The stress feeling of not enough time

Last night I had a dream that had multiple re-occurring elements in it. When an anxious/negative dream repeats itself in such a manner it means there is something I am just not getting and my subconscious/inner/dream self is trying to send me a message in it’s own archetypal way.

In my dream I was at an airport, that reminded me more of a train station. There was two primary levels. I was there waiting for my ex-gf who was coming in on another flight. I had several hours before she arrived, and I had to go to my car in the parkade re-arrange some of my luggage to get ready for the next flight out. I was on the 2nd floor in the waiting lounge, where there were lots of comfy beds placed all over. It was quite nice, I wanted to claim a spot, and decided one next to an elementary school friend of mine (who’s dad was a pastor) would be nice. I asked him if it was reserved and he said yes for his dad and bro, and I didn’t believe him but when I looked up they were there.

Then I found another bed, (there was tons) but no space seemed ideal. I spread my backpacks out on the bed, to try and reserve it, so I could go to my car and exchange the things I needed. I felt very drowsy and had difficult remembering where I was going what time the plane was landing and then felt anxious about not having enough time even though I knew I had several hours.

Time is something I have always had anxiety around. When I was a kid my mom being a stereotypical INFP was always running late, especially for church. My dad being the perfect ISTJ was always ready to leave 20minutes before we had to step out the door. This caused considerable stress on his part and I knew to stay the fuck away from my mom on those morning as she ran around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to look “pretty”.

Later on in life as I got my own car, and had to attend post-secondary school, I always felt like I could never get to the places I wanted fast enough. The need to travel seemed like the biggest inconvenience and waste of time ever. I also had issue of getting to class on time, because I was exhausted from the CFS and my anxious nights, It was always early like 7:30 am icy roads, and rush hour traffic. It would often take me between 45-60 minutes to get to class.

Being at church was another thing I hated because the sermons were boring and negative being of the fire and brimstone kind. I despised sitting there, and watched the clock which makes things go even slower. Another big “waste” of time that caused me a lot of emotional distress.

Being ill with CFS for the last 15 years, I feel like I am running out of time to live the life I want. I also have been unable to support myself financially and feel that I am running out of time before I hit a wall on that front as well. And this time my parents may actually enforce it by cutting me off even though they are rich beyond measure themselves.

So there is a lot of different reasons for my anxiety around time. My gf however informed me that it is also an issue of global nervous system activation. Really it’s a survival type response because when our fight/flight/freeze response is triggered it means imminent danger and if you don’t respond in the proper amount of “time” accordingly you could die!

On thing my therapist had me try to do was imagine I had all the time in the world. He asked me what that would feel like. I had the most difficult time responding because I could scarcely even begin to imagine what that might feel like. That fact should be the biggest red flag ever that I have an epic issue here that needs to be resolved. If there is a positive emotion that I can barely feel in myself or even create temporarily it means there is something drastically wrong.

This is something I have a lot of denial and lack of awareness around. The time -pressure feeling is something that has been so ubiquitous in my life it’s almost a part of my identity and it’s fucking exhausting me.

So every time I feel under pressure or have travel/packing time anxiety I need to become aware and realize that my survival is not under threat. And if it’s not under threat then I should feel relaxed as if in I had all the time in the world.

My gf has a similar issue in that she suffers from impatience with people…mostly herself. So we are matched emotionally vibrationally  in a similar manner.

I think we both may have a false belief that it is STRESS that we need in order to get our ass in gear. I think perhaps most people adhere to that kind of philosophy. This could be one of the worst beliefs affect humanity, because creativity and real problem solving is stifled by the stress/anxiety response.

Many people feel rushed at school, at work, to make money, to meet friends and even through sex. It’s become part of the collective psyche that in order to feel important we need some impending task that needs to be done. Most people don’t feel alive, or rather they feel more alive under pressure of the gun of some kind. Being “under the gun” even implies life or death survival anxiety.

So how do we undue this most damaging belief? I have to start by feeling like I have infinite time and really relaxing into that, It will be a challenge, but the more and different ways and circumstances I can do this the better.

Oh yes, and also energetically/emotionally purging myself of the anxious-time-pressure energy.

