Ever changing, ever shifting exploration

A bunch of people in a conference room couldn’t connect a Jabra speaker to their laptop. One of my techs was late, the other out in the warehouse. Owner was there, cue panic among everyone. For a very brief moment I was thrown back to my childhood and that same sense of fear not because of what anyone said to me but what was implied in everyone’s actions. More specifically you’re gonna be in trouble and he’s not gonna like this if it doesn’t go his way. And everyone feeds into this, I can’t stand it. I can’t be part of an environment where THAT is considered appropriate behavior.

I haven’t overcome my traumas. And I’m starting to think I’m kneecapping my own self improvement by being in a triggering environment and expecting myself to adapt to it in some way.

I know it’s not just me and my biases. After my tech helped out he stopped in my office to vent a bit at how everyone upstairs collectively lost their shit.

Every day I lose my patience more and more. I hate constantly doubting myself. What if I’m the unreasonable one? What if I’m just too sensitive? Bleh. I think the environment has to change not me. But this company sure does pressure me to confirm to their toxic workplace habits.

Spoke with my boss yesterday. He’s on his way out the door soon. Confirmed with me this company crushes moral in people. So at least I’m not imagining it.

My team has been slacking off lately. I try to be supportive and find out why, work out solutions,etc. But it’s not going anywhere.

It might be just coincidence but I’ve noticed since starting my transition I don’t get the same level of effort out of people when delegating tasks.

So really I need to start valuing myself. I have given them every opportunity to grow, ask me questions, find their niche, etc. At this point they don’t even acknowledge how their actions makes my life more difficult, they just assume they can do what they want and I’m the shield that guards against fallout. And that’s not fair to me. I thought I was failing them in some way but I realized yet again in my life I’m taken advantage of because of my empathetic nature. And this is why management isn’t for me. It seems like you either have to have a fantastic team that supports you or lead by fear and always have the consequences in their heads which I don’t like as motivation.

Been a shitty week so far.

In a moment of frustration and recon I listened to my subs for 3 min. It was not the right move. Sometimes I get tired of my own shit and make these borderline self abusive decisions. What I learned. More recon, less growth, and whatever benefits I did get were probably only confined to that first min or so. So no I’m not pushing beyond limits or anything like that by listening more just getting the same results with an added extra side of unnecessary recon. Lesson learned, again.

Aside from that, I’ve noticed a shift in my thinking. It’s small but important. I’m starting to dare to be hopeful with regards to my physical changes. Like focusing on it and ignoring what others say. Cuz really I’m afraid, I’m afraid that after all my efforts and hope that it won’t be enough. But I have to at least try even if the perceived failure exists.

I think my backlog caught up to me when I ran those 3 min loops a week ago. Feeling very very sad right now.

But this is me, this is the actual connection to my body I haven’t had for years. I’m tuning into a body that doesn’t feel right for me. That’s a really really hard thing to process on an emotional level for me. Logically it’s like yes it needs to change with subs and the medical intervention. But what are the actual feelings underneath of being stuck in it with nowhere to go for years and how did your mind cope with that? I look back on my life now and I’m like yeah of course you were so numbed out to everything and the world.

One day I know I won’t feel the need to detach. But right now it’s about honoring and trusting my feelings. I have a tendency to downplay my emotional struggles. But I need to be more aware of them if I want to move forward. Changing the physical alone is half the battle.

On a positive note I sat down to write some music the other day. Turned into a weird Detroit techno type beat. Didn’t go anywhere but I’m just playing around. I intend to finish it but I’m just gonna lighten my expectations and whatever I create I create. On to the next exploration and growth as an artist. Not getting too hung up on a singular almost microscopic expression in the vast sea of creative potential.

Hello, I was going through the Phoenix thread and found this review you wrote some months ago, I thought it could be nice to remind you of this positively filled review, have a nice day!

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I appreciate it! I’ve been meaning to go through this journal from the top again. I had A LOT of growth im undervaluing.

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You know sometimes with my mind, I feel like manifestations happen to push me along. Example was today.

A piece of hardware failed in our server room. We had no idea what happened. My first tech on the scene was dealing with the wrath of our HR person because our door security system was offline and couldn’t open her door. So in between that he was trying to troubleshoot the issue. Then I came in and helped him out.

