#sysdiscourse tw

[compassionatereminders]

Heeey fellow schizophrenic with random headmates! I think it's funny that it's like..

Cold take: schizophrenia means multiple personalities

Normal brain take: schizophrenia is not the same as DID and has nothing do to with multiple personalities

Galaxy brain take: schizophrenia is a disorder that profoundly changes the way a person sees themself and interacts with the world, and experiences of multiple selves or a multifaceted self is actually common within this community!

Thank you for saying it as it is!!! With the nuance this discussion definitely requires! 👏👏👏👏👏

- Erin

[compassionatereminders]

Sorry but most of us don't view endos as liars or fakers. A lot of us believe that they're simply in denial about their plurality. Personally I think believing that your plurality stems from something other than deep childhood abuse is a great way to avoid dealing with what you need to. I know it stopped us from properly dealing with it.

We consider ourselves endo-neutral. Not because we believe that plurality can exist outside of CDDs, but because we don't want to add hate to those who are clearly still in denial.

Well that's not better. I think it's equally inappropriate and disrespectful to think that you know more about any random strangers mental health or trauma history than they do themselves simply because their lived experience doesn't fit into YOUR worldview. You don't get to tell random people online that they must be "in denial" of severe trauma just because they claim to have experiences you don't personally agree with or believe in. Have you considered that maybe YOU'RE "in denial" about the variety and complexity possible within the endless variations of the human experience?

[compassionatereminders]

honestly i never even thought about it like that, but yeah, i can vicariously feel that twist in my stomach at the idea of being an endogenic system (whether or not you call your experience endogenic plurality) and looking through a DNI and seeing you're listed between TERFs and literal Nazis. even if it's not intended to imply equivalence that still has to feel fucking awful.

sending the best of vibes to you! thank you for your posts today

No but I really do think more people should think about it. Like obviously you can make whatever rules you want for your own blog, but I encourage people to think about the difference between "actively supports fascism and bigotry" and "disagrees with me about X obscure intercommunity discourse". Because there's usually a difference worth noting. And I think some people are far too quick to demonize anyone they have any slight disagreement with

- Erin

[compassionatereminders]

sorry if this is a weird ask, feel free to delete tbh.

but one of the positivity posts you reblogged comes from a blog that genuinely believes people can't form systems or identity compartmentalizations without trauma. they're 'anti endo', they genuinely think blogs like yours are fakeclaiming it in some form. i advise rbing from them bcs it promotes their heinous opinions about people.

Well, in that case you can be sure that this means that I do not follow them/know of their opinions. And I don't think it's fair OR realistic to expect people to check up on OPs opinions on everything before reblogging a single post of theirs, if the post itself isn't problematic.

[compassionatereminders]

Wait do you have did???

No. We don't have DID. We experience some identity compartmentalization in the context of Kats schizophrenia, which is uncommon but not impossible. So we're basically what's commonly referred to as an "endogenic system" even though we prefer to avoid that term

- Erin

[compassionatereminders]

On the note of endogenic plurality... Hi everyone, it's Erin! Remember me? I have been following and encouraging this whole debate from the inside for hours, but now it's my turn to speak. And just catch up in general

[compassionatereminders]

And while I don't personally use the term endogenic about my experiences, regularly seeing "endos and supporters" on otherwise interesting people's DNIs alongside terfs and nazis and Trump supporters feels like the demonization is at an unfair level. (Although I always respect DNIs)

[compassionatereminders]

And my main reason for arguing about syscourse for 6 hours is that, despite not using that term, I'm what many would refer to as an "endogenic system" myself.

[compassionatereminders]

yeah i think the narrative “DID wouldn’t happen if you knew you were being abused” just doesn’t make sense and is making a LOT of assumptions about every DID case and the individual’s life.

for example, with me, the courts got involved when i was an adolescent. saying i somehow like… wouldn’t know i was abused when it was literally a legal case, with legal ramifications, that people have brought up to me for my entire life and DEFINITELY affected my real life in numerous tangible ways that are undeniable is… a little absurd. and saying this would mean i don’t have DID doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense when i’m exhibiting all the other symptoms, unless you start arguing i’m not experiencing those things.

not saying anon was saying any of this, but it’s a good real life example of how this could easily happen!

Yeah exactly. Once again, it's just not one singular clearly defined experience. While some people with DID repress their trauma completely, and many do it partly, "no one with DID remembers their trauma" is a stereotype, not a fact

- Erin

[compassionatereminders]

I would also argue that plurality can often be a coping mechanism for trauma, without necessarily following the pattern described in DID. It's fairly new that DID has even been described thoroughly. Until recently in most of the world, who uses ICD, there was a vague "other dissociative disorders -multiple personalities" which had zero description or clinical requirements. What's now diagnosed as DID, would for a long time get diagnosed as schizophrenia.

The diagnostic categories are always changing and it's ok to use them as a definition, but you can't use them as a Truth, in the sense that any one type of experience could only occur within The Disorder...

Yeah like while it isn't this bad today, in the past everything from being queer to "hysteria" to protesting slavery has been "mental illnesses" in the DSM and I wouldn't assume the ICD has a much better history. So like. It's kinda important that we keep questioning and editing that thing. Even as most of the more horrendous stuff has been cut through the years, the DSM (and also the ICD) is still a work in progress, not The Final Truth. It's definitely not apolitical and inherently above criticism

[compassionatereminders]

While I don't think anecdotal stories are good arguments for the wider communities, I still want to give some opposite experiences to those who felt that "endo space rhetoric" hindered their recovery, because they were using it as a tool in their own denial of the trauma they went through. (That's a valid experience, but it obviously doesn't equal that all people who identify as "endo" do so as a result of denial).

