It can feel like a waste to not run something that doesn’t “change” or fill in something different to ourselves. Like it’s cheating to go with your actual self and enhance it.
It’s a subtle form of “productivity” bias but deeper than that it’s a nervous system that knows “peace” is preferable but still unsafe.
I’ve definitely felt that in the past. This time it’s different. It’s like what are my actions, behaviors, identity automatically like when I’m not monitoring myself? Are they something I’m happy with? And the answer is no.
So it’s complicated because my bad habits and thought loops get confused for my actual self. When really I’m neglecting myself by not changing.
Officially done with my job wooo. But also going through a grieving process. I loved my team and who I worked with. I liked helping customers who appreciated my ability to help them solve their problems. I think most of all I’m just sad because it wasn’t the safety I wanted. The environment just sucked and I could see people who were there for a while getting that sort of toxic “well we all suffer together here” sort of attitude of rolling over vs doing something to proactively change the environment. It’s like the higher up the chain you got, the more tolerant of mistreatment they got because they already did their time in the trenches. Horrible org structure model to run with btw. I had an exit interview this past week and I just gave them no filter about what needs to change after they asked me why I think turnover is so high. I’m proud of myself for that because a few years ago I would have slipped into people pleasing behavior and been like “they’re doing their best, you’re exaggerating, it wasn’t that bad”.
On the seductress side of things I’m definitely already working through some conflicting stuff. I’ve been questioning how much of my wants for my beauty are my own vs sexist ideals planted in my head from movies, tv shows, and societal conditioning. And even then, how do I express my own beauty without drawing attention to myself? That’s definitely a block for me, I choose to dim myself so I’m not in the spotlight but then am I really even fully embodying myself?
Ultimately I want that beauty to be empowering, not a ball and chain I feel shackled to and anxious about. I love this sub, it helps me deconstruct the pressures put on a lot of women and start to learn how to flip that in my favor. I want to transmute this energy of “am I good enough?” to “I know I’m good enough”.
I think overall there’s this tug of war inside me that says “don’t do that, you’re only doing that because of men” and then another side is like “but I want to do this for myself”. Then no clear distinction on which is which. It really does feel like that guarded nature of not being objectified by men blocks my own radiance. Running this is helping me put into words the feelings I struggled with that blocked me from what I want.
Ok I am fully onboard with Seductress and HoT now. Those are gonna be my main focus and maybe rotating out other titles with PEACE as needed. I am absolutely convinced Seductress is the one for me, I’ve just got a lot of growing to do.
Still 30s, still bone crushing recon on both of them. Note to self do not run Seductress before going out and expect a good time, ugh this brings up every insecurity I have and makes me want to hide in a corner.
I listened this morning relatively early, crawled back into bed and meditated for a bit. Everything seemed good until I actually started my day.
I think this brings up some shadow stuff for me. Like OK FINE I ADMIT IT, I want to be pretty and hot and gorgeous. I want men and women to get flustered around me. Is that narcissistic? Idk. But also here’s how I see it. What if I REALLY wanted ice cream right? I could sit down, question why I wanted ice cream, the origins of my cravings, how to stop it, and heal from the desire for ice cream. Or I could go to the store, eat said ice cream, experience it, then just move on with my life.
Same thing with seductress honestly. I’m like where is this coming from? Is it really my desires? Is it insecurity? Lol, just shut up girl go be hot and get attention, who friggin cares.
The most gorgeous attractive charismatic people will live fantastic lives and then look at you and be like “well it’s not that important to receive external validation just love yourself”. Meanwhile they have a lifetime build up of it they learned and grew from it lol. Like imagine not eating the whole day and then somebody opens up a box of pizza and eats it in front of you, then they’re like “eh it’s not so great”. That’s what it feels like.
And I’m not saying this is everyone’s path, but honestly I think it is for me. I have to acknowledge my insecurities and my shadow self and work towards bringing that into my life to heal and grow. Once again I attempted to spiritually bypass core desires that needed to be met and acknowledged, sigh.
Hell yeah, let’s get it!
As soon as I started running Seductress I got more likes and stuff on the dating apps. Quality matches? No idea, but it does show me something is moving.
Other stuff
Grabbed an iced coffee this morning and a guy held the door for me while I was at least like 15 ft away lol. I felt awkward cuz he really did not need to do that. So that was interesting
I’m picking up my fascia massage routine with some tools I bought before. So the self care has returned
Currently in the process of doing a reset on my eyebrows and letting them grow back in to shape. Right now they are ugly but last night I had a dream they were perfect.
Slowly, very very very slowly I am embracing the idea of being attractive. Like embodying it independent of what I look like. It’s really hard and I know I want the physical to look a certain way before I consider myself attractive but I think that’s backwards.
The defensive shield is going down, my walk is a little more confident and sexy. Posture is a bit better too and I carry myself with more confidence. I notice when I get around other people though I want to shrink and I kind of hunch over a bit like I’m guarding my body. This is the type of stuff where I think it’s hard to make a postural correction on a purely physical level because unconsciously I’ll fall back into the protective posture.
I’m like 90% sure a lot of that is fueled by the fact I’m trans and the horrible mistreatment you can get if you don’t fully pass as cis. You never really know who’s out there, even in the most tolerant locations. I’ve been dealing with anxiety going outside for the past two years now. Hopefully seductress can get me to a place where I can sort of just own my space and stop feeling terrible all the time out in public.
For the PEACE side of things
I’ve decided to swap it out for Regeneration. PEACE is something interesting. Lots of self awareness and discovery. Unfortunately that’s actually problematic for me. I’m learning things about myself and my inner world that have been insanely difficult to address without getting completely dysregulated. Instead of feeling like I need to push through or keep going to achieve some outcome I’ve decided to step back and just focus on calm and safety. It brought down the dissociative walls more, but I don’t think my nervous system was ready for that.