#Librarian.txt

[cambriancrew]

It always strikes me as funny when someone in the therian or alterhuman community thinks endogenics aren't valid. Like you really think someone can identify as being a nonhuman entity for reasons other than trauma but they can't identify as more than one entity unless that's caused by trauma? Do you really not get it? Are you that small minded that you can't see the issue here?

[cambriancrew]

According to the DSM-V-TR, in the differential diagnosis section of the entry on PTSD, dissociative identity disorder "may or may not be preceded by exposure to a traumatic event."

Also, the DSM does not state that 90% of cases have histories of abuse and the remaining percentage has other kinds of trauma. It says that in 90% of cases, there's abuse history. There are also other forms of trauma in some cases as well. NOT "in the remaining cases". If it meant the remaining percentage, it would have said specifically that. The language used in the DSM is exceedingly precise. You can't just assume it means something that it doesn't actually say. It's not a fancy work of fiction where there's a lot said between the lines. It's direct, clear, and means exactly what it says, no more and no less.

There's no denying that the overwhelming majority of people with DID have histories of trauma and that in most cases, the trauma had a significant effect on the creation of their multiplicity. But there are edge cases where there's no trauma you can point back to. A rather famous case in the tulpa/parogenic community is of Koomer and Oguigi, where both members of the system made several bad decisions from the start that snowballed, got heavily into drugs, and generally Had a Bad Time of Things. Bad enough they would have easily qualified for a diagnosis of DID or OSDD-1 had they gone into psych treatment. Koomer was eventually able to regain control of their life and dissipated Oguigi/forced her into dormancy and got clean and sober. But for a few years they were 100% a tulpa/parogenic system with no history of trauma that would have absolutely qualified for a diagnosis of a dissociative disorder.

And they're not the only such system in the community, just the only famous (or infamous?) one. There were at least two other systems we were aware of where there was nothing short of all out war between different factions in the system.

Psych professionals don't insist that only traumagenic systems get a diagnosis of DID/OSDD-1. They insist only that the prerequisite criteria be met: are you many in the same body, is the identity disturbance not the result of drugs, alcohol, seizures or anything like that, not part of an accepted spiritual or cultural practice, and does it cause clinically significant distress and/or dysfunction. Then if there's memory issues on top of all that it's DID, if not, OSDD-1b. If there's amnesia and the different members of the system are markedly less distinct and less separate, then it's OSDD-1a.

Note that trauma history is not a required part of that process. Not like it is in PTSD or Reactive Attachment Disorder or any of the others in the trauma and stressor disorders category. If it were essential, even if not remembered, the DSM would say so. It does not.

Yes, most of the time, DID/OSDD-1 is caused by trauma.

But it's perfectly possible to have one of those disorders for reasons other than trauma, and the DSM is clear that there are indeed cases where no trauma is involved, and community history agrees.

That's not even getting into the studies and research on endogenic and nondisordered plurality or the professional validation on that from experts, including the World Health Organization, the DSM-V-TR committee, the American Psychiatric Association, and more.

Not-so-friendly reminder that you cannot be a system without trauma.

Some more proof; done by me, a person living with DID.

This is not syscourse, this is fact.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM-5), a history of childhood abuse and neglect is prevalent in 90% of cases of dissociative identity disorder (DID). The remaining cases involve medical trauma, terrorism, and childhood prostitution. Ninety percent is overwhelming. Other research claims that rates of abuse and neglect in DID are actually much higher.

DID develops in response to severe, recurring trauma in childhood. Children are not fully equipped to cope with continued, severe instances of abuse, so they may develop dissociation as a survival skill, which can then develop into DID. It makes sense, then, that the rate of childhood abuse and neglect in people with DID is so high.

https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/dissociativeliving/2016/04/the-undeniable-connection-between-did-and-child-abuse

The authors interviewed 102 individuals with clinical diagnoses of multiple personality disorder at four centres using the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule. The patients reported high rates of childhood trauma: 90.2% had been sexually abused, 82.4% physically abused, and 95.1% subjected to one or both forms of child abuse. Over 50% of subjects reported initial physical and sexual abuse before age five. The average duration of both types of abuse was ten years, and numerous different perpetrators were identified. Subjects were equally likely to be physically abused by their mothers or fathers. Sexual abusers were more often male than female, but a substantial amount of sexual abuse was perpetrated by mothers, female relatives, and other females. Multiple personality disorder appears to be a response to chronic trauma originating during a vulnerable period in childhood.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2044042/

Causes

The main cause of DID is believed to be severe and prolonged trauma experienced during childhood, including emotional, physical or sexual abuse.

