"'[A]ttention-seekers' have often been framed as a stigmatised outgroup and contrasted with those who self-harm 'for genuine reasons' (Chandler, 2016, 2018; Crouch & Wright, 2004; Steggals et al., 2020). Crouch and Wright (2004) reported adolescent self-harmers' vitriol towards a stigmatised outgroup of perceived 'attention-seekers', leading to competition to be perceived as more authentic.
Similar finings were reported in pro-anorexia ('pro-ana') communities, where the pejorative label 'wannarexic' expresses doubt over someone's credibility as genuinely anorexic (Boero & Pascoe, 2012). These attitudes frame disordered identity as a matter of group conformity, where the boundaries of these groups are protected through accusing others of 'faking' (Boero & Pascoe, 2012).
This type of stigma, if left unchallenged, could have serious implications on public mental health. In particular, fears of being labelled an 'attention-seeker' can create significant barriers to help-seeking."
Source: ‘Faking it’: Exploring adolescent perceptions of depression (in)authenticity and ‘attention seeking’
if anything, all being "against" people who are endo-neutral is going to do is cause people who are uninformed on the subject to pick whichever side has better vibes to them, rather than letting people form their own conclusions based on the information available. it's all about rallying people up into more discourse, not building community or "safe spaces" for anyone. especially when it comes to community spaces, you're just picking and choosing who gets access to potential information & resources based on something that they're self-admitting they don't know much about.
especially when it comes to CDDs and anti-endo spaces, i cannot find a single good justification to try and take a community space from someone who might be struggling just because they don't care or know enough to have an opinion on endogenics. it's bizarre, beyond chronically online, and all it does is further conflate endogenics and CDDs by trying to make everyone around you have an opinion on something unrelated to DID.
i just cannot take seriously any person who sincerely puts "endo neutrals DNI" on their blog. it's beyond ridiculous and immature.
Shiloh: You know, syscourse has been a lot nicer to deal with since I've started being our main person...
Others in our system may be reluctant to block people and I have zero compunctions. Curate your online experience, you do not owe anyone your attention unless their existence and wellbeing literally depends on it, and I mean like like kids, pets, and partners. And yourself and your headmates!
as far as our understanding of the psyche and identity go, if you're doing something like willing another headmate into existence, that would have to be through self-induced dissociation, there's no other way when you're segmenting a part of your psyche like that. especially because so many things that go with willogenesis/creating tulpas/etc, such as meditation, astral projection and other techniques that have you 'leave your body', self-hypnosis, visualization techniques in many scenarios, especially centered around the body, daydreaming, and more, all go hand-in-hand with dissociation. if you're someone who already struggles with dissociation (CDD or not) doing some of these things can even make your dissociation worse. it's possible that many people who are endogenic don't have CDDs, but otherwise have dissociative disorders or a natural propensity to dissociate that other people don't have--which could also be allowing them to create headmates, if you believe in that sort of thing.
basically what i'm suggesting here is that based on what i've read in DID literature, it's possible that many endogenic systems, especially tulpa systems/willo systems/other created systems are also experiencing something dissociative, but in a manner different and probably less complex than DID. because there's little to no research on endogenic systems and all we currently have is speculation, i feel like this is one of the most realistic explanations for a large portion of endogenic systems, including some that weren't intentionally created. personally, i think it's also a lot easier to conceptualize the existence of an endogenic system when you understand it through a dissociative or semi-dissociative lens.
once you start looking at endogenic systems like this, it becomes a matter of how dissociated the headmates actually are in an endogenic system and how autonomous they can actually be compared to a DID system, what that means for endos, and how we can meaningfully differentiate the two experiences for the maximum treatment efficacy and risk management for DID patients.
the reasons i feel like dissociation could be at the core of the mechanism behind many endogenic systems is because of a number of concepts and phenomena related to dissociation that we already know about, as well as some other things that aren't.
before i get into it though i'd like to clarify that i don't have a strong opinion on endocourse and more than anything else i enjoy a really good debate. it's a sport to me, genuinely. but unfortunately for endos, there aren't a lot of sources or peer reviewed information on their experiences, and on top of that, many plural communities choose not to interact with the DID literature very much for one reason or another, be it because of inaccessibility or because they feel like there's no room for them inside of the theory of structural dissociation, and anti-endos further inflame this belief. but personally i think there is and i've read a lot of it, so this is my crackpot theory on how dissociation could be a mechanism behind endos as well.
i mostly talk about willogenic systems/intentionally created systems but i don't see why this couldn't apply to systems who did not intentionally create themselves. i'm sure there's plurals that this theory would not apply to, such as those whose plurality arose out of their psychosis or spiritual beliefs, but this is not an all-encompassing theory and "plural" is a very broad label. so, take it as you will.
lets take imaginary friends. the concept is very simple: you don't have a friend, so you imagine one. it's not difficult to draw parallels between imaginary friends and willogenic systems, (sorry if this is offensive to willogenic systems), save for the fact that imaginary friends typically don't control the child's body, and that the processes for creating willogenic headmates is much more intense. they're also considered more 'real' and autonomous than imaginary friends are.
but think about the process of creating an imaginary friend: everything that you create in your mind lives there, so it takes up space there and is made of all the "material" in your mind, so to speak. when a child creates an imaginary friend, they're creating them through the same psychic 'material' that a person might create a willogenic headmate from. people who create imaginary friends often times create an entity with traits that they want to see most, and in some way or another, ends up creating something that is a reflection of themselves whether they intended it or not. much like how someone creates an original character and ends up putting much more of themselves and their experiences into that character than they may ever realize.
