I Have a Parogenic System and We Practice Parogenisis

[Lucilyn]

well.. system is a term to refer to the group of people in a body, and plural is what anyone with any kinda headmate is, it's just an umbrella term

 

those aren't the same thing as words like "endogenic", they're just terms that weren't in use yet in 2012 so you don't like them

[mattx]

They weren't in use and they weren't needed, don't try to picture me as the bad guy boomer that hates new things because that ain't it

I just agree when people say that "host" and "tulpas" are all that's needed, the other did / plurals / headmate / imaginary friends / brain demon stuff honestly can go from this community, but we live in an extremely and forcefully inclusive world so..

[Lucilyn]

there's nothing inclusive about those two words, "system" is just a super useful word so everyone decided to use it, and plurality is already more established than tulpamancy so it's not like we can say "nuh-uh" to it

[mattx]

so useful that we went on for years without using it

[Lucilyn]

literally the concepts of switching and possession could not exist and tulpamancy would still be a thing, so I don't think that's a very good argument - also, tulpamancy was only established for like 3 years before the term caught on and has now been in use for at least 6 years (in our experience)

Edited May 12, 2021 by Lucilyn

[mattx]

what does that have to do with anything? lol

every common term used nowadays is redundant, deal with it

[Guest]

The evolution of language in this community is music to my ears. 

 

3 hours ago, ohItsMatt said:

deal with it

 

 

 

[Ranger]

I think the term "headmate" is extraordinarily useful. I am not the only tulpa in this system, and when I want to refer to Evergreen for example, it doesn't feel right to call him "my tulpa" because he isn't, Gray created him. If you wanted to refer to all of us, you have a few options: "Ranger and co." , "Ranger's system", "Ranger and the others", "Cat's/Gray's tulpas and Cat/Gray", "(The) Shadows / The Shadow System", and "Ranger and his headmates". The ones that only use tulpa and host (Not including Shadows, that's our system name) require one of our names to identify us as a group. You could refer to all of us individually, but I have never seen a single person consider, much less try, to list all of our names to refer to all of us. Inevitably, the language for "tulpa" and "host" has a bias for the host or the most active fronter and everyone else "belongs" to that fronter.

The original language of "tulpa" and "host" is missing a term for the collective and doesn't offer a way for a tulpa to easily identify another one of their hedamates whom they themselves didn't create. Even in a small system of 3, you run into this problem. If you can find a good replacement for "system" and "headmate", then I would be more interested in changing what language I use.

 

Despite the fact I love the terms "system" and "headmate", I'm not a huge fan of the word "parogenic" and "endogenic". I have said my thoughts on parogenic before, in short it fails to come up with a replacement for tulpa. As for endogenic, I don't really want to refer to ourselves as one because I learned endogenic systems use the term "alter" and not just "headmate". Some endogenic systems also claim to have secret trauma and whatnot, and I don't agree with that approach. Endogenic also carries a communal connotation, and I don't feel like I'm part of the endogenic community. For all of those reasons, I do not want to identify myself as an endogenic system, even though I probably used to do it in the past.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Ranger

[fennecfoxx]

My understanding of endogenic systems is that they simply are plural and in many cases always have been. Unlike the tulpamancers who want to copy them because all the "cool kids" are plural.

 

In the earlier days of (modern) tulpamancy, none of us considered ourselves plural. Endogenic plurality (then called healthy multiplicity) was talked about now and then, but it was seen as a similar yet distinct phenomenon that gave legitimacy to the idea that having multiple personalities/identities in one head isn't inherently a disorder. If you think about it, DID gives legitimacy to endogenic plurality, since studies on DID give documented evidence that having multiple personalities/identities in one head is possible. Yet, DID legitimizing endogenic plurality doesn't mean endogenics have DID—so why should plurality legitimizing tulpamancers mean tulpamancy equals plurality?

 

Personally, I don't believe tulpamancy and plurality are the same thing at all; they're only superficially similar. A singlet who decides to effectively split their identity is not the same as a system who never developed a unified sense of identity but instead developed as multiple. Some plurals have never even had a designated "host" but managed the role collectively.

 

As for my thoughts on "system": I don't like it. I'll use it if I have to, because there really isn't a good alternative, but I'll rephrase whenever I can to avoid the term.

 

You can accuse me of not liking new ideas and terminology because I'm old or whatever, but I used to be adamant that I was plural and blah blah blah and anyone who said otherwise was gatekeeping. I'm not rejecting it because it's "new". I'm rejecting it because I went through a cringy phase of loudly appropriating plurality and later realized I'd been subconsciously roleplaying all along. Whoops.

[Jamie]

13 hours ago, fennecgirl said:

My understanding of endogenic systems is that they simply are plural and in many cases always have been. Unlike the tulpamancers who want to copy them because all the "cool kids" are plural.

Confusingly, in some places, yes, but in others, "endogenic" is used to refer to tulpamancers as well. /shrug 

 

13 hours ago, fennecgirl said:

Personally, I don't believe tulpamancy and plurality are the same thing at all; they're only superficially similar. A singlet who decides to effectively split their identity is not the same as a system who never developed a unified sense of identity but instead developed as multiple. Some plurals have never even had a designated "host" but managed the role collectively.

 

Yeah, it's wild... I try to avoid talking about it anywhere really nowadays, but I have a dissociative disorder that shalt not be named, the one with the three letters with so much drama attached. I can't overstate how it's not like my experience with tulpamancy and there is very very little overlap in the actual experiences, one's a cultural practice, the other's a mental disorder... The actual surface-level experience of multiple identities is really not the focus of dissociative disorders- the chaotic, disorderly, mind-screwy levels of dissociation are! No one calls the PTSD-state of a triggered solider who responded to fireworks at a BBQ as if it was gunfire an "alter" or acts like that's "basically the same as a tulpa", but that state is much closer to what clinical research points at as an alter. The whole "Theory of Structural Dissociation" that is taken as gospel with DID currently was based on military patients. It does not extend to or explain the whole culture of LARPing as all your favorite characters on Twitter and Discord. When you're acting like that, geez, the divide between "I'm a traumagenic system" and "I'm an endogenic system" is pretty moot, they act the same at the end of the day, one is just more in a victim mood and the other gets to have more fun... maybe. "Endogenic" systems seem to, by and by, be just as chaotic as their traumagenic counterparts. It's all the same culture. 

 

13 hours ago, fennecgirl said:

 

You can accuse me of not liking new ideas and terminology because I'm old or whatever, but I used to be adamant that I was plural and blah blah blah and anyone who said otherwise was gatekeeping. I'm not rejecting it because it's "new". I'm rejecting it because I went through a cringy phase of loudly appropriating plurality and later realized I'd been subconsciously roleplaying all along. Whoops.

 

I had a bad phase too... I always had a level of shame about it, but I felt like... "this is what happens, right?" You have to end up with a bajillion alters/headmates/whathaveyou, right? Every gust of wind is a new one, right? You have a new emotion, you note it, and someone goes, "That could be an alter." And if you deny a new alter's existence, that's like murder! It's a weird Pascal's Wager in a lot of places: You better believe, or else!  I'm glad I got out. I still have a dissociative disorder, but on top of that, being around the culture impacted my experiences and produced a bunch of weird (but standard in the community) behaviors in me, it's all some weird mass hysteria-level of "Do you feel itchy? Now I feel itchy..." 

 

Do you think there's a fix to stop people from going down that road, going however deep they go, and then having to backtrack out? It has happened to me, happened to many of my friends: tulpa culture and otherwise.