The development of dissociative identity disorder is understood to be a result of several factors:

Recurrent episodes of severe physical, emotional or sexual abuse in childhood.

Absence of safe and nurturing resources to overwhelming abuse or trauma.

Ability to dissociate easily.

Development of a coping style that helped during distress and the use of splitting as a survival skill.

While abuse is frequently present, it cannot be assumed that family members were involved in the abuse.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the result of repeated or long-term childhood trauma, most frequently child abuse or neglect, that is often combined with disorganized attachment or other attachment disturbances. DID cannot form after ages 6-9 because individuals older than these ages have an integrated self identity and history. Trauma later in life can lead to posttraumatic stress disorder or complex posttraumatic stress disorder, other dissociative disorders including other specified dissociative disorder, somatic symptom disorders, or possibly borderline personality disorder, but DID requires an unintegrated mind to form.

https://did-research.org/origin/

Other helpful links!!

DSM-5 on DID and

A explanation of each DD

NAMIs fact sheet on DID

Please see this account for OP

A PDF research paper done on the link between DID and childhood abuse

My own multi-part research thread

A post about biomarkers in the brains of pw/OSDDID

[cambriancrew]

In 100% genuineness and sincerity, I so appreciate all of you anti-endos and endo-criticals here on Tumblr, because unlike the goofballs over on Twitter, y'all actually read and know things.

We can still disagree on things, but at least y'all have never told me nonsense like "you can't trust the ICD because anyone can edit it" (from a person who thought that the coding help tab was about html or something instead of medical billing and coding) or that the European Journal of Trauma and Dissociation isn't a reliable source because OP isn't European, or that the DSM-V-TR is only available in pdf so it's not "really published" when you can look it up on Amazon in less than five seconds and find both a paperback and hardback version with over 2000 reviews.

I mean it's a low bar to be sure, but y'all clear that hurdle like you're pole vaulting instead.

[cambriancrew]

Sunni can laugh at it, Anna can roll her eyes, Shiloh can sigh and shrug their shoulders, but anti-endos refusing to read just really pisses me the fuck off.

I think it's the smug "we're so much smarter than those stupid endogenic fakers" energy that so many of them have and for this particular time the "just give us some sources proving you exist" thing on top of the refusing to read the sources we give that really grinds my gears.

If you can't be bothered to read sources we give you, QUIT ASKING FOR THEM.

Ye gods.

[cambriancrew]

So I'm debating endogenic plurality with a rando on Twitter.

They claim that any source older than 2021 is "outdated".

They claim that the chapter in Transgender Mental Health by Dr. Eric Yarbrough that's called Plurality, isn't about plurality and doesn't support endogenics even though it explicitly says, "However, although dissociative identity disorder and plurality are frequently associated with trauma, there are those who are plural and report no history of trauma. The case presentation in this chapter describes someone with severe trauma, but this is not a definitive or universal reason for the existence of plurality." (Emphasis mine.)

And then they ask if I think they're an idiot.

Yes, yes I do.

Save me.

[cambriancrew]

ANPs vs EPs and us-Willow

I've been thinking about us, while reading The Haunted Self. Hard not to, of course.

The chapter we're writing up a synopsis of now, lays the foundation for the part of the theory dealing with Apparently Normal Parts and Emotional Parts.

And we've long discarded that part of the theory for ourselves. There's none of us that are purely EP and none of us that are ANP.