The thrill of being chased

Last night I had a dream where I was watching someone being chased, and then got emotionally sucked in, so that I was being chased. It was more for the fun of it in that usually dreams where I am being chased I am in terror and there is a feeling of dread and impending doom.

When I woke up I realized that a part of me enjoys the anxious excitement of being chased. Similar to children playing tag on the playground. The fear of being caught is something that really pumps my adrenals and get’s me into this state of hyper-vigilance. Hyper-vigilance anxiety is a state I naturally tend too. In fact I think I get a bit of a dopamine rush on the over-excitement that leads to feelings of being emotionally overwhelmed and then exhaustion. I feel that this is the emotional root cause of the Chronic Fatigue I have bee suffering for most of my life.

The struggle for me is that this programming is so deeply ingrained I scarcely know how to turn it off. In many cases I don’t even know HOW to relax. It’s something I never really learned as both my parents are anxious-hyper-vigilance as well. Bulgy eyes and raised eye-brows are a sign of this.

I realize now as much as it “excites” me that this is NOT a good baseline state. I feel stuck in a paradoxical conflict between desiring two opposite things. It also feels like if I were to change myself I would be losing part of my identity. So on some levels my ego is really attached to hyper-vigilant over-excitement and my body is neurochemically addicted as well.

I need to explore this further and pay attention somatically to these compulsions and the emotional energy that come with it so that I can become aware and then have the ability to reprogram myself to a new norm of empowered relaxation.

It’s kinda funny I have been struggling with chronic fatigue, and it seems the only way out is to put myself into anxiety provoking states. It seems as if my nervous system has learned that anxiety is a good way to get energy. Anxiety= power & energy

So on one level emotionally I believe this to be innately true. It’s like an addiction where I feel the more I get something the less the problem will be, when in fact the problem gets worse. It’s a type of insanity.

I am not quite sure what the solution is. Becoming aware of and then dumping the anxious-excitement-thrill feelings, and relaxing seems to me the best way forward. Also learning to contain excitement, concentrating and focusing that energy, instead of letting it wash all over me. Learning that relaxation is rejuvenating re-vitalizing and energy creating.

 

 

Anxiety is the fear of the loss of attachment

The above video starts off a bit slow, but gets really good halfway through and gets to the root of many of my issues in my life. Especially Social Anxiety. Awesome video and I highly recommend it.

Some key points:

• Long term Pathology is the result of short-term coping mechanisms that were automatically used by the brain too much during early child development
• Anxiety is the fear of the loss of attachment.
• Take responsibility for our emotions, the other is triggering it not causing it. Important distinction.
• Frustration is the engine of aggression. Kids greatest need is attachment if that isn’t met it leads to frustration.
• Concept of: counter will
• Used to develop individuality.
• The more immature we are the more automatic is the resistance.
• Resistance is the natural response to coercion.

One of my prevailing feelings socially is a fear of being left out and/or ostracized. Which in some ways is strange in that in grades 1 through 6, I was always one of the “in” kids and never had any traumatic experiences of note. I never got bullied if anything I was more of a bully.

However, my mother has this generalized feeling so I picked it up long before then. In grade 7 I attended a Christian school, where I did become the kid that people picked on, and that was somewhat traumatizing. (i left the school after that grade) I became rather aggressive after that,

The main point still is that I have that underlying anxiety, and realize that my mother has it even worse which formed an implicit template in me. To reverse the damage first I acknowledge and feel that loss my inner child feels as fully as possible giving the FEELINGS permission to exist within me instead of rejecting them and trying to run away from them. Then I become emotionally very present and feel warm fuzzies by Imagining having all my social/attachment needs met. I am slowly making progress on this front.

The stuff Dr.Mate talked about in terms of counter-will and defining individuality is another huge issue I have in my life. One that can get me into serious debates/conflicts with INTJ’s.

My parents coerced me hardcore, they tried stripping from me as much of my will as possible. And they still try to do it to this day. The harder they try the more resistance I put up, the harder they try even more! It’s a serious negative vortex, and I am unsure how to abort this without giving into their demands.

How about if they didn’t fucking try to coerce me in the first place!? That’s all I can think of. This is an area I still have some major learning in.

