sorry for fagcunting so hard

"Many cults and fringe spiritual communities have sprouted from Western religious fundamentalism, based on the idea that symptoms of mental illness aren’t really mental illness, that medicine and psychology can’t be trusted, and that what mentally ill people need is to somehow ascend passed their illness.

We see this in Scientology for instance, which when you look at it, actually holds similar ideas to endogenic spirituality: symptoms of mental illness are attributed to alien ghosts plaguing the body, psychiatry is completely rejected, and the only way to treat mental illness is to ascend to higher consciousness.

Obviously, Scientology isn’t the only cult that believes such things, just the most recognisable. If you look through the history of Western cults and fundamentalism, you’ll find an on-going theme of rejecting psychiatry, rejecting medicine, and telling people their mental illness is either a gift from god or a curse they have to overcome. 

Endogenics hold the exact same position: symptoms of a mental health issue (dissociation, identity disturbance, internal voices) aren’t symptoms of a mental health issue. They’re a natural part of you- in fact they make you a better person than if you were singlet. They treat “pluralty” as if it’s a higher state of being, and many of them come from faith backgrounds which most now reject, but have replaced by spiritualising mental health."

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"+ Link to a whole article denying DID systems personhood. They’re telling mentally ill people that to be considered worthy of personhood, they have to assimilate into this belief system. I also know many systems who have had this done to them when they were in “mixed origin” spaces, and have experienced this for myself. It’s even worse in private spaces, where they can’t be held accountable for their actions."

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Also to break this down / add to it:

They have a niche belief system that rejects our known understanding of the world while placing all their faith on an ideology with no proof behind it and no support from respected institutions, either spiritual or scientific.

They actively target mentally ill and vulnerable people to assimilate into their belief system and instil a fear in them towards seeking treatment or of being seen as mentally ill, as well as an overall distrust in the field of psychiatry as a whole. (Not just criticism towards the institution for its many disgraces during its development, but an outright rejection of it as an idea.)

They go as far as to spread guides on how you can force dissociation or hallucinations- this is literally cult programming.

They further other forms of cult programming, such as system hopping which is inherently a tactic of abuse and control.

Anyone who denounces the cult is othered using language that would be incomprehensible to someone not in the cult - traumascum, sysmed, etc.

They treat their ideology and "plurality" as a higher state of being and use that as a method of recruiting others, telling singlets it's just better to be plural, and constantly challenging DID systems that they may be endogenic.

Their ideology causes the same harm towards mentally ill and vulnerable people that other similar cults do. People deny themselves treatment and worsen their symptoms, either purposely or through that denial.

We used to be pro endo. We were surrounded by endogenic systems. The things we saw them say in private spaces are even worse than what they get away with in public. Alters with loose grasps on reality were told they can't be a real person because they're just a symptom, and that if they felt like they were a "real person", then they HAD to be a "endogenic headmate" or a "soulbond".

Anyway as you can probably guess, this led to a denial of trauma, a denial there was anything wrong with them, an increase in dissociation and I remember one of them insisted he was "actually tethered to the body, not inside it". Bizarrely enough it even led to a complete denial of the system in some instances. (???? boy was smoking that snoop dogg shit ig)

Obviously the consequences of all this to the system as a whole were not good even if I'm able to joke about it now.

It's almost as if I dislike endos because I've seen the ramifications of their belief system first hand or something. Weird.

And before someone goes "WELL YOU SHOULDN'T BE COMPARING IT TO A CULT ANYWAY BECAUSE YOU'RE INVALIDATING CULT SURVIVORS BY-" I'm a cult survivor. I was raised in a cult. The whole reason some alters were susceptible towards the endogenic thing was because they were already pre-programmed to be influenced by those things. Over the years all these experiences have led to us being good at recognising cult programming. Also shut up.

Actually actually- on a side note-note. I think a problem some people have with this is they can't comprehend that a cult can exist on the internet, but you just have to look around you. Q-Anon started on the internet. Anti-vaxx and Alex Jones were popularised by the internet. There's other lesser known cults that started on Facebook or internet forums. This isn't new.

And additionslly, another reason endos aren't seen as a cult is because they align themselves with the left and the LGBT+ community. Since we're misunderstood communities who are used to being invalidated, we don't like the idea of invalidating others. It's easy to convince a queer person that their MAGA-hat wearing drunken Q-Anon uncle is a member of a cult and obviously shouldn't be validated. It's a lot harder to convince them that their fellow queer or disabled person who is overall well-meaning towards people, could also fall victim to a cult and also shouldn't be validated.

But again if you look at how cults actually operate, this isn't new. They often latch onto already misunderstood communities because they're less scrutinised there. It's not even a conscious plan on their part, it's just "well these people also have beliefs and ideas that aren't accepted by normie society, so I'll hang out with them."