I've found that anything emotionally healing related definitely ramps up your creativity and makes self-expression in general much, much easier and clearer. Studying became easier too, for me.
(I'm not using E2 yet, though!)
(08-15-2016, 10:23 AM)maxx55 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm glad I read your journal entry, I've been having doubts if E2 is still helping but seeing that others are having very similar experiences reassures me it's still helping.
Recently, I have been more proactive with my acting career. I've been interested in writing some scripts for an anime style show and some films, but I never did that much about it. Within the past couple of weeks, my creative thoughts have been flowing even more than they usually do and I've started working on the outline for 3 different scripts. I'm able to see things a bit better in my mind now about the characters.
Regardless of whatever else you're doing for your day job, it really looks like you should keep working on your music. Especially if you enjoy it man.
It's always good to hear from others that similar things are going on with E2. It's a bit of a stumble in the dark at times. It makes sense though we're pretty much rediscover ourselves after all the crap that's been pushed into our heads through the years.
But it definitely sounds like things are coming together a bit more for you. It's my belief that creative ideas are pretty infinite, but when you are too critical of yourself it's like shutting off the valve. E2 has definitely allowed me to tap into more ideas because I'm less worried about them being bad or stupid. I think that's really important for anyone because all ideas come from the same place and you can't filter out the bad ones without filtering out the good ones as well.
(08-15-2016, 12:48 PM)Rennus Wrote: [ -> ]I've found that anything emotionally healing related definitely ramps up your creativity and makes self-expression in general much, much easier and clearer. Studying became easier too, for me.
(I'm not using E2 yet, though!)
Absolutely. That's been my experience too. Especially if someone is a perfectionist like me. Nothing kills creativity faster than trying to come up with the perfect idea. Many hours were spent at my computer not finishing music because I had an obsession with coming up with the perfect idea that didn't exist.
You're gonna really like E2 when you run it. It's by far the most powerful healing I've ever come across.
Lately I've been having the urge to up my exposure time to E2 as I feel like I haven't been getting enough. I've also been very neglectful of my own emotional state. That feeling of me almost breaking down was an indication that I wasn't acknowledging my emotions that needed healing. Also I don't know if this happens to anyone else but I went skateboarding the other day and after I was done it felt like my body released some serious pent up emotions. I think there's a lot of stored emotions still in my body and it's weird but exercise seems to knock them loose.
And one more insight for the day. I assume too much about the healing process instead of taking it for what it is. Sometimes there is pain, sometimes there isn't, sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's noticeable, sometimes it's not, etc. By holding onto any one of those I'm trying to control the process and not letting E2 do what it needs to do. As of right now I'm listening to E2 and having this sensation of intense despair and sadness, I just have to notice it and let it through. If I try too hard to feel a different way I ruin the process. Ironically even though kids seem to be more emotional and out of control than adults, I'd argue they are more pure in a way, not feeling the need to control their emotions as much or hide them. I feel like I need to get back to that state but at the same time be non-reactive to the emotions themselves and not let them lead me astray.
(08-16-2016, 07:33 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]And one more insight for the day. I assume too much about the healing process instead of taking it for what it is. Sometimes there is pain, sometimes there isn't, sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's noticeable, sometimes it's not, etc. By holding onto any one of those I'm trying to control the process and not letting E2 do what it needs to do. As of right now I'm listening to E2 and having this sensation of intense despair and sadness, I just have to notice it and let it through. If I try too hard to feel a different way I ruin the process. Ironically even though kids seem to be more emotional and out of control than adults, I'd argue they are more pure in a way, not feeling the need to control their emotions as much or hide them. I feel like I need to get back to that state but at the same time be non-reactive to the emotions themselves and not let them lead me astray.
This is good stuff!
Alright so this ones on a more positive note, sort of. I've noticed since running E2 people are really friendly towards me. Even if I'm feeling like a miserable person that day. I'm not really used to it.
I feel an energy inside of me. When I really let go it grows in intensity. Part of me is curious to see just how much of an impact it has on people around me, but another part of me wants nothing to do with that. This is going to sound arrogant but I think after a lot of the self healing and inner work I've done people subconsciously gravitate towards my energy. I think I could have a much stronger effect, but I don't want the attention from people. And I think that's more of a fear thing I still need to work through. Especially with women, there's a very noticeable negative reaction when women give me attention. It's like I'm really open, they like it, I get some attention and I close up like a bear trap lol. I don't know it's weird, even before all the subs I always wanted attention from women, but didn't want it at the same time. Makes sense I never got anywhere, those are two very conflicting things. The few times I did have someone attracted to me I pretty much blew it because I did absolutely nothing.
Alright confession time. I've been screwing up these past few days.