Psychedelic trip report #3 – Mushrooms

Substance: Mushrooms; species unknown

Quantity: unknown  (probably 2g-4g)

Date: November 12, 2011,

Timing: 10:00pm took about 1hr to set in, last for about 6

Participants: my gf, Miss.gypsy, myself

Location: Local Burning Man Decomp party

My gf and I were all to eager to go on our next trip. Miss.gypsy was very hesitant. I thought I would do flow staff, but once the effects started, I became overwhelmed with a fractal universe and found it difficult to move. Also sense of time become lost. My gf and Miss.gypsy were supposed to be greeters, and I started getting anxiety about them not doing their jobs.

Then my mind decided to bring up all kinds of negative stuff, and do draining pyscho-therapy on itself. There was too many people around, it was too hot, and social anxiety went into overdrive. I was on the verge of what felt like a anxious meltdown for several hours. I could barley keep myself together psychologically.

Eventually my gf and I left, Miss.gypsy stayed…. and walking to the car, the nighttime sky was most mesmerizing. The universe, and galaxy felt so much closer!! That was an awe inspiring feeling I will never forget. It made the trip entirely worth it, however brief the euphoria was. I got into the car, and thought it was wearing off, but it wasn’t. The nature of my trip changed as the fractals got smaller though. Got home worried obsessively about Miss.gypsy that we had left her. Towards the end though I began letting go, And had that cheering sensation Miss.gypsy had described from her DMT trip.

A lot of what I experienced was the fractals were very large, such that they formed portals into past experiences/memories…mostly anxious ones, as if my pysche was bringing them up to cognitive light to work through them, and then purge them.

Take away’s….set and setting are so VERY important. I got way in over my head, people setting was not good, i tuned to much into other peoples (strangers) insecurities amplifying my own. I also learned anxiety again was still a very serious issue for me that required tons more work. Lesson learned …don’t do shrooms around total strangers at a large party, EVER again.

Some pictures that gives you an idea of what the trip looked like to me:

 

Everything in my field of vision looked like the ceiling in the above picture. This is hands down one of the best pictures I have found the represents the visuals I ge ton high-dose mushrooms.

Psychedelic trip report #2 – DMT

Substance: DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine)

Quantity: one hit…40mcg?,

When: October 7, 2011

Timing: start time about 10:30pm – trip lasted for 10mins, felt like 70 years

Participants: my gf, Miss.gypsy, Wizard-friend, myself
Location: Wizard-friends apartment overlooking a river valley (about 20th floor). His room feels like a jungle with all the plants, and dozens of thick beeswax candals.
I could feel the darkness coming over me. I took one last long toke, and then lay back and was transported into a fractal universe that appeared to be bounded on the sides by a cube. I lost all sense of memory and how I had gotten there. I lost all memory of my life, and it felt like i had been there before on a nightly basis during my dreams. I had extreme anxiety, a whimpering fear, as the very large fractal Tiki’s with rounded eyes, kept fractaling down on me …in the corner..they were made up of fractal square sheets that had a slight thickness to them, and sometimes it was cubes.

 

I remember the cubes fractaled out to infinity..but i still had the feeling of confinement, as if my current place was locked. It was terrifying, i curled up in the fetal position wishing it would all stop, that the fractals would stop compounding in on me and away from me and in on me, like a square fractal slinky that went back…and forth. The speed was incredible felt like i had been there an eternity.

I did not like this place. Everything was made of squares, i thought it so peculiar that i saw no curves, only the illusions of curves brought about by the distant perspective of the squares. It was a harsh square sheet reality, the fractal entities were menacingly honing in on me….maybe they were trying to show me all my fears and anxieties, but there were so many it occurred all so very rapidly, i was meant to confront them, but the presence of the entities that were bringing them to me frightened me. The colours were all pastel pink, orange pink, bland colours. The following image gives a good idea of the depth and expanse I experienced, as well a bit about the square fractacality, and the coulours are very close.

