EIP and Max learning, achieving some goals

[mat422]

Thought I had it figured out. Not so much. I've learned that there is still some resistance to letting go of stuff. It's funny because I did a lot of meditation in the past. Everything I've read has said once you fully accept an emotion you can let it go. I haven't found this to be true. You can completely accept an emotion, immerse yourself in it, remove your resistance to it, but there can still be a reluctance to actually let it go. Merely accepting an emotion doesn't guarantee its release. And this is a huge mistake I've made in the past because I'd end up spending way too much time stuck. I'll have moments where I'll let go of something and then I feel like I shouldn't, like I still need it. It's weird, it's almost like I'm an emotional hoarder.

I guess when it boils down to it there's a lot of wrong information around. When people claim you can't remove emotional pain, only accept it and make peace with it. To me that's a limiting belief because why shouldn't you be able to remove emotional pain? Your mind created it in the first place. Just makes me realize even more how advanced these subliminals are and how out of step most people are with what can be done to improve their lives.

[mat422]

Last post for a while, for real. I've realized I post on here sometimes to convince myself of stuff that isn't even really that much of a breakthrough. I just end up revisiting what I said and feeling the need to think about it. It does no good for me. I don't know what I'm doing. I like to think I know because again, control. I'm terrified of uncertainty. I'm also terrified of letting anybody know the real me, which I think is part of my social anxiety.

I try to remain positive, but there's a fine line between being positive vs shaming yourself for experiencing what you perceive to be negative feelings. I don't know where this came from. My parents were great, a little rough around the edges but nobody is perfect. Nobody told me I had to be perfect, I put this on myself. So I can't even get angry at people with faults who get the most out of life.

I've been through so much self help I feel like I've developed a pathological fear of negative beliefs. Sometimes I feel like I have a self loathing part of myself that I try to change, but it's always just a cover up. Even when I attempt to do stuff to better myself there's always a nagging voice in the back of my head that says I don't deserve it. I notice it makes me critical of others and I don't want to be like that, but I recognize it's just a reflection of me.

Here's the thing, I've been under the assumption that my thoughts are what cause my distressed nature. And to some degree it's true. But negative thoughts aren't created in a vacuum. A happy positive person could call themselves a failure and worthless, but if they feel good enough about themselves they'll laugh about those things. Those thoughts only hurt if you already carry those beliefs inside. Pretending they don't resonate with some part of me just does more harm than good because I just bury it deeper down in my psyche. And I think that's the dark part of me I don't want others to see and why I push away others or fear intimacy.

Sorry to get so real here. But I had to unload. I always feel like people don't like negativity, so they shun it in others. It just festers up inside and slowly eats away at you. Sometimes I grasp for the positive way too much on this forum because I'm trying to avoid the disappointment of still spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. I'm not calling it quits, I'm not resigning myself to a lifetime of misery, but I can't stand pretending like things are going better than they actually are. That's part of healing for me I guess.

[jbdefence]

Last post for a while, for real. I've realized I post on here sometimes to convince myself of stuff that isn't even really that much of a breakthrough. I just end up revisiting what I said and feeling the need to think about it. It does no good for me. I don't know what I'm doing. I like to think I know because again, control. I'm terrified of uncertainty. I'm also terrified of letting anybody know the real me, which I think is part of my social anxiety.

I try to remain positive, but there's a fine line between being positive vs shaming yourself for experiencing what you perceive to be negative feelings. I don't know where this came from. My parents were great, a little rough around the edges but nobody is perfect. Nobody told me I had to be perfect, I put this on myself. So I can't even get angry at people with faults who get the most out of life.

I've been through so much self help I feel like I've developed a pathological fear of negative beliefs. Sometimes I feel like I have a self loathing part of myself that I try to change, but it's always just a cover up. Even when I attempt to do stuff to better myself there's always a nagging voice in the back of my head that says I don't deserve it. I notice it makes me critical of others and I don't want to be like that, but I recognize it's just a reflection of me.

