Thanks. I need time to figure some stuff out. I don’t think I’m ready for some of these subs. I’ve been pushing for change, but idk something really unravelled on me these past few days and I realized I was operating at a level that’s just going to keep hurting me if I don’t do something else.
Maybe take my 5 days of rest and come back to things and just run sanguine as a test. If I have a bad reaction to that I just need to cut these subs out of my life completely for a while.
Hey Fractal_Explorer! Take the time you need to figure things out. Running Sanguine for anxiety sounds like a solid plan.
Remember, diamonds are formed under pressure. This moment of unraveling is an opportunity for growth and change. Trust in your resilience, for through adversity comes growth and greatness. Keep pushing at a manageable pace.
Bro, I know it may not feel like it right now, and also I can be wrong, but I strongly suspect that you’re doing it. I don’t just mean via the subs. I mean I’m seeing you grow in strength and confidence over these years.
Trust in the power of acclimation and adaptation. Not everything that overwhelms you today will overwhelm you forever.
Some problems you will overcome by literally seeing through them and solving or dissolving them.
But other issues you will simply be able to handle. Like people who live around mosquitoes. Often times they still get bitten, but over time it just loses its power over them. I still got bit. It still itches. But somehow, I’m just more interested in something else.
God knows, this doesn’t always happen. And I’m not comparing your deepest traumas and issues to a few small mosquitoes.
But recognize that you have been transforming and growing this whole time. It’s clear to people who are seeing you from the outside.
Good luck with continuing to grow.
Thanks for the support.
I wish I had the words to articulate what I’m going through. I do recognize the growth I’ve had absolutely. And I appreciate you always helping me reflect on that.
But I was really pushing it with these subs. Something snapped in me these past few days. Its a different type of growth, not a pleasant one. But it has me re-evaluating my whole approach to this self growth thing.
I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I’ve been split off in two separate halves. One side develops this strong confidence and determination, but another side isn’t ready. The more I ran the subs the more these two sides polarized until these past few days where that other side is hurting made itself known. It’s not that the confidence isn’t real or doesn’t exist, but it acts more like a defensive shield vs an integration in my whole psyche.
I’m runnng Revelation of Mind and Genesis. And, for me, it’s a great combination.
Alright so I know this is a turning point in my life. I can keep making rationalizations for why something isn’t for me or a better way to do things or I can just keep moving forward with consistency and stop being afraid of going the wrong direction and just commit.
I admit I screwed up, I pushed it a bit too much with the subs and thought I could handle more than I could. Lesson learned there. I didn’t really go past listening directions, it’s just I failed to self monitor and adjust for my needs.
But I had a session with my therapist today. I was able to dig deeper into all this and now I’ve got a more solid plan for improving my life.
The fact is I’ve always been avoidant. She was blunt with me, which is what I needed to hear. I run these subs sometimes and I just neglect the real mundane foundational stuff. If something isn’t working, you find out why, you don’t just abandon it all together. Basically breaking my “I don’t like this so I’m not going to have it in my life” mentality. When you’re at the mercy of having your life align with ideal conditions that’s an incredibly frightening place to be and just really enforces that Idea of lack of personal power which has been a consistent theme in my life.
Additionally I’ve realized why this forum was painful to be on at times. Seeing other’s struggle at times too fueled the “is this ever going to get better” mentality. It’s really easy to get caught up in the negatives for me. I’m blinded to the positives, I’ve got tunnel vision constantly looking out for the bad to guard against it but as a result the positive doesn’t impact me near as much. Not to mention a lot of people in my immediate circle are stuck in similar cycles and I’m trying to find new ways to relate to people.
Genesis 3 months completed give or take
WB 1 month
DRLD less than a month
When I return from my 5 days I’m getting back on this and tweaking my listening. But this is the worst that could have happened to me. Random forum emotional dumping, instability, thoughts of quitting, and sliding back to old ways. My life cannot get any worse continuing on this path, it can only get better. But this is growth, I wanted it to be clean and easy but expectations don’t always match reality.
In reality the stability I fear upsetting is an illusion. Stability isn’t there, it’s never really been there. So upsetting the balance and continuing to push my comfort zone is the answer to feeling safer and more in control. It seems contradictory on an emotional level but I’ll never have freedom if I keep looking for ways to slip out of this stuff.
I strongly intuit that you’re moving into your own form of Leadership.
I think it’s only going to continue getting stronger.
I think part of what you’re mourning is the leaving behind of your previous identity complete with its illusory hopes and hang-ups.
(Illusion is not a bad word, by the way. Creativity is fundamentally about illusion. But as we grow and mature, our illusions need to mature with us. The old ones will neither inspire nor satisfy us the way that they used to.)
