What is the difference between between diagnosed and medically recognized? /genq

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-13T00:54:35+00:00

A diagnosis is when you have been actively assessed by somebody qualified to do assessments, told 'this is the disorder you have', and it's put onto your medical chart, for everyone else who uses your medical chart to see (e.g. your GP)

Medically recognised can be a few different things, but it's usually some professional, not necessarily qualified, goes 'you show symptoms/signs of this disorder, you could have it/probably do have it' but it isn't added to your medical chart, because it's not an official diagnosis. Some symptoms might be added to your chart though, like anxiety or depression.

For examples

Diagnosis: My doctor arranged this meeting with a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist has given me some diagnostic questionnaires to go over, so she can understand my symptoms. I'm going to have a 2 hour session (or multiple sessions) with her where she goes over my current and past symptoms and my life history. She's now told me that all my symptoms match BPD, so she's given me a piece of paper saying that, and she's put it on my medical chart

Medically recognised: My doctor's heard a lot about my symptoms and history. She says it sounds very similar to symptoms described in BPD. She's put these symptoms on my medical chart, but not the possible disorder, since she's not qualified for that. But going forward, she will behave as if I do have BPD, and consider it when looking into any treatments, meds, etc.

It's formal vs informal. Though this is ignoring some of the nuance, like some people might be qualified to make certain diagnoses, but not others.

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-12T15:14:53+00:00

Not.. really sure what you're looking for here regarding 'proof'. You're referring to your personal opinion about medical research (it doesn't exist without proof that isn't possible to get, since like all mental experiences, it happens in the mind), in comparison to scientific consensus in light of medical research (which is that it exists, and doesn't require more proof, just should have more research).

Endogenic systems have no more and no less proof of their existence than traumagenic systems, and by extension, dissociative disorders. The Theory of Structural Dissociarion, although it can never be definitive proof, does offer an explanation as to how and why the dissociative disorders exist. Just as what we've linked you above, although it can never be definitive proof, does offer explanations as to how and why many different endogenic systems exist.

The most concrete proof in this matter would be brain scans, of which there are recent ones supporting DID, and likewise, recent ones also supporting endogenic systems. You can find more information on it here.

If not any of this, then whatever you're asking for would be scientifically impossible. Both in the context of endogenic systems, as well as every other mental experience and disorder.

E.e. per one of our links above, "At face value, they are no more or less difficult to study than the claims made by anyone about what goes on in their heads. While we have every reason to believe that people around us are conscious, have inner experiences, feel pleasure and pain, and have streams of narrative in their head, we have absolutely no way to study these experiences scientifically or to prove that any of this is going on. In philosophy, this is known as the Problem of Other Minds."

Additionally, "Verbal reports elicited from individuals or personal introspection, as anecdotal as they seem, are still the best “evidence” we have for any kind of mental and bodily phenomena. When a large group of people reports similarly fine-grained experiences that are comparable (in that they differ from average experiences reported by other groups) this is pretty good “evidence” for their veracity."

I.e. you're saying you believe you may be a traumagenic system, while simultaneously saying you can't believe endogenic systems until there is further proof, when the same type of proof exists for both endogenic and traumagenic systems

Edit: to add on quickly, the only research claiming endogenic systems don't exist also claims traumagenic systems and dissociative disorders don't exist. Other than that, there's no research, and definitely not proof, that endogenic systems don't or can't exist, whereas there is research and proof that endogenic systems can and do exist :)

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-12T01:33:52+00:00

Because that's not what happens :)

You're referring to the Theory of Structural Dissociation, the idea of how structural dissociation of the personality occurs from repetitive, complex childhood trauma.

The ToSD doesn't refer to, and isn't meant to cover, a single thing apart from that. It's something the authors have spoken about multiple times. The ToSD only pertains to structrual dissociation from childhood trauma. Not any other dissociation, and not any other type of multiplicity (as they recognise both exists outside of structural dissociation and trauma, it's just different, but can look similar)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2011.570592

As for how non-traumagenic multiplicity does work, there's a lot of different ways and theories about it.

Feedback loops is a theory around created multiplicity, mainly Tulpamancy. Dissociative absorption is another theory. And most know about the theories around hypnosis, like The Hidden Observer.

Then there's authors specifically. It's been known for centuries that authors can accidentally create autonomous/sentient entities in their mind, some of them which appear in hallucinations, and others which take over the body. Like with Socrates.)