Here's the thing, I've been under the assumption that my thoughts are what cause my distressed nature. And to some degree it's true. But negative thoughts aren't created in a vacuum. A happy positive person could call themselves a failure and worthless, but if they feel good enough about themselves they'll laugh about those things. Those thoughts only hurt if you already carry those beliefs inside. Pretending they don't resonate with some part of me just does more harm than good because I just bury it deeper down in my psyche. And I think that's the dark part of me I don't want others to see and why I push away others or fear intimacy.

Sorry to get so real here. But I had to unload. I always feel like people don't like negativity, so they shun it in others. It just festers up inside and slowly eats away at you. Sometimes I grasp for the positive way too much on this forum because I'm trying to avoid the disappointment of still spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. I'm not calling it quits, I'm not resigning myself to a lifetime of misery, but I can't stand pretending like things are going better than they actually are. That's part of healing for me I guess.

there is no better place to unload than in a journale, that's why we have them so don't be sorry for anything you say in it. your emotions will change everyday and writing them down and re reading them later on like you have been doing will allow you to process what going on much more accurately for yourself and like you said your still finding out new things about yourself and getting to the core of some of the issues. keep it up mate !

[mat422]

Last post for a while, for real. I've realized I post on here sometimes to convince myself of stuff that isn't even really that much of a breakthrough. I just end up revisiting what I said and feeling the need to think about it. It does no good for me. I don't know what I'm doing. I like to think I know because again, control. I'm terrified of uncertainty. I'm also terrified of letting anybody know the real me, which I think is part of my social anxiety.

I try to remain positive, but there's a fine line between being positive vs shaming yourself for experiencing what you perceive to be negative feelings. I don't know where this came from. My parents were great, a little rough around the edges but nobody is perfect. Nobody told me I had to be perfect, I put this on myself. So I can't even get angry at people with faults who get the most out of life.

I've been through so much self help I feel like I've developed a pathological fear of negative beliefs. Sometimes I feel like I have a self loathing part of myself that I try to change, but it's always just a cover up. Even when I attempt to do stuff to better myself there's always a nagging voice in the back of my head that says I don't deserve it. I notice it makes me critical of others and I don't want to be like that, but I recognize it's just a reflection of me.

Here's the thing, I've been under the assumption that my thoughts are what cause my distressed nature. And to some degree it's true. But negative thoughts aren't created in a vacuum. A happy positive person could call themselves a failure and worthless, but if they feel good enough about themselves they'll laugh about those things. Those thoughts only hurt if you already carry those beliefs inside. Pretending they don't resonate with some part of me just does more harm than good because I just bury it deeper down in my psyche. And I think that's the dark part of me I don't want others to see and why I push away others or fear intimacy.

Sorry to get so real here. But I had to unload. I always feel like people don't like negativity, so they shun it in others. It just festers up inside and slowly eats away at you. Sometimes I grasp for the positive way too much on this forum because I'm trying to avoid the disappointment of still spinning my wheels and getting nowhere. I'm not calling it quits, I'm not resigning myself to a lifetime of misery, but I can't stand pretending like things are going better than they actually are. That's part of healing for me I guess.

there is no better place to unload than in a journale, that's why we have them so don't be sorry for anything you say in it. your emotions will change everyday and writing them down and re reading them later on like you have been doing will allow you to process what going on much more accurately for yourself and like you said your still finding out new things about yourself and getting to the core of some of the issues. keep it up mate !

Thanks man, I needed that.

[mat422]

After taking a break for a couple of days to collect my thoughts I've realized there's a lot that goes on underneath the conscious mind. And sometimes it's to the point where I'm not even aware of it.

Basically that means that I have to be brutally honest with myself, even if it hurts. I can't keep living in denial of the very real issues that hold me back. It feels good to believe that everything is going well, but when that delusion is shattered, it's a really jarring wake up call.

