Very cool!
- I seem really stable on stage two. It just seemed like I was really mellow and on an even keel today.
I haven’t seen any major insights or anything like that. It seems to be working on an emotional level like I expected.
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The first dream for stage two came pretty early in the process. When I start a new sub, I will usually have two or three dreams in quick succession at some point. Otherwise I pretty much don’t dream as far as I can tell. That seems to be my sign that the script is really starting to penetrate because I’ll often start seeing major progress right after.
It was long and involved, but what I remember is that I was in some guy’s garage, and I was trading my motorcycle (Harley Road Glide) for his bike which was of a different brand. I thought his was much cooler. It I think he said it was a Honda, but it looked like a Triumph Rocket-3 (which are awesome) For some reason I was worried that my wife, and some others wouldn’t approve. There was some other anxiety about it, and I was worried that I was making a bad move or something. I don’t recall a lot of the details. -
I’m running three loops tonight.
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Finished my loops about an hour ago. I’m having some memories come up. Sort of.
It’s more of a feeling that pervaded my later youth than an actual concrete memory, though there were memories attached to it.
It was the feeling that I’m not “the real thing”. Meaning whatever it was that I was trying to be or wanted to be. Tough guy, journalist, football player, winner in general, whatever, there was a sense that all I could do was play around on the bottom rungs of the ladder to becoming whatever it was.
I’m not sure if I thought I lacked the ability to be and do what I wanted to, or if for some reason I thought I wasn’t allowed to be. Maybe a weird combination of both.
No, there was definitely a sense of not being allowed to be, well, anything admirable. That was for other people. Better people. I’m not sure why. There’s more to that, I’m just having trouble putting it into words.
This ambiguous feeling guided my behavior on a lot of things. When I started to do something and got a clue that I could become good at it, I’d pull back. I’d start half assing it, or approach it in a disorganized manner that ensured that I wouldn’t rise above mediocracy. This despite having the native intelligence, athletic potential, looks, ect. to excel at a lot of things. That feeling caused me to choose not to excel when it could. Of course, I didn’t directly think about it that way, but I see it now.
I felt, and may still feel that success above a certain low level is simply not for me, and I acted to preserve that reality.
Looking at my history, this has continued into the recent past. -
I covered a lot of the whys of this in stage one, I don’t think this is about the whys. This is about remembering what it felt like when I started approaching success and turned aside.
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Oddly, even though I’m remembering a distressing feeling, it isn’t causing me any discomfort. I’m very detached from it.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I think stage two is starting to catch traction.
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- I mentioned last week that one of the main things I want in life was respect. Theres another.
Purpose.
What I’m doing in life at the moment seems pointless to me at the moment. I’m just existing, trying to keep myself comfortable and maybe chase a thrill or two. At the moment, that seems very inadequate to me. I am not content with what I’m “supposed to be” happy with.
Before anyone starts telling me to do fewer loops or take more rest days, I don’t need it. This is a place I need to be before I can be somewhere better.
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I think you are making milestones a habit…
These above 3 posts are awesome dude!
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Today I remembered another feeling. This one was from very early childhood. This is pretty difficult to describe, but I always find spring depressing.
This morning, I heard a type of bird that I guess is here in the spring as well as in my home state, and it brought back a specific eh, call it flavor of sadness that I felt often, especially around this time of year from very early childhood. It’s a very total feeling of hopelessness, loss, desperation that causes a physical feeling in my heart. It was a very deep feeling. It’s associated with spring and the sound of that particular bird chirping, and that’s what brought it back. I have no idea why I felt that way at the time, it wasn’t really associated with anything that happened to me. I suspect I might have been picking up on something else.
This is notable because normally, the only emotion I get a physical feeling from is anger. I also don’t usually get much nuance in emotion (remember I don’t do feelings, I’m too tough for that) but this was a very specific sadness, like no other.
Second, it didn’t bother me to feel this. I felt it, but I was just remembering feeling it. It wasn’t effecting me now, and I was able to examine it. -
Oh, yes, there IS another emotion that gives me a physical sensation, and is as intense as anger. Embarrassment. This hasn’t happened to me for at least a few years, but I used to feel intensely embarrassed when I thought about mistakes and social errors I’ve made in the past.
That came upon me just like the rage fantasies did, and it was very distressing.
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Thank you for being so descriptive @COWolfe. I’m on St1 for 2 more months, but as I’m reading you speak of St2, I’m empathizing. St2 sounds very doable.
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I have noticed this perspective. For about 2 months of DR st4 I felt uncomfortable but ok. When downs of my emotions happened, I actually felt ok.
The anger has gotten less. I think after a few months of DR st4 you’ll have a big reward.
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It’s a weird effect isn’t it? Fully feeling it but detached from it at the same time.
I’m getting a big reward now. I think. I’ll be starting stage 4 in September.
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I KNOW! I think the only way to truly know this is to actually experience it. It’s like my negative emotions are in black and white, instead of color.
The other thing is the emptiness or nothingness. It’s a peaceful or stillness rather than deficiency.
I’d say mine are in color instead of black and white. But I’m coming from a place of “I don’t DO feelings” so I’m seeing the subtitles and nuances for the first time.
