#sysconvo

[syscourseconversations]

Question of the day!

How do you feel about parts language?

[hiiragi7]

I know the most common definition of endogenic plurality is "a system formed without trauma", however I really feel there should be a way to define endogenic plurality without mentioning trauma in the definition. By using "without trauma" in the definition, you inherently draw a comparison to traumagenic multiplicity that shouldn't really need to be there. Endogenic plurality is a thing in its own right without needing to rely on the framework of traumagenic multiplicity to define itself.

The current definition defines itself by what it is not; it is not traumagenic. It does not describe what endogenic plurality is, only what it isn't. As a definition, it cannot stand on its own; it relies on the reader already knowing not only what a system is, but what a system formed by trauma is, because the current widespread definition of endogenic plurality is "not that".

As well, not every endogenic plural identifies as a system per se (preferring language such as "collective", for example), so this definition of endogenic plurality feels not only unclear (due to the term system also referring to "system of parts" within a DD context) but also somewhat exclusionary and narrow.

Instead, I propose that endogenic plurality is "the experience of being more than one through psychological or spiritual means".

With that, as well, we can then define traumagenic as "the experience of being more than one due to trauma, generally related to a trauma-based disorder such as DID".

These definitions leave room for various kinds of "more than one", because it does not define exactly what that "more than one" refers to; it could be more than one personality state, it could be more than one person in one body, it could be more than one spirit or soul in one body, it could be more than one identity, so on. This wording is explicitly meant to give space for those who do not fit neatly into either "system" or "non-system" (such as many who identify as "median"), those who do not identify with or use the term "system" when talking about their plurality, and anyone else not mentioned under the current definition.

These definitions are also meant to be loose, not rigid, as to acknowledge and include experiences which blur the lines between the two categories or which are often overlooked (such as traumaendo and endogenic plurals with CDDs).

[circular-bircular]

Splitting is inherently neutral. Splitting new parts isn’t a bad thing.

Splits are a sign that your current situation is too much to handle. We wouldn’t fault a singlet for resorting to a coping mechanism when too stressed. We wouldn’t fault an autistic person for resorting to a coping mechanism when too stressed.

So stop faulting yourself for splitting.

I feel like there’s a prevalent idea that splitting is a step back in progress — a sign of instability, which is somehow bad. But… who said instability is even a bad thing? It’s scary, yes, but that’s life. It’s another neutral thing.

Your self is splitting in order to help you cope with the moment. The goal, of course, is to try and cope in healthier ways — but it’s not somehow bad to utilize the coping mechanism your brain has literally trained itself to do.

[greens-spilled-tea]

Anyways something I've noticed is how different spaces have such different reactions towards fusion and splitting. Certain spaces seem to celebrate the formation of a new alter/headmate and are even envious of systems with high alter/headmate counts. I've even come across the question of "how do yall cope with fusions?" with the implication that fusion means the alters/headmates go away or are no longer needed. On the other side of the equation, I've been in spaces where splitting is seen as unequivocally a negative experience while fusion is celebrated. And honestly this difference in opinion and experience is something I want to explore more and understand better. Why is there such a difference? Is this a difference between non-CDD systems and CDD system experiences, or endogenic and traumagenic systems, or something else entirely?

[actuallyverynormalbtw]

not wanting non-disabled people to co-opt disability language is apparently being a "hateful bigot"

not like disabled people are ever listened to or taken seriously though! why should i expect any different within the neurodivergent community?

[hiiragi7]

[Complex answer; pro-endo]

I think that it can be used as a catch-all term, but I find it is often overused in conversations where differentiating language would actually be more beneficial instead (specifically, as it comes to discussions of CDD vs. non-CDD systems); I feel the term "plural" is best used as an umbrella term covering a lot of vastly different experiences rather than a way of saying "all systems are pretty much the exact same regardless of origin, CDD systems are just disordered plurals".

That being said, though, it gets... messy, and personally I don't often call myself plural anymore, because I found it to be inaccurate to describing what I am experiencing (I am not multiple people in one body, I am a person with a divided personality system), but because I am a person with DID, I am often inherently included/lumped under the plurality label when I don't really identify that way. In a lot of contexts, I actually even feel misunderstood or hurt when CDD multiplicity is conflated with non-CDD plurality through use of the plural label, because while both identities are valid, they are different and failure to acknowledge that often leads to misinformation and misunderstandings regarding both sets of identities.

Tl;dr, plural is a good word, but it is sometimes used in ways that feed into misinformation rather than inclusion.

