After two months of not writing my journal:
I’m back.
A lot has happened, probably to much to remember it all and write it down.
Right now I’m on a regular KB+GM schedule (2-3 times a week 15 minutes each) with 1 loop of RotNW a week.
During winter, I didn’t dare to write open because my fiancee read my entries from time to time, and I didn’t want to burden her with my struggles as well as her own.
Perhaps some good news first. My mother seems to be ok again. After struggling for one year of super high blood pressure, we solved many internal issues and its back to mostly normal with only minimal medication. I can’t tell which role subs played in this. She listened to LBfH and Elixir. She doesn’t speak English anymore, but she was fluent enough to travel the world 40 years ago.
Unsteady Listening Schedule
I wasn’t able to keep up any kind of schedule for the first two months. Sometimes I listened every second day, then I took two processing days, sometimes even three or four.
During that time I made the mistake to listen to four Subs. I had NewEmperor, KB S1, GM and Phoenix. I didn’t listen to more than 5 minutes of any, but I guess I was seriously overexposing again.
At a certain point I decided to drop Emperor for some time because he made me very irritable. I had some very sensitive negotiations to do in my family, and I didn’t need anything making it harder as it already was. So it was a temporary goodbye.
After two months of this unsteady schedule, I decided to drop phoenix as well temporarily. Don’t know why exactly anymore.
KB results
During the first two months I was terribly tired every morning after waking up. I felt like a truck had hit me. And that was just 5 minutes of KB. Porn temptation was still a regular thing. I thought If 5 minutes make me so terribly tired, how tired would 15 minutes make me? And how long until it gets better?
It was only until ten days ago when I decided to drop phoenix, and keep a regular listening schedule with KB and GM that it got better. I jumped from 5 to 15 minutes, and the very next day, I felt already much better. I actually felt refreshed after waking up. Also the temptation from porn is gone atm (more on porn later).
Finances/ No Job/ Calm in the Storm/ Saving Grace
Financially it was an interesting period as well.
Finding a job somehow got removed as a priority this winter. I still need the cash, but in all this turmoil of life and overexposure it vanished for quite some time. Then my father let me know, that he cancelled my monthly support. Might have been because I didn’t call over the holidays and his birthday. But during this period I was unable to do much anyways.
Interestingly enough, there was no desperation at that point like I felt in the past in similar situations. There was healing done. Definitely. It felt rather like a kick in my ass to get a job. To think about what I wanna do.
And as money ran short, I felt the saving Grace. I finally got the payout from my Grandmothers care insurance.
It was only a third of what I’m expecting, but even that is enough to pay the bills for a few months and live a little.
GM - Sales
For ages I didn’t know what to do with my life. I knew that I love coaching, and that I want to help people with their challenges. First I wanted to do it as a priest, then as a coach. but firstly I realized, that I still need to solve my own porn issue completely before I can actually start as a porn-free coach. Having won the first half of the battle isn’t good enough. On the other side, I know that there are financial issues as well, that I need to solve first, at least to a certain degree, before I can start my own business. Secondly I realized that I need a solid financial basis before I can start a business so that I don’t have to fear that I can’t pay my debts or costs of living non stop.
After some time, pondering about what I wanna do (I could just grind in a factory doing some cheap, manual labor, but that wouldn’t be satisfying and it’s nothing helping me for my later business) it occurred to me, that sales would be interesting.
A big part of my coaching course was building your business, and therefore how to sell your product was a big part of it. And I actually enjoyed this part. From finding out, if the other needs the product to handling objections. It was fun to practise this stuff.
A friend of mine was originally in pharmaceuticals sales, but at her first job, she didn’t get a proper sales training (she was a pharmacy technician after all, why would she need sales training to sell pharmaceutical products) and after a few years, she didn’t need to “sell” anything. She just drank a coffee with her clients, had small talk and he signed the orders afterwards. But then she moved (for love) and needed a new job. When she finally found a quite attractive position, she was told to prepare for a sales conversation. While preparing, she discovered a sales trainer with tons of free stuff on Youtube. She watched it for two days straight and nailed the interview. They said, they have never seen anything like that. And that was the leader of the sales department of a big company.
That moment, I realized, that many companies still do it like they’ve always done. No innovation as long as money comes in.
So now I’m set to find a job in sales, fully remote, so I can stay at home and keep one eye on my 92 year old grandma.
I plan to write a longer question in this regard since we have some successful salespersons in here.
Existential Kink
I don’t know who has heard of this book before, but for me it was an eye opener like nothing before. It’s a self help book on shadow integration. The shadow is in CG Jungs works the part of our personality, that hides in the subconscious being the one responsible for all the stuff we don’t want to do, but do it nevertheless.
Carolyn Elliot explains in this book, that, just like some people like to be beaten and degraded in BDSM in their conscious mind, the shadow of each of us likes all the negative stuff we experience on a daily basis. Be it the anxiety that we don’t know how to pay the rent, relationship issues or being bullied at work.
