UMS. Let’s get at it

[Paul1131]

My suggestion is to have her directly clarify the situation with her boss, instead of allowing "what if" BS to get out of hand.

LoL, that’s her suggestion too.  She’s doing that tomorrow.

It's a REALLY good sign that that was her suggestion.  It's also a really good thing that it was HER suggestion.

WIFE:  It was nothing.  She talked to her boss who said that she saw that my wife was swamped and assigned it to someone else to give her a break.  We talked about her tendencies.  She said she still has the tendency to overthink things, and pick situations apart and frame them in ways that are very negative toward her.  She feels that it’s getting a little better, and she is consciously working on it.  

ME:  During that conversation I was not only saying things to her like “you’re doing awesome” but I absolutely believed them.  I turned the corner of feeling almost totally positive about myself and my prospects on LTU, but on this, I feel almost totally positive about her and hers as well.  We have broken some kind of barrier with our relationship lately.  It’s hard to describe, but things are a lot better now.  

I picked up a pair of those bone conduction headphones that I saw on Josh’s journal.  Using them with hybrid now.  They’re perfect for my purposes they’re comfortable after an hour or so, though the pressure they put on the spot that they’re touching took a bit to get used to.  I can hear the muttering voices that I use to calibrate volume, and if I turn it up, I can tell that I am also hearing the ultrasonic part.  They are easy to hide under my winter hat, and absolutely do not prevent me from hearing what’s going on around me or who I’m talking to like earbuds do.  
They give an odd sense that the sound is coming from inside my head, and I get the distinct impression that it’s penetrating better with these than with earbuds.  My goal is eight loops tonight.  We shall see if the charge on them lasts that long.

[Paul1131]

ME: I think that I am making this fear removal process harder than it needs to be. Perhaps we all are. I think Shannon said that fear is smoke. It is. The fears I’m dealing with come from circumstances that no longer exist, things that are no longer true. I’m fighting ghosts, and I have been for years. Hell, most of them come from years before I was an adult, and decades before I became the man I am now. Why am I doing that? Because I (some piece of me) wants it to be hard. When I’ve finally defeated my fears and started to shape my life into what I want it to be, I want to feel like I’ve won some epic battle. Or maybe some part doesn’t want to win. Maybe it wants to remain in this isometric arm wrestling match with myself for the rest of my life so that when it’s over I can have a story of incredible strife and strength to tell. Where is the victory in fighting smoke and ghosts? If some part of me would get on board, it would all be easy.
There’s something there. I don’t know how to describe it other than the need for a perceived challenge coupled with an aversion to taking up the real challenge that comes after getting my mental ducks in a row.
There isn’t a fear behind this one, not in the classic sense of an aversion to something. It’s more like a need, like I crave something that constantly struggling with my own head gives me. Think of it like a video game. If it wasn’t hard, you wouldn’t keep playing, and it wouldn’t feel good when you won.
This was another data dump from my subconscious. I got it while listening to my loops and it was accompanied by this bizarre feeling in my head like something was stretching a membrane and about to break through it. This bloom period is going to be all kinds of fun.

[findingme]

I caught myself clearly making things hard on LTU. I've not figured out reasons myself, but I chose to just change directions since the faulty logic I was using affected myself and others negatively on a daily basis at work.

On UMS, more revelations are surfacing, and a part of me senses that tendency to make things hard. I'm really grateful E3 is in UMS, for my motives seem to be tied to old ways of parenting myself. They can be extremely self-punishing.

I appreciated you explaining your big picture understandings of why you may be doing it yourself. They made perfect sense to me.

[Paul1131]

I caught myself clearly making things hard on LTU.  I've not figured out reasons myself, but I chose to just change directions since the faulty logic I was using affected myself and others negatively on a daily basis at work.

On UMS, more revelations are surfacing, and a part of me senses that tendency to make things hard.  I'm really grateful E3 is in UMS, for my motives seem to be tied to old ways of parenting myself.  They can be extremely self-punishing.  

I appreciated you explaining your big picture understandings of why you may be doing it yourself.  They made perfect sense to me.

I understand the self parenting thing.  We tend to parent ourselves the way we were parented, and if your parents had issues you tend to take them out on yourself long after your a grown adult.  My internal voice used to be that of my father at the height of his depression/anger/negativity/desperation for me not to “end up a failure like him”.  Some deeper thought patterns are still influenced by my mother who was much more subtle but a lot more deliberately malicious.  
The thing is, I’m beginning to think that it’s a lot easier to fix things than I have thought it would be.  It’s just a matter of letting go of.......something, and passing on the message to do that to some aspect of my subconscious.