don't get me wrong here: i don't consider imaginary friends to be a form of plurality or proto-plurality, lol. they're definitely a form of day-dreaming, though, which is by itself considered a form of mild dissociation. and certain people, such as those with some forms of ADHD, maladaptive daydreaming disorder, or childhood trauma [without a CDD in this case], might have a propensity toward daydreaming and even creating imaginary friends--therefore dissociating--to get through things like stress and boredom more quickly than their peers.
combine this with intense meditative and visualization practices to project traits and a certain level of autonomy onto a separate part of one's psyche, and you're almost guaranteed to push someone into dissociation in order to accomplish this.
after that, it becomes a matter of whether or not you personally believe this will actually create a headmate, or if it's some kind of placebo effect. because endogenics haven't been studied in any significant capacity outside of self-administered surveys, we have no data on the autonomy of endogenic headmates or information on the nature of the dissociation that endogenics might be experiencing.
that said, to posit my own crackpot theories, since this is my post, if we had to rate the autonomy levels of alters within DID at a 5, and the autonomy of parts/action systems within a normal person at a 0, i would estimate that the autonomy of endogenic headmates within a plural system might be 1-2. i think in most cases, it's very unlikely that headmates within an endogenic system would do something significantly ego-dystonic, especially within created systems. (please note: this doesn't mean "less valid" or "less of a person", this is referring to the level of dissociation from the host/core a [created] headmate may have).
to make this easier to visualize, i might place certain endogenic systems somewhere at the lower end of the secondary level of structural dissociation, because the dissociation being willful makes it less complex and less of an unconscious survival mechanism for direct trauma than it has been in people with DID, but it's still significant because they have intentionally dissociated a part of themself to some degree, where the headmate could even be theoretically autonomous.
now, when people ask or debate over whether or not endos are 'real', i feel like that's the wrong question to be asking. real in what way? they clearly say they exist and have for like 30 years, they're right here in front of you. right, well is the experience real? how exactly do we measure that? what if nothing ever shows up on a brain scan of an endogenic system? what would that mean?
personally, i think it's better to ask more specific questions:
can the autonomy & personhood of endogenic headmates at all be tested and measured like alters in DID have? how does their autonomy compare to DID?
can endogenics reliably be differentiated from people with DID?
how safe is it to create headmates, and what are the long term effects of engaging in this kind of intentional dissociation?
if endogenic headmates can't be shown to be reliably autonomous, what does that actually mean for endogenic communities? if they are, what does that mean for the theory of structural dissociation, and the concept of a unified sense of self?
most importantly: it's important to investigate why it matters so much that people are creating their own headmates or claiming to be plural without DID. what are the specifics of the harm being done right now that are unique to plurals and not also covered by anti-endos? cuz 'misinfo' ain't it.
now, this is just my own crackpot theory. i'm sure i'm far from the only person to come up with this idea in the past 30 years, but i think something holding people back from looking at it further is that people get really, really focused on reading about DID and complex dissociation specifically, and not things like hypnosis, fugue states and other dissociative disorders, spirituality, psychosis, and other subjects that can also give us threads on the mechanisms behind endogenic systems. in addition to that, when they do read on these subjects, they end up misinterpreting a lot of stuff due to a lack of familiarity with academic jargon, which isn't their fault but it's deeply frustrating.
i know this post isn't the best, but if you're interested in this theory i might talk about it more down the line and actually post more specific sources possibly, but it's difficult because these are ideas that have compounded from years of reading & absorbing information and coming to my own conclusions, rather than being able to point to a specific book.
that said, if you're interested in a dissociative theory for endogenic systems, i encourage you to read about the subjects i listed above in addition to trauma and dissociation in order to build your framework, & i encourage people to add their own experiences, sources/further reading and frameworks to this post as well for the sake of theorycrafting.
all of this is intended as a thought experiment for myself and other people who might be interested, and not intended to offend anyone so respond in good faith or i'll kill again
I have no idea if you’ll see this but whatever, I think it needs to be said
To the person creating the bots (possibly Catherine, possibly Sophie, idk):
Stop. I don’t know why you thought this was a good idea, it really is not. You’re hurting innocent people by doing this who had nothing to do with what you are dealing with.
I don’t like you. And if you’re Catherine whos doing this, then I am honestly so disappointed and sad in how you are behaving. I considered you a friend. I thought you were someone who cared. I don’t consider you a friend anymore, but that doesn’t mean I have completely stopped caring.
I’m mad. But I’m mad because you are dragging innocents into your tantrum. Please get help. Log off. Drink some water, listen to music. Please take care of yourself.
Stop sending bots into syscourse. All you’re doing is digging your own grave. You say you have nothing to lose but that doesn’t give you an excuse to be a bitch about it. You have no one to blame but yourself, so if you genuinely care about anything at all, if you genuinely cared about me as a friend, then please stop.
And if you are not Catherine who is doing this, then i hope you learn the consequences. And I hope the universe shows you no mercy for what you have done.
Every June 1st, we celebrate our Crewniversary: the anniversary of us accepting and embracing our plurality. (Though the numbers are weird as we called the origin date our first. So our second Crewniversary was a year and change of us embracing our plurality.)
Do any of y'all have any specific holidays or celebrations that are personally meaningfull?
