Shout out to people with Complex Dissociative Disorders (parents edition):
If your parents genuinely changed and improved overtime
If your parents were absent when you were a kid because they were sick / ill / working / otherwise indisposed
If your parents were not your abusers
If your parents would have acted differently if they knew you were being abused
If your parents didn't have the resources or knowledge to help / understand you
If your parents were loving and yet still neglectful
If your parents inadvertently invalidated / didn't believe you, but now do
If your parents weren't your primary caregivers when the abuse happend
If you weren't abused at all and your trauma was medical / environmental / etc
Had emotionally and physically present parents but you still had disorganized attachment with them as a kid because of your delusions / paranoia / etc.
If your parents regret how they treated you
If your parents loved and love you but acted the way they did because of substances / mental illness
If your parents are not completely bad people, or bad people at all
If you still get along with your parents regardless of what they did
If you ever invalidated your own traumatic childhood experiences because your parents were "too nice"
Your trauma is not less valid if you get along with your parents today. Sure, you needed disorganized attachment to your primary caregivers as a kid to develop a CDD. But that can take plenty of formes, and they don't all include your parents being monsters.
Edit: any other emotions regarding your parents are also valid and okay, and I couldn't mean that more. Childhood trauma survivors go through so many rough emotions, and self-invalidation is sadly way too common. Your feelings are a direct result of what happened and that makes them normal.
Baby systems PLEASE don't act like dormancy or fusing is a bad thing or equivalent to "alters dying" that's actually completely normal and even a sign of healing in some cases
pleek dont be like 2020 sys communities where its considered taboo and triggering it's a normal part of recovery
Astra (relating to stars, or a cosmic sense of infinity) and fractal (infinite, or an infinitely recursive pattern in chaos theory.)
This refers to systems who are vast in size. This can be used by systems regardless of their origin. Systems who are astrafractal have large systems. They have many hundreds or thousands of alters. They often don't have an exact system member count and may feel effectively or literally infinite. They have a complex system structure. May feel like their system, or parts of it, is an entire universe or city. They often face stigma from others, even from other multiples who even may consider themselves polyfragmented, who disbelieve systems can be that large or splitting can be so frequent.
The purple gradient represents all system origin types. The azure strip represents large systems with hundreds or thousands of alters. The rainbow gradient represents the infinite wonder of consciousness. The chartreuse stripe represents complex system structures. The orange gradient represents love and acceptance for the whole system, no matter how unconventional they may feel next to other systems. The black stars represent all alters in a system, including unknown and uncounted ones. The smaller rainbow stars and the fractal represent the infinitely complex and beautiful nature of the system.
okay, this post is not intended for endo identifying systems but if you want to read an alternative perspective, i welcome that. this is meant for those who are pro or neutral to the idea of endogenic systems to try and convey what the "evil sysmeds" are actually trying to say. this will make more sense if you already have an understanding of alterhumanity and/or therianthropy, but hopefully i get my point across regardless. feel free to have discussions on this post, but if you send anything hateful or rude i will just block you.
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syscourse almost always comes down to a comparison between trans people and plurality, but i think a better comparison is systems to therians and zooanthropy.
im not addressing spiritual systems in this post, however tulpamancy specifically has been massively bastardised and whitewashed and i implore you to remember that it is a closed practice.
