#the way people talk about ''endogenic systems'' vs ''traumagenic systems'' makes it sound like trauma is optional for did which is fALSE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sophieinwonderland · 11 months

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Hyptheticals: Endogenic heamates in traumagenic systems

When I talk hypotheticals about traumagenic systems with endogenic headmates, I'm usually imagining what I'll call "verifiably endogenic" headmates.

There's a lot of gray area where it's impossible to tell if a headmate is "actually" endogenic. Are childhood memories of always being a system actually reliable when most people can't remember before the age of 2? Is a spiritual headmate really a spirit or is it just a psychological headmate with vivid pseudo-memories of being a spirit? Even tulpas from OCs can be questionable because those OCs can actually be based on existing headmates which existed first, opening up a whole "chicken or egg" dilemma.

So let's propose an ideal circumstance for verifiable endogenesis and explore it and its ramifications.

The Tulpa Creation Experiment (With Singlets)

Take a large group of singlets with no known dissociative disorders, plurality or PTSD.

Each participant is given instructions on how to make a fixed tulpa. Where most tulpas are created by the tulpamancer themselves, this group would be given source packets and essentially instructed to make a fictive based on the original character presented in these packets. It would have a fixed name and history to start with that participants would be instructed to read and study before they start communicating with the tulpa. This would ensure it wasn't a character participants had an existing attachment to.

Also included would be guides on creating a tulpa, combating doubt and learning how to switch.

My prediction is that, in a year's time of daily interaction with the tulpa, the majority of singlets in the experiment would end up with a fully autonomous, self-conscious headmate.

The headmate will often have some pseudomemories based on the source given to them. The participant won't be consciously controlling the headmate. The headmate will communicate with an inner voice that sounds similar to internal thoughts but distinct from the participant's own mindvoice. They'll have their own thoughts and feelings. There will likely be passive influence where emotions of the new headmate will bleed over. The new headmate will be able to switch and take front with the aid of the dissociative practices outlined in the guides for switching. And there will be a disconnect between memories of the host and the new headmate. (So-called "emotional amnesia." But there will not be blackout amnesia that's common in DID.)

Not everyone will succeed, since there does seem to be some underlying propensity for plurality. But I think most will. I also would predict that, like studies into people who hear God, the successful tulpamancers will have higher levels of Absorption.

This would be as close as we could get to confirming definitively that headmates can be formed without trauma.

The Tulpa Creation Experiment (With CDD Systems.)

Run this same experiment with a second group made up of DID and OSDD-1 systems.

My prediction is that you will get similar results to the first. Most will succeed in creating headmates. These headmates will have distinct identities and autonomy just like the first group. They will communicate through mindvoice like the others. And they will have the "emotional amnesia" of the first group between headmates.

I also predict certain differences based on reports from tulpamancers with CDDs vs the singlet group.

First, while I believe a majority of both groups will succeed in creating a tulpa, I think it's likely a greater majority will succeed in the CDD group as they already have a high propensity for plurality. People who are already plural appear to have an easier time making headmates, whether their plurality is endogenic or traumagenic.

Second, based on people who have both, I believe alters and tulpas are fundamentally the same thing and are just affected by the presence of a dissociative disorders in different ways. What this means is that in addition to the switching, passive influence, internal communication and "emotional amnesia" of the first group, the tulpa will often be affected by dissociative symptoms affecting the rest of the system despite being created endogenically. They may experience inter-identity amnesia, switching may be a triggered sometimes, etc.

(This is also incredibly important for prospective tulpamancers with CDDs to remember. I've gotten asks on this blog from DID systems surprised when they couldn't remember what their tulpa did in front because they heard you don't have amnesia with tulpas. My warning is that if you have a CDD and want to make a tulpa, you will be making an alter, and they'll often still have associated features of the disorder. That's not saying you shouldn't. I just want everyone aware of the risks and to not be caught off-guard.)

Questions This Raises

These predictions are based purely on my own observations of anecdotes from the communities. But I do believe these would hold true. And if they do, there are a few questions I believe should be considered.