When i opened my eyes the whole room was cascading into a pixilated landscape of cubes…the plants turned into lego blocks, everything was moving and continuously fractaling itself out away and back, the plant beside me turned into a palm tree, and i was very aware of the confines of the room i was in, and it seemed to confine my trip in a clausterphopic like way. The plants actually had colour and the cubes/lego blocks fractal, were green. Then when i closed my eyes i was back in that terrifying reality, i couldn’t decide what reality i would prefer yet they appeared to be one in the same, switching between them was very confusing because they kept merging. As I came to, the room seemed larger than life, and the people that were with me were part of an alien landscape, the painting on the wall was layered itself and moving, i closed my eyes to a blackness with green lightning it was cool, i tried bringing back the fractal tikis, and only got a glimpse of a more loving tiki setting. Then i came too. It felt like I was gone for decades, perhaps centuries, i was apologizing for having left for so long, It took a bit to remember my life and who I was. I had experienced ego-death, and really felt like I gained nothing from it.

My initial interpretation:
It appears most of my anxiety is related to time. MY EGO APPEARS TO BE SEVERELY ATTACHED TO TIME AND OUTCOMES IN LINEAR TIME…EXPECTATIONS. In terms of my dreams and sleep in my early teens i started having severe insomnia, severe anxiety about not getting enough sleep so i wouldn’t have enough energy the next day. I’m emotionally attached to time. The DMT trip caused me to confront this. Time is a pencil spinning on edge. The theme among all my dreams is attachment to time and anxiety around that. My relationships with my ex-gf perpetuated this anxiety made it worse and was basically a sign showing me how terrible it is to get caught up in time. She is a hyper strong J (from ESFJ). I thought the fractals in DMT were reflections of my attachment to time. Emotional attachment to time events, outcomes. Get a watch without a time face. Do the tikis represent time, are they time wardens, guardians, time shapers?

The primal form of the Hei-tiki from the Maori tribe in New Zealand appears to be what I encountered on my DMT trip. What it means….I don’t know. There is probably some connection to ancient Polynesian civilization from the islands that made up the Lost Continent of Mu the famed counterpart to Atlantis. Seth mentions it briefly….

After-thoughts:

Why I am so hesitant to return to that place? The worst that could happen is another Ego death. Firstly Ego death is painful and NOT pleasurable, secondly Seth says Ego death is DETRIMENTAL to your pysche. Ego death’s cause new ego’s to rise (some people I guess call this rebirth) however it is a great insult to your already constructed ego. Seth goes at length in one of his books explaining these detrimental effects. Destroying your ego, and then having it haphazardly reform is not spiritual growth in fact it impedes it.

Thus I will NOT do DMT again, or a high dose of any drug. One ego death for this lifetime is good enough, the experience is positively terrifying. Being thrust into a reality full force, without any external reference points, put’s me into the position of being a passive observer with no control. Cam’t really do any exploring.

That being said I CAN explore these realities on low-to-medium dose LSD and mushrooms while maintaining an intact ego. This allows me the freedom to play, to actively explore, because my emotional and cognitive faculties are largely still intact and can provide me with much more direction. I have more interactive power. Working on my emotions is also key. Manipulating and controlling emotional focus with stable flux, is what those realities respond to.

Being the relaxed emotional template for self so it can help empower others as well

Today I had an experience where being around my mother was activating me. She had the emotionally needy, sympathize/empathize pay attention to me, me vibe. This put me instantly at dis-ease, and I was trying to fight it to no avail. After I had that creepy/disgusting/gross feeling.

My first impulse is to tell my mother to stop behaving and being like that. But I know if I tried that it would her only worse. I need to change my emotions and not let hers control/manipulate me. This is difficult because my ego wants to blame the trigger, namely her.

What I realized is that I need to completely change the way I relate to her. I need to STOP relating to her as my mother and start relating to her as a child when she is being that way. I need to take her off the authoritarian parent/mother pedestal, and emotionally relate to her as a needy 3 year old child. The thing I asked myself is how would I most beneficially relate to a child that was behaving that way? And that is by saying “it’s ok” here is a better way to feel. To teach a child how to properly transition through emotions, you have to provide a comforting relaxing template. You have to demonstrate. Relaxing secure emotions are the authority here. Not age, or relational order.