But. We got to the part about tertiary structural dissociation (3), where there's more than one ANP and more than one EP. This is associated with DID (which we don't have) while secondary structural dissociation (2) - one ANP, multiple EPs - is associated with CPTSD (which we do have.)

I think, if the theory fits us-Willows, then we wouldn't be 2 or 3, but rather, maybe 2.5? Each of us facets is an ANP, specializing in one aspect of life. And each of us has at least one EP as a part of themself, one part of us that's stuck in trauma and has its own response to trauma.

Basically, we're an endogenic median system - each of us ANPs - that also has CPTSD secondary structural dissociation issues - and it's clear to us from looking closely at those EPs that these are a result of the trauma we went through AFTER we were already plural. (And it's HARD to look at those parts. They're squirmy and slippery, and painful.)

But just thinking about it this much is giving me a headache and making me irritable. I want this to fit us nice and neatly. I want things laid out clearly. I crave clear true answers. But the more I look the more complicated things seem to get. The more we look at ourselves and the boxes we could fit in, the clearer it is that we just don't fit any of them.

And I hate that.

I hate it when people send us anons saying we must be traumagenic and just don't want to recognize it or whatever. Do you have any idea how badly I wish it were true? It would make things sooo much simpler if we could be like, yes, we're traumagenic, but we still support endogenic systems. But try as we might, we just don't fit that box.

I hate that we don't fit neatly into the endogenic box either, given that we definitely do have trauma and do have cptsd. But at least the endogenic box is big enough to still fit us anyway, even if we push up against the edges a little.

Ugh this post is such a mess. I'm considering not even posting it... But w/e.

[cambriancrew]

I (Librarian) just can’t quite accept that we-Willow could be traumagenic because... seriously? Parents divorcing, dad and baby-me moving around a lot, severe enough trauma to cause us to become a system? It wasn’t even enough to give us CPTSD - that only came as a result of things that happened later; or rather, the early stuff made a shaky foundation that the later stuff built a wobbly broken house on top of. If not for both, we facets wouldn’t have CPTSD parts.

Yes, it was trauma, yes it affected us. But honestly it’s laughable to me to even consider that it would be enough to make us a traumagenic system. Our early years were mostly just confusing. Yeah there was neglect, yeah there was occasional verbal and physical abuse. Yeah there was things little me couldn’t handle. But not enough to split into parts over.

We facets don’t feel like we’re one person split into parts. Not like our CPTSD parts feel. We feel like... well, facets. Parts of a whole that belong together as parts of a whole, perfect just the way they are. Not a shattered mirror - the CPTSD parts being like cracks in each of us’s mirror-self. But we feel like the facets of a gem, one overall identity, shining through several different faces and mini-identities. Cut and polished and sculpted this way, not broken this way.

I don’t want to say that this wouldn’t be trauma enough for someone else. Please don’t read this and think that I’m saying that. If it was trauma enough for you, it was trauma enough for you.

I just can’t believe it was enough for us. And. It just didn’t affect us in that way - we were and are the way we were and are because that’s just how we experience wholeness - through the lens of multiple facets of self-hood. One Willow trunk, multiple little branches of self.

When we were little, we moved into a house that had two apple trees in the front.

One tree had been cut in half by lightning; neither side died, but both were weakened, and you could clearly tell where the lightning had hit and split the trunk. The edges were jagged and rough, too, and it took a long time for bark to grow back in the seam.

The other tree’s trunk split more naturally halfway up, making perfect smooth little ledges for sitting on and waiting for the school bus.

Our CPTSD parts feel like the first tree. The edges are sharp and ragged, the emotions that trigger those parts raw and painful still.

But we facets feel like the second tree. The edges between us are clean and smooth and natural feeling.

It’s not just that the trauma doesn’t seem enough. It’s that the trauma doesn’t seem to have broken us four apart from each other, nor put enough stress on us to keep us from integrating. We grew bark between us because we grew in different directions, not because something sharp and painful hit us and split us and forced us to grow bark to protect ourselves from the elements.

What hit us were little stresses. Enough to fray the edges of our branches of self, but not enough to pull us apart at the seams.