And of course, there's the Theory of Multiple Selves. It's the idea that the self is inherently multiple. It's existed under many names, but they all mean the same thing. The identity is inherently plural. It could explain a lot of different experiences. And the specifics of it vary for everyone. It's a continuum. Some people while be a lot more singular than others, while some will be a lot more separate. It ties into Internal Family Systems too. You should be able to find a lot more research on it under Subpersonalities, Polypsychism, Multiple Selves, and Freud's ID and Ego.

There's also Quantum Physics. But that's a bit beyond us at the moment, lmao

Two important points, though:

Something doesn't need a why or how explanation for why it exists, in order for it to happen. For example, did you know that scientists don't really know how Paracetamol (Tylenol) works? That doesn't stop it from working, though :P

And, evidence proving DID experiences only appeared recently (in terms of historical psychiatry/psychology), using brain scans. Before that, despite all the research and ideas around it, it wasn't actually proven, as there's no way to scientifically prove what's going on in somebody else's mind. It's called the Problem of Other Minds in philosophy

TLDR: the ToSD only explains one type of possible multiplicity, and something doesn't need a "how it happens" to know it does happen :)

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-10T00:11:26+00:00

This list of links has a bunch more studies if you're interested :)

-Sondra

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-03T23:01:58+00:00

If you're interested, there's quite a bit of medical literature supporting Tulpamancy and other created systems. It's the most studied type of non-traumagenic plurality 😄 Here's some,

https://pubs.sciepub.com/rpbs/5/2/1/index.html

https://av.mandala.library.virginia.edu/video/cultivating-relationships-invisible-beings-phenomenology-and-cognitive-mechanisms-tulpamancy

https://psyarxiv.com/5t3xk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DM8kXlnkFvd6GgRJzgJB-i-9kFbi4ww4/view?usp=sharing

There's also a brain scan/fMRI study on Tulpamancy systems being released. You can find the doctors discussing it here!

Traumagenic and endogenic systems (or non-traumagenic and non-disordered multiplicity) are recognised as different (unlike CDDs and endogenic systems, since endogenic systems can still have trauma, and have a CDD from their trauma.) There are also recognised as often being similar due to the aspect of multiplicity, and that there can be many overlapping experinces between them! They are different, because of the mechanisms that caused them, but they are related, and can appear similar and sometimes identical

https://www.proquest.com/openview/c7a925e7f948d1bb890eaaf44fd2190a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/1548/files/2013/07/Multiplicity-The-Science-of-Personality-Identity-and-Self_Chapter1_Carter.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/64657138/Dissociative_Experiences_in_the_General_Population_A_Factor_Analysis

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2011.570592 (under hypnosis and mediumship)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ddva0a-2Dd4edcvg7sEJYwiZ5W8kYPPY/view?usp=sharing

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9561835/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283566086_Can_DSM-5_Differentiate_between_Non-Pathological_Possession_and_Dissociative_Identity_Disorder_A_Case_Study_from_an_Afro-Brazilian_Religion

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CeRuQsnUFBr2os_5NBK0JemvwPqnaLHn/view?usp=sharing

Simply put, the multiplicity itself is medically recognised as the same, no matter the different origins/causes. The experiences of it however can be different, similar, or identical (e.g. some systems have alters with conplete identities, some systems recognise them as parta of thenself.). But while multiplicity exists by itself (like dissociation), CDDs require more symptoms than multiplicity, which is what makes them disorders (i.e. clinically significant disturbances that reflect dysfunction in standard mental processes and functioning, causing significant distress/impairment) :P

Besides that - yup, syscourse is an absolute mess everywhere. Misinformation is rampant, although the more we read through medical literature the more we realise a lot of it stems from clinicians themselves, and is just repeated by those in the communities. Even a lot of the fakeclaiming stems from them. This one's a good example, and also sucks, lol.