Every so-called “dissatisfaction” that bothers you is the flip-side of your own leadership potential to articulate and push for changes in those exact same areas. Again, I don’t mean this in some grandiose way. I think it’s just the way things often work.
This is definitely true. I’ve had a piece of me so absolutely certain of how the world works around me for so long. It had to develop to keep me moving forward in some way because the alternative of complete autonomy over my life put me into a tailspin. That was never an empowering thought to me despite how much I tried to make it one.
But letting go of this is a natural part of growth like you said. I’m not actively trying to fight against or erase it, it’s more like outgrowing old clothes. I recognize what part of my life it was attached to but I know it’s not something I identify as strongly with anymore.
So far with this rest it’s been rough. No bloom here, no overly positive feelings, just a lot of… I don’t even know.
This past month I swear I just blanked out. Except for very small windows of being present I’ve been on autopilot. Caffeine was masking everything and fueling the dissociation. Sure when I had it in my system it made it easier to manage my emotions, but that’s because I kept piling on the stress until my self was so pushed out I couldn’t feel.
So now here I am. Sitting with myself. Knowing full well I’m responsible for how my coming days play out but at the same time under a crushing amount of unresolved emotional issues.
I think for me it’s intimidating. I understand I’m missing out on a lot in life. At the same time I don’t full understand how people exist in this world fully embodying themselves and their own developed identity. I know for me I have to find that and experience it, it’s not something already within me. I have to be honest it kinda hurts, to come this far in life but deep down not having that strong sense of self. Funny how when I was younger I just doubled down on this and thought I was further along in some spiritual path.
I know there’s some grieving here. Not for a loss of old ways, but moreso how my life unfolded the way it did and the series of actions that contributed to stunted development. I know now it’s not imaginary or an exaggeration of someone looking for excuses. It’s just unexpressed pain. I thought I was past this but apparently not as more of my inner experiences unfold to me.
Push Back time:
You’re leaving things really vague.
That makes it much easier to keep moving the goal posts and feeling intensely dissatisfied to the point of crisis.
What’s actually at stake here?
What are you specifically “missing out on”?
It would probably be useful for you to apply discipline to identifying/labeling your feelings, perceptions, and evaluations, and placing them into specific, actual contexts.
In other words:
NOT: “Life is so tough and no one really cares about anyone else”
But instead: “When Joseph looked at me with that blank, unresponsive facial expression, I felt a mixture of sadness, irritation, and fear of rejection”.
NOT: “Nothing ever works for me and my life isn’t going anywhere”
But instead: “As I anticipate getting into another work-week, I’m feeling a sense of dread about the interactions and boundary violations I may have to deal with”
Or even better, “I’m thinking about responding to Q&As from the management team tomorrow and I’m feeling scared and overwhelmed.”
The main reason we create overwhelming, blanket generalizations about “life” is actually pretty mundane… We’re cutting corners.
Who wants to catalog and describe every grain of sand on the beach? Just say “it’s freaking sandy”.
A reasonable approach…
But only when things are reasonably fine.
When it comes to dealing with bad shit that lasts more than a day or two, it’s better to get granular. Because at that point our reasonable generalizations begin to accumulate and pile-up, and they become unreasonable. The inaccuracies and uselessness in our generalizations begins to compete with and overcome their accuracies and utility.
Your mind’s going to keep generalizing unless you rein it in. Generalization is a neurological talent, and it’s a good one… Until it’s not.
You’re intelligent and perceptive enough that all of your observations are going to basically be on-point. But that will make it easier for you to overlook the limits and the edges of their accuracy.
“It’s basically accurate.”
and
“It might as well be accurate.”
are not the same as, ‘It is completely accurate.’
If all of that sounds a little CBT-y, that’s because it kind of is. (Or similar to it anyway.)
It’s definitely not the solution to life, happiness, and the universe; more like some decently-solid guardrails to avoid driving off the road.
Well funny you say all that, that’s exactly the type of stuff I’m working on with my therapist moving forward. I’ve always been hesitant with CBT because I had a pretty awful therapist that treated it like a panacea and when I did try it on my own there was that tendency to get too intellectual and disconnected from emotions vs getting more granular.
So you’re right. What you said makes a lot of sense.
Feel free to be as blunt as you want here. But most of the time when I try to apply this stuff I find myself struggling. I don’t have the developed skillset for this, but I kind of need that to dissect the generalizing that occurs when I do try and it feels like failure on my part vs a learning experience.
It’s frustrating because intellectually I understand exactly what you mean here. But in practice it’s like rolling out hieroglyphics and there’s just this void of “I don’t know what to do”.
I think it’s moreso to do with the labeling/identitying feelings part I get hung up on. I just get frustrated because this feels like basic 101 life stuff I missed the lesson on.
