#I couldn't write up everything because I'm overstimulated atm

[circulars-reasoning]

Each Community Has It's Problems...

In particular, this post is going to address my time in the pro-endo community. JAS made a very good vent post in 2021 about some of those issues, explaining how it created some distaste for him for endogenics in general. It's been circulating again and I wanted to add on a few things. Thought I would make my own post, though, as my thoughts are separate from his.

This post isn't as nuanced as they always will be, but I wanted to be able to share these things. Anyone is allowed to interact with this post!

First off, this phrase "plural is what you want it to be" is something I see on a daily basis in the inclusive servers I'm currently in, and it's something I saw quite a bit in the plural spaces I used to be in. Essentially, "plural" as a label is for anyone - singlets included - so long as they feel the term is "right" for them, or helps them.

I have an innate distaste for this. The reason I do is because of how that mentality was used to hurt and abuse me repeatedly, as a now diagnosed DID system.

When I first joined plural spaces, I was constantly fucking fakeclaimed by pro/endos. I was constantly told I was autigenic, that I was mixed-origin at best, that my trauma "wasn't enough" - because I couldn't describe any. But it wasn't fakeclaiming the likes of what we see on FDC. It was "loving" and "caring."

I express needing desperate help, because I'm having panic attacks and have no idea why. "Have you considered it's your autism and you're melting down? Is someone else internally stressed about school?" No, I was having flashbacks to my trauma and instantly forgetting what I had seen in my mind, because I wasn't ready to see it. So I sat, and puzzled, and accepted that I Was Just Like This. After all, everyone else around me was "just like that," and they had their own strategies to help them - none of which seemed to help me. So I became incredibly defeatist. I believed I was just going to always be a dysfunctional plural, because I couldn't lock away my alters like was suggested. I couldn't push away the trauma stressors in my life.

Plural spaces inherently encouraged me to ignore my trauma, because they offered a million different options for what I was actually experiencing. And it was like being traumagenic was taboo - if you were traumagenic, you were pushed away into a corner, told you could party with the rest of them if you kept it under wraps. I join servers to this day where discussions of dormancy, splitting, integration, and fusion - all incredibly fundamental parts of my disorder and healing from my disorder - are part of blacklists. "We don't want to trigger anyone!" Have you considered what you're actually doing is blacklisting the healing process those like me require? Integration is inherent for healing from DID, but it's blacklisted in numerous servers I've seen and subsequently left.

The endogenic community strongly encourages further dissociation as well. Alters should be different; distinct. I've seen it encouraged to watch new media to "make new fictives." Source-calls encouraging introjects to connect deeper to sources, even date random strangers who "are from the same source" (not a thing). Everything I've seen in plural spaces focuses on being, well, Multiple People, and supporting that strongly - and working against that goal is frowned upon (i.e., final fusion being discussed as being death).

Those spaces also incredibly support unhealthy coping mechanisms for those like me who have DID. Maybe others are finding good resources out there in plural spaces, but... I'll talk about dissociation and be linked to PluralPedia. I'll ask about how to stay awake on a long drive, and be told "just force yourself to rapid switch, because a new alter will be fresh and awake!" (Hello, crashing my car).

I think that's as much time and energy as I have today. I just... I definitely understand the unease. I have been so greatly hurt in endo spaces, and while the inclusive spaces I am in now are better than those I was in previously - with more acknowledgment that those who say they have a disorder should be believed - there are still problems with Everything Being Valid If It Helps, with no recognition of the fact that, when you're maladaptive already, hurting yourself badly can look a lot like helping.