#Syscourse Neutral

[light-alexandria]

hello, system community!

i’m trying to find information/hear personal experiences of systemhood from others, if any of you would be so kind as to help me!

particularly, i would like to hear from those who identify as endogenic or otherwise non-trauma formed systems. of course, i would love to hear from trauma-formed systems as well! it’s just that i am one, and so that’s the community i have been most involved with & heard from already.

feel free to DM me anonymously if you don’t want to share publicly. i won’t post anything. my aim is to hear from others so that i can form my own opinions, figure out the right direction to go for independent research, and to simply understand others more.

thank you very much in advance, and i hope you all are having a wonderful day 💙

(please be mindful & respectful with what is said if you reply publicly. i am looking for open discussion, not arguments or hate.)

[thattheater-kid]

Here’s my metaphor for systemhood that I tell my singlet friends.

Imagine you’re playing a first person video game. You have the controller, you control your character. It’s a normal first person game. You are an alter, the character is the body. This is fronting.

Other people live with you. Sometimes, they come into the room and sit and watch while you play. They sometimes try to guide you, give you advice on what to do next. They don’t always agree, and they can argue with each other. Other times they scream at you that you’re doing everything wrong and you suck at this game. This is co-consciousness.

Imagine how distracting it would be for people around you to tell you what to do, or to scream at each other or at you, even if they have good intentions. It wouldn’t be easy to focus on your game, would it?

Then sometimes, something happens in the game that prompts you to hand off the controller to someone else so they can play and you get a break. This is (some types of) switching. This can be good.

Other times, someone rips the controller out of your hand or fights you for it. This is (other types of) switching. And sometimes, six other players hook up their controllers, but there’s only one character to play as. So all of you have your controllers, but you’re all trying to play the same character. This is cofronting.

Imagine how difficult that would be. Imagine how hard it would be to try and play a game while someone is trying to take the controller from you, or while six other people are trying to play too.

There are also times that nobody is playing, or you can’t decide who should play. What’s happening to the character in the game? What are they doing if no one is playing? This is dissociation. The character is doing nothing. They’re stuck.

This is the best metaphor I have come up with for being a system. It’s something a lot of people get because they’ve played games before.

[boyswillbedogz]

courtesy of my tiktok. sorry for no captions i straight up forgot

keep syscourse off this post i dont care

[starshiver]

Some reminders for systems out there:

- you do not have to fit stereotypes, even if they are formed by the community

- small systems are still systems

- large systems are valid and real

- switching a lot is valid

- switching only a little is valid

- not noticing when switches occur is normal

- being a headmate who is almost always in front or co-con is normal

- being a headmate that almost never fronts is normal

- having many fictives/factives is normal

- having few to no fictives/factives is normal

- having communication issues is normal

- having amazing communication from the start is normal

- hearing voices is normal

- hearing them only with focus or not at all is normal

- understanding headmates through different means, such as feeling what they feel, or having them write things to you is valid

- not fitting coined system roles is normal

- enjoying and fitting coined roles is normal

- almost fitting a term and using it to describe your role is valid

- having no name for your system is valid

- having multiple names for your system is valid

- having stretches of silence from your headmates is normal

- having moments of extreme activity from your headmates is normal

- being frontstuck happens! just do your best, you’re awesome.

- what you see online is not every experience a system has, and they are likely just as varied from other systems as you are, just in different ways <3

being a system is varied and complex for every single system, nobody and no system has to fit into a box to be real, don’t fakeclaim yourself based off of other systems experiences.

[unhinged-recap]

To the fear of "am I making my headmates up":

Well, you can't be. Why does that alter over there love sunflowers when you don't really care about them? She even has a dress with sunflowers and daisies on it.

Why and how do you know that, hmm?

[pos-syscourse]

Sometimes you do gotta do that thing that is detrimental to your health. Self care is sometimes harmful, and yes it’s confusing, but needed.

It’s helped me to think of juggling balls, only some are rubber and some are glass. I can let the rubber ones fall — I’d prefer not to, because they bounce everywhere and make a mess, but they’re harmless, but they can fall. The glass ones can’t — they’ll shatter and break, and that’ll hurt me a lot more than rubber.

Remember: you can let the rubber ball fall. You can go one day without brushing your teeth. You can go one night with a bad sleep schedule. You can do something that means you “dropped the ball.”

Especially if it means preventing a glass ball from falling.

