After thinking it over I think I am going to go back to dmsi a. B was rough for me and I did hit a bit of a wall. I'd like to do some more digging with A. Something inside of me tells me to keep moving forward and I do want to continue with DMSI. It may not cover as much as E2, but theres a lot in dmsi that I can use day to day. I think when I unearthed some really heavy things these past few days it freaked me out a bit and I became afraid to keep going. But I'm back now.
I feel like at this point most people on this forum know my life story. It hit me today that I have trouble healing from these old emotional wounds because I'm ashamed of them. As long as I'm ashamed of what I've struggled with I can't access these emotions to let go of them. It's hard sometimes having your life be pretty damn easy on the outside, but it still somehow feels like you managed to mess it all up. Guilt and shame I guess. It's really easy to forget sometimes I didn't do this stuff to myself. I'm responsible for getting better, but it's not my fault I grew up with this stuff.
I had a dialogue with this internal self that struggled a lot. I told him that I understand how he struggled and I'm sorry he went through all that. I told him I'm not trying to put him through that all over again. I'm trying to build a life we can both be happy with. I told him just because he was afraid as a kid, not confident, not really wanted by most people around him, doesn't mean he's a bad person or unworthy of love.
Prior to this I always treated these buried emotions like "get over it, stop dwelling on it" manner. Something to be overcome like it was an obstacle vs pain from a deeper part of myself I'd long since abandoned. I've been trying to run away from it, distance myself, forget it. Interestingly enough anything that reminded me of my childhood brought up feelings of "that's not me anymore". I definitely attempted to throw out a part of myself to escape the pain, but in the process all I got was numbness. Part of my healing is going to be reintegrating this part while still continuing to improve myself.
I've been sort of trying to figure out how to face fear without causing myself needless stress. I've always practiced physically relaxing my body as much as possible to offset anxiety, but it seems I learned to mentally detach along with that. So now I'm learning to physically relax while keeping engaged mentally and focused on moving past fear. It's tricky but I'm slowly learning to separate fear from the sensations fear is producing. I think for me it's not so much I focus on fear, but moreso my body gets locked up in fight or flight and I'd either detach completely or I'd push far too hard and hit a brick wall.
Other than that had a dream last night that women were really into me. So I take that as a good sign. I also woke up today and I felt a stronger gut sensation that this was my reality. Like you know that feeling of certainty when you're sure of something? It sort of feels like that. I also recognize it's not negative beliefs holding me back, but fear of embracing that new reality.
I don't know how it is for anyone else but I notice when I accept the instructions from these subs I feel it in my stomach. This leads me to believe that there's a very deep instinctual response going on in a positive direction. But it's interesting because it's pretty much beyond words or conscious analyzing. It's kind of just there as it's own separate entity.
(09-07-2018, 06:05 AM)Infinite Wrote: [ -> ]I have no idea when or if I am accepting instructions from the sub.
I don't think you need to worry about it too much. From your posts it sounds like you're executing very well.
Reading Shannon's US/LM journal about the subconscious getting sick in response to the fear. It hit me that I've been falling into theses sabotaging patterns these past few weeks. I may not get physically ill, but I notice there's a tendency to believe I'm more messed up than I actually am mentally. Along with that I've noticed I haven't been exercising control in avoiding rumination. It starts with one small thing, then it gains momentum, and the next thing I know I'm in a depressed state because the negative thought cycles are going without my conscious awareness.
To give an example, online dating. Everyone I've talked to in my life says it's complete shit. Yet somehow every time I went on there I used that as the measuring stick for my attractiveness. I took a subjective experience and turned it into a belief system about myself.
It seems my go to tactic used by my subconscious when I'm moving forward is slipping back into old defeated and shamed based mentalities about myself. Which I mistakenly assume is old stuff being processed or healed from. Which is convenient, because it creates the illusion of forward progress while still holding me back.
A does a lot of good for me. As much as the healing loophole I've created for myself derails me, I find myself learning a lot and moving on from stuff. My initial reaction was to cut out A completely so I could close that loophole. But I think as long as I'm conscious of this stuff I can stay on A. Of course having that realization it's now clear to me that switching between the two is the best the choice instead of doing the all or nothing, healing or no healing game. Too much time on A, more likely to get sucked into that "I need to fix myself more" mentality. Too much time on B, run into a brickwall of fear where I start to burn myself out. If anything DMSI has taught me wayyyyy more about how I respond to challenges and the whole idea of how far you have to go with healing vs integrating new patterns of thinking.
Damn. I can feel myself wanting to execute this sub and another part is like "wait hold on a sec!" It's like this urge to hide or run. I keep coming up with excuses as to why it's not time yet or why I shouldn't push myself harder to make these changes.
The best way I can describe it is like this. Have you ever locked the door to your house, walked a couple of feet and then had doubts that you locked it? You sort of know that you did, but you still want to check and if you don't it's like this doubt or anxiety that sticks with you.
I find myself sometimes trying to think too much about how to cooperate with this sub vs actually cooperating. Keep revisiting old crap that should be left behind, just in general thinking if I just think hard enough about what's going on I can get the fear to go away. The irony of all this is that if I just executed fully I wouldn't have the fear. But I cause more fear by putting myself in a state of limbo being afraid.
