications or how many times you've been in a hospital. That is your business and yours alone to decide who you share it with. It's downright dangerous to share some of it, especially so publically. So who is anyone online that clearly isn't your specific medical practitioner to decide whether your experiences are real enough to allow you into spaces meant for a usually completely unrelated thing? Why would someone holding the opinion that endogenic systems get to decide what labels they use be denied access to spaces just because they support people with differing beliefs and/or experiences?

If we as a system with multiple disabilities want to go into a space for people who are schizoaffective because we need others who won't immediately jump on the ableism train when discussing something we're diagnosed with that has so much stigma, should we be denied that just because we don't label our origin with a clear-cut "we are traumatized!!" label? Should we be denied access to spaces because we don't want to sit around and smile while parts of our system and other members of our community are called fake and evil and whatever else they come up with? It's so common in spaces for people with disabilities to be exclusive to traumagenic systems and people with an anti-endogenic mindset that people don't realise they're not only hurting the endogenic community, but literal chunks of their own community itself.

I can't even begin to understand the reason why.

Endogenic systems by just existing do not cause harm. They're not like a transphobe you would not be safe around by default of having a label. Not every nontraumagenic system is a saint but if you took any communtiy and called everyone in it the equivalent of an unproblematic holy angel, you'd be lying. People are bad in every community, some worse than others, but the nontraumagenic system community literally just wants to exist--and yes, sometimes a nontraumagenic system (or supporter of such) does have dissociative symptoms, or maybe they have autism, or maybe they're physically disabled. Should they be not allowed access just because of the way they chose to label their system, or their opinion of people picking their own labels for their personal identity?

What exactly is the reason they're so excluded everywhere? I'd try to assume that this level of exclusion (to the point of endos being on DNIs next to transphobes and racists) would mean there's some real harm being done on a community-wide scale, but even when looking for it there isn't any explanation we've been able to find. "They're fake" is all we seem to see which has no actual backing whatsoever. "They're harmful" is another but.. How? We might be looking in the wrong places, but we have never seen an actual explanation for how nontraumagenic systems cause harm as a community just by being themselves.

At this point, I have to wonder how many people who say "we care about real disabled people!" are just covering up their "we care about socially acceptable disabled people who I understand and/or do not find cringey" sentiment instead. Being neurodivergent should never be about fitting into tight little boxes--it's part of the whole point of having a community like this. You're not the majority, and that's okay. So why are we dividing the disabled community into boxes too?

Of course, this doesn't only apply to ND spaces. LGBT+ spaces are similar and even more divided from the concept of being a system that it makes even less sense to block nontraumagenic systems from entering the space. How does their system origin relate to their LGBT+ identity? Sometimes it can, but should a trans person be excluded from a trans space because they have a friend who is an endogenic system and they support them fully?

Overall, the main point is that it makes no sense whatsoever to be anti-endo in general, let alone so violently anti-endogenic system to the point where you hurt members of your own community due to it. Sometimes from something as simple as them supporting endogenics alone. Your safe spaces aren't actually safe if you exclude a nonharmful group who also belong in that space due to having a personal identity or opinion different to yours. If you want somewhere to be a safe, inclusive space, it should include everyone as long as letting those people in won't cause harm. People who are seeking to cause harm (racists, transphobes, etc) obviously do not belong in a safe space because they seek to harm others, thus making the space unsafe. But people who just want to be themselves without harming anyone should be included in your space if they fall under whatever it may be topic-wise. Even the "cringey" ones. Even the ones who don't quite make sense to you or have "contradicting" labels. Even the ones who use labels completely differently to the way you do. And even the ones who are uninformed or misinformed but trying their best to learn. Your safe space is not safe if it excludes those who do not follow your every single mindset and thought without any deviation.

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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“System” is a Medical Term

…And Other Things the “Empowered Multiples” Movement Hid From Us

Introduction

Hello again, guys, Remy here, kind of. More or less.

This is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while, because it’s something absolutely no one in the online system/plural/etc community is talking about. Either because they want to ignore it because it makes them look bad, or because they legitimately just never knew that this had happened at all, likely because it was before their time as systems online. But I’m here to talk about it, because this is something that can explain so many things about why the system/plural communities online are the way they are today; damaged and filled with infighting and constant confusion.

