Decided after this washout I’m going to be experimenting with 1 day on two days off at 3 min loops. I’ve noticed once I switched to night listening and had more time to process before my next loop I felt better. But I still didn’t always feel ready for it when I listened at night. So maybe an additional day will help keep things smoother.
Definitely need more time to process ZP for myself, I don’t think the every other day really works for me even at 3 minutes. Still trying to figure this out
Been in a cycle of work->eat->sleep and it’s just been rough on me. Too mentally worn down to engage in things. I can’t describe it but it’s like I can’t hold sustained attention without feeling agitated or feeling stressed. Like I really need to push to get things done and it’s exhausting. Not a natural flow to things at all.
Trying to work on some music this weekend. Still have to figure out my workflow with the MPC so that’s been daunting. I’ve hit so many walls in the past with music making and projects that go nowhere except my graveyard. It can be disheartening seeing a good idea never reach completion.
1 more day on this washout. I feel like I’m experiencing a lot of old mindsets. Biggest frustration is this fog I can’t see through for my future. And during this time I’m doing my best not to kick myself when I’m already down, but goddamn is it hard. The worst part of it is part of the motivation for not doing it just stems from the insecurity of “oh here he goes again with the same tired old shit”. But if the motivation is coming from a place of insecurity and what people think about me then that means a lot of this isn’t rooted in compassion. But that’s the whole point of this, to stop beating myself up so I feel better not to avoid some shame about experiencing emotions.
Everything I’ve ever struggled with in life feels so trivial, like I could easily shake it off if I wanted to. But that’s never been the case. And that haunts me in everything I do.
When everyone says to go inside and face things to overcome them, I can’t do that. I get swallowed up and lost. That’s why I don’t like healing subs. Before I started subclub I spent a lot of time trying to heal. A lot. And what I’ve learned is that I’m better off not taking an incredibly introspective dive into my own head. It’s a labyrinth with not a lot of payoff. I get worse, I destabilize, I make bad decisions. This isn’t a knock on these healing subs, I’m just saying for me at this point in time they have a high likelihood of making things worse for me.
Process over outcome.
Journey over destination.
You have been making tons of progress.
Hang in there.
Always appreciate the support. It means a lot, you have no idea.
sometimes my senses and my mind are just not working very well.
I’m looking at the stereogram thing
but, nope, no image is popping out.
All I see is static.
Sometimes I have to tell myself, just walk through it, give it a go. I don’t see anything, but there’s something there.
It’s not that things really are impossible, it’s just that I’m in a space where I can’t see possibility very clearly.
So I just try to walk through it
See if it works out anyway.
That’s what I’m doing today.
I go through that a lot. Some days my ability to keep going is better than others. I remind myself it’s how I feel now in this moment, but it’s not a truth. It’s really easy to take that feeling, have it trigger old memories and wounds, and then have it loop around and applied to all future situations. Fi-Se loop I think for MBTI terms? Been a while since I’ve dug into that.
But anyway that’s why this forum is important to me. A lot of good people on here to help balance those viewpoints. Sometimes I do think without sufficient healthy early life experiences it can be harder to find that sort of life raft in a deep ocean of turmoil on your own. But once a new foundation is set it gets easier. It’s just building that foundation, which I’m trying to do.
This is a powerful observation.
I’m back on my custom tomorrow. But to be honest I’m going to stay off of it a bit longer to see if I “stabilize” more. The tricky part for me with these subs is sometimes they can pull me out of recon swing where I’m bad. But sometimes it’s better to rest. I pretty much can’t identify when one is needed over the other. I guess an analogy would be like going to a friend for advice when you’re open vs a friend lending their opinion without your consent and having it kind of get you angry. That second one I’m starting to realize is what I do to myself when I adhere to a strict schedule vs adjusting based on my internal state.
As stuff processes in my head I’m gaining more insight into where I’m going wrong with these subs.
I stack my life with a lot of shoulds. I’ve got a mountain of shoulds. All those should statements have a lot of conditional self worth behind them.
A lesson I’m STILL learning. My brain runs different. It just does and it always has. This is the ADHD. I’m all for challenging limitations, but this is one area where I cause myself more harm than good. My entire life has been about battling to be “normal” in brain function. Things people don’t think twice about can be like a tiny dagger in my heart when someone wants to point it out or I’m reminded how other people don’t do this stuff. I live with constant reminders every day of my life how I don’t stack up with basic every day functioning compared to others. The sheer amount of energy I expend every day trying to uphold some neurotypical standard just so I can feel like I have worth is not cool.
So maybe I do need less exposure with zp, maybe my brain needs more time to process, maybe I need to be easier on myself, maybe playing 3 minutes only is absolutely necessary for me. What I’ve realized is all of this sublminal input is learning and when it’s overdone or I feel like I’m given too much it takes me back to my school years and the pain and struggle I had with that. I don’t need to keep up, there’s nobody dictating how fast or how much I need to be cramming for. I have 100% control over what I choose to give myself to work with, so why the hell would I overwhelm myself intentionally? Well again because I have a lot of emotional wounds growing up in a world where the message relayed to me is I’m not trying hard enough.