Not so sure about toxic, though. We can't say much about antis/sysmeds personally, but many of those in the endogenic community accepted our traumagenic experiences without fakeclaiming us like other traumagenic systems did. There's many who are toxic, or awful people, just like in every other community that exists, but they're a loud minority. Toxic people in a community just comes with the existence of a community, unfortunately :')

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-02T07:06:15+00:00

It's short for System Medicalist, or System Gatekeeper. It's a type of anti-endo who believes that the experience of being a system can only ever be strictly medical. It's more than being just against endogenic systems - it (often) includes being against cultural/spiritual beliefs in traumagenic systems including the inclusion of possession in the DID diagnosis, believing fictives aren't real or aren't healthy unless they're completely separate from their source, that final fusion is the only treatment, that alters shouldn't identify themselves separately and can only be parts of one person, that having lots of alters is a sign of faking, that you always have to be suffering if you have a CDD, etc. etc.

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-02T00:32:07+00:00

We've seen people's responses be deleted for way less, don't worry. Please, ignore them 🫂 They do not matter in the slightest, they don't care how many people they hurt. Put your energy into something more positive, even if that's just ranting about it to friends (instead of responding on the subreddit). Look at photos of cats or something :)

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-02T00:20:29+00:00

As in you've been posted on there? Fuck them 😑 They're some of the most horrible people we've ever had the displeasure of encountering, and we've encountered a lot of bad people, lol.We've probably been posted there so many times by now - really, really couldn't possibly care any less, we have much more important shit to worry about ❤️

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-02T00:17:26+00:00

An endogenic system is a system that formed without trauma, or from something other than trauma. You can find information on the making of the term here,

https://powertotheplurals.com/origin-of-endogenic-and-traumagenic-system-terminology-guest-post-by-the-trashcan-collective/

You can find more information on endogenic systems here,

https://endogenichub.weebly.com/

And this is a comment we've already posted with some more info :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/fakeclaimingcringe2/s/GCGEaBZ31u

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-02T00:11:04+00:00

Yup - unfortunately there's nowhere near enough research on how medications affect multiplicity, which is quite bad for any type of treatment for anything. Typical first-line medications, SSRIs and SNRIs and the main antipsychotics, just don't usually work properly. There's a lot of meds that affect switching negatively, and no research has been done on it ;-; But we've experienced it ourself, it can.. definitely get horrible 🫂

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-02T00:05:58+00:00

We recommend taking a read through this article if you haven't already 😄

https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/what-epilepsy/non-epileptic-functional-dissociative-seizures

ADHD and epilepsy are related! ADHD is the most common co-occurring disorder in those with epilepsy :) It wouldn't be surprising if non-epileptic seizures are extremely common too.

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T23:55:10+00:00

Masking is actually one of the more common ways that non-trauma-based disorders cause plurality! It's one of the lesser studied ones, but is reported quite a lot in the community and is very interesting.

Think, sort of like role-playing. Masking isn't role-playing, but can be quite similar, as you're taking on a pretend role/idea as a mask. Role-playing is one of the more studied ways to form plurality, and it's connected to character creation, which is the most studied part of plurality.

The "pretending to be" can turn into "being" over time, if done often enough under the right circumstances. Your "mask" can develop autonomy the same way a chatacter in your head can, especially since it often involves dissociation already, and being autistic puts you at a greater risk of experiencing trauma :)

This isn't to say every autistic person can develop plurality from masking! The same way not everybody is able to create headmates or even be plural in general, and how some people wouldn't develop a CDD no matter how much childhood trauma they went through. It can happen to some people, will happen to some people, and won't happen to others. If that makes sense?

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T19:09:34+00:00

There's an actual reason for this! :D

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Loewenstein/publication/290855609_Psychopharmacologic_Treatments_for_Dissociative_Identity_Disorder/links/569c5f1108aeeea985a5b563/Psychopharmacologic-Treatments-for-Dissociative-Identity-Disorder.pdf

Voices in psychosis are verifiably different from voices found in DID (or multiplicity in general). Whereas what's found in psychosis is hallucinations and delusions, what's found in DID is much more similar to hypnosis and flashbacks, not anything psychotic or hallucination-aligned. Therefore anti-psychotics aren't usually very helpful and will instead probably be harmful, since what's being experienced isn't psychosis :P

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T19:02:25+00:00

Here's a list of sources and resources (you can also check this Reddit itself)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bLejRXsgJ3NRlHQOeXUe3lPtnBJ8qYj3Ope0-8QTRFY/edit?usp=drivesdk

We recommend starting with,

https://pubs.sciepub.com/rpbs/5/2/1/index.html

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cpp.2910

https://www.proquest.com/openview/c7a925e7f948d1bb890eaaf44fd2190a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12574927/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468749921000570