All in all we went from full network outage to back online in 2 hrs. Which is actually good recovery time for an unknown event.

But I heard the president of the company was pissed it took 2 hrs to resolve. And that was it. That was the last straw for me. I’m tired of being disrespected and only treated with respect when things are going well. I was ready to move on from this company, but this solidified it for me. I’m not gonna be in an environment where I’m just a punching bag. I’m not gonna be part of this toxic culture and people making ME feel wrong that I’m upset with how I’m treated.

You want to know why the hardware failed? Because they were cheap when it was first built out and instead of using a power distributor unit designed for networks, it was one used for pro audio equipment. They dragged their assess on supplying money for a much needed infrastructure update and surprise, something happened. And then because in general we don’t have enough staff in our department nobody has the time to do routine checks and diagnostics to make sure equipment is good.

I’m a high value woman and I don’t deserve to be treated like trash. That’s how i felt today. I told myself I’m too good for this company, they don’t deserve me. My boss also told me he overheard other parts of the business saying I wouldn’t leave hahahaha. Oh how wrong you are. The longer I’ve been at this company, the less value they see in me and the more they think they can throw me the bare minimum for money because they think I won’t go anywhere else. Wow. All I gotta say.

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I love Seductress. This is the most organic feeling confidence I’ve felt in my whole life. I’m still battling with stuff, but I feel like I’m getting to that point where I can start not only walking around without shame but also hold myself with confidence. My posture has improved, I noticed I slouch and try to curl up to not be seen when I’m insecure. But that actually just makes me more noticeable. So I was like, yeah why not just be bold instead?

One thing I talked to my therapist about recently. I’ve always hated attention or focus on me. I just wanted to never stand out. But being trans I don’t have a choice. Everything I never wanted to happen in my life is exactly what got turned inside out and I had to face it. And now I’m at the point of well we’re here anyway, why not go all the way and be attention grabbing in the best way possible?

My makeup skills are getting better. I’ve been pretty low key about it. But after listening to seductress last night I just felt like looking good today and I did a little extra with my makeup. There’s a mental block there for sure. I don’t want other women in the office to think I’m just trying to be stereotypically feminine. That’s one of the reasons I need to get the fuck out of here. Everyone I interact with knew me as a guy and now I feel like there’s a comparison between that and who I am now. I hate it. I thought I could stick it out for now while my life is up in the air but it’s been contributing to a low quality of life for me. So it’s getting purged.

As important as the physical changes are for me. The way I hold myself, my confidence, my own self perception of my beauty is so so important. I’m improving so much and I’m so happy that it’s not contingent on purely the physical like I had feared. I was telling myself I needed to look a certain way before I felt good about myself and that’s so backwards. I was listening to the hateful criticisms of the bigots of the world vs giving myself self care and love.

Over the years my life has felt empty and pointless. It’s overwhelming sometimes and a little scary thinking about what my life could be and the only thing holding me back from that is myself. And it’s scary because I have to trust myself enough to know I can do this. When all past experience has shown me I struggled, I avoided, I repressed, I hid. I have to learn to trust in my own personal power and capabilities without having a sort of foundation built already.

I’m growing into me and it’s scary because I don’t know who she is. But I’m just letting myself express the truest parts of myself without trying to control.

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I’m finding myself digging into very troubling stuff. I don’t want to get into it. But I will say this. The most manipulative thing people can do is make you believe you have less power than you actually do. That’s a huge goal of mine right now, personal power. And I guess that’s part of Ascension for Women in seductress.

This life I live still doesn’t feel like my own, yet. It was put together from the beliefs of others, the pressure of others, and lack of individuation of my own self.

My heart really goes out to those who had incredibly rough childhoods and were victims of severe abuse. Experiencing sides to humans some of us never see.

The duality of good and evil is an easy concept to latch onto, but it throws out the nuance of what it is to be a human being and the things that shape you. I think that’s why people like conspiracy theories about “elites”. It’s easier to conceptualize someone as pure evil because it drives a wedge between you and them and removes that aspect of the fact that they are the same as you fundamentally to their core as a fellow human being. The “I would never do things like that” argument. But isn’t it more scary to think that if you experienced the circumstances, you had a similar genetic makeup, that you could unwittingly engage in the same terrible things? Where you were born, when you were born, who was in your life from a young age, all things you can’t control yet shape your life. The wheels of motion for how your life unfolds starts before you even get a say in it.

