#stop lying about how you can have endo alters in a traumatized system

[thestarseersystem]

I have something for endos.

thank you.

[polychaeteworm]

Feel free to delete this if you'd like, but your post about endo systems reminded me of a conversation I had with my therapist years ago. I have diagnosed DID from trauma and I told her I often fear that maybe I'm just making it up. We talked about how DID is a response/coping thing and how, regardless of if I "actually" had it or not, it helped my mind through a lot of hard shit. So in the end she asked me if it truly made a difference, I said no.

I'm almost 28 now and frankly have seen plenty of life experiences that are so different from mine, so how could I ever know to tell someone if their experiences are valid or not, ya know? So basically thank you for that post because it made me really think.

No problem! You're very welcome. I write these posts to make people think and to kind of inject nuance even if my nuance isn't always effectivly communicated lol. I appreciate asks like this because they give me an excuse to info dump, so here I goooo..

I unfortunately have a lot of experience with running away from my DID label and needing to frame my system in a way that doesn't cause some alters distress while still healing and being in touch with reality enough to be functional because a lot of my coping mechanisms are tangled inseparably from maladaptive daydreaming.

This would (and still does) have me defining and presenting myself in ways that would make my system look fake. I was the "in denial trauma system" these people say endos turn into and frankly this doesn't make me doubt the validity of endos any less. If they are in denial traumagenic systems, that is sooooo personal! You are absolutely correct about the variability of the human condition and how much it really doesn't make a difference how it all looks in the end as long as someone is coping and healing!

To me, the structure, presentation, and way a system forms is such a sacred and sensitive thing that is so different from person to person that it really can't be picked apart and fully understood by strangers in the way people seem to want to do with Syscourse on Tumblr.

I spent most my life (literally childhood on into college) telling people very non ironically that I am an alien. Because I am autistic I was just traumatized by existing in the world, I was born traumatized, and my autism was received as a supernatural occurrence by my abusive mother (a fun story for another day), so I truly have zero memory of ever being a singlet, or even feeling like a human. Therapists and authority figures outright refusing to engage with this aspect of my condition is what actually did me harm.

I didn't actually heal until I found the therapist who approached me with "ah, ok you're several aliens, how interesting! So let's make sure you can human as best as you can while you're here on earth." Instead of "you aren't an alien, and you are one person, grow out of this." And I've tried! I TRIED SO HARD to be a single human and failed, all I have left of that struggle is a nice mask and invader zim-esque "the humans are onto me!" levels of imposter syndrome.

Why would we, after all these years ever tell someone that they should "just stop pretending" because we don't agree with the way their disorder presents? I'd rather just say something like "hey -specific toxic behavior- is causing me distress, if you don't stop I gotta stop interacting with you" and not attack the basis of their entire mental health journey. It took me a while to learn that one so that's why I'm like "young adults please wait till your brain is done cooking before attacking people".

Deep down though I think my opinion on Syscourse and why I spend so much time writing about this comes from the fact that a core component of my systems trauma is being told that I don't really know my(our)self. And to be seeing takes that endos are "lying" by tons of people who are so much younger than I and the people they fake claim is... honestly unsettling to my system for a number of reasons.

And it's not that I ever think of these people as "stupid kids" it's that I think a lot of younger folks with an anti endo stance have yet to develop an understanding that their experience with mental health isn't universal and that life is not black and white. That latter realization being a hard won understanding, especially if you have mental illness of any kind. I just feel so crazy when people on Tungle hell site think their opinion of someones mental health is more important than what that persons therapist says. Like why. Your disordered need to express pain through negativity because you were hurt badly is showing fam.

But yeah in closing, I had a similar conversation with my own therapist about faking and he had a similar "does it matter" take. He also has been very straightforward with how he believes that if there is something someone is doing as a coping mechanism that psychology hasn't explained yet, and that mechanism is working as intended while conflicting with the DSM, there is just more research to be done.

Im reminded of a Ted talk where a linguist basically explained that a word not being in the dictionary, doesn't make it not a word, it just makes the dictionary incomplete. What makes a word a word is it serving a function in language. Humans police the dictionary, not the other way around. My therapist agrees that the DSM and mental health as it happens to people irl is in a similar situation. It's not a mental health Pokedex, it's so your health provider has a road map to go off of and can charge your insurance properly. It's the collection of what we know and we don't know everything.

I really just dream of the world where we don't have to introduce ourselves as systems with a performative defense of a lived fact.