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So perhaps some how Dragon adapts to what is needed to the individual. Fascinating… :insert Spock emoji here:
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HAH that is fascinating! 
Spock is awesome.
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**Stage 2 Cycle 1 Week 2**
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Possible good news from my wife’s use of Paragon. She went shopping yesterday while I did housework. The usually this causes her to get home completely exhausted, and in a horrible mood, which gets taken out on me. We had come up with a rule that she only goes to one big store in a day to keep that from happening.
This time she went to three, and came home in a very good mood. The first thing she said to me was she was amazed that she wasn’t exhausted at all and she felt really good.
This is the first sign of major improvement in her symptoms that I’ve seen since she started using Paragon. -
While I was getting ready for work today, I was complaining in my head about how much burden has been dropped on me. My wife insisted on having a kid after her diagnosis, which meant that it was completely foreseeable that she would become more and more disabled as we raised him. Then when she last lost her job, she decided to go for disability rather than try to find another one, leaving us with only my income for the gods only know how long (a year so far). She does less and less, making me do more and more.
Some time during that mental diatribe, I realized that I was deliberately making myself feel stressed and resentful because I was getting something out of it.
It’s kind of hard to describe what exactly I was getting, but it felt like some form of self aggrandizement. Like I was making myself feel like a more awesome person because all of these “unfair” burdens have been placed on me.
Maybe I’m doing it because it makes me feel like the hero of the story, and I couldn’t be that without my troubles being caused by some kind of “bad guy”.
Perhaps I’m just making excuses for why I “can’t” make things better right now. I’m honestly not sure, but the long and short of it is that I’m getting something out of making myself feel overburdened and resentful.
Damn, stage two insights are a bit harder to nail down because they start with a feeling, not with a logical story like stage one. -
My wife had one more store that she didn’t get to yesterday. She’d meant to get up and go this morning. However, (as usual) when I woke up around one PM. (It’s my first day back on and I work nights, so I try to sleep most of the day) she was snoring away.
I woke her up and she said that she could get the errand done before I had to leave at 3:30. The last time this had happened, I was almost late for work because she took so bloody long.
Granted, I leave about an hour earlier than I usually have to because traffic randomly jams up here, and it can take me an extra hour on any given day.
She arrived after I was supposed to leave again. This time I noticed that I was a lot less anxious, agitated, and angry while I waited than I was last time. -
Bonus insight tonight. The reason that the prospect of being late bothers me so much. I feel that I have to be PERFECT. Especially on the job. Any indication that I am not PERFECT bothers the hell out of me, rattles my confidence, and has me envisioning the harshest of consequences for the smallest mistake. Or at least it used to. I think there’s been some improvement there.
That’s at least part of why I failed the OJT for the job I really wanted twice. It consists more or less of doing the job while a senior person trains you and well, tells you everything you did that wasn’t PERFECT. As soon as my mistakes started to be pointed out, I started feeling like I wasn’t capable and started making more of them. It didn’t end well.
That’s why I longed for an easy job where I could at least come close to appearing PERFECT. And that’s what I eventually got.
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- wow! I am officially one quarter of the way through The Year of the Dragon Emperor. It’s seemed both longer than that, and shorter.
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Well said. I can relate to this, especially on my present job. There’s a belief that “if I’m perfect, I’ll be loveable.” But even small mistakes I brood over. When things go downhill, I only see more bad coming my way.
Thanks for being so vivid in your writings. I get it.
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Intriguing insight. Wow! There are so many things you are noticing mate! This is awesome!
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Well this was an interesting day. Our sump pump had died last week. I got our home warranty company to set an appointment to get it replaced. No problem. Unfortunately, just before I left today, the roommate noticed that the basement was starting to flood. It wasn’t bad. Yet. I called again, and they were able to get us an emergency appointment at a considerably higher price.
Now the first thought that flashed across my mind was “oh damn it, as soon as we get some money, something happens to take it away, (not all of it)”. That was immediately replaced with “wow, this happened at the right time when we could handle it, what good luck.”. And that one had more feeling behind it. -
There was a police perimeter preventing me from getting into work due to a really bad incident. I’m emergency response personnel for the government, so I can get past. What I noticed was how confident and assured my communication was with the female cop blocking the road. Very deep voice, strong eye contact attitude of talking to an equal. Which wouldn’t have been true a year ago. She had two things going for her that would have made me act nervous and low status. She was a cop, and she was Hot. I probably shouldn’t have noticed that last part given how terrible the situation was, but I did.
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- I got pretty thoughtful toward the end of my work night. I was thinking about how I used to feel about some things. It was particularly focused on my obsession with my exes, and how I used to torture myself about them.
It was weird, I was able to sense some nuance in the feeling memories that I wasn’t aware of at the time. Hard to explain, but there was some kind of appeal to feeling that way. I was feeling it by choice because at the same time it felt horrible, there was some kind of good feeling wrapped up in it. I somehow got kind of addicted to whatever that feeling was.
Feeling it again, it was tempting to go into that way of thinking and feeling again just to get more of it.
Then the thought hit me. I am through the darkness and I’m not going back into it. I’m done with that.
The thing I’ve been noticing for a while is that I was getting some kind of weird gratification out of my negative thought/emotional patterns. It wasn’t just pain. What the Fuck?
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