Just in general when my subconscious is backed into a corner and has to execute, I find myself chronically overthinking everything as a way to sort of escape.
Hmmmm. Just realized something. Removing fear. I can remove fear, but I guess it's a loophole of some sort. By refusing to follow the instructions of dmsi, I don't generate fear in myself. I don't like dealing with fear, but I've learned when I get closer to the goals of this program the more fear I feel. So my goal now is to ignore the fear and just keep moving forward. I have to get there and by stopping every time I feel a hint of fear I derail my progress
Been too hard on myself lately again. I guess when the fear is triggered in me I get angry at myself and don't show myself any understanding which keeps me stuck in it. Last night I was listening to dmsi and instead of pushing past fear and assuming it needed to be painful and scary, I just focused on my breathing and relaxation. I noticed the more I could maintain a state of calm, the more I felt the effects of dmsi. I feel like I'm getting there. It's been a learning process how to be kinder to myself and work with the parts of me that are still terrified. A lot of it is acceptance and not feeling ashamed at still having those challenges to overcome. It's like I reached adulthood, but wasn't prepared for it. So part of me was always judgemental like "Everyone else can do this, why can't you? What the hell is wrong with you?" I realized that that thought pattern is due to growing up in a country that breeds that neuroticism in people. It's not a part of me that hates myself, it's a part that got wrapped up in the toxicity of modern society.
I think learning to be kinder to self is an aspect of Version A that benefits people like us. I'm not sure there's these endless healing loops, either. I perhaps think that more emotional, introspective people - such as ourselves - just have that far to go. Perhaps 3.3 will take us both past the hump, and get you to the humpin'.
(09-09-2018, 06:43 AM)RTBoss Wrote: [ -> ]I think learning to be kinder to self is an aspect of Version A that benefits people like us. I'm not sure there's these endless healing loops, either. I perhaps think that more emotional, introspective people - such as ourselves - just have that far to go. Perhaps 3.3 will take us both past the hump, and get you to the humpin'.
I think you're right. Sometimes it's hard wanting to be in a certain place emotionally and not quite being there yet. Learning to be at peace with the journey and not the destination. Too much focus on the future and not enough in the present appreciating life.
So I started playing this game called Hellblade. I'm trying to get back into video games. Just chilling out and enjoying myself. I love music, but I've burned myself out these past few months. Too much focus on being good, comparing myself. I thought if I just kept pushing and pushing I'd move forward. But it's a lot like these subliminals. There are limits to how far I can go before I just start beating myself up for not progressing enough. I guess a strength of mine is I'm very persistent, but my biggest weakness is not giving myself space to relax and also having fears about not reaching goals. Those two combined tend to cause me to push myself beyond my limits and not take the time to take care of myself.
Anyway the game is very emotionally heavy for me. It just made me think of my own darkness I had to fight to get out of for a lot of my life. I want to say I'm past it, but I don't think I am. But lately I feel like it's more important for me to acknowledge the depths of it and move past it vs trying to maintain this image of everything being perfect. At a certain point it became more important for me to appear I was better vs actually being better. I was more likely to repress things if it gave me the immediate gratification of appearing to be moving past the emotional things vs giving myself the time and understanding to work through these things and truly move past them. In a way the fear caused me to construct a fake image of myself and it was this outward presentation that was more important than how I truly felt inside. And a lot of this fear stems from shame and what I've been through and continue to go through. But I'm learning to stop being ashamed and stop caring what others think about me.
Had some stuff pop up this morning. I realized whenever I see anyone better looking, smarter, more talented, more accomplished it would make me feel like crap. More than that I'd negate my own achievements. So it would go something like this. "Oh you got a job?, well someone else is already doing that and they're better at it than you and they get paid more so this isn't much of an accomplishment". But basically take that general structure and apply it to all the things I've ever achieved in my life. The result is that I never allow myself to feel good for what I've accomplished in my life and I'm always beating myself up with not being on the same level as others.
My strategy for dealing with this was always to get better. To get to the point where I could say I've done just as much or more as everyone else so I'm on their level. The problem with this it that I ended up in a horrible cycle of getting anxious about how far I had to go, procrastinating, then not feeling good about myself because I still felt behind.
People always say don't compare yourself with others, and it's true. But it's one thing to understand that and a completely separate thing to actually apply that advice. I'll be honest, I struggle with it a lot. I still have trouble feeling good enough compared to everyone else around me.
But healing is about getting better. Not focusing on how messed up I feel or how troubled I am compared to others. So if I don't feel good enough compared to everyone else, then the solution is to start building that up inside of myself by challenging what I tell myself. I think I really screwed up a lot in the past thinking I could just decide to change these lifelong habits and got discouraged on days where I found myself in the same routines.
The question is what would it take for me to feel like I'm good enough? And I think the answer is just more self love and compassion for myself. Because right now I feel like I'm just chipping away at my soul because I've accepted I don't deserve anything better.
The solution is to understand that the only person you can reasonably compare your self to, is what and who you were yesterday.
And if you're better than you were yesterday you're doing something right.
"Good enough" is subjective. Everyone is unique.