[wondercourse]

y'know what a big pet peeve of mine is?

the phrase "this isn't for you" appended to "pro-/endos dni" on posts about trauma. usually trauma recovery. not necessarily about CDDs (though i'll get into why that's ALSO fucked up in a bit), but just about trauma in general.

i am a big believer in curating your space. i curate mine; i don't like how aggressive syscourse tends to be, so i don't engage in it in the way people may expect me to with my username being "wondercourse" lol. i don't really care what "side" they're on, what matters to me is how they treat others. it is okay for you to set boundaries surrounding your interactions with others, including those you don't want to interact with. i'm not saying you shouldn't do what you need to do to feel comfortable in your space.

but why not leave it at "dni" (this is also about the "fuck off" tag but that's a whole different conversation)? why append "this isn't for you"?

that implies that whatever kind words you said in that post, whatever encouragement you wanted to give, whatever "positive" thing you were trying to do, isn't deserved by the people you don't like.

even if someone who identifies as endogenic is a trauma survivor, "this post isn't for you".

even if they're person with a CDD who happens to "believe in" and/or support people who identify as endogenic, "this post isn't for you".

if you are "wrong" in someone's eyes, "this post isn't for you".

honestly, to me, it minimizes the words. they're not actually for all trauma survivors. they're not for all people with CDDs. they're for the ones that you find palatable. and that's...uncomfortable, to put it as kindly as i can.

and it's so unnecessary. it is not equivalent to just saying "dni". you are NOT the arbiter of what people deserve or don't, especially when it comes to trauma support/solidarity.

and maybe this is just me misinterpreting the phrase! but it just makes me skin crawl. like idk if there's really a way to justify it that would make me go "oh, i get it" because i don't (but i'm open to discussing it). why not treat each other as human beings deserving of respect and healing?

anyway, this has been a long enough post. i'm tired. i don't know if this even bothers anyone else. but it bugs the shit out of me.

oh, i was going to keep this in the tags, but this is something i want people to see: i mostly see this with people who identify with being anti-endo. but if you identify as pro-/endo and you do this "this isn't for you" thing on general positivity/recovery posts, then this is also about you. and if you don't, then it's not lol.

[circular-jerkular]

If One Alter Believes It... Adult Edition(TM)

Way back in the day, I made a post about system accountability. Here's a link to that post, in all it's clickbaity glory, for those curious. I still believe this post holds true for myself (though, obviously, not every system works like mine, and not everyone will find this framework helpful; I just find it incredibly helpful for myself, as I hope others will too).

But I want to talk about the 18+ side of things now, particularly as I see more discussions about paraphilias and problematic alters in system spaces. Consider this a continuation of that post, but with more severe triggers and discussion of mature topics.

The TL;DR: If one part (or whatever you call yourselves, headmates/alters/people/brainmates/buddies/pals, etc) believes it, then as a collective whole, you need to work together to overcome it -- if one part believes it, you all do. And yes, this applies to the harmful things as well.

Let's dive in.

If one of your parts is a pedophile, then to some degree, you have a part of you (collectively) that is a pedophile. Part of YOU would have that paraphilia.

If one of your parts is torturing other system members, then to some degree, you have a part of you (collectively) that is torturing yourself. Part of YOU believes you deserve to be tortured.

If one of your parts is an abuser, then to some degree, you have a part of you (collectively) that is abusive. Part of YOU is abusive.

I want to say, out of the gate, the most important part: this does not and will never mean that you are evil. You are not somehow tarnished for hurting yourself or others. You are a person worthy of love, respect, and care, regardless of the things that you feel make you unworthy in some way. There is nothing wrong with abusive, hurtful, "problematic" parts, and anyone who says otherwise is not supportive of recovery, in my opinion.

But, inherently, being a system means you are part of a team. Regardless of what language you use, you are working together -- and since you are all part of one body, you have got to mitigate those problems together, regardless of if you fully agree. Simply put, their beliefs must be taken on as part of YOUR beliefs. And treating them as entirely separate beliefs can often lead to lack of communication, compromise, or structure, and can lead to a rise of conflict. By thinking of specific part's problematic "issues" as collective beliefs instead, we better understood how to work together to solve them.

This is how we combated our grief about murdering a part of ours. This is how we mitigated our distress over our own paraphilic thoughts and how they impacted us. It's how we came to accept that, yes, we are abusive in many ways, even when we try not to be, and that does not make us evil.

These traits are inherent to who we are. They were baked into our parts. For instance, Debra was split specifically to abuse us. And she did! She tortured us relentlessly because she believed, wholeheartedly, that she was stronger than us; that we deserved to be abused, because it would teach us our place. This was a belief inherent to her formation.

And we formed her, collectively, due to our trauma. Part of us believed so strongly that we deserved to be abused that she then appeared in order to abuse us. She's even a part of ours that we understand to be willfully created, rather than split solely from trauma; we remember thinking of her, talking to her, and purposefully telling ourselves that we deserved to be hurt. And she was there to torture us, to the extent that we split more parts due to what she did to us.

