You mean the regular title instead of the custom? I’ve thought about it, but would rather stick with the custom I have built out with AM. I don’t think Ascension would present much of a difference.
Although I might have screwed up by putting gloryseeker in this custom
Yes. It might give you less to process, and therefore reduce reconciliation.
On thinking it over if I’m gonna go that route I might as well drop everything and fully commit to Regeneration.
Or do ascension solo. I don’t think I can mix these two. The only reason I’m leaning towards Regeneration more is because it seems to be tackling the issues that actually prevent me from coming close to embodying what ascension is attempting to instill in me. This custom and ascension has felt like running into a brick wall over and over again.
So what I’m thinking is. I wasn’t raised in a way to form a healthy relationship with my own emotions. I see that now. All reconciliation is, is processing your own emotions and validating your internal experience. But I don’t have that skill due to emotional wounds having to deal with childhood. I need to fix that self validation/relationship with my emotions so the underlying mechanism that all subs work with isn’t broken. I’m very detached right now which doesn’t make for good integration and more aggressive subs seem to cause me to further dissociative vs integrate.
But I’m honestly very spent dealing with all this recon. I think I’ve been unintentionally triggering trauma points and not realizing it.
Gonna sit on this for a bit to see what direction I want to go here.
Screw it. Ascension it is. I’ll try that out and if it’s too much I can fall back to regeneration.
I’m not gonna lie this another instance where I bit off more than I could chew with a custom and couldn’t realize it until after the fact I shouldn’t have put it together.
Hopefully after ascension I can run my custom. By then I feel like some other form of ZP will be out and I’ll be rebuilding though. Oh well, I’ll get this right eventually.
Why do you feel gloryseeker was a mistake in your custom?
What effects did you see
Part of gloryseeker generates an aura of fame. I’m just incredibly incompatible with any sort of attention on myself at this point in time. It’s not like it ever manifested in any way so I’m pretty sure I ignored that module all together. But I’m sure it kicked up some recon.
Totally understand - I’m asking because I recently added gloryseeker to a recent custom. I will be starting my first cycle next week.
Do you mind if I ask how did you notice the extra attention? More eye contact? People initiating conversations with you? People stopping and staring?
I see. Honestly I didn’t notice the effects of it. I’m 90% certain I prevented it from manifesting in any way. Attention gives me a deep anxiety, I don’t think I was fully aligned with the module enough.
Guess this is gonna be a little intermission with my custom. Going to start Ascension tomorrow or the day after. Same deal, 3 minute loop and probably a loop a week. Keeping it low, slow, and steady.
Support got back to me, one loop a week is ok. We’ll see how the timing of it goes.
I am a little bummed I keep creating customs that are too difficult to run. I think it’s well tested major titles for a bit for me going forward until I have things sorted. I’m afraid I won’t reach my goals now, but at the same time those goals were stacked on a really shaky foundation. So I wasn’t going to reach them in my current state anyway, just facts.
A lot of this stuff I’m reading now about childhood emotional neglect is pretty painful. One thing mentioned is individuals who experience it never actually develop a full personality, which is very accurate. I’m stunted in a lot of ways. It’s this realization that it’s not just about building some more confidence, there were some things that didn’t go right in the overall building process of my psyche.
I’m looking into finding a therapist again. Realized this stuff goes deeper than I was initially led to believe.
One possibility might be to occasionally consider “going back to the basics” such as Ascension or Elixir or Sanguine.
Keep your critical faculties about you as well.
Human personalities are not so rigidly quantifiable or identical; though I’m sure whoever that author was probably had some good points to make.
Every single human being has strengths and weaknesses. What makes your particular ones so special or so much worse?
And you’ve probably already seen this, but I try to watch it 3 to 4 times a year. She makes so many great observations.
That’s currently the plan. Going to be running ascension until I feel i can handle this custom.
I have trouble describing it because they aren’t fully conscious processes. But it’s like a jabbing stabbing sort of emotional pain that makes me withdraw when more real aspects of me are presented. Part of what she discussed in the book is how some of us get stuck in our role selves (parts we’ve learned to play) vs deeper more intuitive true self expression. I don’t believe what I’m struggling with is special, in fact I know it’s a surprisingly common experience. That unfortunately doesn’t diminish how it intrudes in a lot of aspects in life.
I’ll have to give the video a rewatch as well because I don’t remember the full contents and I’m sure I’ll pick something else up.
While I know that what you’re describing is genuine, I still want to probe or push back a bit more. (As always, of course, your response/non-response is up to you and will be respected.)
What, in your view, constitutes or distinguishes one of these ‘more real’ aspects of you?
(Often when people use this kind of language they’re referring to particular of their emotions, perceptions, or views that feel relatively more private and which are less commonly expressed; or they’re referring to emotions/views/perceptions that feel more insecure and more at odds with conventional social expections,
In other words, I’m assuming that if you really feel hungry and you say, “I feel hungry!” that will not be associated with the emotional pain that you’re describing. Or that if you watch a movie that you find particularly enjoyable and you say “I really liked that”, that will also not be associated with this stabbing emotional pain.
I’m suspecting that it may be about situations and feelings that are quite a bit more specific and particular than merely being ‘real’.
I have my own assumptions about what you might be calling ‘real’; but I think you would be much better placed than I to describe it in more specific terms.)
This has the feel of a statement that is more an intellectual observation than an experiential one.
Would you be able to describe what had been going on (situationally) with any other actual people who had been having this common experience?
