Sometimes the answers are the painfully obvious ones. I was browsing the E2 product page and it really hit me that these subliminals are just instructions. And in the case of E2 I'm healing myself, not the subliminal healing me. This means that it's what I choose to do day by day that effects my overall progress with this subliminal.
The first thing I realized was that I'm putting way too much pressure on myself to change fast by running E2. Too many expectations, too many judgements, and not enough compassion for myself. I don't have to beat myself up anymore, it doesn't motivate me more and it's all my doing. The only way it's going to stop is if I stop doing it to myself and replace it with being kinder to myself.
To be honest it feels wrong being compassionate towards myself, as if I don't deserve it. But that's pretty much an indication that I really need to start being nicer to myself. And I'm not going to let the feeling of it being wrong persuade me from not practicing it. I've been living a state of self criticism and feelings of not being good enough long enough, it's about time I've changed that.
E2 has been touching on some deep stuff lately. One of the big ones is this fear I carry around of being myself. I'm not gonna lie, a lot of my life I've just felt different. But I didn't care enough to try to fit in more. So I kind of have just always felt like I'm on the outside looking in. But at the same time it's not like I'm confident, so I'm always trying to be what people want instead of myself. If this makes an sense, I'm constantly watching my own actions, what I say, how I say it, how the other person is responding to me, etc. Trying to come across in the most favorable way possible. But it's incredibly exhausting and ultimately a waste of my mental energy.
I've pretty much learned the social game, but when I play it I'm not me. I'm watching myself jump through all the hoops to get a favorable outcome, but I'm rarely myself. This makes any and all social interactions just plain suck for me. I've lived a large portion of my life feeling like if people knew the real me, they wouldn't like me. And I took that as the truth and never really challenged it enough. I guess at some point in my life it was true, otherwise why would I believe it? But I'm at a point in my life where I'd rather have people not like me and be happy, than keep trying to appear a certain way that pleases people.
In general I feel like a lot of the anxiety I feel day to day is just a result of me pressuring myself too much to fit in. And then it dawned on me the other day in quiet contemplation that I'm not the one messed up, it's the world around me. And I was angry, but I sent that anger to myself and beat myself up more about not fitting in. Yeah I felt guilt and shame about not fitting into the dysfunction a lot of other people seem to thrive in. But now I don't care and I'm going to let myself get angry about all the stupid social status aspects of this society that hang over people's heads daily that leave them feeling like they aren't a complete person. I don't want to be part of any of that shit. And I don't want to be influenced by anyone that adheres to that kind of messed up reality. But the most difficult thing has always been being painfully aware of all this and not knowing how to rise above it or not allow it to influence me. I guess the first step is allowing myself to feel that it's ok to be angry at the way things are and it's ok to want something more instead of stuffing myself into that prison.
(09-05-2016, 09:59 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]I've pretty much learned the social game, but when I play it I'm not me. I'm watching myself jump through all the hoops to get a favorable outcome, but I'm rarely myself. This makes any and all social interactions just plain suck for me. I've lived a large portion of my life feeling like if people knew the real me, they wouldn't like me. And I took that as the truth and never really challenged it enough. I guess at some point in my life it was true, otherwise why would I believe it? But I'm at a point in my life where I'd rather have people not like me and be happy, than keep trying to appear a certain way that pleases people.
Play the game, get ahead. Stop playing, get held back. Several people at my job play the game and they are known for being good at politics or bullshitting.
Then there is the other group of people at my job that refuse to play the game and they are unsatisfied with their choices. They know what is holding them back, they still refuse to play the game.
I try to find a balance. Be myself and play the game when it's to my advantage. I'm perceived as a "nice guy" and people are surprise when I speak up and defend myself. They didn't mind hurting my feelings, why should I care about raising my voice and hurting their feelings? Find a balance for yourself!!
This happens outside the workplace as well. Neighbors that try to run the neighborhood, I'm okay with that. Just don't try to run me.
(09-05-2016, 10:33 AM)4Kingdoms Wrote: [ -> ] (09-05-2016, 09:59 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]I've pretty much learned the social game, but when I play it I'm not me. I'm watching myself jump through all the hoops to get a favorable outcome, but I'm rarely myself. This makes any and all social interactions just plain suck for me. I've lived a large portion of my life feeling like if people knew the real me, they wouldn't like me. And I took that as the truth and never really challenged it enough. I guess at some point in my life it was true, otherwise why would I believe it? But I'm at a point in my life where I'd rather have people not like me and be happy, than keep trying to appear a certain way that pleases people.
Play the game, get ahead. Stop playing, get held back. Several people at my job play the game and they are known for being good at politics or bullshitting.
Then there is the other group of people at my job that refuse to play the game and they are unsatisfied with their choices. They know what is holding them back, they still refuse to play the game.
I try to find a balance. Be myself and play the game when it's to my advantage. I'm perceived as a "nice guy" and people are surprise when I speak up and defend myself. They didn't mind hurting my feelings, why should I care about raising my voice and hurting their feelings? Find a balance for yourself!!
This happens outside the workplace as well. Neighbors that try to run the neighborhood, I'm okay with that. Just don't try to run me.
You raise a good point. I'm a bit of an idealist and I've always despised the game playing and lack of authenticity. But there are definitely some people who don't respond to anything else and you have to get on their level a bit to make a difference.