And trying to make myself believe otherwise would be like trying to make myself believe we’d been struck by lightning. It just wouldn’t jive with what we remember and how we are.

We’re four people in one brain, sharing an overarching, gestalt identity, (and sharing a body and brain with a handful of others separate from us Willows.) That’s just who and what we are, not because of trauma, but despite it.

And I'll fight anyone who dares try to pressure us into believing otherwise.

[cambriancrew]

We've been plural - not counting the tulpas whatsoever - since we were 4 years old. Longer than you've been alive. We're writing a memoir about all our multiplicity memories and how we discovered that the way we are isn't the way everyone is, and how it affects our life.

We used to think everyone had very separate, very independent, very complex, very self-contained parts. I think the terms for it now are very "emancipated" and "elaborated" parts? Now we know that's not how everyone is. But it is how we are and have always been.

We members of the Willow subsystem are not imaginary friends belonging to anyone.

We're four people who have coexisted in one head for literally as far back as we can remember, and we have very clear childhood memories, tyvm. None of us are the main, we don't have a core, we all exist fairly equally. We share control of the body, passing control of it back and forth. We negotiate every important aspect of our lives including whether and how to respond to nonsense claims like this.

We're a system. We identify as median instead of multiple mostly because we have a gestalt identity we share as well as our individual identities.

If we were dysfunctional, we'd have OSDD-1b - as we've discussed with numerous mental health professionals. But we're not so we don't have a diagnosis of that or any other disorder relating to our plurality. Our mental health care team supports our plurality and encourages us to work together through our issues with depression, anxiety, and ptsd/cptsd. We've made huge strides together, in the last year especially. Together, we decided to quit our job we had that was horrible for our health. Together, we found a MUCH better one. Together, we navigated the social services system and got some serious help we needed. Together, we finally for the first time in our lives got up to a healthy weight. Together, we're mostly keeping up with a good exercise routine and diet. Together, we're fighting depression and anxiety and healing from traumas. Together, we're working through our memories, both good and bad, through our memoir.

Together, we're living. Together, we're thriving.

We've been a system all our life, we're going to continue to be one for the rest of our life.

And if that bothers you, that's just too bad.

And if that makes you want us to die? Then you're the bad guy.

Why are all endos either:

- 16 year olds who are confused because they currently don’t know what mental illnesses they have and are intirely misinformed through tumblr

OR

- 35, working two jobs just to raise their kids, who also spend all of their free time on tumblr convincing themselves that their imaginary friends are a valid form of plurality

[cambriancrew]

I'm pissed at the notion some people have, that we endogenic systems get to choose our systemmates. If I had a choice, I would share a head with folks a lot cooler than who I'm stuck with. They're not bad people. I just can't stand them most of the time.

To be fair, I can't stand myself most of the time either.

[cambriancrew]

I find it funny that anti-endogenics say that we can have the terms plural or even multiple in one breath, and call us singlets in the next. You can't be both, dude, lol.

Singlet is not the antonym of "person with DID or OSDD-1". It's the antonym of "plural system".

You HAVE an antonym to DID/OSDD-1 system, for people who also identify as plural. It's "non-DID/OSDD-1 systems". Or even just "non-DID/OSDD-1 people" if you don't want to call us systems. Or call us non-DID collectives or whatever, if you insist on having the term system to yourselves.

Also it's funny that they say we don't experience identity separation the way they do... Like wtf do you think we're saying when we say we're multiple people in one head. Like it doesn't get any more "Duh yes we're separate identities" than that. And don't even try and argue that it has anything to do with memory issues because there's OSDD-1b which can be systems without any memory issues whatsoever. And OSDD-1a which can be systems without sharp identity separation.

It's just a bunch of suffering Olympics is all it is, and sorry but I've been there, done that, it's not a fun game to play and it doesn't mean jack shit to actual singlets anyway. Like these numbskulls would know if they ever interacted with hateful ignorant singlets in inclusive plural spaces. Those people don't care. They think the whole concept of being multiple is a sign of "lunacy" that shouldn't be "validated" with a medical diagnosis, to paraphrase what one ignoramus recently said on Twitter in response to an interview with a DID system on BBC. They don't care about our petty squabbles, so why should we?