A child is quite helpless and does not have the intellectual capacity to engage in Cognitive behavioral changes or fake it till you make it. HAHAHA, try telling an infant to fake being relaxed happy and content and tell them their emotions will surely follow. Lol try that on your cat! (animal relations work similar, it’s all emotional)

Dumb people talk at animals, smart people vibe with animals. (my gf completely disagrees btw, lol!)

In the same way emotions do not follow logic in those terms. Emotional communication and templating is far richer and experiential. But first one needs to change their beliefs about their parents. Knock them off the pedestal, relate to them as a helpless infant, and be the template for secure relaxed emotions. This is the most compassionate empathetic kind of care you can possibly give some one. Your own relaxed centered and secure emotional presence.

Most people (99%) are walking around the world looking to template off other people, so they can gain the emotional framework they never received in childhood. The problem is the other 99% also are looking for the same thing since they didn’t receive it. Thus most people you will probably have to at the most strenuous of times relate to them as infants, provided YOU can go into a state or relaxed emotional ease. Realizing this should provide you with the encouragement to make this your default mode from where you operate from.

The more someone is in their ego the more you need to be emotionally relaxed and present and secure in yourself. You can tell by how strong someone is in their ego based on the forward intensity of their facial expression. When the brow is furrowed, when a person is thinking very deeply, when a person is focused very much on their thoughts or ideas, the more they are centered in their ego. People who are highly intellectual or highly emotional will have that same furrowed expression on their face. Their head is usually protruding forward, eyes slightly bulging.

An emotional relaxed state is one where, the head is back and aligned with the spine, the head is tilted slightly up instead of down, they eyes are relaxed and the eyelids droop a bit, the forehead and brow is smooth, the neck muscles are relaxed, and the person is very relaxed in their posture and the eyes are playfully present instead of seriously present. This is the state you want to achieve when your mother is upset and stressed out. This is a most challenging task for most people.

A new model on how to relate to other humans?

So I have discovered a new way of relating to humans; for myself.

So as articulated above, pert of the “googly eyes” my gf talks about, and my emotional attachment to outcomes in human relations is how I have learned to relate to other human beings. My emotional state is strongly influenced by theirs, because I haven’t separated them because I am trying to draw everyone into me, so I can gauge them and survive.

The relationship between a mother and baby must be like this, the two are literally melded into one and mirroring each other. As the child grows older, it is supposed to detach from the mother, and the mother from it. But what if the mother doesn’t detach from the child (my mother hasn’t detached from me) then the child aka me. will use that as a human relational model and use it to relate to all human beings in like matter, like my mother does. I templated that relational framework off of her.

It’s because she learned it from her mother. I remember my grandma reading the newspaper and every horrible story affected her deeply, as if it were personal and happening to her. She got quite an ego kick out of it.

There is another dimension to this however and I feel that a lot of parents see their children as extensions of themselves. Their progeny their creation, they identify quite strongly with their children, and disallow them to identify with themselves. Suffocating is a very apt term.
The children then learn this relational model and then relate to others in like manner. If you separate yourself from others, and observe them as separate emotional creatures, and don’t project your ideals upon to them, then their emotional state can’t have power over you. It’s ironic because as people relate to others with the ideals they have for themselves they put others into boxes, and don’t appreciate them for who they are. Shadow self, very much is a shadow SELF, because its a projection of SELF on another. You dis-empower yourself and don’t see others for who they truly are, and when they don’t act in accordance with your projected ideals you have knee-jerk emotional reactions/resistance to their state of being, because it has been over-laid with your idealistic projections. I feel this is the normal way of human relating for most people.

There is much we can learn from animals. Animals relate to each other, especially different species, with a sense of curiosity, but they respect each other in an inviolate way. They don’t go projecting their ideals on each other. Likewise with plants.

The ideal way of relating to an animal is appreciating them for their unique creaturehood. Animals respond very positively when you treat them as inviolate creatures, because it holds a sacred respect. Animals tend to respond very affectionately The thing is most humans don’t relate to each other in that way.

Trying to extract love from someone or an animal usually backfires. But appreciating animals/human for their unique DIFFERENCES from you and their entire unique emotional way of being, and their individuality is the best way to gain that same kind of love and appreciation back. When was the last time someone appreciated you for your very own unique emotional way of being?