Are all headmates in traumagenic systems traumagenic?

A common talking point from anti-endos is that if the system is traumagenic then every headmate that exists must be traumagenic too. But I believe, in the above hypothetical, we could engineer a situation where headmates could be created in both disordered and non-disordered systems through the same exact methods.

If this method is used and produced results in both disordered systems and singlets, would this show definitively that traumagenic systems can have headmates who aren't traumagenic?

What are the implications on the diagnostic criteria of OSDD-1a and DID?

OSDD-1a is a community term for a presentation of a OSDD that's similar to DID where alters are less distinct.

If an OSDD-1a system with less distinct alters were to undergo the above tulpamancy experiment, they would now have a headmate who was much more distinct and personified. Would this make them technically a DID system now?

If it does, would that make their DID technically iatrogenic?

That inherently feels wrong, especially since tulpamancy is often beneficial. Instead, I think the way to avoid a scenario where a nonharmful practice is considered to make a disorder more complex is to just roll OSDD-1a into DID. Stop treating levels of elaboration as differentiating factors in the diagnosis.

This way, they would just be considered to have DID both before and after the experiment.

Many DID experts have already been advocating for this for a long time given how unclear and ambiguous the directions are for differentiating levels of distinctiveness is. Maybe this could give the final push to just group OSDD-1a into DID.

What are the implications for the Theory of Structural Dissociation?

Does the ToSD only apply to traumagenic headmates? Would the tulpa created in the above experiment be categorized as an ANP under this theory since it's not an EP? And if so, what are the implications for the conception of tertiary dissociation?

If a system with secondary dissociation (having one ANP and multiple EPs) under this theory created a headmate, would they now have tertiary dissociation? (Multiple ANPs, multiple EPs.)

If yes, you run into a problem similar to the above, where the experiment itself would make the disorder more complex.

If the endogenic headmates in traumagenic systems don't count into this equation, then how do we differentiate between them? How can we say if a headmate is endogenic or traumagenic with certainty outside of these engineered experiments?

These experiments need to be more than thought experiments!

Again, everything I've said thus far has been predictions based on anecdotes.

To really start to understand plurality, we need actual hard data from actual psychologists and psychiatrists.

I don't expect everyone to agree with my predictions. That's fine. Disagreement is a natural part of discourse. But I think everyone should want these answers.

And given that all current research into created systems is into tulpa systems, supporting research into tulpamancy should be the highest priority of anyone who actually cares about advancing the science into systemhood.

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deactivated-20220808 · 3 years

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A Criticism of Origin Labels

Remy again, and I’m here to give my thoughts and criticism on origin labels, and this one might be a little controversial, or a ‘hot take’. I imagine I’d get hate and lose followers over what I have to say here, but I still want to voice my opinion on this subject, because that’s what this blog is all about.

Introduction: What is a System Origin?

I have a little bit of an issue with a lot of ‘origin’ labels lately, and it somewhat ties in with my issues with hyperspecific system terms that people have been coining.

I could handle it when it was ‘traumagenic’ and ‘nontraumagenic’/’endogenic’, ‘parogenic’/’willogenic’, ‘paragenic’, ‘spiritual’, ‘gateway’, etc. These make sense to me, at least somewhat. These are simple enough terms to grasp, even if ‘parogenic’ and ‘paragenic’ are somewhat different and could very well get mistaken pretty easily, which is probably another post for another day, but I digress. These labels are fine because they make sense, at least somewhat.

But a while ago, I saw a label for an origin described something like this:

‘An origin that seems to consume or obscure other origins and can’t be easily identified’. (Paraphrased)

This bothers me for a lot of reasons, and my criticism of terms like this also ties in with the post I made about my issue with the term ‘mixed origin’.

To start, I’d like to lay down a general definition of a system origin:

A system’s origin is the original event(s) that caused the system to form, often labeled with DID or OSDD1 or ‘endogenic’ and its general subcategories. DID/OSDD1 meaning inherently traumagenic, and endogenic, (and its subcategories), simply meaning that the system did not form from trauma.

