Shannon's Journal

[WildFlower]

Shannon, does Alpha Male help with overcoming unhealthy emotional guilt and/or (toxic) shame? And if so, in what way? And on which stages would this be addressed? I'm asking this because I believe that this is one of the root causes that has done a lot of damage to my perceived identity and undermined my ability to feel save fully express myself with healthy masculine feelings and being true (emotional wise) to yourself instead of just putting up a mask or cowering away.

It would help knowing that this would be handled by the program or that I have to figure this one out for myself (again).

AM works on making you emotionally healthy. That's the goal. But it does so my working on self esteem, self worth, self reliance, self respect, true pride (as opposed to false pride) and self control. It pushes you to do only those things that increase and improve those things. Guilt and shame are not directly dealt with, but it would seem that they are going to have to be destroyed by the program as a natural result of it dealing with the rest. These things are dealt with in all six stages, but are approached in different directions.

What specifically has you feeling guilt and shame? Is fear a part of that?

Although this hasn’t been checked out by gp or a psychiatrist (I’m currently on the waiting list), but I have serious reason to believe that I suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder. In short; it means that one has a distorted self-image, and is basically obsessed by it, amplifying perceived flaws and solely focusing on them. While other people see a normal person that’s moderately attractive, in most cases and on most days I see myself as something ugly and worthless, and it’s hard for me to leave the house without having the thought that everyone is looking at me with basically thinking that ‘that there is something wrong with me’, and basically fearing what they might think or even might say to me. Every notion towards me is perceived as negative, even if there is no real reason to think so.

This among many other negative thoughts about me and my appearance has since my teen years created a lot of anxiety for me, especially in public areas or in situations that I had to be “social”. A few months ago I already came to the conclusion that I could have Avoidant Personality Disorder, which is also part of BDD, along with Dependant Personality Disorder (which I also believe I have), and I noticed that when comparing the positive traits of AM11 with AvPD, that it actually would address about 95% of the issues of that.

I already had made a significant dent towards it, instead of the thought ‘they think there’s something wrong with me’, I was already going a lot more towards ‘I’m a normal person, and they’re just checking me out because they see something that they like, or not like and I don’t care about the latter’ with the practice and use of your subliminals, mirror affirmations, some pick up theory, psychology, personal philosophy, spiritual practices (adviata) etc. to back it all up and have reason to feel good about who I am and how I looked.

It felt like two steps away from enlightenment because I started to see things so much more clearly, and started being pretty content with who I was and where I was going, even though my life hadn't much going for it, but it was my life nonetheless, and I was grateful for it, and I knew it could only become better. But when I had a nervous breakdown it basically destroyed my belief system where those foundations were stored, and it replaced it with my old negative beliefs I think, although for a while I didn’t had a clue what’s right or wrong, along with constant anxiety, doubt and whatnot, no control over my emotions and thoughts, and the only thing left were the ideas that supported that belief system, which are nice but can’t be used because they now don’t fit into the whole, no intuition, no feeling to back it up. So even though there are things that I know to be true, I don’t believe now that they are true. I have to figure this out for myself, again. It’s really like I was thrown back to about four of five years. It sucks, because I really was taking a path would clear me from my issues, I don’t know if I’m longer on any path. Just searching for a new way to implement the same information, although I miss the solid contrast of how not to do it from past experiences.

But I digress, although the exact cause(s) of BDD (and AvPD and DPD) are not known, I did some research and although this is simply based on my opinion, I think that the cause of it could possibly be excessive shaming in the form of emotional incest at childhood (this term may sound very dramatic but I can assure that the word incest here doesn’t involve anything sexual here).

To quote: “Emotional incest happens when the energy in the parent-child relationship gets mixed-up and, rather than the parent taking care of the child’s emotional needs, the child is somehow responsible for taking care of the emotional needs of the parent.”

It’s only been in the last couple of years that I came across the notion of personal boundaries, because my boundary as a child was continuously violated by my mother and she still violates my privacy from time to time, she basically used me to dump her past trauma’s and her frustrations towards my father on how much he wronged her. Instead of feeling shameful over a personal fault, your identity/painbody/whatever become shame, and it just adds up to the belief that you're inherently bad and are worthless. I also was bullied at school because I didn’t know how to set boundaries, and just let people walk all over me. But a lot of shame would work towards it because I had the sense that I wasn’t worth having boundaries, and was somehow hurting my mother or other people by standing up for myself (guilt). Every time I try to handle conflict I become very emotional. It’s been only in the last couple of years that I understood the concept that the world, or people knowingly or unknowingly only do something to gain something. I always thought that (good) people just gave relentlessly, because giving is good, and it isn’t necessary to get something in return. What a fool I was for thinking like that. We always give something to get something in return, whether we’re conscious of it or unconscious. Psychological/universal egoism.

Anyway, if it hadn't been for the nervous breakdown, I would've overcome this by myself, but since I'm struggling so hard to get the same belief structure in place (and it's not going that well) with an accompanied sense of self I was hoping that the subliminals perhaps could assist me or steer me towards the right direction, because I'm not certain if my methods will work again. What the shame basically does is limit me in a lot of ways, it's hard for me to do the things like I want to, because I believe that other people think me less for it. And when I do manage to do the things I want or loosen up on the perfectionism, I start feeling guilty. I also feel guilty now for putting up this long post, and asking you for advice. I'm currently on stage 2 of AM, but I haven't noticed any impact on this thinking pattern so far, so that's pretty much the reason for asking. And I don't think I would become a good version of a healthy male if this isn't properly addressed.

If the cause of the problem originates back to a time when your beliefs about yourself (and the world) where formed as a very young child, pre-linguistically, i.e; as a complex built around felt 'atmospheres' then it will be hard for linguistic affirmations to really get to them, and tackle them. If this is the case then perhaps a form of Gestsalt Therapy would be best?

I had bad acne during my early teens, which I'm sure, caused me to develop a mild form of BDD. Concern about my looks was an issue for me, and the beliefs I'd created about myself like, "Why is my face more ugly than everyone else's?" did erode my self esteem. I worked a lot on this issue pre-Alpha to great success. Alpha Male itself also really helped as well. The difference here is the beliefs I'd created where linguistic, and so could be tackled with affirmations (or subliminals). This is probably my last remaining demon, it's pretty much gone but occasionally I'll have 'ugly' days. Luckily, I know how to handle these days without them getting anywhere near my rock solid confidence.

I really think it depends when you developed this issue, if it is a problem belief ingrained latter on in childhood then a body-image, face-image subliminal could really help. If it more primal than that - something like toxic shame - then therapy may be the best option. Keep going with Alpha Male though Jay.