Who Were The “Empowered Multiples”, and Why Does No One Talk About Them?

The “Empowered Multiples”.

That’s an identity label that should fill everyone but the most anti-DID, anti-psych, anti-recovery ableists with the most dread.

If you want a long, detailed and heavily sourced history of what the “empowered multiples” did to the online multiple/DID communities specifically, you can read this post here.

To make a very long story short, the “empowered multiples” was a movement started by Astrea’s Web and Dark Personalities that advocated for the abolition of DID/MPD as diagnostic labels and wanted them removed from the DSM, and displayed blatant superiority over those who still accepted or identified with DID/MPD for themselves, and that’s only a very small idea of what they did. They encouraged people to write them essays on why DID/MPD was a bad label, which they would both post on their websites, encouraged people to boycott the diagnosis, told people to refuse to identify with it it even if they were already diagnosed with it, tried to convince people that it was “natural” to have DID/MPD, including inherently pathological DID/MPD symptoms like time loss, as well as encouraged the idea that anyone was plural if they saw themselves that way and rejected the idea of DID/MPD.

They also deliberately muddied the definition of terms like “system”—which was originally a medical/clinical term coined with DID in mind only, originally referring to a “parts as a system” as it were—and “multiplicity”—also only associated with DID/MPD up until the “empowered multiples” movement, as MPD (when that was still the primary term used) was often referred to as things such as “multiplicity”, “being multiple”, the “multiple gift”, and more. See below:

(Sources for these images are linked in the post above)

They changed the definitions of these words to better suit their narrative, to co-opt language that was not for them in order to both boycott DID as a diagnosis, and to still use language that they were comfortable with at the same time, so they didn’t have to change that much about the language used to describe their experiences.

In the process, and this was very likely 100% intentional, they changed the way a lot of people see the word “system”, now referring to any instance of multiple consciousnesses in one body, rather than a specific experience of “parts as a system”, which inevitably lead to the constant confusion and conflation of experiences, as well as the erasure of DID as a system experience, as this has directly lead to some people knowing about systems as a concept, but not about DID, or having very skewed perceptions of DID, things I have witnessed firsthand in the online communities.

Now, I generally use past-tense when talking about the “empowered multiples”, but it should be important to note that on some level, they do still exist within the plural communities, they’re just not nearly as prominent as they used to be, however, that’s purely in identifying with the term itself. The rhetoric of the “empowered multiples” is still quite rampant in a lot of ways, such as in the anti-psych sentiments of many parts of the plural communities, as well as even the “nondisordered plural supremacy” sentiments that many of them spread, with the implication that people with DIDOSDD1 are lesser for being so, or less “plural”/systems as it were, which all goes to display many of the ways that the “empowered multiples” still have an effect on the communities, whether they’re as prominent as they used to be or not.

How Did This Damage the Online Communities?

This damaged the online communities by constantly having dissociative trauma-based system experiences conflated with non-dissociative, non-trauma based experiences, and while there may seem to be a lot of similar experiences between the two on the surface, at the core, they have extremely different needs. In DID, integration/fusion, (not even final fusion/full integration), is often times necessary for survival and healing, and helps to give a more complete sense of self and personal history, whereas in plural communities, it’s often seen as an extremely negative thing on par with death. This alone shows that the communities are very different and have extremely different needs, meaning that the two cannot be conflated or treated the same at all, and yet this behavior of treating DID the exact same as a non-DID experience persists, simply because they are both called “systems”, when plurals, going by the original definition of the word “system” given above, are nothing like systems.

To clarify, I’m not saying endogenic plurals are not real, I’m saying that by the original definition(s) of the word “system”, and taking the history of the word “system” into account and who the word was coined for, endogenic plurals are not systems, because they don’t consider themselves parts, and because they are not parts neurologically. They’re plurals. In fact, “plural” as a term was actually coined as a non-DID alternative to “multiplicity” in the first place, which already makes it a great substitute for the word “system”. The reason that DID systems are systems, even if they don’t consider themselves “parts” is because no matter what, DID alters are, neurologically and structurally, parts of a shattered consciousness that broke apart to survive repetitive childhood trauma. This is something that has been proven time and time again, and even if certain systems are uncomfortable with this notion, that doesn’t change what the science says about DID neurologically and structurally.

