EHPRA Journal

[Why So Serious?]

The urge to listen to E2 today is strong, but I'm still limiting myself to two hours. So far I'm feeling a lot better. There's definitely a strong desire to move past this stuff, whatever it is but I've come to accept that I can only do so much.

Looking back on how much I pushed myself to listen I saw clear signs that I ignored that I should have cut back. One was my obsessiveness grew, there's a certain neuroticism that I fall into when I'm overstimulated. Two, was my inability to focus which was probably due to the anxiety. And three was trouble dealing with crowds or large amounts of people. Being a cashier at a store really made this part suck for me because the constant interaction kept that fight or flight response on.

I don't want to say I'm a messed up person, but I think compared to the average person I've got a lot of deeper stuff going on than I thought. Something really odd happened to me the other day. There was a lot of talk about kids going back to school and I got this sinking feeling in my gut. It's like I was having flashbacks to being a kid and going to school and it was miserable for me. The anxiety every day before the bus came was terrible. I thought to myself, if something as simple as this developed an enormous amount of fear in me then there is probably a ton of other stuff I'm not even consciously aware of.

I have been stuck in this exact same over stimulated state for almost two whole weeks now. It's crazy that you experienced it around the same time as I discovered running E2. As of now the only thing that truly has helped me has been to stop running E2 altogether. But I'm worried that switching to another sub will detract from my overall emotional healing, even though I feel like running e2 is somewhat driving me insane.

How many days overall have you been running E2 as of now?

Ah, I lost track haha. I think I might be in about 7 months now. I started it as soon as it came out.

I've been jumping back and forth with the less hours thing. I can't tell what's me avoiding stuff vs needing to push past it. I think it's just resistance. The thing with E2 is, it's so powerful I think when you do resist it, it takes up a lot of energy compared to earlier subs. So I think that overstimulated state is just your fight or flight response in overdrive because you're fighting the sub all the time. I've started to realize it's not what E2 brings up that's been distressing people, but more likely their reluctance to following the instructions given to the subconscious mind to let go of whatever it is and move on. Basically fear, so you get stuck in this weird limbo between not really being your old self and not feeling completely ok with transitioning to the new self.

How many hours were listening before you cut back to 2 hrs. I'm still doing the usual 8-10. I was going to take a break at the end of this month but I may taking one sooner than I thought or at least cut back on the hours.

Yeah about 8-10 hours was what I stuck to. I just went back to it though. I don't know but something inside me tells me I should stick with 8-10 hours. Do you listen during the day or at night? Sometimes I give myself a night of not listening to the subliminal, just so I can reach a deeper state of sleep that I probably need.

I listen at night. Sometimes during the day as well.
I'm always tired, have been for years, but maybe a break at night might help a little.