Similarly there are those that believe in the opposite. Some intervention from good, some uprising, some precipice of change. But nobody will come to save you. We all just live in a soup of mixed convoluted emotions and experiences and try to make sense of it.

Weird self reflections lately based on a physical shifting stack if I’m honest. But like I’m getting to a point where “focus on your own life and enjoy it” isn’t cutting it for me. I feel like I’m being herded into predefined bounds of existence vs true freedom. I’m the product, the thing to be manipulated and exploited and everyone wants my attention. I hate this feeling. I feel like I need to cut these influences before I can truly understand what life is for me and what I want out of it. And at the same time I can’t tell if this is how others experience things or it’s because I didn’t have the proper development and now I’m vulnerable to it.

Well that was the precursor to some stuff…

Yesterday I was laying on my back doing a butterfly pose. Eventually my legs started shaking and my hips too. I was familiar with that from my time with TRE.

I had fragmented pieces of childhood memories coming up along with a really unsafe sick feeling. I wasn’t ready for that. I had to calm myself down and basically act like a parent telling myself I was safe, it’s ok, we’re here in the present not stuck there.

I don’t know what it is. But I put a lid on it until I can see my therapist this week. I don’t trust my memories. I’m always afraid I’m making up fantasies to explain the distress. But that can also cause me to repress things and insist stuff never happened or wasn’t real.

I definitely had an episode yesterday. I was sitting on my bed curled up in a ball hugging a stuffed animal. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone with these feelings, I was scared, alone, unprotected. I have never had that happen, it was like I completely regressed to a child self. Despite that happening and being beyond my control I still feel like it wasn’t real feelings.

I have the synergy module for physical release of tension and the other that has information releaser. They seemed to work together well. But I’m not equipped to deal with this on my own. Whatever that was I wasn’t ready to face it.

I’m very happy for you, it sounds like you are about to and have already started releasing some seriously deep and painful stuff from your root, I’m myself working on this actively and it’s not easy but once the release happens it’s just more beautiful nourishing energy available for well being and sense of self, more pieces of the puzzle.

Good luck with it, and one advice I can offer is don’t get caught up in your mind stories, it’s all bullshit, trust what you feel more than what you think, thoughts comes from your feelings either way, but the mine complicates everything trying to understand nothing.

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Thank you :heart:

I remind myself I don’t HAVE to uncover the memories. Just process the feelings. And my therapist reminds me of that too. But sometimes processing the feelings makes the memories tag along and that can be really scary because I don’t have control of that. I’ve been trying to just validate everything with how I feel, independent of the mind like you said. But it’s difficult because my mind was my defense mechanism for years to shield me from this painful stuff.

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I finally FINALLY after years am committed to leaving this job. My resume needs work, I haven’t looked for anything yet, I’m terrified I’m not gonna make money anywhere else, and that I don’t have enough skills for anything else. But I’m stepping away, the intent is there and this horrible piece of my life is gonna be carved out to make space for something better. I don’t know when or how, but I trust it’s going to happen.

I got into an argument with my dad a week ago. I was trying to explain to him what at will employment was, what toxic work environments are, how you can’t just “not let it get to you”. Every time I had talked about stepping away from this company it’s “oh but the money is good, it’s like that everywhere, you won’t find anything better, at least you have a job, don’t make any drastic decisions”. When I explained how jobs don’t take care of you and can let you go for any reason, you don’t have the flexibility to stand up to bs. He used to be in a union and stood up to people, I was like cool that’s not the world I live in, I can’t “give it back to them” and also that’s toxic af anyway. He said “well that’s the world you created and live in because you chose to work under someone else”. I was just like wow, just wow. You’re really gonna be an abuser apologist right now? Someone mistreating me is my fault because I didn’t become an entrepreneur or be rich? That’s the bar we all have to pass for being treated well huh?