The truth is I've been watching my life from third person for a while now. And I think that's just due to the enormous amount of stress I'm under and I've never had a healthy way of coping with it. I don't know how to describe it other than you live your life, but there's a subtle feeling that the life you live isn't real. In the back of your head you think, "One day things will be fine and I won't have to worry anymore", but you become further and further detached until you don't understand what it means to live. The problem is that I numbed out the anxiety and stress, but I also detached from my emotions a lot. Essentially I detached from myself as a person. When you do that it's almost like you lose your understanding of what you're supposed to be doing on this planet. Everything seems meaningless because there is no more connection. You can't target negative emotions exclusively, if you blunt yourself emotionally, it applies to everything. The biggest problem with this is outwardly it will look like you're productive or holding it together, but inside it's like your soul is dying.

I don't know if anyone has done research on Enneagram personality types, but I found out recently that I'm an Enneagram 9. And I was reading up on it and I encountered a paragraph that described me perfectly.

Nines demonstrate the universal temptation to ignore the disturbing aspects of life and to seek some degree of peace and comfort by “numbing out.” They respond to pain and suffering by attempting to live in a state of premature peacefulness, whether it is in a state of false spiritual attainment, or in more gross denial. More than any other type, Nines demonstrate the tendency to run away from the paradoxes and tensions of life by attempting to transcend them or by seeking to find simple and painless solutions to their problems.

I know this is really accurate because when I was around 16 I lived in that state of false spiritual attainment for a while. The irony is that spirituality is seen as this light sort of thing, but the reality was I was in the darkest times of my life at that age. I didn't transcend anything. Also for as long as I can remember I've valued peace and tranquility, internally and externally. The problem is when I ran into issues or problems I wouldn't address the problems and instead I'd just kind of assert this fake inner peace on myself and hope things resolved themselves. Obviously it didn't work. Also this insistence on everything needing to be peaceful and tranquil has caused me to be averse to any potential challenges or frustrations as they endangered that false sense of peace. So naturally there were aspects of my emotions I deemed "wrong" which is not healthy at all.

All in all I've developed a highly dysfunctional way of managing my emotions and perceptions of my own life over the years that I need to unlearn. Even writing this all out I feel like part of me is saying I'm exaggerating, but that's just my defense mechanism kicking in and trying to sweep it all under the rug.

[mat422]

I think I've realized where I might be going wrong. This might get a little long, I'm not sure I'm kind of just free writing here. Anyway with these subliminals old stuff is brought to the surface to be released. But there's no way to really tell whats old vs new. So I'd end up with all these feelings of self loathing and feeling like a failure and apply it to my current situation instead of recognizing it's stuff from the past.

I do this weird thing. I don't know what it is. But whenever I go to change something it feels like a lie, like I'm being inauthentic. As if being depressed and anxious is how I should be. That's a limiting belief that's kept me tethered to my problems. Then I'll kind of "meditate" to address the issues. I put meditate in quotes because I've realized it's not meditation, it's rumination. More specifically it's subconscious rumination because I don't even realize the thoughts that are going through my head. But basically what happens is I go through in my head everything wrong in my life and everything that will go wrong and how awful it is for me. That's what feels natural to me because I've done it for so many years. The problem is I think natural = truth. The fact that thinking positively and focusing on what I want seems awkward and foreign makes me feel like it's all just lies.

But there is no inherent truth in my depressed and anxious state. There's just not. Which means that being positive and getting what I want can't be lies or wrong because it's just as subjective as my depressed and anxious state. Freedom to choose never occurred to me and I think it's because I was so wrapped up in my emotions and taking those as the truth instead of questioning how I felt. So my thought process was "I feel like a failure, therefore I am a failure". And that was that. Now any attempts or evidence that I wasn't a failure were immediately dismissed because that feeling was the ultimate truth.

