"There's no scientific backing for endogenic systems and tulpas" says the Lemur Therian

I'm sorry, I didn't realize Mr. Lemur that you needed scientific evidence to support people's identities and experiences.

So um, just for the rest of the class, @that-lemur, can you show us the proof that you are, in fact, a lemur internally?

Because without scientific backing, I just don't know why anyone should believe you, by your standards... 🤷‍♀️

Oh wait.

When it's your identity, your position is...

Got it!

Anyway, reminder that the Alterhuman community is inclusive. It has always been inclusive since the term was coined, including plural and walk-in identities. (Walk-ins generally referring to a type of spiritual headmate who walk in to a system.)

So yeah, if you're routinely posting in inclusive spaces, people will probably assume you're inclusive and safe to interact with.

Now, I find it pretty ridiculous that someone in the alterhuman community is using a lack of scientific basis to argue someone's identity is invalid.

But I also need to say that this factually incorrect!

Practically every source, including dissociative experts, have confirmed that endogenic and non-disordered plurality exists or at least may be possible. Anti-endos have yet to produce even a single doctor who has said otherwise.

And more recently, there was an AMA with psychiatrists researching tulpas in an fMRI study for Stanford University. One of their big findings was changes in the brains of tulpa systems during possession of limbs.

This is actual, neurological data.

Beyond that, here's a big document of other research and studies related to endogenic systems.

I could go all day with pro-endo sources. But here's the bigger thing you need to understand.

Bigotry like this has no place in the alterhuman community. Because if you decide that someone's identity isn't valid because they don't have "scientific backing," others will see that as permission to say the same about you.

The system medicalist ideology of requiring scientific validation is harmful to all alterhumans, not just endogenic systems.

*NPCs in complex dissociative disorders: a community term for a person, animal, etc that may appear in the innerworld of someone with a CDD. they are not alters, & cannot front. NPCs usually have no sense of self, & only exist to be "characters" in an innerworld. this is more common under - but not exclusive to - polyfragmented DID, or those with more vivid & complex innerworlds.

bonus question: what are your NPCs like? are they significant to you/your innerworld?

- amaranth.

"You can't just ignore, or be neutral about syscourse!"

Yes you can, just because somebody has a disability and wants to be involved in the community, doesn't mean they have to constantly fight with fakeclaimers, or endos, etc etc.

People are allowed to just chill out, have a nice time.

A lot of people cannot take threats and such, if they fight, they will be getting threats and such. I can handle threats, I can handle people being ignorant, but many people cannot handle that, and that is why they should not involve themselves in discourse.

I'm not claiming anybody is weak, systems are very strong people, and you won't ever be able to truly understand the horrors they went through that caused them to be one. They are the opposite of weak.

Don't feel invalid because you can't involve yourself in this constant war. Take a breather for yourself.

Hey sysblur! friendly reminder,

-Alters/ parts aren't always going to share the same thoughts and opinions.

-Alters can be shitty individually. That dosent mean their entire system is like that.

-⚪️

shout out to my fellow asian plurals you are so cool . keep being awesome

The _System_Arcade_v2.0

Welcome to the System Arcade! Your one-stop shop for everything you need!... If you’re a part of a system, that is! 

A while back, the original admin of this blog made an interest check for a server for system folks who also kin. After 4 years of inactivity, we’ve decided to do a hard reboot and start running this server again with new and updated things! 

What We Offer:

A safe space for systems to meet new people, chat it up, and generally unwind! 

Individual chats for different headmate roles as well as general system chats, along with a space for people who kin!

Forums for a wide range of sources / pieces of media to talk about and find fellow fans/kin/introjects of! 

Plurakit! ( Obviously, haha! ). We also have Tatsu, Dyno, and YAGPDB.xyz

All types of sources are allowed! Cringe culture is dead! 

Requirements to Join: 

Please have the body be 14+! We have spaces for minors to talk to other minors as well as adults to talk to other adults. ( And on top of that, there’s no NSFW allowed in this server. ) 

Be a system ( obviously … ) 

Besides that, just don’t be a jerk! We don’t tolerate discrimination or drama of any kind, including syscource. This is a place for any system to meet with other systems!

So. . . What are you waiting for? [JOIN_TODAY]!

Hiding Hate on Systok

Hiding Hate on Sysblr

Suggestions on Words and Phrases to Filter Out

arent real / arent valid / faking / fake / roleplay / roleplayer / dont exist / need trauma / ableist / cant be a system

Suggestions on Tags to Filter Out

Endos DNI / Endos fuck off / Endos not for you / anti-Endo / anti Endo / Syscourse

Hey lets maybe not do that???? What the fuck????

