Syscourse blog

We'll only really be using this blog when we find syscourse related posts we agree with and want to reblog (or we disagree with and feel like starting a debate), or if we just feel like making a post related to syscourse Don't be surprised if this blog is mostly inactive, we try to stay out of discourse for our mental health. But we also enjoy civil debates, such is the point of this blog

Sys info: DID system Traumaendo + willo headmates Metaphysical beliefs Polyfragmented We are multiple people in one body, not parts of a whole

Quick syscourse stances: We believe these are valid: Endogenic and non-traumagenic plurality Willogenic and created plurality Spiritual and metaphysical plurality Plurals who are plural because of delusions or hallucinations Plurals who see their own plurality in any way so long as it is not being pushed onto anyone else CDDs developing for reasons outside of trauma We have complicated feelings on: Plural related transIDs [moreso due to our stance on radqueers] The use of the terms "tupla" and "tuplamancy" [we choose to remain neutral due to being bodily caucasian] We are against: Fakeclaiming

Syscourse code: 👍/🧡/📘/▪️/🟢/🌕/🟧/🌲/☀️/🥧/🐊/🐌/🐳

This blog has no DNI. The only DNI would be those coming in bad faith or with no intent to listen to the other side, however those people wouldn't listen to the DNI anyway

To DESTORY the system community from the inside out and render the diagnosis of CDDs so USELESS they get taken off the DSM 😈😈😈

As a little quick note, the discussion you brought up is both an interesting and useful one, and one with a lot of delicate and traumatic history in the system community itself (a faction of the psychiatric community essentially used the idea of non-traumagenic DID as a way to insinuate that 1- multiplicity overall was purely subjective (and therefore by their reasoning “fake”), and 2- that trauma survivors with DID had made up their trauma) so it can be challenging to talk about calmly for a lot of folks.

With that aside, in regards to your post: I think a lot of the discussion depends on how you’re defining “has DID”. Which sounds kind of silly, because isn’t it already defined, in the diagnosis? But it actually depends on whether you’re thinking of DID as nothing more or less than a specific collection of symptoms (for example, the dx criteria), or whether you’re thinking of DID as a neuropsychological model of a disorder that includes both the symptoms and a specific explanation for what’s causing them, how they work, etc. Neither of these ways of thinking about it are necessarily right or wrong, notably, but they are different, and the question of “can you have DID without trauma” depends a lot on which one you’re using. (It also depends on other things too, like how you’re defining “trauma”—in some ways of thinking about trauma, practically everyone on earth is traumatized; in other ways, only a very narrow category of adverse events are considered to “count”).

It’s relevant to know that the vast majority of research done on professionally dx’d DID systems consistently notes some kind of early traumatic history in the pwDID they studied, and that DID overall is widely considered by the field to be a dissociative disorder caused by early trauma (as well as being affected by innate predisposition factors). Even dissociative disorders like maladaptive daydreaming—especially when it starts to cross over into DID/OSDD—tends to occur in people with some kind of early trauma. However, it’s pretty safe to say that DID is almost certainly underdiagnosed, and that there’s a spectrum of experiences of multiplicity and pathological dissociation that may or may not always be easy to categorize into “CDD vs Not-CDD”, and that determining what kinds of events end up causing traumatic responses in someone can be really tricky, because ultimately the event itself doesn’t have to “look that bad”, especially for a young kid. So, while DID-the-disorder-model is generally considered to be directly related to early trauma by the field of psychology currently, I think it’s still an interesting and relevant question to ask whether DID-the-collection-of-symptoms can ever show up without having come from trauma. Certainly it’s possible for systems and system-adjacent experiences to exist for reasons other than trauma. Amnesia or other memory difficulties can come from trauma ofc, but they can also come from physical injury or illnesses, neurodivergence, or even sometimes from intentional things like hypnosis. Would it be possible for a system to “check all the criteria boxes” for DID without also having clear signs of early trauma or of other strong posttraumatic responses? Potentially, I’d argue, yes?—the question then would be whether DID or another CDD is a useful diagnosis label for them. If it was the only way they could get certain accommodations or insurance coverage, maybe they would end up being diagnosed, purely for bureaucratic reasons. Does that “count”? It depends on how you’re thinking of it.

