I’m reflecting on (my own) avoidant coping.
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Avoidant behavior is painful man. Sometimes I can’t even see it until later and it’s a huge facepalm moment
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Woke up this morning feeling bad. Sometimes it makes me think. What’s the issue here? A lot of the time I say it’s my circumstances, this or that, how I’m not achieving enough, etc. How I have to overcome something, push past, be stronger. What I realized is it’s the opposite. I have to let stuff in, I have to let people in.
I ran the love bomb experimental, I never bought the new version. I might. Love has always been an issue for me. Both receiving and giving. Two sides of the same coin, if I have trouble accepting it I can’t access it for other people. And then where I did more damage is berating myself for that inability vs understanding it’s my own emotional damage that needs focus.
I just meditated while it was playing. I felt the aura around me. I felt the energy coursing through my heart. It was like tapping into something I’m devoid of for a large part of my days. I thought it was powerful because it was a direct source to it. No needing to heal an emotional wound to then feel better or achieve something.
I’ll be honest sometimes I really don’t like myself. I can be selfish or wrapped up in my own head to such a degree I lose track of other people. But I’ve tried to be attentive towards others and I’ve found it just doesn’t work. I don’t have the energy, I don’t feel good and my actions don’t feel authentic or good. My life has been difficult for me, I’ve had to pour so much energy into taking care of myself that I don’t have a lot for others.
There’s definitely something troubling here that I need to work through. I’m going to work with elixir more. Sometimes I just don’t get it. I’d rather be alone for most of my life than deal with the pain of having trouble connecting to others.
Had no idea what to do with myself today so I just went on a hike. Which is kind of rare because usually I’m like “no I have to work on music, clean my place, figure stuff out, research something,etc”. But today I was like fuck this we’re going hiking.
It was nice and it gave me a break. And I thought about a lot of the stuff I’m dealing with in life. Honestly speaking I can’t get on top of anything. I’ve been trying but it just doesn’t happen, something falls through the cracks, something gets left behind. This is 100% the ADHD and instead of focusing on doing all this “better”, I’m focusing on patience and self care with myself. My place is constantly a mess, im always putting off stuff, my ability to cook myself food and have meals ready for myself is very poor (past two weeks I just straight up haven’t eaten lunch because I don’t make anything) and even the things I want to do I don’t do and I couldn’t tell you why. Possibly a combination of anxiety and feeling like I don’t get to have fun until I clean my act up.
People look at stuff like that and only see the exterior of it. That has been my whole life, constantly shouldering that guilt of not keeping up with some standard of living that everyone else seems to magically be able to do. This is and always has been the struggle for me. Sure I shouldn’t compare myself to others. But everyone else is going to compare me to people who don’t struggle with ADHD. If I just tried harder, was more disciplined, more organized, made more lists, etc. It’s demoralizing and upsetting when someone minimizes trouble functioning in life to a set of moral failings on your part.
But my point is I’m focusing on making things better for myself. In all likelihood my place will still be a mess, I’ll still screw up meals, but at least I won’t have to deal with the emotional pain that comes with associating those things with being a failure.
Here’s an interesting one for the healing reflections:
I’m only allowed to thrive and/or feel good if I first ____________.
In other words, reviewing with skepticism the rules we’ve internalized.
It’s important to accept that arguing with those rules doesn’t change them. It’s not as simple as just saying or recognizing, “That’s not true”. But that’s a good first step, and also a good action to take when working with a healing subliminal.
Critical review of your criticisms.
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And the obvious answer to this is to take more action and spend less time thinking about these rules for myself. I think that’s the only way I’m going to get through to myself. Doing things despite that inner dialogue and not letting it ruin any enjoyment I could have in my life.
But that presents another challenge. One where personal responsibilities fall to the side as I get wrapped up in an activity I enjoy. So I think my obsession with setting those rules is a way to protect myself so I don’t completely abandon responsibility. But it’s too rigid.
A lot of these realizations are coming from living with ADHD. Time perception isn’t great so there’s an underlying anxiety when engaging in things that take up my full attention. Basically my time management skills suck and I procrastinate and avoid things far too much. I’ve yet to find a system that works for me, which I’m still doing. And I know it’s absolutely necessary to find that because doing this “no fun or enjoyment until your life is under control” has been most of my life and it’s been depressing as hell.