But that does not make her unworthy of love, or evil, or forever scorned and abandoned. In fact, the idea that she was evil and could never change -- that something inherent could not also be changed -- was what led to us murdering her. The fear that we were evil, horrible people for what she did to us led to us killing her, thus setting off further guilt, fear, shame, etc. It led to further breakdowns, pain, suffering... and when she came back, she doubled down, because we were not working together.

Regardless of your feelings, as a part, on matters of 18+ material, you must work together to solve problems. You must work together to find compromises. (And, well, that goes for everything -- not just problematic stuff.)

Viewing Debra's beliefs as collective instead of just her own... that's what led us to understanding why she was there. It made us realize the connections she had to us: how Wade believed so firmly that she was teaching him a lesson, or how Numb believed someone needed to be hurting us for him to protect us. Her beliefs were part of our beliefs, as a whole. And only once we started understanding that did we begin to dismantle the beliefs entirely.

Because it was far harder to say, in isolation, "Debra, you are wrong, and YOU are hurting us" than it was to say, collectively, "This line of thinking we share is hurting us all."

And those beliefs are still inherent for her, even if she has changed! She still deals with those thoughts that she is better than the rest of us, that we deserve to be punished, and that she is the one who has to do that. But, now that we are working together -- now that we take on her beliefs as ALL of our beliefs -- we can help her when it is distressing to have those thoughts. And, through that support, she has those thoughts less, and less, and less.

Everything in this post is a personal example. We have to deal with all of these things. But it applies to others as well. If one of your alters, or headmates, or brain buddies, or pals, or chums, or whatever have you, has a problematic belief -- then it may be helpful to view that belief as a collective, team belief. Collective, system-wide, whatever phrasing you want.

This may not help you. But I really, really hope it does. It helped me greatly.

Good luck out there, y'all.

[thecircularsystem]

Resource Reviews

Heya folks -- I've been wanting to do this for awhile. Over on my old blog, Reasoning, I was trying to debunk some articles that "proved" that endogenic plurality was real. Needless to say, the articles didn't prove it. But that didn't make them completely horrible articles with no redeeming value -- at least not inherently.

So I've been wanting to revamp that debunk series I was doing, for quite a few reasons.

I don't want to frame it like a debunk this time around. I'm not looking to say endogenic systems aren't real. I really just want to write about articles for long periods of time and get my thoughts out about them. It's not really academic writing -- it's not me using academics to really disprove things. It's just me writing!

I was... a pretty big asshole in those debunks. I know that, next year, I'll look back on THESE reviews and be equally displeased with my past self, but... At the very least, I want to have things I'm proud of where I'm a little less insulting.

I don't want the responsibility of trying to actually dismantle the arguments. I'm not an academic, again -- I'm just a random DID system on tumblr. My degree is in literature.

[circular-bircular]

(I’m not sure how tangential this is, fair warning)

I think my concern with “sysconvo” is that syscourse inherently means “the following is controversial to many groups.” The issue being, I think a lot of what gets labeled as syscourse should be able to be spoken about without that label. Things like littles consenting, insys relationships, varying identities and labels within systems… I feel like these topics should just be normal system conversations. Sysconvos.

Instead, when these things are brought up, people get triggered (which is completely okay and normal) and then go on rampages online about how the other person is both wrong and evil (not okay, sadly also completely normal).

So like… I like the concept of sysconvo. I worry I’m not at a place to use it myself, though, out of fear that I’m “not labeling my posts” correctly, because I’ll end up triggering people, and at my current place of recovery, that’s one of the most evil things imaginable. Syscourse, meanwhile, is inherently a triggering space/tag indicator.

Idk.

[syscourseconversations]

How do systems face systemic oppression for being systems?

.

[hiiragi7]

Endogenic Plurality, Disability, & Ableism

Note: For simplicity's sake, this post will be focused on endogenic plurals without a CDD, and uses endogenic interchangeably with "endogenic without a CDD" to be less wordy. Disability and disorder are also used somewhat interchangeably here.

I've been thinking more on the "do endogenic plurals experience ableism for being plural" debate, and something which I really would like to explore more in discussion is how plurality's proximity to disability impacts the ways in which endogenic plurals are treated.

While I see some fair points in each argument, statements such as "if you don't have a disorder, you do not face ableism" and "endogenic plurals only face misdirected ableism" are vastly oversimplifying the actual issues here to the point that they are actually misleading at best and harmfully incorrect at worst.

I have been reading Cripping Intersex lately and it has changed a lot of the ways in which I view disability politics. One thing that this book has made very clear: Saying "I do not have a disorder" does not prevent you from being subjected to discrimination based on an ableist system, and in fact rejecting the disability framework entirely not only does nothing to dismantle that ableism but even reinforces it.