We need to acknowledge this part of us, love him, and finally need to learn to get off on those negative sensations, so that in the end this shadow part of us can say “OK, I’ve got my share of joy from being poor. I’m satisfied. Who’s next” so we can strive for other pleasures like abundance of wealth.
I don’t know if it was thanks to DRP, any other sub, or if life primed me for this, but the second I read the book, I knew it was true. I just knew it.
I even started to translate portions of the book for my fiance because she can watch TV shows, but reading some deeply philosophical texts about the nature of our being is a bit to hard for her. And while translating it, I realized, it was to hard for me as well. I understood whatever I read. But translating it, the process of chewing on the thoughts to understand them so well that I can actually translate them in a text that conveys the meaning behind the words, made me understand it on a much deeper level.
Although the book comes with a detailed instruction on how to do the EK-work, aka getting in contact with my shadow part via meditation, it was rather hard to do it myself. So I found a guided meditation and translated it as well adapted it to my needs and recorded my own guided meditation. I still don’t do it to regularly, but the results are pretty exciting nevertheless.
Porn/BJ/ Relationship-trouble/ Trust/ Ending it?/
I relapsed with porn, rather porn games, a few weeks ago.
Of course I kept it secret from my fiancee. I don’t want a trusting relationship after all. sarcasm
But tbh, thanks to EK, I now know, that there’s a part of me that is enjoying all the trouble this is bringing. This keeping my relapse secret. There’s this kinky, perverse, sadistic and masochistic part of me that enjoys the tears in my relationship (ambiguity is intended).
On both sides.
While she still didn’t know about my relapse, I took her on a shopping trip, to brighten her mood. and it worked like magic. She was happier than in a long time. That night we even had our first sexual contact in half a year (since her depression). It was so magical. The next day, I immediately I deleted everything porn related I had and could find.
But of course she found out about it a few days later. I somehow missed that my computer saved system-files on an external hdd. This was the worst thing. I never wanted to hurt her (consciously). I was such a blow to her trust in me. And I would understand whatever her reaction would have been. I denied using porn or games or whatever, laughing in her face a few days ago. And now she found out, that I lied again, about the same topic again. Laughing in her face about her suspicion.
The following conversations were hard. But honest. We drank a lot. But we were able to cuddle again while falling asleep.
Still,… a few days later I woke up 2 hours earlier than usual. My thoughts going wild about how I destroyed her ability to trust in me. And if I am able to repair that. And if it is repairable at all. Or would it be the best to end this relationship with the woman I love more than I can tell to not hurt her anymore?
Not long after, I got up and played Assassins Creed Valhalla to distract my thoughts. Not even half an hour later she came into the living room. Partly because she missed me at her side, partly because she asked herself what it was, I was doing.
Later that day we had another long conversation about my doubts and my fears. It was reassuring and we’re still rocking this life together.
We also decided to have a date night once a week to talk about everything on our hearts.
Gaming/ Adventure/ Life is boring/ Rejection/Worthlessness
On our shopping trip, we not only bought clothes for her, but also one crime novel (Mindful Killing in the here and now) and Assassins Creed Valhalla for me.
A part of me wishes I would never have bought this game. I bought it 11 days ago and already spent 46 hours in game. That’s about 4 hours a day.
But I don’t want to waste my life. Not this way, not any other.
So I had another long and very insightful conversation with my fiancee (don’t forget, we meet during a coaching class).
The insights were the following:
- I find my own life boring, therefore I seek adventures in games
- Porn games are the same, as I mostly played rpg-games
- I develop my characters in games instead of my very own
- I could see my own life as my very own game (as Luthor suggested) where I level up myself, but I’m unable to do that
- That’s because I feel like I don’t deserve any better
- There’s this deep issue of worthlessness
- This stems from the rejection I experienced from my father as a kid over and over again
- I still hold a grudge against my father despite that I forgave him quite often in the past
With these insights, we decided to work on my father wound regularly and I will forgive him on a daily basis to reduce the grudge. It’s still hard, sometimes I need to start whispering because I can’t speak it out loud.
Today, while gaming, I had this short moment of realization how 30 minutes turn into 2 hours: I realized what I was thinking. It was something like “Just only this last one treasure, and then only this riddle,…” and so on. This was a first step into getting it under control.
Thanks to @AlexanderGraves for a long PN and to @Trader for his willingness to help, even when I didn’t answer or even asked questions. I was just to worn out at that time.
Open Question
After I’ve run KB1 for 2 months (Only 10 days with full loops) and starting to have the results I wanted (not so tired anymore + no temptation towards porn atm), should I run it for another cycle or should I switch to stage 2?
This is a long overdue restart to my regular journaling. Next Episodes will come in more regularly. I think I’ll write at least 2-3 entries/ week.
Although I don’t have a clue about how I will journal this time.
