**Stage 4 Cycle 2 Week 8**
**AFTER ACTION REPORT **
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That’s it. I’ve stuck with DE for a full year, and while it doesn’t seem like it to me all the time because today seems much like yesterday when I’m in the story.
Thank You to all @RVconsultant, @Trader, @subliminalguy, and everyone else who has helped me by discussing things on here so intelligently. You’ve helped make it an amazing year for me and helped me to go out of it a much stronger person than I went into it. -
These are the results that stood out. I may add more as they occur to me.
Noted effects of DE
- Discipline. I managed to stick with the program for an entire year, get on a workout program that I’ve stuck to religiously since May, and start practicing answering oral board questions to shore up a weak point.
- Greatly reduced anxiety. Both the general sense of dread that something bad was going to happen that I used to live with all the time, and in specific situations such as crowds.
- More patience.
- Less obsessed with making a career change or solutions to financial problems happen NOW, NOW, NOW. I’m willing to take the time and put in the work.
- More quietly hopeful about the future instead of having forced excitement about it.
- Managed to keep things on the rails financially despite extreme difficulty.
- More respect from and less conflict with the wife.
- I have lost that weird attraction I had for feeling sad, depressed, and melancholy.
- My PMO compulsion faded out throughout the year and has been completely gone for the last month or so.
- I have a pretty complete understanding of where my mental problems came from and how they work.
- People at work directly express respect for me.
- I am completely over ex #3. When I think of her, it’s without pain or a sense of loss. Matter of fact I’m a little smug about it. She’s the one who missed out on something great.
- I have no more bitter resentment of ex#4. When I think of her its about how I’d have gone about setting boundaries with her and either avoiding the relationship or ending it in the best way when I figured out it was unhealthy.
- I think I have a lot of value now. I think in terms of wether things or people are good enough for me, rather than wishing I was good enough for them.
- I now see myself as responsible for and in control of my life circumstances.
- I am no longer overcome with uncontrollable and upsetting negative visualizations of things going wrong. At all, ever. I don’t remember the last time that happened. Considering how much that used to happen, that’s amazing.
- Actual self belief. I believe that I am capable of having and doing a lot of the things that I’ve always wanted to, but deep down thought I couldn’t. The belief goes as deep as introspection allows me to look.
- Elimination of the “negator” effect. When I thought about things I wanted or wanted to accomplish or have in a way that might help it manifest, I’d have an immediate thought that it was just fantasy. As far as I can tell, that’s gone.
- Had repeated vivid visualizations of certain key moments in my past that had profound effects on both the course of my life, and my mentality. In these I reacted the way I “should have” until I almost remember it that way. I think this is a way of erasing the belief that I’m a weak person that my actual actions reinforced, and making sure that the lessons learned from the events are fully integrated.
- One of the main things that happened quietly during the year is that my, call it, addiction to mental self torture faded away.
- I realized that since I left my parents homes, almost all of the mental angst and anguish that I’ve experienced was generated in my own head. I also realized that I have the option not to do that to myself.
- I figured out that a lot of my (and everyone else’s) life is shaped by the story I’ve been telling myself. More importantly, the archetype that I’ve written the “me” character around. Throughout my life I’ve cast myself as the tortured tragic hero. I had to cause myself a lot of mental pain to play that role. I also now know that with that history I can turn my archetype into the victorious hero who has been through the torture, strengthened himself, and come out the other side as an unstoppable force. And also a wiser, mature man worthy of guiding others through the Storm. That archetype is a much better thing to be. They get respect and the accolades that they’ve earned, they have a place of honor in society and can enjoy physical and financial rewards. Oh yeah, they get laid like no other. It’s all a matter of your subconscious accepting you in that role.
- Come to think about it, DR revealed the entire process that was causing all of my mental blocks, problems, and self torment. It happened step by step as I worked through the stages. In short, my thoughts were consistent with what I was told and experienced in childhood. That caused me to feel various negative emotional states. That made me think those same kind of thoughts more and feel the emotions more. Eventually I became so used to those emotional states that i didn’t know how to function without them. This works exactly like a chemical addiction. My subconscious mind did whatever it took to get the emotions that it thought it needed including directing my actions to screw me up and keep me from succeeding.
- The cycle above really seems to be broken.
- One of the most important realizations I had was that a lot of my issues with self image were caused by my parents treating me like crap as a child. That messes a lot of people up, but the key thing I had to get through my head to get past it was that they were too mentally wrecked to love or treat me properly. They were that way before I was born, so none of that reflects on me at all.
- I got a really good look at what was really happening with my early love life. I had a repeated cycle there. I would get into a relationship, she’d end it, and I’d desperately Pine after her for an embarrassing amount of time. I saw that what was going on there was that I was afraid that her dumping me meant that I was unworthy, and it had nothing to do with the girl at all.