But endogenic plurals are nothing like this, because they don’t have any substantial scientific evidence for their existence, let alone for what their headmates are neurologically, (no offense or judgement meant by this). So, going by this historical definition, endogenics are not systems, they’re simply plural. (Hah)

Is this a bad thing? No.

I also don’t think it’s inherently anyone’s fault for not knowing this, considering this is something that was pretty much deliberately covered up and forgotten about by most of the plural community, considering, well, if this were part of a community I were in, I’d also be pretty humiliated and offended by these people’s behavior, and would just want to move on. However, this is an extremely important part of the history of the plural community, and I haven’t seen people talking about it very much, if at all, and that needs to change if we ever want to start to fix the community going forewords.

How Can We Fix It?

The best we can do to even start fixing the community is to stop conflating endogenic plural experiences with the experiences of DIDOSDD1 systems.

Full stop.

The two experiences are far too different and have far too different needs to comfortably conflate the two under the same umbrella, using the same language, because someone with DID is never going to have the same experience as an endogenic plural simply because DID is severely dissociative and traumagenic, and endogenic plurality (or any non-DID plurality) is, by definition, not. DIDOSDD1 does not belong under the “plural umbrella”, because going by the historical use of the word “plural”, we aren’t plural. We’re systems, or multiple.

Using the same language implies that the two experiences are the same, when they are not. If you want to look more into the differences between DID and endogenic plurality, I suggest looking under the #endos vs. DID tag I have on my blog, which goes a bit more in-depth in this subject.

Is Separating the Experiences Necessary for Community Healing?

Separating the experiences via encouraging the use of separate language? Yes.

Separating the communities entirely? Well, that doesn’t have to be the case. It’s not like I could control people in the first place, so saying ‘yes’ would be useless.

Shared spaces aren’t inherently bad when they’re not using the same language to describe two extremely different experiences, implying they’re both the exact same just with a different origin, when that is very, very obviously not the case, verifiably so.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the “Empowered Multiples” movement did a massive amount of damage, more than I can put in one short post, which is why I linked the post I got my information from, which has dozens upon dozens of sources and links to archives of these sources, as well as screenshots and image descriptions for them, so you can read the original post and make your own conclusions based on the information at hand, (however OP explicitly asks for no syscourse on their post, so please respect their boundaries).

The “Empowered Multiples” movement did a lot in the way of conflating and confusing two extremely different experiences, taking language from the earlier DIDOSDD communities and it wasn’t even that long ago, either. The movement was only really brought to its knees when “The Haunted Self” came out in /2014/, presenting the Theory of Structural Dissociation, and just two years before that, 2012 was when the discourse surrounding the “Empowered Multiples” was at its peak. The damage that this movement did is still very, very prevalent in the community in the anti-psych fearmongering rhetoric a lot of plurals (and even DIDOSDD systems) spout, in that “fusion is murder” or the implication that all alters have to be extremely separate all the time or sentiments of “getting diagnosed will make you lose ALL your rights” in the form of long, severely misinformed and frankly bullshit twitter threads, and we can’t forget the outright ableism of being considered “disordered” that many plurals peddle—all of these things are remnants of the damage that Astrea’s Web, Dark Personalities and the “Empowered Multiples” movement have left us with.

These are the parts of plural history that people don’t want to talk about, which only makes these things more important to talk about now more than ever, if we ever want to change it and if we are ever going to make progress within the communities to stop the infighting.

If you want to make a change, we need to open a dialogue on this damage so that we can heal it.

Sincerely,

Remy

(P.S., I do not support the use of this piece being used to attack endogenics/plurals for any reason, that is not the reason I made this piece, I made this piece to start a dialogue within the system community about making actual, genuine change and to start a conversation about how we can try to fix a massive amount of what’s wrong with the online DIDOSDD1/Multiple and Plural communities, not to attack Plurals and to invalidate them, because it is very much my belief that it will do nothing to help the infighting between the communities.)

#txt #syscourse #actually endogenic #actuallytraumagenic #actuallydid #actuallyplural #actuallymultiple #empowered multiples #pluralmeta #sysmeta #didmeta #plural deep dive #pluralitycritique

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