Traumagenic who were in pro-endo places all along culture is thinking that you're endogenic at the start but than slowly realizing you traumas & what causes your plurality when you are already prepared for that

Because if we were in only anti-endo spaces we'd probably discover our traumas too early or we'd fakeclaime ourselfs to the point of fully regreting plurality & any of this would probably lead us to really bad condition

Just glad that we could have normal journey of self-discovery❤️

-🌑👥✨

Traumagenic who were in pro-endo places all along culture is...

For Systok accounts that are tired of the fakeclaiming and hate comments!

Please do reblog and share! Not everyone knows about filtering comments, it seems, and some Systems on TikTok are quitting due to all the hate!

- Orisa

Speaking of Anti-endo AspenFrosten continuing to spiral, I found this on r/systemscringe

Link

Apparently, she took this version of the video down and removed that part, but it's still a huge YIKES either way!

This is a major anti-endo TikToker with over 30K followers publicly backing right-wing homophobic talking points that are actively being used to strip rights from queer people.

And it's really, really bad when she's out there making the ableist hate subreddit that is r/systemscringe seem reasonable by comparison.

If anyone wanted more of a reason to stay away FAR from @AspenFrosten, here it is!

shoutout to introjects who run fandom blogs about their source. how brave tbh

Creepy-cute system

A system who feels represented by, feels connected to, or just likes the creepycute aesthetic!

DID system joy is our singlet best friend knowing an alter in our system really well- not even the host (we dont have one) or the alter who fronted around him the most (the work fronter, we were coworkers) but just one of our alters. and this singlet friend genuinely treating him like his own individual person.

this may not make sense to anyone else as to why it gave us joy but it did; our singlet friend was talking to one of us about us wanting to start testosterone soon. both of us are trans so this was normal conversation. our friend says something like "i feel like nick will have the hardest time on testosterone because of the type of person he is." and it made us happy that he individually referred to that alter and was simultainiously acknowledging that who he was speaking to *wasnt* that alter.

it js felt good to be recognized as individuals.

<3

Some Basic Advice About EMDR for Systems

(drawing on our own experiences, reading about it, and comparing notes with our therapist)

This is mainly aimed at systems who are considering doing EMDR or planning on it, but want to know what the process is like and what to look out for, with some personal experiences sprinkled in.

Under the cut, because I talk a lot:

General Concept

I think the big picture in our experience is that EMDR is/was like…an intensifier for the kind of headspace/internal system interaction processing work that a lot of systems do naturally, at least a little, especially if they have decent internal communication. This has both upsides and downsides/areas to be cautious about.

A lot of EMDR pre-work (often called “resourcing”) is about making sure you have a good toolbox of “mental tricks/techniques” to be able to handle unexpected intense emotions, feelings, and/or imagery etc that often comes up when you get into trying to work with traumatic stuff. This is in my opinion very important, and something your therapist should take at least a few sessions to talk with you about even if you already have good tools for it already, just to make sure they know your strategies and you’re all on the same page. Also super common and normal to spend some time developing extra ones if needed—stuff like “the box” for temporarily containing crisis emotions when needed, having a mental “safe space” that you can come back to, etc. Also, EMDR specifically tends to often be a little rigid/scripted in the types of visualizations and metaphors you’re “supposed” to use, but in my opinion a good therapist should be flexible enough to adapt to equivalent images/techniques you may already have (like, “imagine you’re viewing the traumatic memory on a movie screen, or out the window of a train going through a tunnel” is a common instruction; if, say, your headspace has a lot of fantasy elements and it makes more internal sense to be viewing the memory via…scrying in a dish or something, your therapist should be down with you doing that instead, if you want to).

As for the sessions themselves, a big thing we don’t hear articulated a lot is that, in our experience  and that of some other folks we know, EMDR has a tendency of being…like, sneakily intense: It doesn’t necessarily hit you all at once in the session, which may just feel like “ok, that was Some Therapy Work but I’m chill”, but then over the rest of the day and maybe even the next few days, it’s not uncommon to keep feeling a lot of emotional intensity/vulnerability, having more intense “internal conversations and/or realizations”, etc. For this reason, EMDR is generally supposed to start with a very mild memory-to-process, like 4-5 out of 10 max.

