Teatime @teatime@plural.cafe

Hobby: Giving compliments to strangers. (without being creepy)

Motivation: Saving the world.

Reasoning: People carry too much negativity into this world. Each curse, insult, and manifestation of hatred needs to be outweighed by some form of good deed. Compliments are the small change of positivity (pun intended).

Who's in? Share your stories!

When my time comes, on my tombstone it shall read:

SUFFERED FROM
FINITENESS

I have many different intests. Reading, writing, different sports, drawing, programming, paper-crafting, juggling. Could go on.

When I try to follow all of them in parallel (which I did), I never get anything done, or don't get better* at it. I feel like I'm pulled in so many directions at the same time, that I don't move at all. But I get sad if I have to limit myself.

At some point I thought #plurality would help to understand and balance those interests, too. But eventually that would mean that those few (two atm) creative and curious system members are systems on their own with different interests for each sub-member. And everyone tries to vote for their interests.

But that sounds like a huge mess, even for foggy me with limited insight. I guess something else is at work here, but I can't put my finger on it, let alone manage it properly.

*: Getting better is not a criterion, but would be nice to see every now and then.

Recently got into acting. Acting as in stage plays. I see parallels between play characters one has to enact and system members that front. (Of course there also are a lot of differences.)

Actors might not necessarily become plural or create system members by "getting into character". But maybe a role helps a pre-existing system member, who has been mute so far, to find a voice.

Hm. Could acting exercises possibly help troubled system members to front more?

#Plurality #Plural

@SatuSepiida
I also had Internal Family Systems a bit in mind when writing the other post.

When I'm trying to talk about plurality or IFS with other people not that familiar with it, I often described things this way (mostly in the context of IFS):

The difference between a person with and without "problem" is not that one is plural and the other is not, but that both are plural and one has dysfunctional group dynamics within their system and the other not.

If one then claims to be plural, then that just means that that one has increased self-awareness for what's happening within their system. And if that one has "problem", then increasing self-awareness is kind of the first step.

Thanks @SatuSepiida for the (more or less related) inspiration!

How does the duality of mind and body relate to plurality? (Assuming Descartian philosophy traditions for now.)

Does each system member have an own mind, or is there one mind that maps to the complete (possibly nested) system?

If one mind houses the full system, what then defines a mind? All I would have attributed to a mind (reasoning skills, emotions, ...) belongs to an individual i.e. system member. What makes a (plural) mind a mind?

Sometimes, when I have big deadlines coming up (projects, reports), my free time suffers so I get stuff done.

Even my peers and colleagues notice, that I/we are a different person, when we can breathe and play freed of sorrows and worries.

lurk lurk

Recovering from most stressful weeks of this year. Urgh, so glad that's over.

I feel I lost touch of Plural Cafe a bit. Maybe I can return to engaging more gradually over the next weeks.

lurk lurk

Five deadlines in five days. So glad when tomorrow is over.

Have to act like a normal person and that feels so unnatural. 🙃

🤔:month:​​ Resolution for this month:

Do 30 sessions of meditation to improve internal communication.

Seems like daily life keeps me too busy. So dedicated sessions are the way to go for now.

📔✍️ Results so far:

Works! Difficult to keep a streek, though. Each session helps a lot to explore who is there. It's like an internal Q&A-style dialogue. Switching happens infrequently, but gets tiring after a while.

Specifically today I/we talked with a creative part/alter/inner-person. Talked about fun times, about hopes and fears, and what thoughts belong to other parts/alters/etc.

Recently I was asking here about how other systems find names for their members. Faced difficulties with naming. That part very quickly chose a name. I'm excited!