#like does neurodivergence need to necessarily be pathologized?

[sleep-safe]

sometimes someone seems autistic and they're literally. just Asian. western medicine does this.

[antimisinfo]

So, there's this. This is a video made by Aspenfrosten or The Entourage System on tiktok, this video was made shortly after she removed plural kit from her discord server

First of all let's focus on that first part

""you took away my accomodations""

This is apparently something that some people in her server said after plural kit had been removed, she's mocking them for saying this. Now, are they right for saying this? Technically yes but also no

"Disability accommodation is an umbrella term for a range of accommodation or supported living services that are available to assist people who are living with a disability"

Technically by this definition you may be able to consider plural kit a form of accommodation as it does assist systems by allowing them to represent themselves as alters as well as allowing them to look back and know who sent a message. Though on the other hand you may not consider it accommodation because it isn't needed; systems can use sign offs without plural kit and often don't necessarily "need" it. So it really depends on how you look at it, but I will say that Aspen is wrong for mocking these people nonetheless; whatever their reasons are they clearly think of plural kit as an accommodation and are distressed at its removal. Should they demand it back? No, it's her server she can do what she wants, but do they have a right to be upset? Yes. When someone takes away something that may have been helping you in one way or another you are allowed to feel hurt or distressed, but this does not mean you should harass that person for it back.

"i feel like plural kit is too anti recovery"

I feel like a lot of people say anti recovery without actually understanding what it means.

Anti recovery's definition is "A movement consisting of those who oppose what they perceive as recovery from mental illness and/or neurodivergence." Which most people do know, but the more important part is what they consider to be recovery ;

"Recovery in this context does not mean a cure, it simply means coping/living with your illness/neurotype in a positive way."

Which would mean to be anti recovery you would be against anything that makes coping easier and anything positive, you would be convinced you have to suffer and refuse to make things easier.

By this definition plural kit is not anti recovery as it makes things easier for systems; being able to identify yourselves and being able to tell who said what can be important for multiple reasons and plural kit makes that easier, which is positive and not anti recovery.

Further more she claims it "promotes way too much separation between alters" which might be true but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you are in active healing and moving towards final fusion perhaps that would be an issue but for those striving for functional multiplicity this separation would not cause an issue

"Some individuals reach a point where all personalities have access to shared memories, set boundaries, and have common goals, making it easier to stabilize emotions and maintain healthy behavioral patterns. Individuals with functional multiplicity still experience the following:

At least two distinct personalities with accompanying unique behaviors

Personalities adapt to unite toward a common goal

All personalities prioritize recovery and treatment"

""the problem in MPD is not the intrusion of part selves as such, it is with the degree of amnesia, conflict, self-destruction, and dysfunction in the psyche. The problem is not the multiplicity, it is the degree of pathological dissociation. In MPD the part selves are personified to an abnormal degree. There is a big difference between someone with active classical MPD, and an individual with healthy multiplicity."" ((Though this did come from DR. Collin Ross, who is not a good person I still felt it might be important to add))

"Some systems choose to stop at what the ISST-D calls resolution, or what may also be called functional multiplicity. In this case, systems may retain any number of independently acting alters. The current rates of complete integration and functional multiplicity may be very similar. A 2017 study (Myrick et al.) followed up on 61 therapists about the well-being of specific patients of theirs after 6 years; 12.8% of therapists reported that their patients had terminated therapy due to achieving stable integration, and exactly the same percentage reported that their patients had terminated therapy due to resolution of symptoms without full integration."

Overall the separation between alters is not an issue, more so the amnesia and conflict, which can be solved in therapy, but even so; not everyone has to be actively working towards healing. For systems who are not in therapy / not actively healing there is no need for them to worry about whether they're "promoting too much separation between alters" because there's already separation and it's not getting better. for those who aren't healing it may just be easier or more comfortable to use plural kit and that's okay.

It is not anti recovery to not be healing, that's stupid, everyone heals on their own time; some systems may not have access to therapy and therefore are unable to safely work towards healing (which would involve going through trauma, which should be done with a therapist) and that is not anti recovery.

[ if any mistakes have been made please let us know and we will attempt to correct them ! Also if you wish for us to try do this with any other videos Aspen has made feel free to request it ! ]

[faesystem]

The biggest problem with syscourse is that each side is speaking about different things. I honestly believe it would be in everyone's best interest if we all deconstructed how we view CDDs and plurality.