[cringeandproudx3]

we are alive.

there is nothing punk about being anti-endo. and there never has been.

endogenic systems are not "an internet trend created to mock people". we are alive. we wake up in the morning, we talk to loved ones, we sleep and eat and drink and watch stupid cat memes. we play video games, we go take walks, we LIVE.

we aren't an online thing. we never have been.

we are creatures, people, humans, nonhumans, LIVING BEINGS that you can encounter in public.

and you know what? it doesn't matter. none of this matters.

plurals, collectives, systems worldwide are being locked up and discriminated against. this shouldn't be a fight against endos, this should be a fight against pluralmisia. against pluralphobia, antiplurals, psych wards. we need to be fighting against plural oppression, not someone's different origins.

we need to fight against oppression. we need to stop siding with them.

[thecorporatetower]

Hear me on this.

I kind of have a stance that some systems may need to manually create system members to cope with things, or for other reasons. To deal with trauma, to handle tasks, etc. And that is fine. It is what that system needs.

But this is for within themselves.

But we are 100% against people creating system members and selling them. System members are not fucking fictional characters or OCs, and members should not be passed around like toys.

This shit could also even be a form of people trafficking. It’s disgusting.

Us as system members are real beings. We exist within a form or body’s own processor/mind.

If you support creating alters for other people, block us. Unfollow us. Remove us from your page, and leave us alone.

And I stand my ground on this.

[seasidewanderers]

you don't have to understand where people are coming from to respect and value them, and talk to them like they're your fellow human beings. you don't have to understand why they're saying what they're saying or doing what they're doing, you don't have to analyse their every word in search of something that makes sense to you. you just have to not be assholes to them. that's pretty much it, that's part of living with other people. you agreed to not be a pain in the ass to others when you decided to share a space with them.

this is for and about everyone in syscourse.

[manyminded]

y’know, we aren’t endo. but we definitely still lean pro-endo. even if we are traumagenic, we’ll still be getting fakeclaimed, because we aren’t disordered. isn’t that funny? I’m almost there. I’m so close. Yet, I’ll never be accepted. At least pro-endos will believe I exist.

yes, we try to remain syscourse neutral. we want to get out of the pro-endo side of syscourse - we want to hear you out! we want to understand where you’re coming from! getting out of the echo chamber is essential. our main goal is to connect our community. syscourse runs so rampant, it’s hard to find others like you. it’s so awful to be here and that isn’t right. we need to change it!

still. sometimes I’m tired. maybe I just wanna be around people who won’t fuck me over, I guess. at least part of the time.

[sysmedsaresexist]

An explanation of the Theory of Structural Dissociation

This post, originally, was attached to a syscourse argument. I realized that it might be nice to have a version that can be reblogged without any syscourse or ugliness behind it. This post has no DNI, it's meant to be educational, and if it helped you, maybe consider giving it a share.

The ToSD is a very scary, highly misunderstood monster to the system community. When you think you understand it-- Stop. Because you don't.

This post, though, might be an okay place to start learning about it. I hope it helps others understand some ToSD basics.

[Some ToSD facts to know before reading]

The ToSD

The ToSD was actually started in the late 1800s by Pierre Janet. Many, many other doctors have worked on and contributed to the theory over the last century. This was the competing theory against Freud's work, happening within years of each other. If Freud hadn't been such a dramatic pervert, Janet's work might be more well-known.

It is what it is, though.

If you've heard of the ToSD, though, you probably know it from The Haunted Self.

This (now) infamous book was written by three people. One of which lost his license for abusing his patient.

Many people think The Haunted Self is the ToSD. That this is the book that started it.

These two facts have been used in the recent past to discredit the theory.

Let's talk about it.

The Haunted Self came out at a time that allowed it to really gain traction based on technology. Being able to SEE it happening on brain scans was mind-blowing, and the proof for the theory continues to grow.

Opposition to the ToSD is based on atrogenic and sociocognitive models (fantasy, no plurality is real). It really is the best model we have and one that continues to consistently hold true. So... to explain the ToSD in very a semi-simple way...

The theory states that everyone is born with an unintegrated sense of self. Children have action systems, and these are the base building blocks of who we become. These are things like energy management, attachment, caretaking, survival (ex. hunger and thirst), and many more. From these, we build responses to our environment and people around us. When looked at from afar, or as a larger picture, these action systems can be said to, "exist for their own sake", which is where the confusion stems from.

