Phaine of Catz

(crossposting a thing I wrote in Discord so I don't lose it)

Was working on our "am I plural" guide but now I'm distracted by the thought of writing a "this is how we do emotional regulation as a system" essay

I feel like a lot of emotional regulation in systems keeps being "designate one headmate as the Omelas kid/icky emotion holder and then suppress them" and it bothers me

Off of the top of my head, I can think of a few points that I want to cover...

• Emphasizing that thoughtcrime is not real and that your actions are what matter - you are not Bad for having messy thoughts and feelings (maybe link DBT stuff on radical acceptance of emotions?)
• My personal step-by-step strategy for emotional regulation: commit to not acting in the moment, identify the emotion, identify the cause of the emotion, validate the emotion, identify what the most productive action is, take the action
• Maybe also a bit on harm reduction and gradual progress - emphasize that it's okay to not be able to do all of this off the bat
• Ways that being plural can assist with emotional regulation: acting as "spotters" for each other (and practices to make sure everyone stays in contact during these moments), switching (but with caveats), imposed hugs
• Appendix of further reading for DBT resources, social skills, IFS, and other related topics

Mirror of this post on our website, any updates will happen there: https://feastingwithghosts.com/creations/essays/plurality/internalsignatures

(With thanks to Pax^Wonderbeasts for suggesting the word "signature", and the Otherconnect Discord for proofreading!)

So this is a guide on a thing that my system and several other systems do that helps us a lot with intentional switching, internal communication, and so forth. We kind of cultivate for every member of the system a "bundle" of associations and sensory impressions as a way for the rest of the system to reach them or as a way for them to reach out. For ease of discussion, I'll refer to these association-bundles as "internal signatures", or simply "signatures".

As a disclaimer, this technique works well for us, but your mileage may vary. You probably won't experience everything the exact same way that we do, and that's okay! No two systems are the same - take what works and leave the rest.

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