Anyways, I wanted to talk about how identifying with the DID and OSDD community can also be harmful (which, again, doesn't make the community harmful as a whole).

I'm thinking of my fiance. When we met they identified as having DID, and they were later diagnosed with DID. They have trauma, and they were two alters who largely didn't share memories, after dealing with a lifetime of blackouts etc. They were eventually officially recognized too. For them, the rigid symptoms that they had been diagnosed based on, became a self-fulfilling prophesy. It reinforced the dissociative amnesiac barriers, because they derived their validity as separate people from the lack of shared memory.

For them, personally, discarding the label of DID and accepting and recognizing that they were inherently plural in nature - some of this was just who they are, while other things were based in trauma, and that those things were all tangled up - was crucial to their journey of recovery.

Now they still have blackouts and dissociation sometimes, i mean they have a dissociative disposition and a boatload of trauma - but they are much healthier and happier accepting themselves as a plural being.

Them and their surroundings buying into the rigid narrative around DID made them afraid to explore any deviation from the pattern.. when the road to healing was exactly to be found within the deviations from the pattern!

Likewise, less dramatically, I spent a lot of tears obsessing over how and why I'm faking osdd, and for me it was extremely liberating to accept that maybe that's just a thing my brain does and it literally doesn't need a label or an explanation, it's just a quirk of my brand of humanity. And I think that's true for a lot of ND people esp of the psychotic variety, who tends to have an ofd sense of self and "odd" experiences in general

Yeah the "there's only ONE valid way to experience X" rhetoric can easily backfire in various ways. Like for many people the specific label of DID is helpful and necessary, but for others letting go of rigid psychiatric definitions is equally helpful. It's just not a Two Neat Clearly Seperate Boxes situation. Nothing actually is

[compassionatereminders]

same anon who showed my ass about endo systems but a lot of people with DID do remember abuse even with impaired or non-existent communication. memories of abuse can be shared among alters, including a/the host. another reason why “DID is always caused by trauma” framework may not really fit. under this hypothesis, the reason DID exists is to “shield” from the memory of trauma. this is not a hypothesis that always works out in practice, even with people experiencing very textbook symptoms. there are other ways DID can “protect” one from trauma (such as an alter who is good at fawning, or fighting) without blotting out memories.

Yeah, experiencing dissociative amnesia definitely doesn't always equal having zero awareness of ones trauma. Thanks for elaborating on that part!

[compassionatereminders]

(prev DID anon) certainly and that’s what i’m advocating for, because that goes into point (3) that one could possibly be wrong. one is allowed to be skeptical without running their mouth online or harassing other users. when endo systems talk, it’s not my place to argue with them or say anything, nor do i really find much to even argue about, because essentially any argument you can think of would boil down into trying to nitpick what they say you think “sounds fake” and ultimately, hurts everyone. sometimes you can hold skepticism without it affecting how you treat people or how you engage with them. aside from this anon and my friends, i’m pretty private about my DID, and even if i wasn’t, i have never felt the need to go at endo systems or start trying to question them. things just aren’t always people’s business, and i think that’s a lesson a lot of people engaged in online discourse haven’t learned yet, because this specific discourse makes no positive impact on the community, and does nothing to change the framework of psychology. they’re still stuck on whether pro-dxed people are “real” or not. so it’s all really pointless, and just harms or offends real people.

Yeah the thing is I honestly don't think there are objectively Right or Wrong human experiences. Like if someone has the experience of being an endogenic person and isn't bringing DID into that, I really don't think it's anyone's business to judge whether that's Right or Wrong. It's their lived experience, not an essay to be evaluated

[compassionatereminders]

in my experience endos tend to be misinformed. i dont think theyre maliciously faking it or lying, just a bit misinformed about the DID and OSDD-1 criteria. i just feel like a lot of newly discovered DID systems tend to get confused in endo circles and end up denying their trauma further. i also feel like endos tend to spread the myth you cant have DID and be happy about it or functional and have high communication which is pretty upsetting to me

But "endos", by using that or similar terms instead of calling their experiences DID, are very much NOT claiming to have DID. They are claiming to have experiences of plurality outside the context of DID, which I think is entirely possible and not inherently problematic. It can be executed in problematic ways, obviously, but assuming "endos" are just either confused people with DID or people who think they have DID but don't really seems very presumptuous and far more problematic to me than the existence of endos itself ever did. Like I'm not saying misinformation isn't a problem in these communities and discussions, but I do think there are many different ways one could potentially experience identity compartmentalization outside the context of actually having DID

[compassionatereminders]

No, I do not experience dissociative amnesia at all. I also do not like to use the term system OR the term endogenic about my experiences with identity compartmentalization, generally speaking. I am what many people would call an endogenic system, but I don't use those terms

[compassionatereminders]

It's okay. But I only ever used the label endogenic in the sense of saying "I am what many people would refer to as endogenic, even though I don't personally use the term". But I honestly just call it identity compartmentalization at the moment, and I use the term aspect about the other aspects of me. I don't use terms like system/ plural or alters/parts/headmates