After reading this
http://personalitycafe.com/type-9-forum-...-hole.html
I've realized how badly I've been messing things up in my life. I recently got sucked into LOA writings again. And oh man do they appeal to the side of me that desires shortcuts and the avoidance of stress. If you take a concept too far and base your entire frame of reality around it things get messed up very fast. For those that don't know I'm an INFP. My primary cognitive function is Fi. Introverted feeling. For anyone that doesn't know what that is, introverted feeling is making decisions and judgements based on morals or values. Essentially what feels right. This is one of my weakest points in my personality. When something feels right there's an automatic assumption it is right. Enneagram 9s favor peace and harmony, that's one of my values. But I'll twist and distort my own views and life to attain this fake harmony. I'll go so far to not rock the boat so to speak, if my outer world isn't harmonious I'll retreat inside of myself. And if it's really bad out there, I go deep into a state of almost disillusionment with what is actually going on in my world.
The bottom line is I have this tendency to believe everything will work itself out and I just pull away from the reality of what's going on. I've come to realize when I'm falling into one of these states. I'll feel good and like everything is working out for me, then something comes along that challenges my perfect serene reality I've created in my head. My car breaks down and I realize I don't have enough money to fix it, I'm 25 and still not in a full time job, I've been procrastinating on things I should be doing like learning more about coding, etc. When this happens my knee jerk reaction has always been to run back to that peaceful state and avoid the painful emotions that come along with these realizations instead of seeking a solution.
My life is in shambles right now, but I'm starting to be ok with that because I know there is a solution. I just have to stay with it and not retreat inside my head where everything is fine. Sometimes it's really painful to take a good hard objective look at yourself, but it also gives you a really good idea of what you need to improve on.
Yesterday I decided to sit down and ask myself why I was stuck in life. Why I believed I couldn't do the amazing things other people do or why I always felt I'd just fail at everything I do. I just sat there and literally asked in my head why until I got an answer. And the answer I got was nothing. There's nothing there, no good reason why I can't do what everyone else can do. The only thing holding me back is the belief of not being able to. And I think that belief is just a result of fear. Now that I look at it fear has been such a block with regards to moving forward in my life. The amount of times I've attempted to lift my self esteem and then heard that negative inner voice put me down. I thought it was just a bad habit, but now I see it was the most effective way to keep me in my current place and not face my fears. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if I have healed emotionally and I'm ready to move on with life, but fear just keeps making me believe I have more to take care of inside myself or makes me feel like I'm worse off than I am. Which would make sense given the highly repetitive nature of a lot of my posts in my journals.
Now that I think of it this is like going into a boss fight in a video game where he constantly sends out henchmen that keep regenerating. You can't defeat the henchmen because they keep coming back, you have to target the boss specifically and the henchmen die. I have a strong suspicion this is what the fear has been doing to me. I've had this realization before too dammit, just goes goes to show how tricky things get up in my head. I think the only way I'll be on autopilot for good and not have this destructive behavior anymore is once I get rid of that fear. Until then I have to keep a watchful eye on it and be aware of when it starts playing head games with me. It seems like it sabotages me, but now I can see how it's really only doing it's best to preserve my safety, unfortunately that safety confines me and I'm ready to outgrow it and do things with my life.
So the other day I had work and when I was driving there I didn't have my usual anxiety. It felt good. I guess I made some progress or overcame some block with E2. I've noticed I've been resisting this sub less when listening, so maybe I'm starting to make more progress. I think I'm still a bit controlling, ok a lot controlling, when it comes to this sub. I have this fear that if I don't know how I'm making these improvements, I'll lose them in the future. So I have way too much analyzing going on a lot of the time. But I guess what I really fail to realize is this is the whole point of subliminals, to get you to make improvements and positive changes that come automatically and aren't consciously brought about or worked on. So maybe I just lack trust. Which is completely ridiculous seeing as how the subconscious keeps me alive without me thinking about it.
Been thinking about laying off the hours a bit for E2. Lately I feel like I don't have the energy for anything. Hard to tell what's a result of my emotional state vs E2 being too demanding on my brain. For example I was reading about synthesizers and how to make certain sounds but it's like I couldn't grasp the concepts. To be honest it felt like I was incapable of understanding what the words were saying on the page. It's not like this was new stuff either, if anything it was more like a review but there was this internal tension as I struggled to make the connections in my brain. Gonna restrict my hours to night listening and see what happens.
Now that I think of it maybe all this procrastination lately isn't me avoiding stuff, it's just not having enough energy to do it. But of course when you feel like you need to do something and you don't, it just weighs heavy on your mind. I'm still in a bad habit of pushing myself beyond my limits instead of taking it easy because I think I can just plow through all this stuff and come out the other side. That's just really a result of my tendency to not break things down into smaller steps and my perfectionism. There's almost an impatience inside of me that wants so badly to move beyond all this stuff I fail to recognize the small achievements because I'm not quite reaching the idealized version of myself in my mind.