[findingme]

 
The thing is, I’m beginning to think that it’s a lot easier to fix things than I have thought it would be.  It’s just a matter of letting go of.......something, and passing on the message to do that to some aspect of my subconscious.

I like your thinking on this.

[Paul1131]

ME: I did the full eight loops last night on the bone conduction earphones. They worked great, and I’m pretty sure that the ultrasonic portion does come through them.. I say that because I woke up with a pretty massive “sub hangover” this afternoon. I felt a nonphisical pressure in my head and was very conscious of my energy field vibrating around me. That’s an odd feeling, it’s kind of like my arm hairs are standing on end from a static charge, and they extend about a foot from my body. My thinking felt slow, and while I didn’t feel physically tired, I felt very slow to get going.
This thing really has me in my head, but not in a bad way. Right now, everything is focused on FRM getting its thing done because as I mentioned, it’s penetrated to a different level where things work a bit differently and it’s taking up more of my available processing power to get it done. These data dumps from my subconscious are an interesting experience. I get a flash of epiphany, but I spend the next while unpacking it to fully understand it.
I got into this on my last post, it should be easy to get rid of all of the fears that are getting in the way of me having any life I want. The fears that are causing me to resist are literally nothing in the present time. The things that caused them have passed, and I have grown to the point that most of them aren’t anything that I would perceive as a threat if it happened to me today. Or at least I’d have a more functional reaction.
The thing I said yesterday is that some part of me doesn’t want to because of a bizarre kind of self aggrandizement, well, there’s more to it than that. It’s an excuse. That part doesn’t want to admit that my mental blocks are ephemeral and easily dissolved because if it were that easy then I am fully responsible for not having done that before. If I keep thinking of fears and inhibitions as being very tough things to get through, and things that circumstances put there, then it’s not my fault that I’m not where I want to be in life. So this part of me would rather see myself as a victim of circumstance who has struggled mightily just to get where I am, than admit that I’ve spent the last twenty some odd years afraid of phantoms and pretty much letting life happen to me. The truth I’m facing tonight is that I have always been the captain of my own ship, but have been belowdecks obsessing on imaginary sea monsters when I could have been on the bridge setting whatever course I wanted.
On a more metaphysical note. I believe that FRM is knocking on the door of one of those levels of the subconscious that doesn’t recognize time. The, whatever is communicating with me says that’s a conundrum. Before that level, it’s possible to tell yourself that whatever you’re afraid of isn’t happening and or isn’t a threat anymore. Once you get there, it IS still happening. This could be interesting. I’ve got that trying to move a boulder feeling in my head again.

[Paul1131]

ME: The hits keep coming. I had another epiphany tonight. I know why I’ve been feeling stuck and lost for so long. In 2003 I started a process by which one kind of gets rid of their old selves and becomes the self that they’re supposed to be. I can’t go into much detail here because of rules. What I did outwardly was choose a profession that was in line with who I am, and took my first steps on that path. But I now see from some of the thoughts I was having at the time i initiated a more internal process as well. Thing is, I didn’t finish it. That was because I (I would love to say I was UNABLE TO here, but that would be a lie) didn’t let go of a very heavy emotional connection. That was to the girl who got away. The one who I’ve mentioned occasionally in my journals. This left me in a bad situation, I had taken the first steps along the path, and there really is no going back. So I’ve been stuck with that thing half done, which is not good. That explains why I’ve had so much getting into that profession and generally feeling like I’ve been stuck and going nowhere for so long. It also explains some of the imagery that’s been going through my head since then.
Somehow, the sub has gotten me back on track with that.

[Paul1131]

