Anti-endo Archive

Recently, the owner of the bot has gone on a massive ban spree of innocent servers and users who were using the bot for verification purposes. If your verification form mentioned anything regarding shipping in general, endogenic systems, and other topics that could be considered "controversial," then there's a chance you could be banned.

When the owner was confronted about it, they were unprofessional and rude, and went as far as to ban people who have done nothing wrong in the sever. Myself, as well as many other contributors have created our own doc on the situation which you can find on this post.

Since I am the document creator, I deciced to create a Tumblr blog to answer people's questions as well as extend the reach of the document. Please share to as many communities as you can!

This is not a post to fakeclaim. It's moreso to educate and hopefully help people. Endogenic systems are heavily debated in the system community, and it's because they scientifically can't exist.

What is an endogenic system?

An endogenic system is a system who claims to have formed without trauma. It's often used as an umbrella term for all the other origins of systems without trauma. Scientifically, they don't exist. If a person doesn't go through trauma, there is literally no reason for the dissociative barriers to raise and for their identity not to integrate. There has been no scientific exploration of endogenic systems because like I said, they scientifically can't exist.

Does this mean all endogenic systems are faking?

Absolutely not. Just because they claim to be endogenic doesn't mean they're faking. In many cases, it's actually the opposite. They claim to be endogenic because they don't remember their trauma, which is very common in systems. I know for a long time, we had a lot of triggers that we knew triggered us but couldn't find a source of trauma as to why. No one knew about it until we had flashbacks of before any alters could know. This is likely because our brain wanted to protect all of us from the memories because it was before any of us could handle it. None of us knew of the pieces of trauma until we had flashbacks, and even then our brain wasn't sure if it actually happened. So it's very possible for an endogenic system to have trauma that caused their system and them claim to be endogenic because they don't remember it.

Why are they harmful to the system community?

They often spread misinformation. For starters, they mispread information about system origins, as we've explained earlier. A lot of the subcategories of endogenics claim their system formed from other mental illnesses, such as "BPDgenic" and "schizophrenicgenic." Obviously there are other instances, but this is one of the main ones. They also take away from the reality of systems facing trauma. If enough claim to not have trauma, singlets will start to believe that without doing any research. Singlets are ignorant enough as it is, we don't need them getting mad at systems and fakeclaiming us for having trauma because of the misinformation spread by endogenics.

Why are they harmful to the endogenic system itself?

This part isn't talked about as much, but any system who identifies as endogenic is putting themselves at risk just by believing they don't have trauma. If they don't believe in their trauma, it can cause severe distress when they do finally get a flashback and get to the traumatic parts of being a system. Formed alters may fully split into new ones. Their entire reality could drastically change negatively. So if you claim to be an endogenic system, I suggest you reconsider it. You may not remember trauma, but there has to be for you to be a system. There is no reason or scientific evidence to support you being a system without trauma. So for your benefit, if not other systems, at least be aware that there is trauma somewhere in your childhood.

"But I don't have OSDDID. I'm a plural singlet/my system isn't disordered."

Tulpas are widely understood to be their own people in the community. In the FAQ of the official subreddit it defines tulpas as “The simplest way to describe a tulpa is simply another person who was created intentionally/unintentionally through repeated interaction and shares a body and mind with their creator” https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/wiki/faq/ (Note, tulpamamcy isn’t always a cultural thing, it can be done accidently.) so yes, by definition tulpamancy is a form of plurality.

Academic articles make this connection too. For example this study: https://pubs.sciepub.com/rpbs/5/2/1/index.html#:~:text=This%20paper%20opposes%20this%20bias,conscious%20entities%20within%20the%20mind. “by analyzing one form of plurality in consciousness: tulpamancy.”

Usually, I ignore these asks if they cite sources like reddit or pluralpedia of all things, but I'll hear you out for this.

Our host is currently taking a break, so, you're stuck with me—Geo. Woohoo. Just use it/its for me.