But as an aside to that I joined an online dating website and after looking at some of the women I realized there's still a lot of negative beliefs surrounding this area of my life. First one is I have a tendency to feel guilty if I don't find a woman attractive, like I'm too shallow. It might have something to do with my problems with body dysmorphia in the past, I'm very critical of my own looks so I'd imagine I do that to other people as well. Second is I felt like at my age, 25, no woman would be interested in me because I don't have a steady career or my own place. This points towards still basing my self worth on outside things and not valuing who I am as a person. Third is I'm incredibly distrusting of women in general, I have a tendency to think they always have some ulterior motive and I need to be careful around them. Basically those problems in the simplest of terms fear, guilt, and shame. Shannon was spot on when he said those problems are the trifecta of dysfunction in most people.
Quote:Third is I'm incredibly distrusting of women in general, I have a tendency to think they always have some ulterior motive and I need to be careful around them.
Thanks for writing that I think this part of my problem with men.
(08-27-2016, 09:56 AM)Why So Serious? Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Third is I'm incredibly distrusting of women in general, I have a tendency to think they always have some ulterior motive and I need to be careful around them.
Thanks for writing that I think this part of my problem with men.
I think it's a pretty common thing among most people. We've all been burned one way or another when it comes to intimacy or trust. But the important thing is not allowing a few bad people to ruin it for everyone else. In a way it's safer to remain distrusting, but you lose out on a lot of potential connections with people out of avoiding the possibility of being hurt.
Well yesterday I learned why you shouldn't meditate with E2, even though it wasn't really meditation. I've read a lot about mindfulness and how being more mindful of your emotions is good and to accept the pain, let it pass, etc. Well E2 brings up a lot of stuff and I'm pretty sure it intentionally dissociates you from this stuff a bit so your aren't overwhelmed and it can be processed out of conscious awareness. If you meditate, which I would advise against, you pretty much open a door to incredibly painful stuff that wasn't meant to reach your conscious mind, yet. I didn't fully understand this until I realized that a lot of my insistence on feeling my emotions fully like a bunch of mindfulness books taught me was actually re-traumatizing me emotionally and causing more problems. So yeah, as hands off you can be with this sub I think the better.
Basically what that means for me is to stop focusing on fear, resistance, guilt, shame, or any other block inside of me and dwelling on how to get rid of it. If it's not resolved then I still need more time. Going inside myself, ruminating, obsessively trying to let it go isn't going to work. Accept that I can only grow at a certain rate, acknowledge it's ok, and do my best to improve day by day as much as possible. I'll be the first to admit that it really sucks feeling like you want everything to be better, but you're still in the process of fixing everything and erasing the problems that brought you to this position in life. Tired of the old self, but at the same time a little fearful of fully embracing the new self.
Transition is one of the hardest parts of change and E2 blocks most of the transition issues, thanks for sharing, I have learned from your experience
Sounds like that's going to difficult if you're somewhat introverted and used to meditation, mindfulness, and such. Like I am. You have a sub that turns your focus inwards, you're used to doing it anyway, you have negative feelings floating around all the time, you're experiencing very little drive to get external things done.. and you're not supposed to be looking at the feelings. Well I was into positive LOA-style visualization at one point during my E2 journey and that was great. Just a lot of effort to get into that positive visualization state if you're feeling low. Hope you find your way, just sounds like a bit of a catch 22.
(08-30-2016, 07:53 AM)LionKing Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like that's going to difficult if you're somewhat introverted and used to meditation, mindfulness, and such. Like I am. You have a sub that turns your focus inwards, you're used to doing it anyway, you have negative feelings floating around all the time, you're experiencing very little drive to get external things done.. and you're not supposed to be looking at the feelings. Well I was into positive LOA-style visualization at one point during my E2 journey and that was great. Just a lot of effort to get into that positive visualization state if you're feeling low. Hope you find your way, just sounds like a bit of a catch 22.
Yeah it does feel like a bit of a catch 22. But ultimately my goal is to let E2 find the optimum balance for this stuff. Interfering with that is what causes all the problems. In a way its like having your own personal therapist who guides you step by step to overcome stuff instead of throwing you in the deep end. It was foolish of me to bypass that and think i could heal faster if i just pushed harder.
Positive visualizatiom definitely helps. It gives me a target or goal to focus on so I'm not stuck in my head. Anything at all that gets me doing instead of analyzing is good. There's a serious lack of balance between my thinking and actions