ME: I’m still on the introspection and tracing the roots of my fears phase of things. I am glad that the sub has made it possible for me to get a very clear look at myself without a bunch of BS in the way. One thing I’m sure is an affect of the sub is that it seems to have greatly reduced the level of judgement and resulting discomfort that this process would have caused me before. I can take a long look at the less flattering aspects of myself without feeling so much shame that I would turn away before digging for the reasons. I’m absolutely sure that what I’m doing now is an absolutely necessary phase in getting my mental house in order so I can level my life up. FRM has made it possible, but it can’t do this part for me under the hood.
I found two things today, and they’re closely related. First. Im afraid of responsibility. I am afraid of admitting that where I am in life is my own doing and the result of a million decisions that I myself have made and continue to make. The bad parts are my fault, but that also means that the good parts are my doing.
The second thing is that because of this, I lie to myself a lot. I primarily do that in order to serve that fear of responsibility. I blame anything and everything that I don’t like about myself on someone or something else. Why? I don’t want to admit to myself that I chose to be that way. This is the same victim mentality that I look down on in others, and I can’t say that I’m happy to find it in myself, but it’s there, it has been for most of my life, I put it there, I let it stay and grow, and it does not serve me.
(I’m going to go through some examples, I’m mostly doing it because writing something out helps me focus and think about it if you don’t want to read I won’t be offended).
For example, I frequently blame my parents for the stuff that goes on in my mind, and the failures that have resulted from it. I like to say that they were so mentally abusive that they messed me up for life. It IS true that they were abusive. They seemed to do everything they could to tear me down and make me feel like a worthless piece of crap every day. That lead to me hearing a voice (not literally hearing it) in my head that did the same thing even decades later (that mostly stopped on LTU). The voice lead me to be afraid to try anything, have flashes of anger, and all kinds of things. Maybe it was their fault in the beginning, when I was a child. But I’ve been a legal adult for over twenty years, and capable of recognizing that my thought and emotional patterns were a problem for longer than that. There were plenty of things available that might have helped in the late nineties. Subliminals existed though they were nothing like what we have here, they might have done some good. There was hypnotherapy, various types of regular therapy, a million books on changing your thinking, and other things. I knew about them. Did I use any of them, no. I just went on having the problem and blaming my parents for it while it prevented me from having the success and living the life that I wanted to. I could have solved the problem much earlier had I just done a little research, found a plan, and implemented it. I consistently chose not to for decades. I am responsible for the problems still existing beyond where I could do something about it.
When I ask myself why I did badly in school, I like to say it’s because I was picked on so badly that I couldn’t concentrate as well as blame my parents for the stuff I mentioned above. That’s BOLLSHEET. I did badly because I consistently decided not to pay attention to what I was supposed to do, decided not to do homework, and decided not to do any bomber of other things knowing full well that if I made too many of these decisions, I’d get bad grades. That is my responsibility.
Why don’t I have a college degree? Because life got in the way. BS, because I made a million little decisions that lead me away from succeeding at that. I self sabotaged every time I could. (This is one of these things that I wouldn’t let myself achieve due to fear of success even though I am eminently capable of it). I’m responsible for that.
Why was my credit score in the tank and still not what it should be? Because I just forgot to pay the bills because I’m disorganized. BS, because I chose not to make a system that ensured that they got paid. I decided repeatedly not to get off my butt, pay attention to when things were due and make sure they got in.


And so on. I don’t know if this is an effect of the sub or not, but I think that the reason I’m able to analyze this stuff without feeling too much shame and anger at myself is that I’ve forgiven myself for it.

[findingme]

Ok, let's do this Paul.

The short version: Me too.

The longer version: If I were in a public meeting room and you were sitting there, I'd want to sit near you. If you're that unwilling to lie to yourself, you won't lie to me, so I would want to be infected with what you have. I lie to myself and actively try it some every day. I was nervous about writing you, so I put on some coffee to attempt to hold back my emotional truths.

You may see your words as analyzing, but it's unedited truth, a real gem among the journal writers here.

I had a dream/revelation myself last night, I'm fearing being so vulnerable myself, but thank you for being an example to go before me. I'm going to go share my truths in my journal now.

Thank you.

[Paul1131]

Ok, let's do this Paul.

The short version: Me too.

The longer version: If I were in a public meeting room and you were sitting there, I'd want to sit near you.  If you're that unwilling to lie to yourself, you won't lie to me, so I would want to be infected with what you have.  I lie to myself and actively try it some every day.  I was nervous about writing you, so I put on some coffee to attempt to hold back my emotional truths.

You may see your words as analyzing, but it's unedited truth, a real gem among the journal writers here.  

I had a dream/revelation myself last night, I'm fearing being so vulnerable myself, but thank you for being an example to go before me.  I'm going to go share my truths in my journal now.

Thank you.

That’s the beauty of anonymity.  I’m not being vulnerable.  I’m one of the more closed off people you’ll ever meet, and I’d never in a million years say any of this stuff to anyone who knew who I am, let alone a group of them.  Here I’m just a screen name.  You may well have met me, and we’d never know it.
I’m being this open because I don’t know what detail will Help Shannon get what he’s trying to get done done.  Plus it might help others decide wether or not to use a sub, or help others who are going through similar stuff.  
Don’t feel bad that you lie to yourself.  EVERYONE does.  It is helpful to write them down or speak them out loud when you recognize them because once you’ve brought it to the forefront of your mind it’s easier to recognize it when you try to do it again.  
Thank you for the heartfelt comment.

