Revisiting guilt, shame, and fear

[mat422]

I should have switched to the masked subliminals a long time ago. I'm noticing more progress in a few days than I did on two weeks of the ultrasonic.

The one thing that really hit me was my perfectionism. It's been slowly dissolving over these past few days and I realize now just how miserable it made me. Nothing was ever good enough, I was afraid of doing things wrong, of making mistakes, it pretty much paralyzed me. But now that I feel like it's slowly going away I've noticed my ability to enjoy things went up by a lot. And naturally I procrastinate a lot less.

But I think the biggest result was learning how perfectionism affected my own perception of my self growth and improvement. I'd always get mad at myself or frustrated when I just couldn't let things go. But now I just acknowledge any progress I have made and understand that things can't be corrected overnight for me. Slow steady progress is better than one big huge change for me. I've noticed if I make small changes it sticks, whereas huge changes is just a matter of willpower and eventually I revert to old ways.

I can feel the old habits still. It's weird because those once felt "right" like I should think that way. But now my new way of thinking feels a lot better and I realize the old way only caused me a lot of misery.

[Patti]

That's so interesting Mat. I wonder if anyone else has had that experience when using masked vs. ultrasonic? I'm gonna try it but I can only do it in the day, any of the masked versions wake me up in the middle of the night. Obviously I'm wrong, but I thought you were listening to emotional healing. Anyway, I'm happy to hear you're starting to get some substantial results.

[mat422]

That's so interesting Mat. I wonder if anyone else has had that experience when using masked vs. ultrasonic? I'm gonna try it but I can only do it in the day, any of the masked versions wake me up in the middle of the night. Obviously I'm wrong, but I thought you were listening to emotional healing. Anyway, I'm happy to hear you're starting to get some substantial results.

You're not wrong, I am listening to the emotional healing. I just made this thread then immediately found out about the emotional healing so it's a little confusing.

At first I thought I'd have trouble sleeping with the masked too, but after a while you get used to it. The trickling stream is better in my opinion, you just tune it out after a while.

I think I'm just sensitive to the higher frequencies and I can't listen as loud as I want to without discomfort. If I could I'd probably use the ultrasonic. For a while I thought I was just very resistant, but I realized that when I listened to the masked subliminals it wasn't as bad. I'm probably getting better results because it's louder than what I could have tolerated with the ultrasonic.

[Patti]

Ahha! I'm listening to that also and so I really like it. I wonder if it's possible for resistance to be sometimes about the higher frequencies more than the content of the sub? I've always felt that I'm just one of those more resistant people and I've only, for the most part, have listened to ultrasonic. My oldest son can't listen to it at all. He hears it as soon as he walks in my house and it bothers him a lot. I don't hear it at all but maybe somewhere it bothers me for other than the obvious reasons. Who knows?! lol

[mat422]

Ahha! I'm listening to that also and so I really like it. I wonder if it's possible for resistance to be sometimes about the higher frequencies more than the content of the sub? I've always felt that I'm just one of those more resistant people and I've only, for the most part, have listened to ultrasonic. My oldest son can't listen to it at all. He hears it as soon as he walks in my house and it bothers him a lot. I don't hear it at all but maybe somewhere it bothers me for other than the obvious reasons. Who knows?! lol

I had similar thoughts. The only way to tell for sure is to switch to the masked and see if you respond differently. My other theory is if the higher frequency was creating a stress response, then that might be associated with the suggestions and confuse the subconscious mind.

[mat422]

Hitting a rough patch lately. Financial situation got worse and now I'm dealing with a lot of anxiety. A lot of perfectionism resurfaced again. Mostly with my own situation and not being patient with myself. So I get caught up in all the ideas of what I should do, which just fills me with guilt and actually hinders my progress.

Which got me thinking about my fear and anxiety and stuff like EFT or something to remove those blocks. It never works for me, and the reason is because I don't want to remove the fear. Yes I want to move past the fear on a conscious level, but subconsciously I still hold onto it. Maybe somewhere down the road I'll seek out a practitioner or something, but I've already established that using these healing modalities on myself is a losing battle. A lot of the time I'll end up feeling worse because I beat myself up that I can't just let it go. The only thing that has given me consistent relief is these subliminals and meditation. So I'll stick with that and keep pushing little by little.

I think time is really the only answer for me. I can't force or rush these things, no matter how much I want to. I think part of that stems from the perfectionism, wanting to get to the end goal as fast as possible so I don't see the faults along the way. I think learning to be more at ease with myself would probably do a lot of good for me. But that's something I've always seemed to struggle with.

[mat422]

Something that is confusing me a lot lately. The nature of reality. I've experienced shifts in my mood that were so instant I get weird symptoms. Stuff like headaches and nausea. Maintaining these moods tend to be difficult. It's sort of like a glimpse into what could be, but I can never make it stick. Maybe it's the negative beliefs that pull me back down. I don't really know.