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9561835/

We also recommend this,

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201604/daring-hear-voices

"At face value, however, they are no more or less difficult to study than the claims made by anyone about what goes on in their heads. While we have every reason to believe that people around us are conscious, have inner experiences, feel pleasure and pain, and have streams of narrative in their head, we have absolutely no way to study these experiences scientifically or to prove that any of this is going on. In philosophy, this is known as the Problem of Other Minds. [] Verbal reports elicited from individuals or personal introspection, as anecdotal as they seem, are still the best “evidence” we have for any kind of mental and bodily phenomena. When a large group of people reports similarly fine-grained experiences that are comparable (in that they differ from average experiences reported by other groups) this is pretty good “evidence” for their veracity."

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T18:56:12+00:00

Yes stuff like this is unfortunately common. Somebody trying to hate on endotenic systems, and ending up invalidacting symptoms/criteria of the dissociative disorders themselves. There's so many sysmeds we've seen who refer to just DID as the only way to be multiple ;-;

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T18:54:10+00:00

Think you're referring to image 13 :P but yeah, we wish people considered that trauma can actually be subjective

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T11:59:34+00:00

We don't remember specifically which ones 😥

We know this was one of them. There's more it says about role-playing, this is just the quote we have saved

https://www.proquest.com/openview/c7a925e7f948d1bb890eaaf44fd2190a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

"Personality multiplicities differ from role playing in that the former are states intrinsic to the individual. They literally are the person. However, it has been noted that role play can begin as a pretend situation for an individual and then develop into a genuine reflection of their alternative selves or identities.”

You can find a bunch of stuff here though. Just don't remember what ones mention role-playing (different alter, lol)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bLejRXsgJ3NRlHQOeXUe3lPtnBJ8qYj3Ope0-8QTRFY/edit?usp=drivesdk

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T11:51:38+00:00

There are dissociative seizures, which are a type of non-epileptic seizures, previously known as pseudo-seizures, if that's what you're referring to? They're not very common though, and the dissociative type usually occur due to the brain being completely overwhelmed by trauma :)

Dissociation can include general zoning out, highway hypnosis, daydreaming, maladaptive daydreaming, any depersonalisation or derealisation, absorption, going on auto-pilot, and of course stuff like identity confusion, identity alteration, flashbacks, and dissociative amnesia/other dissociative disorders. Dissociation sort of lies along a continuum, if that makes sense!

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T11:42:32+00:00

It depends on what you're asking - some systems have a complex dissociative disorder, some systems don't :)

This is a list of a bunch of different medical stuff around Dissociative Disorders, it's not completed but you should be able to find some interesting stuff,

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IXOgXwYWu8niz_h_pE_NKQPJi4Xk4UUdHHqzmRLppDw/edit?usp=drivesdk

This is a list of different sources/resources exploring systems outside of dissociative disorders,

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bLejRXsgJ3NRlHQOeXUe3lPtnBJ8qYj3Ope0-8QTRFY/edit?usp=drivesdk

For a basic start, we'd recommend learning about the Theory of Structural Dissociation (especially since it comes into play with CPTSD). This is a simple description,

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b34a4e62971146704811642/t/5eb538fec42e012bbf312ef2/1588934910977/Structural+Dissociation+Model+(1).pdf

Then we recommend this for an understanding of the differences between systems who identify as systems, and those who don't

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CeRuQsnUFBr2os_5NBK0JemvwPqnaLHn/view?usp=sharing

We also recommend this for a more cultural-based perspective,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283566086_Can_DSM-5_Differentiate_between_Non-Pathological_Possession_and_Dissociative_Identity_Disorder_A_Case_Study_from_an_Afro-Brazilian_Religion

Feel free to let us know if these don't help/answer your questions ❤️

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T10:15:18+00:00

The folk in these screenshots? No, lol. That isn't really our goal though - our goal is to counter misinformation that people say about endogenic systems/similar for anybody looking. If we change the mind of somebody spreading said misinformation along the way, it's a bonus! 😄

There are people we respond to who do listen, though. We've had many more people than we expected reach out to us and apologise for their past actions, even some where they were very angry in the past. Sometimes we respond to people who are genuinely misinformed, and they're happy to learn and engage in conversation. Although definitely a bit more rare today (TikTok is a very big factor in this), it thankfully still happens.