Anecdotally, in our years in the system community, we’ve yet to run across a system who had CDD symptoms and zero other signs of CPTSD. (It turns out that CPTSD symptoms are extremely common in neurodivergent, queer, PoC, and chronically ill populations). Whether the same thing(s) caused their CPTSD and their CDD symptoms…sometimes that’s a hard question to answer, not only because of amnesia but also because it’s genuinely not always easy to untangle all of the factors that have influenced us over the course of our lives. Ultimately, for ourselves and the way we think about all this, we’ve kind of stopped focusing on whatever The Cause Was, and instead on looking at how the traits/symptoms/etc themselves are presenting. Is someone having trauma-response reactions, and responding to trauma therapy? Or is that not a useful model for helping them with whatever problem they’re presenting with?

I couldn't read all of this (damn ADHD, maybe I'll try again over winter break when school isn't frying my brain)

BUT!

I read a good chunk + skimmed and I really appreciate this ask

I think how you explained this portrays the complexity and nuance of this whole thing super well, and I agree here!

Edit: This post was me just yapping not writing an essay to sway people. If you're here to "sway" me, stop. I'm not responding to y'all (unless it's funny)

If you're here to actually say your thoughts about what I said without saying "erm actually you're wrong because I said so", you're welcome to respond to me and thank you

Ok so I've been thinking about the "you can't have CDDs without trauma"/"CDDs have to be caused by trauma" thing, right? Even a lot of pro endos & pro endos can have CDDs argue that point (as for the latter they think endos can have CDDs if they're traumaendo/mixed origin)

But imo I think it's possible to have CDDs not caused trauma Yes it's much more likely to develop if you have trauma, but it's not necessarily a requirement for it to develop

Let me explain… First off, iirc the creator of the DID diagnostic criteria themself said trauma isn't required. The DSM-V criteria does not say trauma is required. DID is classified as a dissociative disorder, not a trauma disorder. That's if you want to look at it from a (pro-)psych point of view at least I remember someone once argued that dissociation is inherently caused by trauma which is why it's still a requirement, but that's not entirely true, and leads into my second (+ not as pro-psych heavily + more detailed) point Dissociation isn't only caused by trauma. Dissociation isn't even always involuntary Daydreaming is a (less extreme) form of dissociation. Often a voluntary one at that (though sometimes involuntary in the case of MaDD) Daydreaming is disconnecting from your reality, from your surroundings. If you're an immersive daydreamer, that's especially the case. It is (usually) a voluntary form of dissociation that can even turn involuntary and become more of the "extreme" type people usually mean when they talk about dissociation Honestly even like, getting so into a story you loose sense of reality and your surroundings could probably count as dissociation I think

It is my belief that, subconsciously (or consciously I guess), it is possible to develop a CDD through intense non-traumatic and even voluntary (at first) dissociation through daydreams and similar forms of dissociation. Thus, CDDs aren't only caused by trauma

Honestly it pisses me off when people explain DID as a disorder caused by "intense (repeated) childhood trauma", bonus points for "[...] childhood trauma before the age of [arbitrary number]"

First off, I feel the use of intense can very very much lead into "trauma olympics" where people hear that and go "oh so it has to be like extreme physical or sexual abuse every single day" because that's what they think of when they think "intense trauma". This then leads to fakeclaiming or denying of people's systemhood based on how "intense" their trauma was (or rather, how intense it seems to the fakeclaimer/denier)