In other words, do you know that this experience is surprisingly common because you’ve read that it’s surprisingly common? Or have you actually recognized and observed specific people having this similar experience to yours?
If you have actually observed someone(s) else who was undergoing a similar kind of pain to what you’re describing above, what is it like? How do you recognize that the pain experience is happening for that person? What kinds of external conditions are going on for the person in that situation? And how do you find yourself responding to it and feeling about it? (If it’s something you’ve observed a lot, just choose one.)
Trying to sum it up without getting wordy. At its core it’s really just basic self expression without these knee jerk sort of responses, The “real self” is a pretty ephemeral concept, but I guess think of it as less reactionary and more self autonomy. This is hard to dissect because I’ve been living like this for years. It’s like self preservation mode with automatic responses, but also being on high alert scanning the environment.
Well that’s a tricky one. I think alone I’m comfortable saying these things, but among people it shifts. Just that example made me realize I always ask if someone else is hungry or wants to eat before leading with my own need. And it’s not really consideration for them, it’s just deflection from asserting my own need in that moment because I perceive it as overly selfish or needy. But take something like that and string it out through the day where it can fire in rapid succession without catching up to it and that’s what I struggle with.
I guess if we were to get into specifics it’s really just among other people the “real” aspects of me shift. I do my best not to do this, but it’s a constant back and forth. Sometimes I catch myself in the moment, sometimes I look back on the interaction later and think to myself “damn I did it again”.
I hang out on forums reading other people’s experiences and struggles, also talking with them. I know it’s not face to face interpersonal experiences, but I feel as if they can be more open because of the anonymous nature.
I’ve read experiences that could have came out of my own head, word for word. I’ve also written stuff that people strongly identify with. I know social spaces can be a bit of an echo chamber, but I don’t think they’re all gathering around making up these concepts just for validation. I think there’s a very real pattern and people are just looking for answers.
A lot of these emotional pains from those I’ve talked to are just remnants of childhood surfacing. But how they got through that pain as a child was minimizing their own needs and instead behaving in a way that got a favorable response. That works as a kid to control your situation, as an adult it really messes with you.
I can’t really elaborate much more than that because this type of conversation itself can be exhausting for me. Discussions about self care/emotional needs tends to cause me to shut down and dissociate. I don’t write about a lot of this here on the forum for that reason. It’s too easy to slip back into denial habits when certain things are said or I misinterpret things that are said.
I’ll say this though. From my first journal onward with this forum I got more confidence to speak about these things openly without shutting down. But my earlier journals were filled with a lot of self censorship that made me look “better” so it can be deceptive. I’m actually going to read those again to pick apart my mental states I was in and see if I can identify things better.
@Malkuth Your probing questions did bring up something I know I struggle with a lot.
It’s the ambiguity and difficulty of identifying if things are held onto as limiting beliefs vs challenges that need to be validated more. I used to perform a lot of mental gymnastics to get myself out of feelings and I took pride in it when I was younger. It’s taken me till now to realize it was coping mechanisms I learned that aren’t the most healthy thing. As a result I am quick to think I’ve moved beyond something when I haven’t so it’s left me with a lot of blind spots.
Some days I think about the subconscious, our untapped potential, the power we have, and it seems like we are truly incredible. But then I also realize I’m stuck on my couch, dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and wondering how I’m going to survive the rest of my work week. It kind of knocks me down a peg and I think to myself, “yeah but how has it gone so sideways with all that potential?”.
Funny how everything I tend to explore or read tends to converge at one point. A while back I read reality transurfing and one line always stuck out to me. “Give with your hands, but not your heart”. Intellectually I understood it, emotionally I did not. Fast forward to today and I know what that is. It’s the emotional labor people with trauma engage in to guarantee a certain outcome. Of course it doesn’t work because that’s not how humans work, but it’s a child like coping mechanism that thinks “if I give them everything and be really open and honest I’ll get good things in return”. Obviously that opens you up to abuse majorly. It operates from a baseline fear/uncertainty where the only way to guarantee a good outcome is to try to force it into happening even when I have no control.
I listened to Ascension last night and I’ve realized the major reconciliation I struggle with is trying to be a fully self actualized man, but having recurring patterns in my life that make me feel like I’ve regressed to an insecure child.
But it seems like Ascension is more than enough programming right now. I don’t know what I was thinking with that custom, there were a lot of layers of things that would have caused reconciliation. To the point I’d get overwhelmed. But that’s always been me, not taking the time to take care of myself, always pushing beyond my means out of insecurity, and trying to escape some past vs heal from it.
2 things make me feel truly free. Being in nature far away enough from modern living and making music. I’ve realized aside from that I struggle a lot. They’re both amazing things, but they aren’t an answer. In some ways they’re also a form of escape. That doesn’t make them bad, but it raises the question, what are you trying to escape from?
Time spent alone is time spent understanding myself. Not on an intellectual level, but an emotional one. I realize the “real self” is also there, it’s not lost. It just gets covered up for safety and sometimes I do it so well I lose perspective. Someone had mentioned a trauma response is an intentional dulling of your personality, so there’s nothing there for people to latch onto.
I dont know if it’s me or ZP but I can feel how certain “parts” of me for lack of a better word surface and then step back. Yesterday I was feeling very bad and vulnerable at my job, so a more assertive/aggressive part stepped in to help me complete my day. It seems like my experience with ZP is becoming more aware of these parts in myself and how they interact.