In the most simple explanation I can provide:

Plurality is a non-pathological label people can use to describe feeling like more than one person. CDDs are completex dissociative disorders characterised by the presence of multiple identity states. One is an identity, one is a disorder.* (Also, see here for a post about differences in terms. It may help clear up some things if what I am saying feels very far from your definition.)

To provide a more expansive look at plurality, it is important to understand what I mean when I say 'label' and 'feeling like'. I am going to make an analogy about gender identity. I loathe to compare anything plurality related to anything LGBTQ+ related due to people consistently using poor analogies between the two, but it is the best I have to explain how I view the terms in this context.

Being transgender is just something that I am. The reason I know I am that label is because of how I feel about things and how I interact with the world. I use the label to describe these experiences I have, these feelings I have. These feelings will not be identical to any other transgender person. The reason I use the label will not be identical to any other transgender person. It is trying to describe the vastness of human experiences, and there is a lot of variety in that.

It is similar when it comes to plurality. Plurality is a label to describe the experiences of people. It is solely about what people feel is right or wrong, not necessarily some medically provable phenomenon.

I feel as though this is the biggest way the conflation of CDDs and plurality hurts non-CDD plurals. There is conversation that either they have this provable brain difference, or they are claiming to have a CDD. Plurals are plural because that is what describes their experience, not because those experiences have any measurable differences to the experiences of non-plurals.

Which brings me to CDDs. CDDs are medical disorders *just like every other disorder*. They are not unique or special or inherently different to other disorders. When it comes to speaking about CDDs, alters are just symptoms of a disorder in the same way that my special interests are just symptoms of my autism.

If this feels like a difficult to swallow, please consider if perhaps you have some ableist biases you need to deconstruct. Something resulting from a disorder or a disability is not inherently negative. This is actually what neurodivergency is supposed to be about, correcting the idea that non-harmful symptoms of disorders are bad and wrong and need to be fixed.

CDDs are not plurality. Having a CDD does not make you plural. Plurality is an identity, it is a label you can opt into if you feel as though it matches your experiences. CDDs are disorders that you either do or do not have based on your symptoms. There is no opting in or out of it.

You can treat any and all of your disabilities or disorders as an identity. Even an identity you are proud of. The idea that you cannot is, once again, that ableist idea that something resulting from a disorder makes it bad and wrong. But, at its core, the disorder itself is it an identity. And having a CDD does not inherently make you plural.

We have a CDD. We do not identify as plural. We hate having it applied to us and our experiences. All of our experiences are because of DID. It is inherently pathological and we really dislike having a non-pathological term applied to it. Because that is what plural as a label is, nonpathological. But just because the label is nonpathological does not mean it cannot be used to describe pwCDDs.

*Which brings me to what I wanted to clarify from earlier. Just because I believe it is incredibly beneficial for us to make distinction between the two does not mean that there is no overlap. In the same way everyone else can identify as plural if they feel it matches their experiences, so can pwCDDs.

Just because plurality is a non-pathological label does not mean it cannot be applied to pathological experiences. Even in pwCDDs who feel similar to how we do, that their system is just symptoms of their CDD and unable to be seperated from that, they can still identify as plural.

Plurality is a vast, vast label that includes literally everyone who feels it fits. There is no right or wrong way to be plural. However, the narrative that CDDs and plurality are one group/one group within another is so detrimental to so many people. They are two seperate overlapping groups.

I just think we would all really benefit from creating that disctinction. It would clear up the vast majority of confusion in the community.

[headspace-hotel]

also there’s an important analogy I think needs to be made about clinical diagnoses of mental illness

Does everybody remember that post that was talking about how manatees were removed from the endangered species list, and then it was added that this wasn’t actually because their populations were increasing, it was just that their protections as an endangered species were removed?

It’s like that. Mental illness labels are like endangered species labels. They are both made up, they both describe something real to an extent, but the lines defining them can be very arbitrary. And they conceivably wouldn’t be necessary in a perfect world.

But just like the answer to manatees’ decline isn’t to take them off the endangered species list, the answer to mental health problems isn’t to do away with labels. Because—just like if manatees aren’t endangered anymore, we won’t be closely tracking all their populations and setting up wildlife refuges in important habitats and spending lots of money on educating boaters on how to avoid manatees—if we don’t have some way of “labeling” conditions, people won’t be able to easily access information that might help them and ask for the accommodations they need and connect with other people on the basis of shared experiences.

This goes for neurodivergencies too. It especially goes for them.