But anyway always good to hear your input. And it makes sense. Just as always practically applying it is the difficulty or bottleneck I run into.
I think I react to it a little differently. I feel there’s a difference between thinking about something and processing something.
I think processing is what really needs to happen.
It’s less about thinking and more about attending. Does that make sense?
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Makes sense. I’m definitely in a processing stage right now. I guess if I did take action without the processing, I’d still carry the emotional weight of those rules. Which also wouldn’t be all that great because I’d still be forcing myself to do something. Seems like a lot of my life has been about forcing myself, I have to unlearn that.
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Yes. I think subs, and especially healing subs, help us to process experiences more effectively. When it’s working well, I think that’s what therapy does as well. It’s not about the words as much as it’s about the attention and the consciousness behind/underneath the words.
Ultimately, it’s a gradual change in somatization, the subtle physiology of experiencing. It’s a real physical-mental change that’s happening. Like dismantling one reflex-chain and constructing/engaging a better one.
See Sylvia - Spike-up internal arousal (below awareness) - Subtle clenching sensation (below awareness) - Flinch and pull away (below awareness) - Mutter ‘hello’ - Feeling of stiffness in center of face - Internal Thought: ‘this day is going to be stressful’
gets replaced with:
See Sylvia - Spike of internal arousal (below awareness) - Internal compassionate self-embrace (below awareness) - Internal neutral feeling (below awareness) - nod to Sylvia - Sylvia smiles back - return to work - Internal Thought: ‘Where will I eat lunch today?’
Just these tiny moments that make up the day.
But the shifting can happen more easily when that subconscious opening, releasing, and processing happens. It’s not under direct conscious control. But we can make it more likely by practicing self-soothing, self-compassion, and so on. And then trust the organism (i.e., ourselves) to take care of the rest of what needs to happen.
Something like that.
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Been messing around with my 4 track. Tried to record some stuff the other day. Kinda painful seeing just how much I couldn’t do outside of a DAW. Meaning getting things in one shot or actually playing a performance that’s 2 minutes long. So was kind of, ok a lot bummed about that. I really regret not learning an instrument when I was younger.
But my plan is to flesh out the bulk of my tracks with pre programmed sequences and then maybe recording more live improv style stuff over the top in different takes. I’m definitely more of a composer than an actual instrumentalist.
But the goal here was to limit myself and just get used to committing to ideas. I’m still pretty rough at it right now because it’s a whole new workflow I have to get used to. But so far it’s a lot less overwhelming than a DAW. The ideas feel closer or more easily executed. But we’ll see.
Had a small win tonight. I felt like crap from my work day. I was laying down for a bit and just felt like giving up for the night. But I told myself to go make music for 10-15 minutes, give it a shot and if it’s frustrating and stressful you can drop it. But once I got started I found myself actually continuing.
What I realized is that my expectations for what I have to commit to with music are always too high. Too much pressure I put on myself and then that’s what I think of when I try to summon the motivation to do it. Not even necessarily worrying about it being good. But the constant anxiety of unfinished projects that has haunted me since the day I started writing music.
It’s not a complete answer to what I’ve been battling with. But today has showed me that I have to push myself more to physically do the thing, while mentally removing all the anxiety provoking expectations. It’s like the action itself isn’t draining, it’s everything tied to it.
And honestly I’m tired of days slipping by where I don’t do something. I hate those days. I’ve had too many of them and while I understand everyone needs to rest sometimes, I feel like it’s too much. Waiting for that energy and motivation to appear doesn’t seem like a good plan.
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Ran elixir U before I went to bed last night. This morning it feels like what I can only describe as being turned inside out. My life is such a mess and I feel like shit because of that. But my internal world is also a mess. I’m just making a big list of general life improvements I have to make for myself.
I’m hoping just getting some level of organization on it will help out. Right now I just feel completely lost as to what to do. I’ve mentioned it before but I have deep interpersonal issues with people. I’m dealing with the normal stresses of life on top of the fact that I’m basically in self isolation not of my own free will but fear.
I feel like an outsider a lot playing a role in nearly every scenario of normal day to day living. I don’t even really care about fitting in at this point, I just want my life to make sense and work for me. And right now it’s not.
How would you compare how you feel now to how you felt 30 days ago?