I've realized that it's kind of like sailing a boat. Your conscious mind adjusts the sail and navigates. The subconscious could be perceived as the wind. Sometimes it's carrying you in the right direction, but sometimes it blows you off course. If you were sailing a boat you wouldn't tell yourself that you should just let the wind carry you into the jagged rock face you're about to hit. You'd adjust the sail and follow your course. Same thing with the mind. When the subconscious pops up and makes you feel bad, you calmly redirect your mind. It's not suppression, but more like redirection. Ideally your want your subconscious to be in alignment with your conscious, but until you get to that point it's important to always question what you believe. If you don't you'll just be pulled along by the subconscious and possibly engage in self defeating behaviors.

My biggest mistake was thinking I could go on autopilot and just let the subliminal take care of everything. It may not be true for others, but for me there are a lot of defense mechanisms and resistant behaviors that HAVE to be kept in check by my conscious mind. I wrongly assumed that my subconscious had all the power and conscious intervention was pointless, which isn't true.

[mat422]

So two parts to this post. First I want to talk about gut feelings vs conditioned responses. I'm a believer in following your gut. But sometimes it's hard to discern the two. I've realized in the past when I thought I was following my gut it was really just past conditioning causing me to avoid something. In my last post where I said the subconscious needs to be directed, it has some truth. But the subconscious also knows a great deal about what's right for you. Intuition is a powerful thing and I'm attempting to calibrate it more after years of ignoring it in favor of doing what was "right".

Second. I was reading Reality Transurfing and the subject of importance popped up. Basically when you apply too much importance to something, balanced forces cause the opposite reaction. It got me thinking about the mixed results from everyone in this forum. From my observation it seems like the individuals who listen to the subs with an attitude of "We'll see what happens" have greater results. As compared to those who have more invested in the sub working. Me included. It seems the key to achieving results is to detach from the importance of the outcome and allow it to happen instead of coming from a place of forcing it to happen.

More specifically the idea of resistance. I notice a lot of people here deal with that. I'm finding that decreasing the importance you place on resistance makes it fade away. So when it pops up, instead of focusing on how to remove it, how much it sucks, how it's holding you back, etc. just let go and allow the subliminal to work. The more you focus on it, the more it will grow, trust me on this one. If you just let go and decrease your focus, it will fade away in time. But I want to emphasize this isn't about suppressing it or avoiding it, it's about giving it less focus. You allow it to be there, but it no longer holds as much importance as it once did.

I don't know how valid the authors theory on balanced forces are, but it makes sense. Give it a try.

[mat422]

Went to a small get together the other night. There was some alcohol involved. I had about 3 ciders then called it quits. I've realized in the past I'd push myself to get drunk. Not gonna lie, I like being drunk. I like that I'll say whatever is on my mind and usually be able to build connections better with people around me. But I decided I'm not gonna do that anymore. Maybe if alcohol didn't make me feel like complete garbage, but the tradeoff isn't worth it. A really fun night and then a week of bad depression isn't worth it.

I'd rather actually get to a place where I have that ease of conversation without using alcohol as a crutch.

Also random thing that's been bugging me. I never feel like I retain information. I don't know if I really don't or I'm just anxious that I'll forget it. I used to have this problem when I was younger and had to study for tests. I'd memorize stuff until I could get it down perfectly. Then I'd go back and study everything again just in case. But I'd do that throughout the rest of the night every time I had the slight worry that I'd forget. It happens to me with books now. I'll read something and feel like I didn't really understand it or that I need to read it more and just go back and forth.

[mat422]

I wish I didn't have anxiety anymore. It just makes everything needlessly complicated. I've learned the worst thing you can do for any emotional problem is attempt to fight it or overcome it through willpower. It just causes more trouble. In my case whenever I put myself in anxiety provoking situations to overcome my anxiety there's no resolution really. It's like I think that once I do this it'll be like a stepping stone and I'll get better. But it's more like I still want to get the hell out of there and I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it. So my body is carrying out the task or whatever and my mind is just looking to escape at the nearest opportunity. There's this lack of unity between my subconscious and conscious mind and I can feel it very strongly. This is what upsets me the most. A lot of people struggle with anxiety yet live lives that seem good on the outside. There's just way too much focus on the outside as a measure of progress in a persons development. To the point where there's a profound misunderstanding between coping and actually living life.