What I do know is that whenever I'm reminded of these negative states, I gravitate back into them. In a way I willingly choose to experience those states again even when I feel like I have the capability of experiencing things much better. Maybe it's tied down to what I believe is the truth. I feel like after a long time of negative beliefs, they have painted my reality and I've come to see them as the "truth". But it's no more of a truth than any other reality I chose to experience. And yet even with that realization, it just doesn't stick. Small events in my life trigger those old beliefs and consequently the old reality.

Which got me thinking beliefs can be created at any time. Are negative emotions and beliefs eliminated? Or is it the belief itself that those negative beliefs and emotions are eliminated? To expand further, if past negativity is eliminated then theoretically it should not come back. But if we merely start to believe that past negativity is gone, that's creating a reality where negative beliefs don't exist. The difference is if it's merely the belief that it's eliminated, there exists the possibility of recreating past issues that need to be removed by internalizing the belief that negativity is still there. Basically it's easy to recreate a reality where you have more problems in a misguided attempt to clear more issues that weren't there before you started contemplating them.

Makes me wish I actually knew how the subconscious mind operates instead of guessing all the time.

[mat422]

Well I got my answer haha. After a night of running the sub I always tend to wake up in a less than optimal mood. I'm thinking I just got a lot of old stuff pulled up that needs to be let go of. It's not always pleasant, but it needs to be done.

I think the subconscious really does eliminate negative beliefs and emotions, it just takes time. I've concluded that those small shifts in mood are essentially me exercising my willpower and using my conscious mind to temporarily override the subconscious. And the nausea and headaches might be some form of resistance. So it only really causes a temporary effect.

This could be that perfectionism popping up again. I always blame myself for not being able to just snap out of all of this. I mean it's just thoughts inside of my head and beliefs, and I control those things so I should just be able to let go of all the stuff that doesn't work for me. Ideally that's how it would go. But that's my conscious mind thinking all of that. I'm sure my subconscious has a very different story.

[mat422]

Round and round I go. I feel like I never really get to the bottom of the reason why I am the way I am. So I've established that yes, the anxiety is a problem. But it's a symptom of a much larger problem. I've realized that if I don't get this problem under control then my life is nothing more than a series of highly traumatizing events.

At first I thought fear of failure was at the heart of things. But it goes deeper. It's part of it, but fear of failure is what causes the procrastination and the stuck feeling. At the bottom of things I think it all comes back to shame. For whatever reason I have great shame tied to myself. At first I thought this idea was crazy, but the more I looked into myself I realized that I was ashamed of being a human being with emotions. Which is unhealthy on so many levels because we are emotional creatures.

It made me realize that it's not the actions of others that hurt me or being rejected. It's not them, it's me and how it echos that part inside of me that still feels I should be ashamed of who I am. I'm not saying that emotions like sadness won't be there from being hurt, but it becomes an emotion that I experience instead of reminding myself of being ashamed of myself.

My perfectionist traits were a constant attempt at avoiding the deep feelings of shame. So I kept building myself up, or attempting to, in order to become immune to the shame. But obviously that didn't work and caused serious issues.

And don't get me wrong, this isn't about accepting myself for who I am and not working on improving myself. Like so many people out there do. It's about returning to a healthy state of mind where improvements can actually be made. There's a certain foundation you have to have before you can even think of building.

I guess the subliminal kind of bubbled up to my conscious mind and this is what my subconscious revealed to me. Just becoming aware of it was cathartic, but I'm not sure if I've completely healed that shame yet. But now that I'm aware of it I feel like all those negative feelings and thoughts I'd get stuck in are easier to dismiss because they were a symptom and not the cause.

It all makes sense why I never took to the AM subs that well. I utilized them as a type of protective armor instead of improving myself. I might still have some trouble looking at improvements I need to make without completely disowning where I am right now.

[SargeMaximus]

I might still have some trouble looking at improvements I need to make without completely disowning where I am right now.

And where are you right now?

[mat422]

I might still have some trouble looking at improvements I need to make without completely disowning where I am right now.

And where are you right now?

On a path of healing. Shame was like a constant negative force destroying my ability to heal. Now that I've let it go I can allow myself to.

[SargeMaximus]

I might still have some trouble looking at improvements I need to make without completely disowning where I am right now.

And where are you right now?

On a path of healing. Shame was like a constant negative force destroying my ability to heal. Now that I've let it go I can allow myself to.

I doubt it. More likely you are sitting in a chair, inside some building.

[mat422]

I might still have some trouble looking at improvements I need to make without completely disowning where I am right now.

And where are you right now?

On a path of healing. Shame was like a constant negative force destroying my ability to heal. Now that I've let it go I can allow myself to.

I doubt it. More likely you are sitting in a chair, inside some building.

I don't really understand what you're getting at here. Elaborate if you want to.

[SargeMaximus]

I don't really understand what you're getting at here. Elaborate if you want to.

Well think about it, where are you right now?