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Stronger and definitely able to detach from negative influences in my life more. I also notice a greater ability to focus on my growth and not criticize myself for all my shortcomings.
So I see progress, but it’s frustrating because I feel I’m not at the level I need to be to straighten my own life out yet. There are good days and bad days. The bad days are when I get overwhelmed with all the stuff I’m struggling with in my life.
But overall yeah I’d say I’ve seen some positive growth in being able to take care of myself more and handling stressful situations.
Thank you for clarifying. Are you journaling your successes each day, and looking for more and more each day?
I’m wondering if you focus more on the positive changes, if that might lead to more positive changes.
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It didn’t even occur to me to do that to be honest. I’ll be keeping note of even the small successes moving forward. I have a tendency to discount most things if they don’t hit my internal standards for myself which tend to be ridiculously high.
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Solid goals that are important to me right now that I’m trying to work towards. Goal setting is hard for me because sometimes I feel like my priorities are out of place, but screw it any movement forward is better than none.
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Spending more time making music. Whether that’s 15 minutes or 4 hours. I just want to be more consistent with it. I need to get a flow and routine going with it so it’s more normalized vs this big intimidating process it usually falls into.
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Start working out again. Right now I think I’m going back to an old isometrics routine I used to do. I need to do something. The combination of depression and sitting at an office job over the past few years has wrecked my physical health.
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Getting my home more organized and cleaned. Figuring out some kind of system there. Also throwing out junk/packing up stuff I don’t immediately need right now so when I move I’m not in chaos.
4.(maybe) Connecting with women more to get over my own crippling limiting behavior around that. I’ve mentioned it before this looms over my head a lot. It’s not that I absolutely need women in my life, I just want to get that sorted so it doesn’t continue to be a worry every single time I interact with someone. If an opportunity is there actually take it vs step on my own feet and trip myself up.
- Engage in some type of digital art. I’ve been thinking about getting into 3d rendering. Not realistic stuff, more like surrealist weird type of stuff. I just think another outlet besides music would be good for me.
I think that’s enough for now. That’ll keep me plenty busy trying to enact those changes. Less of a concern right now is career goals or advancing my skillset. Honestly they just don’t sit high on my priority list because there’s no life satisfaction related to that area. I’m not really driven by any type of normal conventional job. All my drive lies in music
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Don’t know if it’s coincidence or not but I listened to elixir before bed last night and today I was completely non functional. I think my sleep was too disturbed from whatever was brought up. I was fading in and out of consciousness at work. And every time I tried to focus it was like a massive buildup of stress and I could only sustain it for a few minutes. Then I seemed to also get pulled into my emotions more, unable to concentrate on anything else.
So yeah listening before sleep might be a bad idea for subs in general besides Paragon.
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Yesterday I listened to my custom. Later on in the day I just got flooded with memories of my high school years. Honestly I just felt like a loser all around. Part of me still holds onto that I guess. It’d be different if I was more of a late bloomer and my life turned into something I could be proud of, but so far it’s just been more pain and struggle. I know it’s not fair to feel that way towards myself, but really I have nothing to push against it with. And maybe trying to find reasons I’m not a loser externally isn’t the way to go. But whatever this is it seems like I really need to acknowledge it and work through it.
The problem is that I feel that impacted sub personality of myself from high school makes itself known in an any vaguely hierarchical scenario. So for example jobs. Jobs can just be a direct extension of high school, I hate to say it but they can be cliquy as hell. The gossip, the fake niceness, passive aggressive behavior, etc. So for me I get transported back to that same anxiety and feel like I act like an insecure kid sometimes.
You’re fixated on the perceived losses of the past, and that fixation is blocking you from taking in new information.
I’m not judging. I get fixated too sometimes.
The people who made you feel those things were literally little children. As were you.
And here’s the crazy part, we remain little children throughout life. Human lifespans are short. We get worn out and die, but we don’t actually get old. We definitely don’t get particularly wise. The people who act like they know what they’re doing? It’s an act. If you think back to when you were in kindergarten, there were definitely already 4 and 5 year-olds who acted like that then.
So, if you add that all up: anyone who has ever made you feel bad about yourself was actually an ignorant little child. And that includes yourself.
Are you willing to let some children who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about control your narrative?
It’s just an interesting thought.
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