I guess today is one of those nothing has changed days. Probably hit a raw nerve with the sub and now it needs to be released. I'm just gonna ride it out, do my best, and not dwell on it. Hopefully tomorrow is better.

[mat422]

I noticed something with the EPRHA subliminal for me. It brings up some strong emotions at times, well actually a lot of the time. I thought it was resistance at first, so I ignored it. But then I realized it's actually all my suppressed emotions and negative beliefs coming to the surface. I also attempt to control this emotional release which blocks the natural path it should take. I think part of my problem with this sub is stuff comes up, but I don't allow myself to release it because there's some beliefs in my head about openly expressing emotion. Even if it's not outward or apparent to others, I still feel incredibly vulnerable. It probably stems back from some childhood stuff where my emotions were invalidated.

I think there's a mechanism for release using these subliminals. But in my case it gets stuck. Due to guilt or shame. I can't know for certain, but I've noticed I tend to be very uncomfortable with my emotions.

On that note I've been running this sub for 11 months now. Which is a lot of time. In that time I've made some changes and my life feels like it jumped onto a different track so to speak. But there are still some things like social anxiety and depression that still get to me. And I've recently stopped beating myself up for not overcoming these problems sooner. I'd have a bad habit of wanting to change so bad that I'd ignore how I really felt and try to convince myself I was further along because it made me feel like less of a failure. But I realized that was a step back because then I pushed my beliefs and feelings down further which made them harder to process.

I think honesty is important when it comes to self change. If you hold a belief deep down that you aren't good enough and refuse to recognize it, it'll haunt you. You can tell yourself to let it go, not believe it, focus on the positive, etc. as much as you want. But I think the fact remains when a negative belief is gone it's gone. If there's any doubt or hesitation then most likely there is still stuff to be cleared out and it's better to acknowledge that than hold onto the idea that you no longer have it. It's not always pleasant, especially when you realize you've been running a subliminal for close to a year and those things still linger, but it beats being ignorant to it and subconsciously acting out self sabotaging behaviors.

[mat422]

So after that post I've been experimenting with the lefkoe method. Originally the process didn't work for me. But he redesigned it for more kinesthetic people and it finally made an impact for me. For those that don't know it's a method to remove limiting beliefs. And it's easy. To the point where you'll question if it really could make that profound of an impact but it does.

The most valuable thing I got from it was that feelings are not a sign of an ultimate truth. But I understand it from more than a logical viewpoint. You see I'm a feelings oriented person. I base my decisions on feelings. If you try and logically tell me the why's of something it won't persuade me if my feelings hold a differing view. In the case of not feeling good enough about myself or feeling worthless, you can't point out all my good traits, all the good stuff I've done, any achievements I've made, the progress I've made, nothing, NONE of that will make any amount of difference on how I feel if I've decided in my head that that is what I'm feeling. The only thing that can break me out of a feeling is the realization that it's only one of thousands of different interpretations. Which means even though it feels like the absolute truth, it's not. Because if I had experienced things differently in the past I would be holding different feelings which means, that one feeling cannot possibly hold the truth.

Which brings me to my next topic. The importance of realizing that past experiences and feelings can cause me to think I know something when I don't. For example.

Change is hard. It's only hard because I continue to believe it is hard. There are plenty of others out there that easily change, which means I'm capable too.

I have to experience painful emotions fully before I can release them, NOPE. That may have been my experience in the past but who's to say it's not possible to fully release negative emotions pain free and without resistance?

I'm a resistant person and subliminals aren't tolerated by my subconscious well. Again, only because I feel I'm resistant. There's literally nothing else except a feeling that I am a resistant person. So who's to say that can't change?

I've lived within the confines of a limited reality because I assumed I knew how things worked. And in that assumption I cut off the possibilities and limited my mind.

