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The regressive nature of sysmedicalism in regard to trauma survivors

DATE OF ORIGINAL UPLOAD: Feb 12 2025
ORIGINAL POST

Sysmedicalism is usually attributed to being directed towards endogenic systems in particular, but what happens when those beliefs are turned against the groups they wish to protect? Where does the line get drawn between the seemingly noble desire to stop misinformation and the outright witch-hunting of systems online?

As a system who has relabeled their identity after years of self-discovery, I have engaged with sysmed rhetoric from the side of an endogenic system as well as from that of a traumagenic one. Unfortunately, I continue to find myself negatively impacted by its effects even now. Despite being the very thing that would be recognized affirmatively in the eyes of a sysmed, I worry I still am not good enough.

This feeling of personal inadequacy is mixed with a sense of fear, a sinking dread of never fitting a diagnostic mold that will validate me in the eyes of my traumagenic peers. I have no reason to feel this way; I have a trauma history beginning in childhood and my therapist has affirmed the existence of both my system and the individual identities within. I have rushed after a CDD diagnosis to assuage my own fears when my treatment without one has yielded positive results regardless.

Why do I continue to feel this way? A large part of it is how online communities handle system origins. I find that in attempting to protect traumagenic and/or disordered systems, the medicalized plural community has inadvertently left scars on their own members. When encountering the level of vitriol often directed at non-traumagenic, “non-valid” system types it becomes very easy to develop a mindset of fear.

Sysmed rhetoric is inherently exclusionary. It promotes dichotomies fundamentally designed to separate:

Individuals as “valid” vs “invalid”
Experiences as objective truths vs experiences as subjective realities
“Them” vs “us”
The truth, of course, is that individual experiences are widely variable even within a clinical environment. Diagnostic criteria serve as guidelines but cannot hope to fully encompass the range of structures that function within it.

The hyperfocus on these comparisons is of course problematic, but it is especially so in a community full of traumatized individuals. Knowing that you will be turned on for not fitting a mold, feeling a growing anxiety at presenting yourself in an inoffensive manner, never speaking, behaving, or acting out of line. The need to fawn and placate for fear of harassment and abuse is a perpetuation of trauma cycles that many of us have experienced firsthand. More drastic results of sysmedicalism–fake-claiming and targeted harassment–come from a place of pain; a need to exert control over perceived threats real or imaginary.

We silence because we have been silenced.

We tell others they are not good enough because we have been made to feel not good enough.

We hurt because we have been hurt.

It is not my goal to attack or condemn others for feeling their feelings. What is my goal, however, is to invite plurals to approach one another more compassionately. Viewing my therapy process as personalized to my lived experiences has been incredibly healing when engaging with spaces that often push one-sided viewpoints. Trauma healing and mental health treatment is an individual, tailored process, and that is what we traumagenic plurals should be emphasizing.


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Pub: 13 Feb 2025 02:34 UTC
Edit: 13 Feb 2025 04:31 UTC
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