whome's LTU5 journal

[whome]

And after all this, you have noted nothing that would indicate it is having an effect?  Not even tiredness?

When I first started listening to it, I got tired, but that seemed to pass. I got hit hard with an ongoing streak of grief about two weeks ago, but I have no idea why; I've been keeping up with the LTU.

I honestly don't know how to judge this, how to tell if it's having an effect. I haven't been coming up with realizations of anything, or been feeling like I've been working through anything.

(Edit: A possible future module to add to this might be one that is awareness of what's changing in a person, so that they can answer the question of "is this working for you?")

[Shannon]

Awareness of what was changing only led to cognitive dissonance and resistance. Thus the naturalizer.

What you describe tells me it was affecting you, but you're probably stonewalling now. I suggest lowering the volume or using masked format. I also suggest going back to 5 loops, 4 days on and 2 days off.

[whome]

When doing the 5 loops, it was overnight using ultrasonic. I can drop the volume with that.

Today was day 1 of being off, so I'll pick up with the 5 loops on Wednesday.

[whome]

Day 114

Day 2 of being off; I'll resume the overnight ultrasonic at a lower volume tomorrow.

I slept terribly and woke up exhausted, but have been thinking about a singing lesson that I had last night. I'm starting to finally get the subtle things that are really making things kick in, and the more that I think about the fact that I'm finally getting to the point where my teacher is saying, "That. Just keep doing that" with no suggestions, the more I can find a buzz in my body.

I still feel the grief deep underneath, and I'd still like to heal that, but I think this buzz is a variety of self-love. This is something that I can tell myself that I'm good at and wanted for. Hmmm....

[whome]

Day 115

Back to 5 loops. Running in ultrasonic on my iPhone, volume 6/16.

Still filled with grief, no luck or positive results to speak of. We’ll see.

[Shannon]

At this point, I suggest a volume of 7 or 8/16. If this doesn't produce noticeable results in a week or two, you can start lowering it one click per week from there and see what happens.

[whome]

At this point, I suggest a volume of 7 or 8/16.  If this doesn't produce noticeable results in a week or two, you can start lowering it one click per week from there and see what happens.

OK. Will do.

[whome]

Day 116

Day 2 on, volume 7/16 ultrasonic 5 loops overnight.

Still lots of grief and sadness; exhausted in the mornings because it takes me more than an hour to fall asleep at night.

In talking with my shrink, he’s wondering to what extent my reaction of grief to my work with my sexuality coach is due to me hating women in general. That didn’t feel quite right, but I can’t entirely deny a deeply buried anger at the world. When I’m collapsed and feeling worthless, the hatred feels entirely inwardly-directed, but there may be a feeling of pushing away others.

[whome]

Day 117

Day 3 on. Volume 7/16, 5 loops overnight.

Still sleeping poorly.

In the early days of running this sub, I would post dreams and thoughts. I kinda wore out of posting dreams a while ago, and I'm not remembering anything now with the grief.

Still no follow up on the possibility of the 5-MeO.

[whome]

Day 118

Day 4 on, volume 7/16, 5 loops overnight.

Slept poorly. I ran across a video about LISS which is about exercise, and so when I woke this morning I walked. I walked to the food place, then to my sexuality coach. The exhaustion and heat compounded so that by the time I got there, my body was just shut down and we didn’t accomplish anything.

I’m angry that my body shuts down like this. I’m angry that my sleep is disrupted and that I can’t even work on sexuality and arousal because I can’t even manage to function correctly with sleep and in the climate of my city’s summer. I’m angry that everything around me is breaking (my electric toothbrush, again, my fridge’s icemaker so I can’t use that to combat the heat, the washer/dryer still). I’m angry that using earplugs with the air conditioner doesn’t seem to be working like it had in previous years.

I’m angry that my feeling of dehydration doesn’t respond to me drinking water. Or coconut water. Or that using special rehydration drink packets makes my stool super loose so that I have to keep running to the bathroom (and it also doesn’t help with the feeling of dehydration).

I’m angry that I feel forced to consider using drugs like 5-MeO. I’m angry that LTU isn’t showing any effects other than maybe disrupting my sleep even more than it already is disrupted. (I could really use some damn luck here, USLM module!)

I’m just so angry. Nothing is going right.

[whome]

Day 119

The grief finally broke.

Last night I took a naproxen, a big drink of water, jammed the earplugs all the way in, and left the A/C on. I only got 6 hours of sleep, but woke feeling without the grief.

I’m quite angry at myself. The grief kicked in weeks ago, exactly when the weather changed and I started waking up to an 80°F apartment. I’ve been pushing through it, tolerating the heat, tolerating the pain, just so that I wouldn’t have to wear earplugs. Half because of all the ear infections, but half because I wanted to be able to listen to the subliminals.

I’m doing my best to get over blaming myself for wasting a month of time being in pain due to not wanting to wear the earplugs. Dammit!

In any case, I’m now wearing earplugs overnight. Given the attenuation of earplugs (it cuts out the high frequencies entirely) and that I have them jammed in deep enough to stop the air conditioner sound, I don’t see how doing the subliminal overnight will work. I can play the masked version during the day, but it likely won’t be for the 7 hours (5 loops) uninterrupted. And I can’t make the tradeoff of not wearing earplugs any more.

[whome]

Day 120

Second day off. Sleeping with earplugs and the A/C on. Feeling decent, though now that I’m not right off of a pain streak, I can see the layer of grief still underlying everything.

5-MeO is still an option.

I belong to a social website and signed up for sunset cocktails. I went to the bar, but everything in me just shut down. I could barely talk to anyone and couldn’t even really focus, so I left after 20 minutes.

Still not entirely sure how to listen to the sub tomorrow. I have the loops loaded up on my work Mac. I’ll get the loops in.

[whome]

Day 122

I woke up this morning with a similar feeling to the past month; it was 77°F and the A/C was iced over and struggling. I have to figure out how to deal with the ice. I had a dehumidifier pointed at it, but that didn’t seem to help. Sigh.

Meanwhile, because I have earplugs in overnight, I have to get all 7 hours in at work. Yesterday I was playing it as much as I could but since I was on and off the computer I only got it finished off by 9pm. It’s good that I had things to do at work until 9, but that kinda sucked. Today seems a bit better, but only just.

Not much else to say.

[whome]

the A/C was iced over

I have a thermal camera, so I pointed it at my air conditioners. Guess which one isn’t working right.

[attachment=673]

[attachment=675]

It still doesn’t make sense. Even if the top coils don’t work, the bottom ones still aren’t cold enough to ice over. And when the bottom coils are iced up, the top ones are cold.

I need to figure out if it’s worth it to have a repair person come over, or to just throw it out and get a new one. What makes this a hard decision is that there is a lot of custom circuitry in there to make it controllable by my Nest, which is a factor that might make this worth fixing. On the other hand, if I don’t mind hacking together something, and losing the fan, then the control circuitry is maybe $50.