Unfortunately there's gonna be more individuals like me who have trouble with the subliminals. And it's not the subliminals themselves that cause the problem. It's the stubbornness of a mind that holds the belief that feelings can hold some ultimate truth. I know Shannon said these subs work without believing in them, but trust me if someone like me holds the feeling that nothing they do will make a positive impact, it's gonna be really hard for them to accept ANY change.

If there was some way to condense this knowledge into a sub I believe it could open the doors for people of my personality type. But it also seems kind of dangerous if you tell the subconscious mind that feelings aren't an ultimate truth as that would be taken way too literally.

[mat422]

Had a little tug of war in my mind today. I've been reading more on the Lefkoe blog and it's shaking up my perspective. Essentially he believes it is better to not have any beliefs. In the end all beliefs are just meanings we tie to events. So even in the case of positive beliefs you still aren't seeing an inherent truth. For a while this made me think about discontinuing the subliminals. The more I thought about it the more I realized positive beliefs don't hold any more weight than negative, therefore subliminals would be pointless.

But then I realized he's operating from the belief that reality is this solid unshakable thing and we live within it and it's our meanings that shape our perspective of it. I come from the reality creation perspective where your subconscious acts as your own personal projector for life events you encounter. Therefore it's beneficial for me to continue to directly program my subconscious mind.

It's hard to know how exactly the world works. But I've always been on the side of things being more than they seem. Open to possibilities like different planes of reality and such. I know the subconscious is powerful. Way more than the conscious mind. But that's not something I can quantify, it's only more of an experience.

In the end I have to think for myself and question everything. I questioned these subliminals for a while. I started seeing them as something outside myself and I should be able to do all this stuff on my own. It's only my limiting beliefs holding me back. But the funny thing about limiting beliefs is they aren't always something you can dismiss through conscious intervention alone. And sometimes the way the mind works isn't how we consciously believe it to work. It's like sitting in your car and thinking if you just changed your beliefs surrounding the car it could fly. But your beliefs have no effect on the physical structure of the car and how it operates. It's the same for the human mind and body/energy, it operates a certain way and it's better to work with it than against it trying to do things instead of expending excess energy trying to circumvent that.

[mat422]

Today's lesson was that my subconscious mind is me. Simple and obvious, but often overlooked. A lot of the time I treat it as the enemy. And I do this because it contains all the things about myself that I refuse to acknowledge. I want to be confident, I want to be happy, and I want to like myself. But there are still emotional wounds within me that need to be confronted face to face. And I need to see these things and realize I'm not less of a a person for having those vulnerable emotions. This is why my mind goes crazy and bounces around ideas of how to get the subliminal to work faster or with less actual emotional intimacy. It's because I'm not comfortable with the things that are brought up and I just want to skip to the part where I'm all good and happy. But denying those parts of myself is what keeps me stuck in the same loop of resisting the changes being brought about.

That being said I think my personality type definitely makes it harder to remove negative beliefs about myself. I'd say beliefs are formed from things that give us emotional impact. The more sensitive you are, like I am, the more of an impact the belief has. The more of a strong hold it has in your mind. Unfortunately there was a lot in my childhood that had a lot of emotional impact on me. I used to think sensitivity was a matter of belief, but it's really an in built trait for me.

It's just all part of accepting who I am which I still haven't been able to do all that well. A lot of my life has been spent wondering why I'm so different than most people and feeling wrong. Everyone's got their own path though and I just need to focus on what works for me.

[mat422]

I'll admit EPRHA has not been pleasant at all for me. That's part of the reason I have such a hard time with it. It's been triggering a lot of emotionally difficult stuff. I'm having moments where I feel a tightness in my chest and an urge to scream or punch a hole in the wall. It's like having this build up of energy with nowhere to go and it drives me insane. In the past I'd ignore these sensations, but it was more like detachment in an unhealthy manner so they never got processed properly. Now confronting them face to face feels very intense.