Some really messed up stuff happened with me the other day. I was doing a chest stretch to open up my chest because I have chronically tight muscles. I think a lot of it is due to the anxiety. But during this stretch I noticed a lot of unpleasant emotions coming up. It got to the point where I couldn't handle it, it was that bad. So I laid down and just had to sleep for an hour or two. When I say bad, I've never had to deal with that emotional intensity before, I felt like I wanted to throw up and curl up into a ball. My only conclusion is that a lot of my muscular tension in my upper body has been locking down some more of these traumatic feelings. By stretching my chest out a lot I released them all at once.
I'm still dealing with processing what came up. Tried to listen to E2 and I can't, it's just too much. I never considered myself traumatized in any way, but now that I look back on my life there was a lot I was afraid of as a kid that was more traumatic for me than other kids. I coped with this by learning to disconnect from those intense emotions, but now I'm realizing as an adult it's like stacking emotional trauma on top of emotional trauma, I haven't been doing a good job of actually healing it.
I might have to cut back E2 to two loops a day. My lack of progress might be due to trying to take on too much at once instead of listening to my body. There's a lot going on inside me that I wasn't aware of and I've realized a lot of the relaxation exercises I've done over the years dissociated me further from my emotional trauma. It's not like I had one incredibly traumatic event that messed me up, but more like a continuous stream of small ones just enough so I never felt relaxed or safe. This pretty much echoes how I feel in my day to day life as an adult, constantly feeling like something awful is going to happen and not knowing why.
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.
Back and forth with these journal entries. But I think I was just hitting on some resistance and fear with those last few posts. Actually I know I was, there isn't a doubt in my mind.
The emotional pain is only bad if I engage in it, get stuck in it. I don't have to do that. From now on my focus is on letting go, that's it. Not where it came from, how much it troubles me, or how badly it's screwing up my life. My continual error with this sub is not carrying out the primary instructions of letting go of all this stuff. Instead I get caught up in the details too much and get sucked back into it. That's pretty much all my doing and having a poor idea of what it means to actually go about healing stuff.
Maybe it's just me, but given enough time to think about this stuff and involve myself in it too much I start making up reasons why I can't let it go or move on from it. Then I'll weave a story so deep and compelling it takes a while to pull myself out of it again.
(09-08-2016, 08:45 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]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?
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.
(09-10-2016, 10:54 AM)kalmah0804 Wrote: [ -> ] (09-08-2016, 08:45 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]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.
(09-10-2016, 06:16 PM)Why So Serious? Wrote: [ -> ]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.
Man, 7 months on E2! Good for you, great dedication!
How many subs had you ran before you started E2? I am a long ways into my healing path, but I didn't start with E2. I'm just entering my 4th month of it and hoping with all of my other sub listening I won't have to run any longer than 6 months.
(09-11-2016, 11:04 AM)kalmah0804 Wrote: [ -> ]Man, 7 months on E2! Good for you, great dedication!
How many subs had you ran before you started E2? I am a long ways into my healing path, but I didn't start with E2. I'm just entering my 4th month of it and hoping with all of my other sub listening I won't have to run any longer than 6 months.
Thanks. Quite a few. I ran AM 2011 then AM 5.0, EHPRA 1.0, overcome guilt shame and fear twice I think, Absolute self confidence, and I think that's about it. I'm a bit of a veteran with these subs haha. I'm also one of the people on this forum that had A LOT of stuff to deal with. Most guys on this forum are a bit ahead of me in terms of growth.
(09-10-2016, 07:23 PM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ] (09-10-2016, 10:54 AM)kalmah0804 Wrote: [ -> ] (09-08-2016, 08:45 AM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ]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.
(09-10-2016, 06:16 PM)Why So Serious? Wrote: [ -> ]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.
(09-11-2016, 06:19 PM)Why So Serious? Wrote: [ -> ]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.
I can relate to the being tired bit. Have you noticed that whenever you feel and think positive your energy levels are very high? Whenever I get into a negative spiral of thoughts it takes all of my energy. It has been a challenge to think positive when the habit of doing the exact opposite is all I seem to know.
I have also observed that when I am upbeat, positive and in a high vibration then nothing seems too tough to deal with. I wish meditation didn't intervene with E2's function because it seems like E2 is guiding me to do exactly that in order to gain more awareness around my thought patterns.
Maybe you can relate
(09-11-2016, 02:15 PM)mat422 Wrote: [ -> ] (09-11-2016, 11:04 AM)kalmah0804 Wrote: [ -> ]Man, 7 months on E2! Good for you, great dedication!
How many subs had you ran before you started E2? I am a long ways into my healing path, but I didn't start with E2. I'm just entering my 4th month of it and hoping with all of my other sub listening I won't have to run any longer than 6 months.
Thanks. Quite a few. I ran AM 2011 then AM 5.0, EHPRA 1.0, overcome guilt shame and fear twice I think, Absolute self confidence, and I think that's about it. I'm a bit of a veteran with these subs haha. I'm also one of the people on this forum that had A LOT of stuff to deal with. Most guys on this forum are a bit ahead of me in terms of growth.
Yep, I've had a fuck ton to deal with, as well. Been on 2+years of various subs and while I'm definitely in a way better place than I was when I started, I still feel like I have ages to go. Definitely getting really frustrated with my lack of results when so many other people on the boards are having way more success with me, way faster, without listening nearly as much as I do. But I guess the only thing guys like us can do is keep on pushing through and hope that our extra doses of adversity make us even stronger once we finally overcome them.