I constantly wonder if I’m just not trying hard enough to execute this stuff. Or if there’s really a profound deficit here that needs professional intervention. Like needs it. Meaning I’m not gonna be doing it on my own until I practice with someone that can model it to me. It’s that ambiguity that leads me to the generalizing a lot of the time. And it’s a balance between working on stuff vs setting unrealistic expectations for my own current level of growth.
Actually I’ve been looking for a sub that isn’t purely healing and just helps me identify emotions more or accept them. This is definitely a huge issue in my life and compromises my ability to integrate more difficult concepts from subs.
Maybe it’s time I get back on the LBFH horse. As much as self love makes me internally cringe. Gonna check out my older journals with it and see if it could potentially help me out with some of things I’m struggling with now.
Some insight today. I really trip myself up with “what I want” .
I’ve realized a lot of my survival mechanism is doubling down on what I already know. Then I just make guesses as to what is “me” vs not in alignment. But it’s a really bad approach to life.
Why am I talking about this? Because I’m running WB. Today I had another “maybe this isn’t for me” moment. But then I realized I was running again. Even more so I had positive feelings with the idea of being attractive to women. And I stopped and I was like yeah that’s normal, of course when you get attention from the opposite sex it feels good.
And then it really clicked for me. I find myself not allowing external situations to bring me happiness out of a sense of control. It’s like an extension of the hyper-independence I’ve created for myself. I will sit there and be like “you shouldn’t feel good about that because it shows you depend on it to be happy so you need to do more internal work”.
I keep creating these elaborate scenarios in my head that WB is “distracting” from Genesis and it’s simply not true. I think I’m just tackling a lot of stuff with WB that I want to run away from and I keep creating these ideas or scenarios that seem real but aren’t what’s actually going on.
I know this is good growth so I’ll keep going down this path. If WB truly wasn’t for me I wouldn’t even be responding to it in this way, I’d be neutral. But that’s clearly not what’s going on here.
Deep.
Just things I’ve observed in the course of watching my own mistakes.
(and trying to survive them.)
Only a truly deep person would say such things! 
Note for myself, holding back negativity towards myself is not the equivalent of addressing it.
The question is. What has to be done so I can move organically towards a place of not believing these awful things about myself but at the same time not trying to shove them in an overstuffed closet?
It’s clear a lot of these are cognitive distortions. But they aren’t “wrong”. They had an origin somewhere, some reason for self preservation. I guess it’s a little complicated because it’s not purely the thoughts themselves contributing to the problem. There’s other things going on here
I’ve started journaling more triggering events in my life and recording the honest thoughts that come with it. There’s a strong feeling of “don’t think like that, it’s bad” whenever I voice my honest thoughts to myself. But I think even that is necessary. If I can’t clearly see these thoughts and what they contribute to then I can’t work with them. I think this is my knee jerk toxic positivity conditioning when it comes to less ok emotions and feelings. So I can’t just say “ok let’s allow all these thoughts and work with them”. It doesn’t really work like that, I have to disarm this defense mechanism first. The very act of these things popping into my awareness is an immediate shutdown.
So yeah not as straightforward as “fix the negative thoughts”. At least I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell sometimes what’s more bs from my mind trying to escape responsibility. Is this a complex problem? Or does it only seem complex because I have difficulty carrying out a simple idea?
Back on the subs today. Had some pretty important realizations today.
A lot of emotional flashbacks this past week. I was listening to Pete Walkers CPTSD book today and it was just weird having him describe everything I’ve been going through this past week. The catastrophizing, the shame cycles, the dread and anxiety, the complete inability to think or challenge these ideas. It’s just odd sometimes reading a book on complex ptsd and then having a sort of lighbulb moment like “yeah this is you and you can’t just flip a switch to turn this off”. Not in a pessimistic way, just more acceptance and less unrealistic expectations of myself. It really is the stack of triggers in the most mundane ways that I don’t acknowledge that throw me into that tailspin. Being aware of it is definitely key.
But I’m really learning more about emotional regulation. Actual emotional regulation, not what I thought emotional regulation was. Just learning to be ok with not being ok.
It’s just really surreal stuff. No doubt Genesis kind of exposing everything to me. Things I thought I knew, but really didn’t. Really though a lot of my life has been a theme of “everyone deals with this stuff, I’m just weak and keep letting it get the best of me”. But I’m learning more and more people grow up with way way different emotional landscapes and belief systems. The type of subconscious stuff, habits, patterns that just naturally lead to automation of a fulfilling life. Not even in the woo mystical sense, I mean just behavior. So many actions that can be taken throughout the day and as much as you might try you can’t be conscious for all of them.