Random Nonsense

hello! I have a question for the aroace community. Does a shiny silver ring work in place of a white ring for aromantic pride? just curious. Thanks in advance!

On to the terms

“Parts Conglomerate”

A parts conglomerate is essentially what happens when a parts coalition pulls a trick similar to the “three kids in a trench coat” trope. It is a parts coalition sharing one “body” and moving and acting as one. This also carries the benefit of if you unburden the conglomerate, you’ve unburdened several parts. Parts conglomerates can be identified if they take on more than one role. For instance, an anxious parts conglomerate can take on all 3 traditional IFS roles the role of a manager with constant low level anxiety, causing the person to constantly make backup plans, a firefighter for extreme panic and suicidal behavior, and an exile, always anxious that a parent won’t come back. For me, parts conglomerates are a way for parts to organize themselves into larger, more complicated units. They’ve displayed this behavior for a long time.

Tips for working with conglomerates: Treat them like you would any other part. Don’t “separate” them unless they agree to it. Instead, visualize going into their heads to meet the parts behind the conglomerate.

“Guide-like parts”

These parts are very similar to guides. They have good intentions, they are calming to be with, and they take on the form of something comforting and/or meaningful to the person. The one difference is that they interfere more than they should and don’t have perfect methods for doing what they do. They might be managers or firefighters. They never do anything too destructive but can do morally dubious things in order to try and help.

Tips for working with guide-like parts: encourage their guide-like qualities. If they want to be true guides, unburden them in a way that lets them ascend to the state of a guide. If they don’t like being a guide, do what you would normally do with a part that doesn’t like their role and try to help them find something more fulfilling to do.

Now for the technique I developed to assist in my work.

Contacting unburdened parts:

Joy has long since left headquarters to live in imagination land, Fear and Anxiety are concerned about stuff such as bills and finding love, Anger is still pissed that Aaron’s college sweetheart left him, Ennui has completely checked out and just pilots the console from her phone in bed during times when it’s not Super Bowl, Embarrassment and Disgust are both trying to get Aaron to lose weight, Sadness has been wandering the mind to try and find Joy, and at the center of the mess is Nostalgia, Envy, and a partially shutdown console. The console itself hasn’t fully shut down from Gloom/Depression but it’s about a fifth of the way there. Nostalgia and Envy are at the console 24\7 trying to prevent the encroachment of Gloom. Due to the stress, Nostalgia has picked up some odd habits. He has gained the ability to change memory color and is constantly recalling memories to make them nostalgic and then throws them into the belief system hoping it will fix the depression. Aaron’s sense of self constantly repeats “I was worth something” and Envy is constantly gawking at college athletes and cheering Nostalgia on. Envy has started to work along side Anger, causing Aaron to feel extremely jealous.

In all of human history there have been two constants. Love, and stories. Gods and monsters were created by humans to understand these concepts better. In that attempt to understand, a being from another place took interest. It saw these thoughts from its realm of dreams and wanted to know more. In its attempts to understand it took many forms. Anansi, Aphrodite, Cupid, Eros, and its favorite, Puck. All trying to understand love and stories.

When humans started to feel less need for gods and monsters, Puck became confused. Its grasp on reality weakened. It had no definite form anymore. Merely thought sustaining itself. Its knowledge of love and stories became the way it saw all things in the universe. All Puck saw was stories and a distinct lack of love as it had grown to understand it. The way Puck saw love was through the stories people told, not the true ways it was expressed. And as stories became entertainment rather than education, Pucks view of love grew further from reality. It thought, when it entered Japan, that humans see it fit to kill the person they loved most if they did not love them back, or to harm them in grievous ways whenever a social misstep was performed, or to ignore your love hoping they talk to you first, when it entered America, it thought that love was rigid and that a man’s spouse was his enemy.