Notes of Caution and Stuff to Keep In Mind

Especially for folks who already heavily dissociate from emotional trauma, it’s super easy to think you’re “going too easy” only to find that the memory has a lot more emotional baggage than you realized—really go easy on yourself when you start, EMDR is like psychology power tools and you absolutely can hurt yourself. (We’ve heard from plenty of systems who had bad therapists who did not adequately support them in doing EMDR, and absolutely fucked them over by starting too big and retraumatizing the hell out of them— this isn’t meant as fear-mongering, especially if you really like and trust your therapist, but just genuine “hey, EMDR can be very volatile stuff, which is part of why it can be so helpful, but also means that it’s important to not skip out on the safety precautions and self-care”.) What this means in practice is often stuff like: (our recommendations at least) - trying to schedule breaks/easy days immediately after - possibly getting someone to drive you home, especially if you know you’re going after a Big Thing, because the dissociation hangover immediately after can be pretty real - start with a memory that feels "too easy", and scale up if a week later it still felt trivial/like you’re fully over it, because it’s way easier to ramp up than try to do damage control.

Our personal experience, in tl:dr form, was that it felt like the core of the technique was really useful for us, and mirrored some of the most useful instances of self-processing we’d had before while also kind of serving as a “shortcut” to it—but, it was pretty intense and we didn’t really like/fit well with the therapists who we were working with at the time, which is why we stopped (didn’t want to keep doing an emotionally intense thing with folks we didn’t trust).

Finally, a bit about EMDR and "maybe I'm plural but I'm not sure, and/or may not have great in-system communication": yeah, this is a case to be especially slow and careful, for all the aforementioned reasons; what my instinct/recommendation would be in those cases is to: 1) make sure you learn a lot of resourcing techniques 2) try to check in with yourself(s) frequently and with compassion/intent-to-collaborate, "ask the inside of your head how it's feeling" and even if you're not sure whether the "reply" was just your own thoughts or a headmate, listen and try to engage with/respect those responses and emotions 3) if you start getting warning signs/back-off signals/sudden intense feelings, listen to them and lighten up, pause the session if you need to, do some self care etc, even (especially) if you don't know why you felt that way and it seems 'odd/random', and really you're super curious about what's going on and just want to figure it out. Like...you and the inside of your head and/or other system members are trying to navigate a complicated D&D maze together, in the dark, and you each only have part of the map--so you have to work together and trust each other, especially listening to warning signals even when your "part of the map" doesn't show anything to worry about there. And the more you work together and trust each other, the better everything gets, including therapy work.

When it's "Death By A Thousand Papercuts"-type Trauma Instead

If you're not sure where to start because there aren't a lot of obvious "Big Bad Memories" that feel like they adequately explain the issues you're having, some recommendations:

-> First, note that "no Big Bad Memories are immediately coming to mind, idk" is super common in systems and also in CPTSD, way more than I think most folks realize, so know that you're not alone and also that it doesn't mean you don't necessarily have stuff deserving of help and support.

-> So yeah, there's kinda two things imo you can try. The first is, if your therapist is on the more flexible side, you can try doing EMDR with either "this specific memory wasn't too bad, but it's representative of an ongoing pattern or theme that wasn't great" (say, loneliness at school or something, and you pick a specific lunchtime memory, which wasn't really That Bad in the moment, but you were kinda sad and/or upset about it and it feels representative of the overall trend you're trying to process/heal). Or you can try just doing the EMDR process on the theme itself, at the abstract level, and see what comes up--again, I'd really recommend starting with a much lower-stakes issue/theme than you think you need, just because it's really easy to underestimate, especially for systems and other folks whose brains dissociate a lot. (And especially if you know your system has episodic amnesia--e.g. event-amnesia/blackout amnesia--as well as emotional amnesia.)

The second is, there are other "more flexible" types of similar somatic therapy techniques (brainspotting is the name of another one, and there's more I can't think of rn) that might fit better instead-- tldr, totally worth asking your therapist about the whole situation, and asking what they'd feel most qualified for/comfortable with, in my opinion. You don't need to be doing Specifically Exactly EMDR to do somatic trauma therapy, even though EMDR is one of the more well-known modalities for it, and finding a version that feels right and not like you're forcing anything is really valuable (and you're not 'being picky' if it takes a while to find one; you're allowed to want to find one that feels right).

"you have a lot of introjects" you say that to me in a bad way because apparently it bothers you more that I am a system with several introjects than that I was (and i am) traumatized