I want to make sure I understand more fully your plan.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
What is your plan for listening and rest each day this week? When are you listening to what?
I can’t give a strict schedule because I don’t always follow it and it gets messed up schedule wise. Right now it looks like this for the week.
(yesterday)sunday RoM and Ascension chamber 30s
(today) mon rest
tues Sanguine and Custom HoT 30s
wed rest
thurs RoM 30s
friday rest
saturday Sanguine and Custom HoT 30s
sunday rest
What if you did one per day?
Now I need you to clarify lol. You mean one per day and rest in between each day?
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Yes, thank you for asking.
Example:
Monday: custom HoT
Wednesday: RoM
Friday: Sanguine
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I could give it a shot. Though I’m concerned because it’s not in the listening guidelines.
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What has been your success so far when you stay within the listening guidelines?
I feel like I haven’t had issues with it. I think the bigger factor was moving beyond 30s when I wasn’t really ready for it. So I wanted to give that a try for a while. My main concern is really that 3 titles is already a lot and spacing it out like that is going to minimize my results.
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I’ve taken 3 days off from subs at this point. I just seem to have a lot to process. It felt like the right thing to do instead of keep pushing myself. Really trying to break this idea of needing to get more sub exposure even when my mind doesn’t feel up to it.
The other day though I pushed past some fears. I had to go to another part of town to update my banking info. After I was done I decided to go into the gas station across the street for a snack. But I knew I was in a more conservative area, I figured I’d try to see the reaction some not so nice people might have to me. I walked in and immediately some guy was just staring at me with hate/annoyance in his face. Ignored him and got some snacks and drink. A few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to do that so it feels like I’m more confident. Like I would have spiraled about what I look like and violence against me and whatever other doom type things. But I took it for the one off event it was and went on my way. I’m proud of myself for facing that. I don’t want to live in a world where I let my fear of judgement ruin my life. But on the same note, I do have to be careful of people that might want to do a little more than a mean glance.
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Decided I just have to take a leap of faith and move before I have a job lined up. So I’m just packing up all my stuff in boxes now which I was struggling with. But I’ve got a system going now which has been easier. Room to room packing is 1000 times easier than trying to organize what you put in boxes.
I don’t have an apartment yet. It’s tough because I have money saved up but a tenant with zero income isn’t the most reliable thing. My friend reached out to someone today who might be able to help so fingers crossed. It’s been pure chaos. Seems like things might be falling into place a bit idk.
I turned down two job opportunities recently. One the commute was gonna be an 1hr 30, no way. The other I unfortunately didn’t have a good enough timeline for moving so it would cause issues. But I made a contact who might help me out in the future which is cool.
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Wrote some music yesterday. Felt good. Just went for a dirty messy type of expression. Still not done yet but it’s a cool start. After a long hiatus from writing I’m coming back with more flexibility. Feels like I can just play around and I’m more focused on achieving what I want vs what sounds good.
I’m considering signing up for an open mic night at a bar to just perform live. I’ll have to set some stuff up ahead of time with my mpc and synth. My therapist was like just improvise, but I literally cannot play an actual instrument so I’ll prob trigger some loops and tweak some knobs. Maybe solo poorly over the top. I’ve always wanted to try it but I’ve never had confidence in it.
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Ran 30s of RoM earlier today. I could sum up the feelings it evokes as “forget what you think you know”. Which brings on the deeper understanding that knowledge is fluid, you never know the whole picture.
I need to return to IFS again and my parts work. I’m realizing direct work on beliefs doesn’t work for me. Those beliefs are upheld for a reason. I can say yes I would like to let go of these limitations while simultaneously feeling that no I don’t. I thought one was more true than the other but what I’m seeing is they both simultaneously exist.
The interesting thing is I stopped doing IFS for a bit because the concept of having a dysregulated system didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t like that parts had more control over my life and I couldn’t willpower it away. In hindsight this is another part that thinks the best way to guarantee safety is by controlling everything.
I’m like why am I having so much trouble finding a job? And duh, I don’t want one. Aside from ending up homeless there’s no strong force there pulling me towards it. And that’s what I fight with every day.
So this week, no more spinning my wheels externally. I have time, I have quiet, I have no bullshit in my life. All the shoulds of modern society can go away while I figure things out for myself. The truth is I don’t want to go back into any of it. And until all parts of me understand the benefits of it I’m going to be fighting all the time to get myself to do something that deep down I don’t want. Only overcoming that via shame, fear, or guilt if I’m not in alignment and I’ve done plenty of that in my life to know those three are toxic motivators.