This is a newfound promise to myself to run these subs with the intention of helping myself, not meeting some metric, not trying to keep up with others, and not trying to prove my worth. I won’t pressure myself into making things harder for myself anymore. And you know, maybe I’m not as bad as I think I am. Maybe I’m just taking all that outside criticism and unfairly tying it to my own self worth as an individual.
Screwed up so bad yesterday. Had a huge iced coffee and then later in the day a can of monster. Absolutely wrecked me today and then I decided to have 2 cups of coffee this morning which compounded everything. A small burst of energy to get things done is not worth the cascading repercussions. Along with this I’m going to be more strict about reaching for coffee to get things done at work. No more of that. If I can’t get things done in my current state that means my body needs to ramp down in intensity, not up. Throwing myself on this full throttle override path is gonna hurt me. Need more self compassion on my rougher days of functioning.
Having said that still didn’t listen to my custom today, still letting this ride. I feel more emotional today, but in a way where they are flowing if that makes any sense. A few days ago it was just this dense brick of overwhelm, anxiety, fear, panic, and feeling frozen.
Been debating if I should go back to a healing focused sub, despite my reservations about it. But idk, it feels like this combo is working in a way where I am healing from stuff. Sure there’s a lot of internal pain there, but I think a lot of that is held in place because of the beliefs I’ve taken on over the years. I think I’ll keep sticking with this, just making sure I’m being very very mindful of how much input I get and my own internal state.
Going through old songs of mine. Some of these I like a lot more than my newer stuff. Some of my newer stuff is too restrained, it’s trying too hard to be someone else and it loses the whole idea of music which is to emotionally resonate in a way.
In a lot of ways I was more confident and creative when I didn’t know anything about music production because I trusted my intuition more. Nowadays I’ve lost attachment to that and need to find it again. Funny how that works.
I’m wondering if you’re prone to worry and nervousness, perhaps caffeine might make those feelings worse.
So it’s not actually while I’m under the influence of caffeine which is the interesting part. Caffeine actually calms my brain, I can think more clearly, I even manage my emotional state better. It’s unfortunately a case of what goes up must come down. The rebound effect of what I believe to be my neurotransmitters trying to regulate themselves throws everything out of wack. I just can’t have it at all for that reason. But I have moments of weakness where I just want to feel like I’m on top of everything and organized so I drink it.
You might benefit from working with somatic therapeutic modalities.
Seems like it would make good use of a talent that you already have.
Here is one that I know is good:
I was trying to find a therapist that specialized in this but it was so damn difficult. I’m very interested in somatic experiencing. Thanks for the link.
I still can’t believe how much recon and processing I’m going through even after 7 days now of no exposure. I legitimately feel like I might not have been processing any of this. Right now it’s manageable, but if I ran a loop today I know it would kick me over into unmanageable territory.
More importantly the effect of the modules in my custom are way way more obvious. And I feel like I’m internalizing the principles of them more. For example I have rogue in my custom and that thing is incredibly liberating. I’m feeling some profound not caring what others think energy. I’m not saying I’m full of confidence, but I can feel some kind of buildup to it.
Also feeling more inspired for music. Next step would be getting my workspace more organized so everything I need is right in front of me.
Overall just feeling more hopeful and more centered in my own desires. Not being swayed by those negative opinions on stuff.
I think where I’m really struggling right now is being ok with resting. This past week I haven’t touched anything music related. I was trying to read a manual but I was having trouble focusing. But I feel terrible about it. I feel terrible that my days have been work, eat, sleep, repeat. But right now I’m struggling to tackle anything else. My apartment is still a mess too from when I moved in. Last weekend I completely failed to clean like I had intended.
I feel guilty about everything that doesn’t bring me closer to my goals. But I need some kind of rest or calm place. I’m thinking about running Sanguine more because a lot of this restless energy comes from not feeling like I can relax because my life isn’t together and I need to do more to prevent something bad from happening. That’s really how I feel a lot, unsettled like the rug is gonna be pulled out from underneath me any second.
What holds me back the most?
I’m really annoyed with myself because I affirm not doing this all day and then going about my day I just get sucked into it all. I only catch it after the fact which doesn’t help because the damage is already done
I do it to myself but it’s so goddamn automatic and I don’t know how to stop it other than to keep working on myself.
You’re like Hercules with low self-esteem. Doing heroic tasks and not acknowledging them. One day you’ll realize and acknowledge just how much you’ve actually done. Already done.
People: “Hercules, you literally just raised a boulder above your head.”
Hercules: “Sure; but I’m supposed to be able to move a mountain!”