First off. Your argument centers around community definitions, philosophical considerations, and sociological observations—and crucially not scientific evidence, and that's a very important distinction I would like to make here.

Secondly, citing Pluralpedia, FAQ on Reddit, or plural community jargon does not prove that tulpamancy is scientifically recognized as plurality. It is completely permissible for any social community to call themselves whatever they like, but this self-definition is not a form of validation. The pluralpedia is a community user edited wiki and FAQ's on subreddit are written by the community. That doesn’t mean that tulpamancy is endorsed in clinical terms, recognized neurologically or have any diagnostic confirmation.

The fact you bring up that 'plural' term was created precisely to separate itself from dissociative conditions ironically weakens your argument more than anything else. If the plural community originally created it precisely to be separate from dissociative disorders, that would mean the plural community itself defines it as a social or community identity, not as a recognized natural occurance. Creating a broader social concept of "plurality" doesn't retroactively mean DID and OSDD now have separate medical definition by the creation of a social construct.

The academic papers that you provided, don't prove what you think they prove. Almost all modern studies that use the word 'plurality' do so in sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and identity research looking into online communities and subjective experience.

Sociological papers tend to analyze self-identifications and community formation in online environments, analyze the narration of individual experiences, or the creation of meaning within internet sub-cultures; this is not evidence that the research team are asserting the metaphysical or neurological validity of participants claims. If research was carried out on communities of self-identified vampires, reality shifters, or otherkin then this would not be proof that they were literally vampires, traveling realities or non-human beings—it would simply be proof that such a community existed, and thus was socially viable to study. This applies directly here. Descriptions of how communities define themselves does not prove the existence of multiple sentient individuals inhabiting a single brain.

The SciEP paper concerning tulpamancy is also much weaker evidence than you claim. This is not a high-level clinical or neuroscience journal; it is rather more theoretical and philosophical about consciousness and subjective experience, and does not indicate separate neurologies, separate identities in the brain, or evidence for clinical non-pathological multiplicity. The most this paper does is assert that people describe experiences which are considered plurality, and this merits further philosophical exploration of these experiences. It does not provide evidence of tulpamancy as a scientifically established non-disordered psychological phenomenon.

There is also an important issue that you are conflating the broad social use of "plurality" in the online plural community with its clinical interpretation as a dissociative disorder. Official psychiatric conditions such as DID and OSDD are classified as trauma related dissociative disorders recognized by DSM and ICD. They are widely acknowledged as having extremely high prevalence and correlation with traumatic development, typically overwhelming trauma in childhood. The plural community use of "plurality" is broad to describe disparate types of experience which include the notion of tulpas, soulbonds, spiritual systems, RP-based identity's and various other internally claimed headmates. Widening of this social term doesn't retroactively change the established definitions of psychological trauma, the same definition of multiplicity, in clinical settings.

The history of the tulpa argument is also quite troublesome. Modern day internet tulpae have very little in common with the original Tibetan Buddhist concepts, but are primarily influenced by Western interpretations of concepts like Tibetan Tulku's and emanation based beliefs, transformed in to creating intentionally autonomous other people in your mind that you interact with through repeated imagagination-led visualization; not original Tibetan concepts of consciously generated masters who are recognised as reincarnations.

Overall the overwhelming evidence your provided did not claim what you said they did, at the end of it all none of them prove existence of "endogenic plurality", at most your evidence does show that:

- Some individuals claim to experience things that they perceive as plurality

- Social groups around these ideas exist on the internet

- Some people intentionally actively create their own incredibly anthropomorphic internal companion(s)

- These phenomena may carry psychological meaning for those people who experience them.

This is not equivalent to evidence of multiple people existing in your brain or evidence of non-pathological multiplicity.

Let's see what ELSE you said about us.

“Omg I can not with this person. They said tulpamancy wasn't plurality and I corrected them using community resources + academic ones to explain that by the definition of plurality tulpamancy is plurality. And then they vagued me complaining about using Reddit and pluralpedia as a source. These are not medical terms their definitions are the ones the community uses. I swear anti-endos don't know how words work.”