For example, a child screams for food because he's hungry, and that action system has been activated. Once activated, it becomes the primary concern, but it is still the same child. This sense of hunger and how to deal with it is integrated into the sense of self (unless you're like me and a lot of your trauma is around food, and then a division occurs, and you refuse to care for that part of yourself or reject it entirely), and slowly begins to interact with other action systems, with no delay or divisions.

For example, you learn to balance your hunger and bathing needs, prioritizing and compromising needs/wants without issue.

Typically, as we get older and develop, we build on these base states and have easy access to them at all times. They interact in a healthy, cohesive way that makes you, you.

In structural dissociation, these parts become divided due to interruption, losing access to other action systems, and they begin to build within themselves.

The amount of integration before disruption (basically age) can help explain why there are levels and why some people develop PTSD vs OSDD vs BPD vs DID. For example trauma at age 4 will likely result in DID and a lot more amnesia because there was so little integration to begin with-- the walls are built higher, before any part had a chance to meet the others (this doesn't take into account predisposition to dissociate-- this is why some children in similar situations develop a CDD and some don't-- some people are not physically capable of dissociating like that).

Trauma at 9 could result in OSDD, as parts have already had a chance to start working together. Like, you met your neighbor before the fence was built. You still know them. This level of integration can't go TOO far backwards. Once the sense of self has come together without interruption, or once those formative years pass, you can't make those same changes to the brain. Someone who's 25 and becomes traumatized won't see the same level of damage to certain brain areas as someone with early life traumatization, and they won't have developed similar neural pathways that lead to the disordered behavior.

From action systems, we get into defense responses. In structural dissociation, these responses tend to fall on the EPs-- parts that are still stuck in trauma. Emotional reactions and triggers are so far divided that they can activate unchecked, and with volatility. A big misconception is that ANPs won't know about trauma, but that's not necessarily true. Dissociation as a mechanism, on all levels of structural dissociation, is meant to detach feelings from memories, so I remember a lot of trauma but have no emotional connection to that trauma. The "not me" part of dissociation. And this happens in PTSD and DID and everything in-between.

The difference is how much autonomy that part has. In DID, that part is so far separated that it's essentially its own person (l don't want to get into parts language or "less than" conversations in this post, this is just about developing autonomy). In PTSD, these parts are still connected, so the "main", or whatever word you want to use, still accepts that the experience is their own and can integrate it into their sense of self. For example, you learn not to go down those dark alleys, but know that the rest of the world is safe. You change a few habits, become a little more cautious, and maybe the memory fades, maybe it doesn't, but you're still you.

And this can be because of age (someone was already highly integrated) or because of duration (ongoing repeated traumas, with little sense of reprieve, end up with higher walls and more division-- one time use vs longtime use).

In this way, the longer the duration, the more parts are created, and you end up with multiple EPs and ANPS (secondary and tertiary SD). Keep in mind that there have been updates to the ToSD that show there are more than just the two types of parts, and that functions very often overlap.

And that's the basics.

[entity56]

All are encouraged to reblog

[sysboxes]

[Text: This system is syscourse-neutral.]

Like/Reblog if you save or use!

[unhinged-recap]

Storytime!

Hey, non-traumagenic systems, how did you become plural?

My system is trying to think of how plurality can be formed outside of trauma experiences and we're finding it difficult. Like, why would you willingly want to be plural when you can have a whole life to yourself, but also why not be plural for the beauty of it?

So I'd love to hear some of your stories and get a wider perspective! /gen

[pos-syscourse]

Don’t feel guilty for enjoying yourself today!

This post is late because I was spending some time with my fiancé. While I could feel guilty for posting late today, why would that benefit me? It wouldn’t shame me into doing it sooner tomorrow — it would just shame me away from the blog.

Instead, I realized I hadn’t posted, and went, “Fantastic! This gives me another chance to talk about how much I love my fiancé.”

I’m glad I got to spend some more time with them today, and I’m glad I can share it with you all. I shouldn’t feel guilty about my pleasure — it was wonderful to be with them!

What do you feel guilty about right now? How can you turn that guilt around?

Good luck and have fun!!

[expressionless-fr]

anti endos are full of hate and use any moment to jump at you.. pro endos tend to baby others and act like traumatized adults are children.. as if there is no safe space in this community.