I think that’s a pretty easy and agreeable definition. With this in place, let’s explore system origins, and why a lot of the new ones being coined don’t make any sense.

See, the thing about origins is that all they are is how your system formed. Your system either forms from trauma, or it doesn’t. There’s no shame in not knowing if you’re traumagenic or not either, (but I have a tag, (endos vs. DID), that can help give you an idea if you’re that invested). You don’t actually have to know or seriously try to figure that out until later. The best way to go about figuring out if you’re a system isn’t to figure out your origin, it’s to connect with your alters/headmates, establish communication and try to function together. Cooperation comes first.

(Side note: someone telling you that you may be DID/OSDD1 is NOT them telling you that you have to go digging for trauma right then and there. You should never, ever do this without the help of a professional. Even if you find out you’re DID/OSDD1 on your own, NEVER do this. Not only can you very easily traumatize yourself trying to do it, but the memories you get will often times be even more distorted and confusing than they might usually be. It’s not a good idea to do this, ever, without a professional’s help.)

My Full, Honest Opinion: Do These New ‘Origin’ Terms Help?

But enough padding. Here’s my full, honest opinion.

Your system’s origin is not a gender. It’s not like a gender. It doesn’t behave the same way because how your system forms is not a gender. Gender is a feeling, a construct, you can make it what you want. A system origin is not like that at all, a system origin is the event(s) that happened to cause the creation of your system in the first place. Nothing else.

I mentioned this in my post about hyperspecific system labels, but the reason why MOGAI works is because it’s challenging an arbitrary societal standard that has oppressed people and stifled them for generations, hundreds of years. It was something created by colonizers to impose upon other people to oppress them. MOGAI works because it challenges that, it shows you that gender is a construct and it doesn’t actually mean anything. You can do whatever you want with your gender because gender is a construct and that means you can construct it into anything you want.

System origins are not like this at all. There’s nothing to challenge here. There’s no real societal standard for how systems form, other than how DID/OSDD1 forms in the DSM. The idea of DID/OSDD1 forming from trauma doesn’t oppress you, if you are someone who is endogenic. We, as people with DID/OSDD1, are inherently oppressed by those who are nondisordered, by ableism, whether you want to believe it or not. If you believe your plurality is nondisordered, then you are inherently the oppressor here because you cannot experience actual ableism for your plurality, only misdirected ableism, and DID/OSDD1 systems cannot truly oppress you for being nondisordered. The idea that the nondisordered can oppress the disordered because we are people who have experienced repetitive childhood trauma is ableism against the traumatized. There are plenty of examples of nondisordered plurality of all kinds being represented fairly in media, where someone becomes a murderer or dangerous the second they’re revealed to have DID/OSDD1 in similar medias.

The point is, DID/OSDD1 systems do not hold any kind of real, societal, structural power over nondisordered plurals, and creating all of these new terms and origins doesn’t actually do anything, because there’s nothing to challenge, there’s no status quo, there’s no agenda, there’s no oppression, there’s nothing. DID/OSDD1 systems don’t hold any structural power over endogenics, and we especially don’t hold any kind of structural power over endogenics that would call for the challenging or changing or hyperspecification of a system’s origin.

So, we’ve thoroughly established that system origins are not genders, and system origins are not MOGAI or comparable to MOGAI.

So why are people treating origins like MOGAI labels?

It makes even less sense to coin terms like this if you bring up the concept of system origin in the first place.

No, Really, What is a ‘System Origin’?

Let’s make a callback to that system definition I mentioned earlier.

I think this is a pretty easy definition to agree upon, and when you think about it, the idea that a system origin can ‘consume other origins’ starts to make a lot less sense. It sounds far less like a system origin, and more like someone is trying to describe a gender, or like they are trying to describe an origin similarly to a gender, and this is wrong because being a system and being LGBT are absolutely nothing alike, and comparing the two is a gross misrepresentation of both communities. It is beyond disrespectful to the experiences of both communities to compare the two, speaking as someone who has DID and is LGBT.