He survived toxicity at work by being toxic himself and getting pulled into it. And you know what? It had collateral damage. Violent outbursts and rage episodes when I was a child. He wasn’t even aware of how damaging that was, what was causing that behavior, how to stop it. He just bottled it all up and then unleashed it at home, where we all should have felt safe. Me and my brothers made mistakes because we were kids. We didn’t learn why the mistakes were a problem or how to correct them, we’d just get yelled at or had the fear put into us to never do it again. And the hardest part of living with someone like that, is that’s not all they are. I still love him but reconciling the two sides was close to impossible as a child.

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Started processing the trauma with my therapist. Essentially what she said is it could be nothing and it could be something. But you just have to get through it. But she let me know I can stop at anytime and it has to work at my pace. She constantly reminded me it’s the past, it can hurt and feel overwhelming but it’s not here now.

I was shaking during the session and almost crying. Just totally involuntary. One very clear memory popped up that we’re working on next week. My fear is more memories will come up and make me dysfunctional and introduce more chaos into my life. That’s the fear. Whether or not that will happen I don’t know but I can’t let that stop me from facing these things.

Like I said before I was really shaken up. I’ve never had something from my past come up and be that adamant about dismissing all of it.

I told myself a while ago to stop digging and start living. It turns out I needed more digging. I’ve been running from things and feelings for so much of my life. I kept telling myself the reason unpleasant stuff was there was because I was making it up and looking for problems. Anytime it grew, became more apparent, or intensified I thought I was doing something wrong. When really I was growing and expanding, it just didn’t feel good. It really does feel worse before it gets better, that purging and how things enter conscious awareness more.

I ran AC yesterday. I’ve been back on that sub lately. Got me thinking about physical shifting more.

I had such an epiphany. And both my custom and Seductress are really helping me accept my appearance more.

Facial traits are sooooo diverse. When I first started running HOT I wanted to just change everything and get rid of all the perceived masculine features. But then I started seeing women with a blend of characteristics and men too and honestly that’s what makes people so unique is their own personal blend of features. I still want to lean more towards feminine and feel beautiful but I was nitpicking and tearing myself apart for no reason.

At the end of the day if I feel beautiful to myself that’s a win. But it’s not the whole picture. I really would like to pass in society for two reasons. 1. I’m not a target of harassment and 2. Being seen as a woman and treated as such.

But overall I was feeling so crappy about how I look and this gives me hope that I don’t have to make such a huge drastic change in my appearance. That felt so overwhelming and impossible, but this feels like I really get to enhance my own unique beauty which is like 1000X better than trying to just mimic someone else or typical ideas. I’m excited to see how it unfolds for me! Every step of the way I’ve felt myself gaining more appreciation of my body and I hope it just continues. This is so much better than the doom spiral I was stuck in.

The only other thing that came up was learning to be more of myself. I bought a new phone the other day and wanted a case for it. I found this cute pastel pink one and I felt self conscious because I was worried about what others would think. I’ve mentioned it before but who I am did a complete 180 in the eyes of others and sometimes I get hung up on who they knew me as before and what I never did vs who I am now. I find myself overanalyzing why I like certain things, why I express myself in certain ways, why why why. Mostly because I’m comparing it to past me vs accepting it as who I am authentically. My body language, how i talk, how I hold myself ,etc. it’s all changed. But it’s not something I learned, the subs just started helping me allow it without judgement. I still battle with that a lot. On this forum, at my job, around my family, it hasn’t been easy showing a different side of me that I knew intimately but nobody else is familiar with. I really want to get to the point where I just am fully present as myself , not second guessing, not questioning, just being who I am.

Hey I just found this on Sanguine thread from february, sounds awesome and a great booster!

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Sanguine is really helpful for sure! I wish I could add it to my stack but sadly I’m only running two subs at a time and my stack is full.

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I wish I could be as disciplined with subs, 2 subs is optimum, I’m going through lots of inner transformation and my sub use is all over the place right now, listening to 5+ different subs and not much breaks, I’m riding the wave and taking lots of integration time spending hours lying in bed doing deep relaxation, it’s a wild time but very fun!!

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Whatever works! I just know for me bouncing around definitely doesn’t get deep enough for long lasting change. It’s like I need a few months to settle into the concepts of the sub, then once I’m more familiar my mind feels safe enough to take even deeper actions in line with it. But presenting too many new ideas, no matter how exciting or positive, can easily make parts of me want to run the other way.