I know “autism” is a made up label, and to an extent arbitrary. But—do y’all seriously think the only benefit it’s given me is some kind of “identity” related thing?

Before I started reading online about autism, I did not know what sensory issues were. I had them, but I could not identify them. I knew that I would often be very exhausted after social events and would often become very upset and cry. I knew that sometimes eating was very hard for me, and my nutrition was bad. I knew that I hated going to certain things, but I couldn’t articulate why.

Without the “label,” I could not have described or even found out what was happening to me. As a kid I couldn’t tell you “I don’t like events that are loud” or “I don’t like certain kinds of touch” because I didn’t know that. I just knew that the world was scary and sometimes I felt awful and overwhelmed and there were some patterns but I couldn’t interpret them.

My parents didn’t seek out a diagnosis because of anything related to sensory issues either. I thought things were like this for everyone! I just didn’t know why I had to cry so much and be so irritable.

Like, shit, I’ve had a completely debilitating fear and hatred of doctors and medical procedures my entire life and I could never identify why, and I hurt and traumatized myself further not knowing it was an Autism Thing because I couldn’t communicate my needs or concerns because I genuinely didn’t know what they were. I thought everyone felt like I did! I thought when people joked about going to the doctor being unpleasant, they were referring to things like having recurring nightmares about it and shaking uncontrollably from being in a doctor’s office and feeling panicky from having a nurse move in their peripheral vision.

I hate when people talk about how excessively labeling neurodivergency is somehow stifling or oppressive. I need more words, not fewer. I don’t even necessarily believe that characterizing something as a ‘disorder’ is always bad. “That hurts” is a label and a characterization of something as wrong, and when I’m in pain I don’t want people to create a society for me where it’s okay to be in pain, I want someone to help. Things will still hurt in a world where everyone’s needs and feelings are okay! Sometimes they will hurt in non-normative ways! It’s not possible to completely eliminate the ideas of a “normative” way to experience distress!

Like, I think people have this idea that in a Perfect World, autistic people will be able to be like “yeah, I need quiet environments because I’m very sensitive to noise” and have that accommodated without a “pathologizing” label for it.

But when I was diagnosed and began to do research about my condition, I was able to buy clothes based on my sensory issues. I was able to start wearing earplugs to noisy environments. I was able to plan my activities around what would drain my processing energy and give myself adequate time to recover. I couldn’t have done anything like this before because I didn’t know what was causing me to suffer.

I still feel obviously, painfully Other to most people in social environments. I don’t know if that will ever go away. You can theoretically create a society where accomodations are freely available to everyone without “pathologizing” them, but how do you create a society where no one is Other even if their physical perceptions and entire experience of the world is different? How do you talk about sensory differences without labeling some experiences as different? How do you create a world where it’s okay to be autistic if “autistic” can’t be meaningfully differentiated from anything else?

Defining disability and mental illness based purely on accommodating people without labeling them assumes that people can articulate how they are suffering and what they need without “labeling” vocabulary for it. And I just don’t think that would work as well as people think it would.

Sensory overload doesn’t feel like sensory overload until you know what sensory overload is and how it might apply to you. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. It feels like coming home from a party and crying and feeling angry, or snapping at people when they try to ask you things, or just feeling nauseated and like your skin wants to crawl off when you’re sitting at the dinner table. Even if you know what sensory overload is, if you’ve never been able to directly and obviously associate your reactions with stimuli, you might not feel it applies.

I’ve struggled so much with my own experience of my body and world and how it’s different from other peoples’ experience and how to explain and identify things I feel and experience. But if I wasn’t able to label myself as autistic, I would not have recognized my suffering as suffering or fully understood that it was “suffering.” I would have just been anxious and exhausted in such a vague, unclear way that it would limit my life, and I feel sick at the thought of a society that would reassure me that it was “okay” to not want to pursue anything outside of my house without giving me words to describe why that was happening.

Sometimes you can’t tell you’re suffering because you’ve never felt anything better. It’s as if people assume there’s this level of feeling okay that everyone will successfully identify as how they could be feeling, and it’s just not true. Sometimes you can’t tell you’re suffering because youre so out of tune with your senses and emotions that you can’t identify something you’re feeling as worse or better than something else, or at least not outside of the immediate moment. Sometimes when you learn about a “label,” that’s the first time you realize, “Wait. Things can be different?”