therianthropes are folks who identify as animals other than human, for the sake of this conversation, we're gonna use that most simple definition. theres not really any evidence to confirm they're "correct" in feeling this way, but they do, and theres no harm in that. some folks have argued that therians are demedicalising zooanthropy. the key difference between therians and zooanthropes is the experience, therians (generally) are not claiming to experience the symptoms of zooanthropy. zooanthropy isn't just identifying as an animal. it is very specifically the belief that the individual can transform into an animal. the individual may, while lucid, claim to have undergone this transformation and remember being in a transformed state. this is not what therians claim to experience. the "criterea" to be a therian is literally just to identify as an animal, be that for a psychological reason such as trauma, or a neurodivergency, or a spiritual belief, or something else. some therians claim to have mental shifts, where they feel mentally more like their animal type. some claim to have phantom shifts, where they can feel animal limbs that aren't there. these things are not symptoms of zooanthropy but can be found in those with it. if you want my opinion, those things are signs of mental illness, but that doesn't mean they're bad; no harm comes from feeling like you have a tail when you physically dont. (im not here to make the argument that delusional and psychotic therians aren't allowed in the community, dont put words in my mouth)
therianthropy does not demedicalise zooanthropy because therians do not claim to have the same experience as zooanthropes, even though there are similarities between them. endogenic systems, however, are claiming to experience the exact same thing as CDD (complex dissociative disorder) systems but without meeting the diagnostic criterea. CDDs form from trauma, your brain struggles to process something traumatic, and so disconnects you from the experience, creating dissociation. in childhood, if an individual experiences chronic traumatisation, the dissociation can impact their ability to develop into a singular identity. this dissociation creates a barrier between an "apparently normal part", who isnt connected to the trauma, aka a host, and "emotional parts" who are connected to it in one way or another and usually want to protect the host, aka the alters. alters can also serve the function of self care to help the host navigate life with such extreme dissociation. they can also inact dangerous behaviour that their trauma conpells them to do, etc etc. endogenic systems claim to experience hosts, alters, and switches between them based on triggers just the same as CDD systems do. human brains can learn dissociation at any time, and the appearance of ANPs ans EPs is not exclusive to system disorders, but an already developed brain will not separate its parts into different identities entierly when it has already formed one singular identity. there is no reason for a brain to dissociate without trauma. otherwise, there is nothing to dissociate (or "disconnect") from. for example, an adult may experience dissociation after a traumatic accident, the experience may be too much for them to remember (literally and/or emotionally) in order to get on with daily life, and it may be too much to talk about even with others they trust. in this situation, their brain may dissociate them from it, making them not feel present whenever the accident is mentioned or affecting them. that way, they dont have to feel the heavy emotions related to it. this is why dissociation occurs. without trauma, there is no reason for it. to claim to be an endogenic system is basically claiming to switch without dissociating, and without dissociation, there is no separation between parts.
this is why endogenic systems do not make sense, this is why they are not the same as trans people, this why they are not the same as therians. endogenic systems claim to experience exactly what CDD systems do. i am not accusing endos of lying, i believe what they're experiencing is true, but the terminology is just incorrect for it. being a "non disordered system" is exactly the same as being a "non disordered zooanthrope." it's an oxymoron. if you saw someone identifying as a zooanthrope but described their experience in a therian like way, would you not want to educate them? to point out that there is a different word for what they're experiencing and that zooanthrope is very specifically a mental illness? zooanthropes and therians are both valid, and (in my opinion) so are the experiences of CDDs systems and "endogenic systems." i dont think you're lying, i just think you should have your own community with your own terminology. therians have started using "phantom shift" instead of "phantom limb" to describe feeling their animal limbs so as not to take away from amputees, CDD systems are asking the exact same thing from you.
On that note, it's perfectly normal to be weird about plurality because it's just inherently weird at times. Sometimes your headmates are animals or machines or other non-humans. Sometimes headspace is enormous and sometimes it can be one single room. Some people don't even have a headspace. Sometimes your headmates will like very different things from you (hobbies, interests, food, even sexual preferences) and sometimes they like something so much that they'll shove others out of front to take over. Sometimes it gets very loud and busy in your head, and sometimes it'll be so quiet that it makes you doubt your own experiences. Your headmates may like or dislike certain people. They might have a different age and gender identity than you or "the core". Most systems I've met don't even really have a "core person" anymore. You're going to lose and gain headmates along the way, and they might feel like others that have been around. My theory is that a headmate is just a collection of traits that have been gathered into one identity, and when they stop feeling cohesive those traits get distributed to the rest of the system. Headmates can have in-system relationships with each other. Sometimes it's possible for others to tell who's in front according to the way your system is currently talking or their facial expressions or voice. Headmates don't always get along with each other, and sometimes they might be angry/frustrated/sad and it'll feel permanent, but it isn't. Sometimes headmates lash out or have independent breakdowns from the rest of the system. Sometimes your brain will try to collect the "worst" system traits into one person to act as a scapegoat, but every part of you still deserves love and respect. Your headmates might even have different pain tolerances and physical capabilities. It sounds insane, I know, but we see it every day in ourselves and have heard similar stories from other systems. If you're just discovering your own plurality, be prepared for things to not make sense initially. Be prepared for it to be weird and a little awkward and especially be prepared to fight the overwhelming denial that usually comes with it. You are still valid. Your headmates/parts/alters are valid. It can be a rough transitional period, but now I can't imagine what my life would be like without my system supporting me.