This is not to say that endogenic plurals are "actually disabled/disordered", but rather that plurality as a whole has a proximity to disability in such a way that it is almost inherently subjected to ableism. There is absolutely a socially and medically enforced view of self which excludes any sort of overt plurality, especially in a Western colonialist context. Whether your plurality is actually disordered or not, that does not matter when you are working within a systemic framework which seeks to eliminate anything not defined as normal or acceptable. It doesn't even matter if your plurality is non-pathological; if it is not socially accepted as "normal", it is treated as disordered and to be fixed.

This sort of ableism is not only related to ableism more common to DID, but ableism as a whole. It is related to disability as a socially prescribed status through discrimination rather than black-and-white categories or objective truths regarding disorder and non-disorder. It is related to how saneism defines what is and is not normal and acceptable, rather than what psychology or the medical field defines as "actually" pathological and disordered (though it is important to acknowledge that these two systems heavily interact, as well, and that oppression impacts how the medical system defines pathology).

I reject that ableism towards endogenic plurals is simply "misdirected". To call it "misdirected ableism" is so often used to say that endogenic plurals are not the intended target, but I argue that they absolutely are included as intentional targets because plurality as a whole is a target, explicitly named or not. The determining factor for ableism is not whether someone is "really" disordered or not, but that they are treated as such due to societal standards regarding acceptable and unacceptable ways of being. When "unacceptable" is equated to "disordered" through a saneist lens, you are treated as such - and, you are, therefore, vulnerable to ableism.

I heavily agree with those who have so far spoken about how what people call pluralphobia is so often just ableism (though I also view it as often intersecting with anti-spiritual/religious views and racism), however I feel that we need to take this conversation even further to examine exactly how ableism works and who it affects. This post is also not meant to say "endos are oppressed for being plural", but rather that endos are oppressed through the same ableist systems that affect all plurals/people with CDDs and to expand on that to open conversation about it.

On a final note, I'd like to reflect on how rejection of disability has gone for various movements in the past and how that relates to the modern plural community and its approach to "plural acceptance".

As someone who was diagnosed with autism in the 2000s and saw a lot of push from autistics back then to de-medicalize autism to avoid further forced "normalizing treatment" like ABA, I can say that rejecting the framework of disability and ableism did not help us to dismantle systemic medical violence against autistic people and even isolated many severely disabled autistics who rely on medical interventions and support.

As an intersex person, I can say that the intersex community rejecting the framework of disability and ableism did not help us to end "normalizing treatments" against intersex people and even isolated many intersex people who do identify themselves as being disordered due to their intersex condition.

And as a person with DID, I have learned about how the empowered multiples movement had attempted to reject the framework of disorder and ableism to avoid medicalization and forced fusion, and how that did not help systems who did need medical intervention nor did it do anything to dismantle medical violence or stigma against multiples.

Any sort of wider "Plural Acceptance Movement" that comes into existence will fail if it is not also simultaneously and inherently a disability movement, and this is not just due to the existence of CDD systems. Seperation from disability does not exempt you from ableism or ableist frameworks and systemic oppression. CDD or not, we all as a community are impacted by ableism and cannot find any widespread acceptance while ignoring that. Plural acceptance is disability acceptance.

[circular-bircular]

I’m fairly certain there’s already been polls like this, but I am curious:

Feel free to explain why in comments or reblogs.

[greens-spilled-tea]

Protip: if you actually want people to listen to you and understand your point of view and possibly even change their opinion, wishing them harm and hurt and isolation is not going to do that.

Like, I am so so serious. I'm sorry that people have hurt you and you absolutely do not owe anyone anything. But at the same time, further ostracizing others will actually hurt your cause. If what you truly want is for people to understand your point of view, for people to change their opinion, the best way to do that is to actually be kind.

And again, if you don't have the capacity to be kind.... you don't have to. But also don't be cruel. That is how you push people further into their own preconceived ideas and reinforce their own hatred.

[actuallyverynormalbtw]

hey guys um actually me tagging this post with "endos pls dni w this" was NOT an invitation for endogenic systems to come and start discourse in the replies. idk why y'all cant respect an extremely simply boundary. i dont see how it is problematic in the slightest for me to exclusively discuss my disability with those who share it. its the same thing as tagging something with "able-bodied ppl dni" or "allistics dni". a DNI says nothing about my personal thoughts on your existence. please understand that our equally valid experiences have very little to really do with eachother.

disabled people deserve the space to discuss their disability only with other similarly disabled people.

realizing youre Real is .weird,,

like you can exist for Years??? never noticing??? never thinking about Yourself. assuming you are the host, or assuming you are another alter.

it is WEIRD to sit there with your morning coffee, having a conversation, and just suddenly the stars align . and you realize how different you are from "you" . you realize you werent "you", you were actually YOU the whole time.

I KNOW THIS DOESNT MAKE SENSE BUT I HOPE SOMEONE GETS IT

[syscourseconversations]

Question of the day!

Where do you see your system in 5 years?