(01-22-2013, 10:48 PM)Shannon Wrote: My mother and father separated when I was 3 months old. I went with mom.
I am starting to have a hard time taking psychological professionals seriously when I am told straight faced by them that I need to get a job, instead of getting help overcoming the fear keeping me from getting a job, hearing that from you, hearing doctorates tell me there's no such thing as a subconscious mind, and having you tell me "anxiety isn't real".
What effects do you think you've seen from OF and OGFS?
Like any profession there's always some bad apples. Some psychological professionals have huge egos, I'm sure of it. Know it alls who like submissive personalities and they try to shove their agenda onto them. When a person doesn't agree with what they are saying they get agitated. That was my experience at least, this guy listened to me, but he didn't really listen if you know what I mean.
From OF and OGFS, it's definitely been a bit hard to get an accurate measure for what's happened. But a big one is I've always felt I've struggled somewhat in life and I never really expressed that. I always tried to stuff it down thinking I was strong for pushing past it instead of letting it affect me. But deep down it ate away at me and made things worse than if I was just honest with how I felt. Over the past few days I think I purged a lot of shame and guilt about expressing how I feel. I realized not only did I consciously suppress negative emotions at times, but I did it subconsciously as well. I'm pretty sure I built this defense mechanism as early as 13 years old. There's always been this difficulty in life that I never shared with anyone and I felt guilty and ashamed for feeling that way. Everything just always felt like my fault.
Fear has been reducing, slowly, but it's definitely reducing. I've noticed that sometimes when I listen to the sub at night though intense emotions are brought up in me. And one night I let those emotion do what they had to do. It felt like a terrible feeling all throughout my body and I just wanted to get away from it, but I stayed with it. And then slowly those feelings past.
Some days I wake up and I feel incapable of doing anything. I need the whole day to process what's going on and let it pass. I really don't know if that's the sub or if it's been an ongoing thing in my life. All I know is that for years I've been pushing everything down because I was afraid of what might come up.
(01-23-2013, 09:03 AM)Sean Wrote: Hey man, stuff I've been listening to recently ties anxiety to a lack of confidence, and says that we gain confidence by making decisions and exercising courage. You can start small, and just start doing things. Anything. Take small risks, and even when they fail, you gain confidence.
I'm interested in both your comments on this, Shannon and Mat.
I think the key really is to start small. You have to recognize where you are, see your limitations, and work to move past them. If you set out with a huge goal that's overwhelming it seems like everything works against you. I think what's even more important is that when you take those small risks you should be internalizing a positive experience of moving past the fear and not just focusing on the fear itself. Fear tends to breed more fear, the perspective has to shift, otherwise it's like more conditioning for the fear.
I like to talk about analogies for some reason, it helps give a better picture. Let's say there's this snake in a box and someone tells you to stick your hand in it and tells you it won't bite as an experiment. You may still be afraid, but you stick it in anyway. A couple minutes pass and the snake doesn't bite. But then without warning it bites you anyway. So you might feel betrayed or feel like that safety was just an illusion and now you really can't trust a snake. So let's say one more time you put your hand in that box, this time with a snake that's defanged. This one really can't hurt you. Would you still have fear? I feel like I would, just by association of past events.