Idk. I can’t vibe with the ‘labels r bad’ side of mental illness conversation. Labels are always going to be incomplete but they are also always going to be necessary, and they facilitate the process of asking for accommodations. The idea of eliminating “normal” and “abnormal” as categories of experience is appealing until you spend most of your life not knowing “abnormal” existed and just thought “normal” felt bad and difficult.

[genderqueerpositivity]

Please stop telling people self-diagnosing is okay. It’s really not and you need to be diagnosed with dysphoria BY A PROFESSIONAL to identify as trans, and if you don’t have dysphoria, you’re not trans and you won’t get the treatment. If you don’t want the treatment and never wanted it then guess what? You’re not trans and you never were. Plain and simple.

(TW: transmedicalism, anti-self diagnosis, suicide, ableism, gatekeeping)

It’s really incredible how the same discourse talking points get recycled over and over again. This message sounds like every anti-self diagnosis argument I’ve ever heard used to target neurodivergent people. This argument was bad then and it’s still bad now. And, I’m going to break down some of the issues that come with anons’ way of thinking.

1) The medicalization of transness is harmful. First and foremost, it takes the power to define transness and trans identity out of the hands of trans people ourselves and places it squarely in the hands of medical professionals–medical professionals who are majority cisgender.

Cisgender people should not be in the position of being allowed to define the transgender experience or to award the label of True Trans to whom they see fit. The gate is not theirs to keep, so to speak–they have no right to the keys.

2) There is no single trans narrative. We have different genders or no genders and we’re not all binary and even many binary trans people are gender nonconforming. There are people who aren’t cis–and who may or may not identify as trans–but who identify outside of binary western concepts of gender entirely. There is no one age where every trans person “figures it out” and we all come to the realization in our own ways.

Dysphoria (for those who have it, and no, not all trans people do) comes in different types and looks different for each of us. Gender euphoria exists, and can exist with or without dysphoria. Even among those of us who have dysphoria, the same “treatment” cannot simply be applied for every trans person of a specific gender–transition isn’t one size fits all. There are genderfluid people who only want to socially transition, trans men who don’t want top surgery, trans women who don’t want HRT, nonbinary people who want both, and agender people who want neither–along with a million other combinations and experiences.

A trans person denied the ability to transition by a medical professional is not necessarily secretly cisgender, or for that matter, non-dysphoric. Often, they simply did not fit the cis idea–based upon stereotypes and the narrow popular narrative–of what a trans person is supposed to look and be like. They were too feminine, not masculine enough, not binary, gender variant. Or perhaps they’re neurodivergent, intersex, a person of color, gay or bisexual, physically disabled, etc. The problem with allowing cis professionals the power to decide who is and isn’t trans is that these professionals are not infallible–they have prejudices, they internalize stereotypes, they may have received little or no education on trans issues, and they cannot know first-hand what it’s like to be trans the way any trans person can.

3) While you may believe that having transness defined as a medical condition will lend legitimacy to our identities in the eyes of transphobes, that is not the case. It is literally already a conservative belief that being trans is inherently disordered–and so requires treatment or cure. Quite frankly, the only real difference between what you propose here and what those conservatives believe is that you have different ideas about what the cure should be.

While interaction with the medical industry is required for medical transition (and I fully support every trans person who is medically transitioning or who hopes to do so one day; I may do so one day myself) pathologization of transgender identity is not and never will be our friend.

4) Requiring diagnosis before one is allowed to identify as trans takes resources and community away from trans youth. Trans kids, especially those who have unsupportive families, are already at a disproportionate risk of depression or suicide, and denying them access to the trans community can only worsen that situation. Every trans young person deserves access to trans spaces and trans supportive spaces, whether they’re “diagnosed” or not.

5) The same is true for poor and rural trans people–those of us who can’t afford medical transition or who live hours away from the nearest trans competent health providers. Not every trans person lives in fucking Portland or Seattle. Not every trans person can afford to see a gender therapist. Not being able to call ourselves trans without an official stamp of approval from a professional further isolates us from community support.

None of what you propose makes any of us any safer, it gains us no rights and no more respect than we already have, it does not decrease societal cissexism or transphobia, and it does not increase access to medical transition for those who lack it. Instead it takes away our power to define our own communities and own our own experiences. Where we have strength in numbers, this would make us weaker by division.

Cutting some of our most vulnerable people (young, poor, and geographically isolated) off from our community is not how we improve trans health overall, it’s how more precious lives are lost.

Every trans person–diagnosed or not, dysphoric or not, binary or not–deserves to be included in a supportive trans community. You belong here. We belong here. Plain and simple.