Like I said before, your system’s origin is not a gender. It doesn’t ‘consume’ other origins, because you can only really have one origin, which is something I explain in my post on ‘mixed origin’ as a term. If you don’t want to read that post, I can paraphrase what I mean here:

You can only have one origin that actually caused your system because only one thing can have /originally/ formed your system. The origin of your system does not include the origin of every alter/headmate you have, it does not refer to tracking down the origins of every single alter/headmate you have and applying that to your system’s origin. You aren’t ‘mixed origin’ if you have alters that split from trauma and alters that split from regular day-to-day stress, you’re DID/OSDD1 and are exhibiting normal DID/OSDD1 behaviour by splitting when you’re stressed. You aren’t mixed origin if you’re DID/OSDD1 and have a parogenic headmate, you’re just DID/OSDD1 with a parogenic headmate. You aren’t ‘mixed origin’ if you have parogenic system and spiritual headmates, you’re just a parogenic system with spiritual headmates.

This is because the origin refers to what /originally/ formed your system. Not how every single headmate formed individually, not how you feel about your system’s origin, not anything like that. In the same post, I coin new terms for people to use instead that are more accurate than ‘mixed origin’ as well, in case you’re interested.

You can’t have a system origin that ‘consumes other origins’ because you can only have one origin, and it’s not a feeling, it’s an event.

You experience repetitive childhood trauma and become a system to cope, that could be your event(s). You choose to create a system to help cope with your day-to-day stresses, and that could be your event. Your spirituality somehow invited an entity of spiritual origins to live your life with you, that could be another event. Hell, your event could even be that you were born a system, but your event is not a feeling. It is not something you /feel/, it’s something that happened, either to you, or an event that you chose to make happen.

I’m just stuck on the idea of a system origin ‘consuming’ other origins. It doesn’t make sense, it makes no sense at all, and nobody coining these terms really seems to think about the terms they’re coining or what they actually mean when they’re talking about a ‘system origin’. You can’t be an origin hoarder the same way that you can be a gender hoarder, and you probably shouldn’t, anyways. It just leads to people coining hyperspecific terms for the kinds of trauma that caused their system, and people calling themselves something like ‘mothergenic’ or something, because people feel pressured to call their system a term that tells other people, whether they want to know or not, that your mother caused you such trauma as a child that you ended up with DID/OSDD1 because of it.

I have no idea if ‘mothergenic’ is a term, but for the love of god and for the comfort and safety of others, not just your own, please don’t call your system something like that, and don’t coin terms that refer to the specific traumas you went through. Not only can it be extremely uncomfortable to hear when you didn’t want or need to know that, but that information can very, very easily be used against you and it puts you in a vulnerable spot where people can and likely are going to take advantage of you for it. Terms like that are dangerous and deeply unnecessary.

Just because you may have anxiety and cope by labeling yourself with hyperspecific labels just to have a sense of identity doesn’t mean that is a healthy coping mechanism. This applies to both hyperspecific system terms and LGBT terms, as well, though my opinions are a lot more lax on the latter subject.

Conclusion

My point is, if you’re coining all kinds of system origin terms, you’re vastly misunderstanding what a system origin actually is, as well as misunderstanding what made MOGAI work, on top of misunderstanding the LGBT experience--and you can do this even if you’re LGBT yourself. Younger LGBT people often times don’t have the same knowledge or experience of LGBT elders and often times don’t understand why some things are the way they are, and it’s deeply important to understand the structure behind things and what makes them work (or not) before trying to imitate them, because otherwise you end up with things like ‘OSDD-2 system’ pride flags, and pride flags for all kinds of things that don’t need to have pride flags, seriously, why does everyone feel the need to make a pride flag for everything?

But like usual, that’s another post for another day.

If you have any opinions on the subject, disagree with me, or want to talk about your experiences, you can reply to this post or come into my ask box and we can talk about it freely, I enjoy hearing other people’s opinions and experiences.

[Do not derail.]

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