#syscourse tangential

Sometimes you and the therapist aren't working well together, sometimes money is an issue, sometimes the therapeutic approach the therapist is using isn't right for you/is actively making the issue worse, and sometimes the therapy just isn't helping.

The original post was in #syscourse and directed at endogenics and willogenics. If people are going to imply that no one could possibly want to have a system because of chatty, distracting headmates, we AND traumagenic and CDD systems who feel like that's not a bad thing, have a right to say so *on our own blogs, not in a reply to the OP.*

I'm not well versed in grieving practices in other cultures. But I do know that in a lot of other cultures, grief and honoring the past, honoring the dead, is seen as a good or even essential part of life.

And this extends to Western-culture-influenced beliefs about system things, like system collapses, systemmate death and dormancy, and fusion, and introjects missing their source.

I just want to remind y'all that grief is okay. It's healthier to grieve than to bottle up unpleasant feelings. And grieving is a process all people go through, if you just live long enough.

And it IS a process. It's even a healing process - the mental and emotional wound must be given time and space to heal.

So yeah. Miss who you were, who you used to know, places and people you used to have, things you SHOULD have had but never did. Be sad for the losses. Cry, tear things, make shrines to remember them by. It's okay.

You'll grow, and remember, and learn. Give yourself grace, and give yourself space to grieve. And if you can, let people in your life be there for you as you grieve. Because one day, perhaps, you'll need to be there for them when they grieve.

How the soulbonding community basically died for a good, solid six or seven years. Sure there were a few of us around (though we're kinda on the midline between soulbond and parogen) and there were a few small bubbles on smaller social media sites like pillowfort, but with the death of forums and web rings, it kinda just... Never picked back up, not for a long time.

I strongly suspect that a major factor in this was also the unintentional funneling of people who might otherwise have identified as soulbonders/soulbonds, into the tulpa community, and then the subsuming of everyone into general plural discord servers. It wasn't until the last year or so that the sb community started picking back up again with its own subreddit and discords and a carrd and such. (Please don't ask for sources to those, we're not active in the sb community just on account of needing to limit our online presence to something manageable.)

We know peaceful resistance doesn't always work. The first Pride was a riot, after all. The United States was founded on violent resistance to the oppression of a monarchy. The Civil Rights movement sure wasn't all peaceful.

But making your stance all being about how you want to inflict oppressors with pain, does not protect you or the community you're wanting to protect.

It makes you feel good in the moment - anger and hate are addictive.

And yes, sometimes we do need to fight back.

But you do not build a safe, healthy society on the back of war.

You do not end oppression by becoming the oppressor.

You do not drive out anger and hate with more anger and hate.

What does? Justice. Compassion. Mercy. Being LOUD and PROUD and IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID.

Their rights deserve to be respected. They do not deserve dehumanizing actions or cruelty.

That doesn't mean that we can't correct, chastise, or oppose their behavior. They may feel that by us doing that we're disrespecting them. That's not the same kind of respect as what I'm talking about when I say everyone deserves basic respect.

There are two basic definitions of respect: basic dignity, and esteem.

It's not uncommon for certain kinds of people to say "If you want me to respect you, you have to respect me first" - and they're using both definitions. "If you don't respect me as an authority, I won't respect your basic rights as a human being." Which is despicable and manipulative.

We ought to give everyone the basic dignity kind of respect. The basic rights of being a human being. That's the ethical thing to do.

That does NOT obligate us to give them social respect/esteem.

Remember too, when we're treating people ethically that's not excusing their behavior. The ethical thing to do is give fair treatment - which includes fair retribution for detrimental actions ranging from social ostracization on one end and prison on the other. And that includes for people who you like/who agree with you just as much as it is for people you dislike/who disagree with you. Because that's true fairness and equality.