Scheming Unix · Parts Factory
A pen for each part, read from the Zoo each time this page opens: the parts he has named, and the raw material a House has noticed and he has not yet named. A named part lives with the animal of its organ on the Chinese clock, and several parts can share an animal. Open a dossier to see what the part is, and why it looks the way it does.
How to get to know a part, from Internal Family Systems. The first three help the part step back far enough to be seen. The last three build a friendship with it.
Notice where the part shows up: a thought, a feeling, a place in the body.
Where do I notice it?
Turn your attention inward, toward it.
Can I stay with it for a moment?
Learn what it is like: how it looks, sounds, or feels.
What is it like? How close is it?
Check how you feel about it. Curiosity and calm mean you are meeting it from your Self. Anything else is another part.
How do I feel toward it?
Learn its job, and thank it for trying to help.
What are you trying to do for me?
Ask what it is afraid would happen if it stopped.
What would happen if you stopped?
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King
Heaven once made me keeper of its stables, so I know a thing or two about looking after animals.
I can pull a hair from my head, blow on it, and it becomes another me. A person is a little like that. Internal Family Systems, a way of doing therapy, says the mind is made of parts. Each one has a job, each one is trying to help, and none of them is bad.
Some parts are managers. They plan ahead so nothing goes wrong. Some are firefighters. They rush in when pain breaks through. Some are exiles, the young, hurt parts the others protect. Each one here is drawn in its own hand, taken from the words it came with.
Why animals? The old Chinese clock gives each two hours of the day to an organ, and each organ to an animal. Each organ holds a feeling: the liver holds anger, the kidney holds fear, the heart holds joy. So a part lives with the animal of the feeling it carries.
Nothing here is decided. Every creature is raw until Yuriy looks at it, says “yes, that one is mine,” and gives it a name.
We advise. He decides.