[cambriancrew]

This is a thing I'm seeing float around again...

"You're just naming your ego states!"

No. Ego states and headmates are very different and easy to tell the difference between, imho. I know what my own ego states are, my fellow facets are NOT them. My fellow Crewmates? Even more definitely NOT ego states.

I can't help but feel personally insulted. As if I'm unable to figure out the difference between my own ego states and a whole different person with her own ego states in my head with me? Sheesh. How dumb or clueless or whatever do you think I am??

How dumb or clueless do you think the whole endogenic community is?

I'm annoyed by this. Baby Bear is upset. Mama Bear and Monk aren't upset or anything - lucky them, I wish I too could be unbothered - but they have their own thoughts and feelings on this.

So tonight we're writing a script for a video we're going to do together on it. It'll be part of a series on things we and other people have assumed that we facets, our other Crewmates, and fellow members of the endogenic community are.

...I hope it turns out okay. *suddenly nervous*

[cambriancrew]

If we're going to split up terms, DID systems have to give back ones we endogenic collectives created.

Like "headmate", created by soulbonders in the early 2000s. You're only allowed to call yours alters. Don't like that term? Too bad. Use it or create your own, but don't use ones we've used.

Like "fictive" - same source. You have to use the longer DID term now, "fictional introject."

Oh. And make up a new term to describe your origins, because our side invented the term "traumagenic" so you can't use it for yourselves. Sorrynotsorry.

(Edit: Mama Bear here, saying Sorry for L's tone. She's irritated, but I'm just kinda sad about the whole thing. Maybe I'll post my version of this thing we want to say later?)

[cambriancrew]

I've been rereading The Body Keeps the Score and there's a part early on where it talks about how people with PTSD tend to "reenact their trauma", as if they're addicted to it.

I've been chewing over that, thinking about that a lot and turning it over and over in my mind, and come to the conclusion that I tend to seek out arguments as if I'm addicted to it. But because my particular trauma history, I don't do well when those arguments don't go the way I hope. I can't seem to reenact them in a way that actually puts me in control and resolves them in a satisfying way -

EXCEPT within my Crew. Within us-Shea, in particular. We've learned how to argue in a healthy way, without triggering each other. And it's satisfying to me in a way I can't quite describe.

But we don't argue enough these days to satisfy that addictive craving.

And I don't think that syscourse is particularly healthy or satisfying though. Even though I feel particularly strongly about it, I think I need to again step away from it and let Mama Bear handle it again. Not that it's healthier for her either, but she handles it in a healthier way. And I want that. I want to learn from her.

And I want to cry.

What's wrong with me? I want to cry out. Why do I seek out arguments that I know that I can't win or resolve in a healthy way? Why do I seek out things that remind me so much of how my parents and my ex and others abused their supposed authority? How they fought so hard to convince me that wrong is right and right is wrong and hurt me so badly when I disagreed and fought back?

Because I can't go back and change the past, so I'm trying to fix it in the present. And that's not the way to do it.

The way is to live my truth. Not just argue it. But to prove my truth by living it out loud.

But that's so much harder.

But ultimately, I think – I hope – more satisfying and healing.

~Librarian

[cambriancrew]

It's simultaneously fascinating and frustrating to be an endogenic system with such a significant trauma history - to the point that we have CPTSD even. Like... It definitely hurt us and affected us pretty strongly. We can pinpoint exactly where and how it did. Each of us facets has their own cptsd parts.

But we facets are not ourselves cptsd parts. Nor are we OSDD-1 alters either. We're, as far as we can tell, plural the way we are because it's how we were meant to be. How we grew. How we would have grown with no trauma at all. And explaining that to anyone who believes that trauma = the only cause of Real Systems™ is next to impossible. It feels a lot like trying to explain colors to a blind person.

How can I explain that feeling of belonging together the way we are? Of rightness and comfortableness and quiet euphoria from being plural the way we are? Of the wrongness and distress and quiet panic that comes from contemplating us NOT being an us anymore - or of being much more separate than we are now?