[Paul1131]

ME: one of the sets of self lies that I’ve told myself that have been particularly harmful are the ones about my love life. You see, I didn’t think that I got one iota of positive female attention until I was almost eighteen. I got a lot of negative female attention too.
Interestingly, there was one exception when I was fifteen. I was at at an out of state event. I just ran into this girl, she not only started the interaction, but she pushed the interaction to every level that it got to. Which was pretty far for a fifteen year old who had never touched a girl before. She lived too far away to visit, but she wrote me, and clearly wanted further attention from me. It’s very weird, that within a few months I’d pretty much erased this from my memory. As far as my day to day thinking was concerned, it hadn’t happened. That’s self lie #1. I am guessing that I did this because it didn’t fit the established narrative in my head.
After that there was “nothing” until after I switched schools a couple years later. Now, thinking back, there were a number of girls who were VERY interested, and I had a clue. But I Refused to believe it. Why? Because before that, I had some humiliating experiences where one of the popular girls pretended to like me in order to set me up. (Fear of embarrassment here). So I convinced myself that that’s what was going on and I didn’t take the bait. At the same time I agonized over the “fact” that no girl would ever want me.
Then I switched schools sophomore year, and was “faking” being the new me. I made a very close female friend the beginning of junior year. (She was also VERY interested. She told me later. She is still one of my closest friends). I complained to her about not being able to get a girlfriend, She set me up with a friend of hers who (Friend did warn me going in) was, shall we say, less than mentally stable.
She liked me instantly, like almost obsessively. Here’s what really was going on there. She had the same kind of desperate thing going on that I did. However I had learned to fake confidence well enough that she fell for it. Add to that that I had the appearance of a bad boy, and she was a good girl and we were off to the races. She also wasn’t very attractive. She wasn’t ugly, but definitely plain. Maybe a six at best. She let me, well, do the stuff I’d always wanted to do with girls though and she was very eager to please. I was convinced that this was the best I’d ever do since my prior thinking was that I was repulsive. It was odd, because there were multiple other opportunities at this time, and I even took some of them so I’m not sure why I still thought that.
So over two years, I kind of talked myself into thinking that I was deeply in love with her. This is self lie #2. We went to different colleges, and she fell headlong into drug abuse and a bunch of other crap (common in people who just escaped an abusive home) and she left me for a real POS. This devastated me. I was obsessive and mopy for a year and a half.
It was weird, because I was swimming in it during that first year in college. On one of my first days there a flat out hard ten blonde goddess started talking to me on the quad, and we wound up in bed that evening. There were many more. I stuck to two things though. On the surface, I stuck to the notion that girlfriend #1 was the love of my life or something. Underneath that I stuck to the notion that she was the best I’d ever do despite a plethora of evidence that I was far from it. These were both lies that I both told myself and believed. They were complete BS too. I wasn’t really in love with girlfriend #1 and I’m tall, muscular, good looking and smart, which made me a real magnet in my college years without much effort on my part (also might have been a DMSI like energy component too). This was despite really having no skills or game. Now, I could have done much better if I had seen the self lies for what they were and moved on. The consequences weren’t just not getting laid as much as I could either. I neglected class, and was on academic probation at the end of the first year. It also might have prevented me from having a real healthy relationship with someone who is actually worthy of me. (Not saying the wife isn’t, but she came along later and were still getting to healthy)
Then, the next year I was approached by a girl in the computer lab. She became girlfriend #2. She was cuter, but still well below a ten, and had an annoying childlike personality (maybe amusing and endearing in small doses) that SHOULD have really put me off. I did the same bloody thing though. I convinced myself that I was in love with her for absolutely no other reason than she would have me. This was due to the same fear, which was probably mostly subconscious at this point. That I was so undesirable that I had to take what I could get and hold on because it was likely to be my only chance. She was a little more savvy in a way. At least she recognized that as a reasonably attractive young woman, a lot of guys wanted to sleep with her, so she had some control. She played all kinds of power games which I didn’t recognize at the time. Generally she treated me in ways that I should never have allowed myself to be treated. She left me for some guy who she’d had an on.again off again thing with for years. I repeated the cycle. Spent the next couple of years miserable. This time I finished flunking out of school, moved home for a year.
Then recognizing that I had some problems, I decided to go back to school out of state to “get away from it all.”. That didn’t go well, because I met girlfriend #3 almost as soon as I got there. She was pretty but overweight, and a decent person who had some issues. The weird thing is that I didn’t lie to myself at first this time. She was cute, fun to be around, and I thought id have a light, fun relationship with her. Then after a couple of weeks she pulled away. Then something really weird happened. The same feelings that I had after both of my prior relationships came crashing back in. At higher volume. It was really weird, but what I’m sure happened was that her leaving me confirmed the old fear that I was undesirable which brought up the desperation and sadness. My conscious mind didn’t really understand that, so I made up a reason I was feeling like that that made sense. That was of course that she was the love of my life and all that rot. It didn’t have anything to do with her at all. I was lying to myself for more than a decade. There were multiple opportunities that year and after, some with real high quality women, and I passed them up because I was afraid I was disgusting and telling myself that I was in love with someone who I had only mildly liked. CRAP! Why did it take me until now to see that?
After that, I had a brief relationship with this girl who I’d met through girlfriend #2 She’d been obsessed with me for years, so I gave it a chance. She moved out from my home state, but I never really fell for her. She turned out to be a horrible person, and I was still stuck on the last one, so I ended that quickly.
Then I met my wife. If any of you wondered why I put up with the way she treated me for years, that’s why. I was afraid that this is all I’ll ever get. That’s despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Now, she is working on herself with the help of subs, she’s on meds, so I’m not ending it. But I recently demanded that she treat me better, and told her I was out the door if she didn’t. Things are getting better.