We were a social outcast in school for years, but was never outright bullied (aside from one year). In fact, most kids were just acquaintances, often friendly acquaintances in elementary years. And yet the sheer isolation that came from our anger issues, general inability to relate to others, and lack of social skills was traumatizing for us. Traumatizing enough for us to develop DID

Yet when a lot of people hear "intense childhood trauma" they'd think that's not possibly "intense" enough to develop DID

Second off, every time someone gives a number as to what age the trauma has to be from or what age it develops, it's just... so stupid. There's always research that denies it. There's no set specific age for when the trauma cut off is or when DID has to develop, and if you do enough research you will fucking see that

"Trauma before the age of 9" "before the age of 11" "before the age of 5" "before the age of 18" so so much conflicting information on when the cut off is... because there is so fucking cut off!!! If you do any research instead of just taking what one or two articles say and running with it, you will see how much the "cut off age" changes between resources. Because it's not possible to set a specific age to the "trauma requirement"!!! It's just misinformation!

Thirdly, my final gripe with people explaining DID like this is why is that the first thing you explain about it? Why is our trauma the most important thing to bring up first?

What I'm talking about here is not people asking how does DID develop or whatever, I'm specifically referring to when people ask "What is DID?" and the very first thing that is mentioned is that it develops from trauma

This is partially sparked from a page I saw on a fandom wiki that brought up systems. Particularly, it mentioned things relating to alters and introjects. They had a little thing at the start of that section titled "What is DID/OSDD?" I edited it to give more information, but before editing, all it said was:

DID is a dissociative disorder caused by severe childhood trauma, but it can also be caused by disorganized attachments to caregivers, such as when a child's parents did not comfort them when they were upset, or when their caregiver was unavailable or unwilling to meet their child's needs.

THAT IS NOT EXPLAINING DID WITH THE CONTEXT NEEDED FOR THE TOPIC OF THE SECTION!!!

The section is about alters, and DID is a dissociative disorder with alters, and yet the explanation didn't say a SINGLE THING about alters!

What it did say, though? An in depth explanation of the trauma that causes the disorder! Because, yes, it's totally fine and normal to define the entirety of a disorder by the "extremely awful"* trauma that causes it to people who need context for your wiki page. /sarc Now all that these people know is that if someone is a system they experienced the most "EXTREME"* trauma as a child, and they also still don't know what alters are (which was, again, necessary context for the section). Good job guys you did great /sarc

Tangent aside, my point is, why are you defining our disorder by our trauma? Why is the first thing you want to say when explaining it to someone is that anyone with the disorder has "intense"* childhood trauma? Rather than explaining what the disorder is, the symptoms, what dissociation is, or what alters are, you just put people with DID's trauma on display and nothing else

*(In quotes because as explained earlier I don't believe in referring to trauma as "extreme"/"intense"/etc because of the implications people get about it)

I think posts like this are really fucking stupid and annoying. Like bro. Come the fuck on. If your goal is to say "you are valid no matter what" you kinda fail at that by then explicitly saying "actually i dont think you're valid if you're this thing tho fuck you"

"You're valid unless I decide you aren't"

Something I've seen a bit that I'm really sick of is seeing people who say they're "syscourse unaligned"/"don't care for syscourse" but are really just anti endo. And I'm not talking about neutrals who happen to lean a certain way, I mean there have been multiple occasions where I've seen "syscourse unaligned" people turn around and reblog posts saying shit like "ENDOS DIE I FUCKING HATE YOU" or have a Discord server where a rule is "endos aren't welcome bc you're harmful"

It always frustrates me when people think their experience is the only one. I see this frequently in plural spaces

All disabilities, disorders, neurodivergencies, and mental illnesses are spectrums. We're all different, we'll all experience things in different ways. And this applies to plurality/systemhood/multiplicity as well

It is entirely fine for you to have your own experience with your own beliefs for yourself. But the moment you push that experience onto everyone with the same disorder/neurodivergency/[etc] as you, that's when I have a problem

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