You keep shifting your words throughout the argument and you are unintentionally proving my point. Your first tactic was to use academic papers and dissociate terminology to try and argue that tulpamancy is recognized as a valid form of plurality on par with DID/OSDD, but then you suddenly declare "these aren't medical terms anyway."

If plurality is just a social term made up by the community, then you cannot use sociology/philosophy papers and treat them as evidence that endogenic systems are fact.

Yes, people can choose to use words socially to mean what they want. Nobody is claiming plural communities don't use the word "plurality" broadly. The actual point is that many of these online communities and concepts do blur the lines between social identity and clinical dissociation, and stating that "this is what the community calls it" doesn't prove it's medically recognized as on the same level as any other form of plurality.

This is the whole reason I'm calling out Reddit and Pluralpedia as weak evidence. They're good at showing what words the community use and how they define things within their own framework but they are not evidence of scientific legitimacy. If the only point you're trying to make is that "the community uses this word for it", that's a social claim, not a scientific one, and you cannot claim that social definition overrides existing psychiatric understandings of dissociation.

And again, none of your papers actually prove your point, they are all primarily sociology/philosophy papers dealing with identity, subjective experiences, and internet communities. Being in an internet community to write about it doesn't mean you agree with and validate every belief those people hold. A researcher can write a sociology paper about tulpamancy without claiming there are literally 2+ human beings living in one head.

And, truthfully, a lot of the arguments hinge at this point. What many critics are NOT saying is that people can't have inner monologues, rich inner fantasy, fractured self-experience, absorption in roles, parasocial relationships, or embodied personified inner experiences.

Human beings are more than capable of that. What they are saying is that these inner phenomena aren't equivalent in the way alters are because endos frequently use the disorder terms coming from CDDs.

Also, ignoring the historical issue of tulpamancy is a huge problem. What's generally seen today as tulpamancy (multiple consciously created & distinct characters that exist internally, often treated like 'headmates') is westernized and divorced from its Tibetan Buddhist origins in Tulku traditions.

Tulku were believed to be reincarnated Buddhist masters with prior spiritual knowledge whereas the concept of 'creating' a tulpa in modern usage has shifted from it being a form of conscious meditative practice designed to develop mental focus, to something much more similar to making up original characters in your head.

So. The problem isn’t that “anti-endos don’t know how words work.” The problem is that endogenic communities often conflate community self-identification, sociological observation, philosophical discussion, and clinical legitimacy as though they are interchangeable when they are not.

At most, your sources show that people self-identify as plural, communities exist around those identities, and some researchers find the phenomenon socially interesting.

They do not establish scientific consensus that non-traumagenic plurality is a validated natural occurrence comparable to dissociative disorders.

Alters and the self-states that make up PTSD develop from the same process, just on different levels of complexity. If it were possible to split alters without trauma it would also have to be possible to develop PTSD without trauma, which it obviously isn't.

And importantly, splitting because of stress is not an exception to this.

The development of alters and PTSD is tied to a person's integrative capacity, which is made up of their mental energy and mental efficacy (ability to use that energy effectively).

When both of these are high, the person will easily be able to integrate their experiences even if those experiences are stressful or frightening. When both are low, the person will lose their ability to engage in more high level integrative actions, making them more vulnerable to structural dissociation until their integrative capacity recovers.

Chronic stress lowers a person's integrative capacity and prevents it from regenerating, and as a result people who have experienced complex trauma (which is required for the development of DID) tend to be stuck in a constant state of low mental energy and efficacy.

As such, if you have already been severely traumatized over and over, you are much more vulnerable to being traumatized again, even in response to things that a non-traumatized person would likely be able to cope with. This is what people commonly refer to as the "window of tolerance".

However, when that threshold is crossed, it is still a trauma response even if we wouldn't traditionally call the event that caused it "trauma". Neuropsychologically speaking, the exact same process of developing PTSD for the first time is happening when you split because of stress. Trauma is still trauma to your body and mind even if you're choosing not to label it that way.