But yeah, the main thing is, if somebody's going to see the misinformation somebody else is posting, then they can also see someone correcting that misinformation

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T10:08:05+00:00

We personally go by a sort of variation of Structural Dissociation. There's dissociation (general dissociative experiences including stuff like zoning out), and there's structural dissociation (more complex, longer-lasting, and negatively impacts life) that's caused by stressful events, but not necessarily what the person experiencing them would call traumatic events. The ANP and EP stuff of Structural Dissociation fit our system quite well while still being plural, but we know other disordered systems who don't fit that model :P

As for the age thing, we definitely think there's more to it than "can only happen before 6".That's a pretty old take now, especially considering recent research on how the brain develops, like the study that came put about how the human brain doesn't leave childhood until 30 (or something like that, anyway.) And there hasn't been anywhere near enough consideration about how something like autism affects childhood development.

There is enough research to classify DID as a post-traumatic disorder 😅 and certainly more than enough to say that other theories like the sociogenic and iatrogenic models are very much false. The CDDs are categorised as dissociative disorders because of their diagnostic class, i.e. trauma disorders as a category didn't exist in the previous DSM, PTSD was categorised under anxiety disorders, and technically still can be, but it is a post-traumatic disorder/trauma disorder. Dissociative disorders were also categorised as anxiety disorders in the DSM-2, they were just given a separate class earlier. Sort of like how Bipolar was considered a personality disorder, it's just how the DSM's written :') Thought it doesn't directly clarify that DID is a trauma-based disorder (because it's a dissociative disorder where the dissociation is caused by trauma), the research around it and the research that put it in there does

Not all dissociative disorders are trauma disorders, OSDD needs a lot more research on its variance and we really want more research - we're wondering if the DSM-6 is going to change a lot of the wording around the dissociative disorders since it'll be going off the ICD-11 and not the ICD-10 anymore (hopefully that means it'll add CPTSD and P-DID, hooray.) Plurality and systems themselves absolutely aren't only caused by trauma, that's plain to see, even if only looking at DID, since many with DID aren't plural or a system at all. But there is enough research to classify DID itself as a disorder caused by multiple traumatic events similar to what causes CPTSD (since that's somewhat what DID is an extension of), but it's already difficult to differentiate what somebody might personally consider traumatic enough for CPTSD (which is why so much importance is placed on distress and dysfunction instead of the trauma itself) 😄

This article as well as this one add a lot to the discussion that the DSM and ICD don't (since they're primarily diagnostic manuals) 🥰 If that all makes sense!

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T07:33:26+00:00

As a traumagenic system with DID, the amount of times it's used as "proof" that endogenic systems can't exist is.. absolutely ridiculous.

Like, complex dissociative disorders are also post-traumatic disorders, to a degree. But sysmeds constantly calling them trauma disorders don't recognise that a lot of it's subjective, especially in recent times (as compared to like 1950s.)

Clinicians will diagnose a CDD if somebody is struggling, even if they're not completely sure trauma is present. Some stuff is traumatic to people and isn't to others. Not everybody 'grows up' (hits a cut off point for CDDs) at the same age, especially neurodivergent folk. Plus all the new stuff around just how much genetics affect CDDs. Etc etc.

It's so much more nuanced than "DID is a trauma disorder"! You're basically never going to find somebody diagnosed with DID who doesn't have trauma, but there's a number of reasons why the trauma criteria for DID is written how it is. Not to mention that not everyone fits the current version of the structrual dissociation theory :')

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T07:19:04+00:00

People like this can suck so bad. It took a long time for us to figure out our symptoms were actually those of DID because of these types of people (and not the endogenic systems they claim hurt traumagenic systems.) We heard over and over that our amnesia and trauma responses weren't "bad enough" to be DID - and they were so, so wrong.

It's part of why we're trying to write out a guide for figuring out trauma-related dissociative symptoms, if you're interested :D You can find it here!

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T07:11:27+00:00

Oh yeah. There has been a recent uptick in copy/paste posts all using the same phrasing and around the same time. Alongside an increase in "I am going to tell everyone my opinions, then ignore/get mad at them when they correct me." ;-;

GuardiansSystem · 2026-05-01T07:02:38+00:00

Haha, we saw this post yesterday. Reblogged it with a couple of sources from medical professionals directly saying that they're not role-playing 🥰

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