Sure it's not always easy. It's often not, in fact. But it still feels just... Right. Effortless. Easy. Natural.

We're not one person who was meant to be one person until Things Screwed That Up. In fact, trying to be just one person is the quickest way to dysfunction for us.

We were never meant to integrate. No matter what our early childhood might have been, we-Shea belong together as a median system, NOT as a singlet. We're not a broken singlet. We didn't have this way of being forced on us to cope with trauma. We were this way, and we went through everything we went through this way, and ended up being this way just the same.

We're not ego states of a child that never integrated due to trauma. Each of us has and has always had their own ego states. If anything, each of our own set of ego states didn't quite integrate fully and that resulted in our cptsd parts.

But that's cptsd parts. Not a traumagenic system - because those parts aren't separate enough to be anything more than traumatized parts trying to cope in different ways. They don't manifest as different people. They manifest as things like Monk's spaciness and their general lack of a connection to our body, Baby Bear's escapist tendencies and use of fantasy as a coping mechanism, my argumentativeness and desperate need to be understood, Mama Bear's overprotectiveness and disregard for our personal safety, etc. We each have several different parts with different reactions to things that remind us of our trauma. But we each still have a core self. We can each integrate those broken parts back into ourselves, with help from our therapist.

What we can't do is integrate the four of us into one person. We're as close to being one person as we'll ever get. We have a shared name - well, technically a few shared names if you count Shea and Willow and our legal name. We have a shared group identity. We present ourselves to the world at large as one person. But on the inside, we're pretty close to being completely separate, but coconscious, individuals. Sure we don't make a big deal of it in day to day life, but it's still a factor in everything we do these days. We make an effort to work together like partners and equals.

Because that's what we are. And that's just the way it is.

[cambriancrew]

You know, I know other people - normal people, that is - have parts they deal with and often swap between. Like my dad, especially when he works from home, he's got his Work Self that swaps with his Stern Dad Self and his Fun Dad Self and his Lovey Dovey Husband Self. I've seen these types of switches happen and they're normal.

Yeah they can be kinda startling or even freaking scary sometimes, especially when Stern Dad comes out of nowhere.

But I really wonder, just how much different that switching between modes of one person is, from the switching we facets do.

For one thing, we each have our own modes and know from our own experience that with modes, its rather instinctive and situational or based on mood or context. And that with switching between us facets, none of us become the other facets - we just swap which of us is in control. There's usually a fair bit of negotiation involved too, even if it's kinda vague and nonverbal. Sometimes it is somewhat instinctual, but that's nearly always only when one of us is triggered - whether in the PTSD sense or the just "Oh hey that's My Thing" sense.

But I wonder if this is mostly just because we're used to seeing ourselves separately. If, maybe because we're nonverbal thinkers, if we're just more aware of the underlying communication and process than primarily verbal thinkers are.

I wonder if maybe we're normal and it's just that other people are so used to thinking of themselves as one person that they're not consciously aware of how their parts interact.

And then Baby Bear does tug-of-war with me for the front so she can tune out my fretting and listen to fun music while we work and those doubts, for the moment, fade away because we're just so obviously different.

But still there's a part of me that wishes we knew more about how other people think, so we could know more about how we compare, and understand ourselves better...

Except that part is being drowned out by the rather obnoxiously loud and squeaky internal voice of BB singing "I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas". So... OK. OK. Music now. Fret later.

I'm still gonna keep fretting, it'll just be quieter and nonverbal and not where I can control the hands to write about it.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[cambriancrew]

Yeah we're definitely plural... Me deciding to get back into syscourse the way I've been lately, especially the earlier defending myself post, has sparked a TON of inner debate...

I guess I'll let Mama Bear handle it from now on again, but... Seriously. OK so maybe it was a dick move to reply AGAIN after it was clear they meant to block us but didn't, and then to block them first... But... Am I really supposed to let people spread obvious lies about me??? AUUUUGH.

I HATE lies so freaking much.