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I did a lot of internal work today. The important thing is maintaining curiosity and acceptance over “fixing”. And I’m basically repairing relationships within me. It was hard today because I have this controlling part that takes over. We agreed to just 15 minutes of doing nothing this morning. And from those 15 minutes there was a lot of emotional release because this part is very tired and doesn’t want to control everything anymore. But it does it because it thinks if it doesn’t the whole system will fall apart. I couldn’t make a promise that it wouldn’t happen, but I encouraged it to relax and think about itself.
This then led me to a YouTube video I watched on emotional neglect. And this man basically read back my entire life, I cried. Like everything, he hit everything I ever struggled with. And his message was to take it seriously and acknowledge it. This has been the most insidious part of emotional neglect for me because I don’t take it seriously enough. I think “oh yeah just fix this one little thing and poof, I won’t have to deal with these pesky needs and emotions anymore”. And it’s just the wrong way, it’s like trying to win some battle and in doing so I neglect myself further.
I think my recent unemployment has been causing a flashback to when I was younger and my parents were frustrated that I couldn’t maintain jobs. All the anxiety and depression and dysfunction, but they just wanted to know why I wasn’t doing the thing they expected me to be able to do. And it hurts because unintentionally, they did that to me. They caused that difficulty and then got more upset that I couldn’t figure it out myself.
And then that made me realize something about being trans. The discomfort I had in my body. Of course I could never verbalize it or take it seriously because my whole emotional landscape has been non existent. And I’m getting in touch more now with acknowledging those feelings and being in my body. The immediate reaction is always “I shouldn’t feel this way, I’m doing something wrong”. That’s a heavy burden to have weigh on me just for existing.
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After reflecting on that part dynamic, I realized I have to speak up with my therapist about the way neurofeedback has been going. I’m definitely getting benefits, but one side is pushing really hard for change and I’ve been sticking it out. I think I’ve been subtly reinforcing that alert and hypervigilant state vs relaxation and calm.
That’s the hard part of self growth for me. Yes I can get results, but sometimes those results don’t indicate what I did was good for me. I’m trying to build a much healthier relationship for myself where I can have self growth and feel good a majority of the time vs going through all these really rough twists and turns.
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Where I’m at right now. I’ve become so fearful of the outside world because I struggle with boundaries because I react from trauma responses I can’t always control. This then leads to people taking advantage of me in the workplace or triggering me which creates a state of hyper vigilance which leads to operating from survival responses I learned. And it all goes in the toilet from there. That’s what I’m afraid of, so something as dumb as a desktop support job where a bitter person treats me like crap is enough to have me revert to people pleasing and then garbage management that wants me to put on customer service persona to keep them happy at all costs. At my last job when I was a manager I told my team to let me know if anyone mistreated them and I’d step in. Enabling managers are the worst.
I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I don’t control this stuff. People like to say you can choose how you react and not respond to this stuff. But experience has shown me I have no control. The only way to resolve this is to acknowledge I have no control and do what I can internal healing wise to get to the point where I just don’t react anymore. Anything else is just a bandaid solution that keeps me going but results in a subpar life. If there IS control, it’s as a concept. Taking responsibility for the automatic response and working on those. Anything else is a huge drain on me mentally that amounts to struggle and burnout.
The lesson I learned. I ran from everything for years and it caught up to me. And now I can’t even push myself like I used to in order to get things done. And I’m worried how long this is going to last. My body has just decided to shutdown.
I’m really starting to wonder about Sanguine, if I’m compatible with this sub. This trails right behind love bomb in terms of really brutal recon for me. And it’s not that I don’t get results, that’s the hard part for me. I keep subjecting myself to this awful recon because I think the end result justifies it but I’m not so sure. I’m going to be replacing it with seductress soon anyway. But idk, something in this sub doesn’t sit right with me.
Gotta find a post where I wrote something about Love Bomb that Saint commented on. I think I need to stop doing things that make my life difficult and persist out of a fear of it just being recon and sub hopping. If a sub doesn’t work that’s not me failing at something, it just wasn’t the right tool. I’ve caused more setbacks stubbornly sticking to stuff that wasn’t working vs pivoting.
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@RVconsultant When you get a chance can you close out this thread? Going to start a new one for better tracking purposes.
Are you afraid to relax?