Anyway, there it is, a back trace of how one fear and the self lies that sprung from it harmed one aspect of my life.
Thinking that I am unattractive/repulsive lead to me thinking/fearing that no woman will ever want me which lead to me lying to myself and saying that I was in love with every girl who showed me any interest which lead to me freaking out when they left which lead me to accept poor treatment from women and miss so many opportunities that it isn’t even funny.
Odd thing is that I had a whole lot of hookups and FWB relationships throughout this whole thing. That should have given me a clue. Also, I had high quality women really interested too. The reason that I didn’t let anything happen there was that I couldn’t conceive of much above the bottom of the barrel being interested in me.

This all cost me a college education paid for by parents, many opportunities for relationships that could have been really good, many more hookup opportunities than I took advantage of, years of unnecessary emotional pain, and a good chunk of self worth and confidence. And it was all a bloody lie that I TOLD MYSELF and kept perpetuating for most of my life. Shannon is right, now that I’ve laid it all out, it’s smoke. I’ve been an attractive, desirable guy all along.
Now to get to what’s holding me back with money.

EDIT: Every time I did hook up with a woman who I would have considered out of my league, she lead the interaction from start to finish.

[Paul1131]

WIFE:  She was clearly frustrated when she got home and throughout the night last night.  She didn’t turn on me though.  Not at all.  I could tell a couple of times that she wanted to, real bad, and had focused on some thing I did that she didn’t like.  But she controlled herself.  I could tell that it was taking her some effort, but she did it. This has become consistent, and last night was a real test because it’s you know, the time she’d usually be going off on me left and right.  This is pretty awesome.

ME:  This is my fifth day of bloom and my thoughts and emotions were considerably darker when I woke up.  I was thinking that I don’t like the shape my life has taken, and I feel trapped in it.  I was seeing nothing ahead, and I have no idea where I’m headed.  Anger and despair creeping in.  Oh well, I’ll run loops tonight and tomorrow.  This too shall pass.
One thing that’s really executing here is the anti clutter module.  Clutter used to be my natural state of being, and the house has shown that.  Recently, it’s been driving me nuts, and I have been doing my best to clean it up.  Unfortunately, it’s a huge job, and there’s only so much room in the house, the roommate is a slob, and the wife has a penchant for overbuying.  So it’s doing more driving me nuts than it is being fixed.

[Paul1131]

ME: IIm still thinking about all this stuff today. I said that the biggest fears getting in my way were fear of success, fear of failure, and fear of embarrassment. With a lot more thought, it turns out that both my fear of success and failure stem from the fear of embarrassment.
I’m a little unclear on success makes me fear humiliation, but failure is pretty self explanatory, but there’s a little more to the failures I fear.
I’m not afraid of trying something and failing at it. I’m afraid of failing in front of people. Especially people who see as better than me. This is why the interview process for the job I want have been so tough on me. I see the people interviewing me, who already have the job I want as better than me. (This is a big ol self lie) I’m afraid of embarrassing myself in front of them, which makes me visibly nervous, and less able to express myself properly. I’m not so nervous about the result of the interview itself as I am of looking foolish and or weak during the process itself.

[Shannon]

It's a damned good thing I'm not afraid to try something and fail publicly! Lol