Man if humans related to each other more like this……. it could change everything.

Holding others accountable for their emotions

Had a really interesting experience w/ my mom today.

Finally told her I wasn’t gonna be spending christmas with her, and was gonna go to cancun. She responded emotionally in much the way I anticipated, like I hurt her, and was driving a steak into her heart and sat twisting it and enjoying the agony I was putting her in. She put on quite the show. Very impressive amounts of pain, that she projects as my responsibility.
This is something she does to everyone, it’s sheer emotional manipulation. She has done it to me my whole life, made me responsible for the well-fare of her emotions. I have usually responded by ignoring her, or getting angry, which perpetuates the problem.

After talking to my gf about it, we came up with a strategy. I need to flip the dynamic, and make her take ALL the responsibility and hold her accountable for her OWN emotions. I have to stare her the fuck down, and not be emotionally phased one iota. The emotional strength this will take on my part is probably one of the most challenging things I have ever faced. However I know welcome the challenge. My goal is to reflect back to her, and make her accountable for her own emotional state and not let her be victimized by me. Ignoring, ejecting, running away, freezing are not options, for then she will have won, and learned nothing. This is the best for her spiritual growth, if only I can teach my Dad and my bro these skills now.

Her emotional manipulations of me have affected me in all areas of my life. It has made me easy prey for many that use similar to strategies to her. If i show anger it justifies the victim stance she has taken, and then will milk it for all its worth. Instead I need to be aggressively calm, and learn to be comfortable at starring her in the eyes reflecting it all back at her. Phew!

I have been a master at holding people intellectually accountable, now I am becoming adept at doing it emotionally as well with intense aggressiveness strength.

Because at young age I learnt to take on my mothers emotions, very similar to how depressed-friend takes on other’s suffering. I took on my mother and most peoples emotional states, internallizing them, and then building resistance against the controlling nature of those emotions. Basically fighting myself, and creating a permanent wall of resistance, if im not around others, whose emotions to take on, i take emotions of created people in my dreams. Possibly why i feel so comtrable in clubs, too many peoples emotions to take on so I dont. Smaller group of people I can. This is a subconscious habit of mine. This is possibly the greatest source of my fatigue, and maybe one of the greatest issues i need to deal with.

Strategy to deal with this is to visualize bubbles around every person that contain ALL their emotions, so i dont take it on and this way it dosent affect me. When people are directing negative/controlling emotions my way, all that energy is re-directed at them as soon it leaves. It stays with them. Their shit gets reflected back at them. On the surface reframes are powerful, making people eat there own shit, take acocuntability and responsibility for their own emotional state. I help them best this way as well.

Focus on the freedom and relaxation i feel from the expanded energy i can feel, when all others energies are contained in their own fields. Makes it so much easier for me to be present, to feel a part of earth, to be alive with abundant energy not being dragged down by others and my resistance to theirs. Helps me see people who for they really are, the whole self, the negative and positive, all their own creations, and desires.

I actually have to fundamentally change the way I relate to ALL people. This is reminiscent of narcissm, everyone and their emotions contained within your bubble/boundary…its why mom is so obssed with narcissists, she is a vampire one.

In a way it was like i was a sucking vampire, a femimine void/black hole…like my mother. She does this to everyone around her….probably as a survival strategy, and i learned it from her. Leaving people to their own energies is a great way of not taking things personal.

The pitfall of empathy/persona morphing – survival strategy

I had a very strange dream last night, and talking with my gf about it figured some things out.

In my dream I was a gay guy driving a SUV while eating from a plate. I got out at the intersection and began walking and eating from the plate, because gay guys cant drive and eat at the same time. Then I got conflicted because I’m not sure if they can walk and eat at the same time either…

Last night my parents had a relative of mine over for dinner who was a pastor, and while eating I had this feeling of confrontation keep coming up. (I made this guy cry once…telling him his religion was phony) Anyways I often get the confrontational feeling when Im around my family at dinners.

Also last night I was shopping with my gf for a dress, and some gay guy was helping us. I became self aware that I was acting/behaving more gay when he was around my gf and I. Weird!

I do this a lot, I tend to act like the people I am around. It makes me very adaptable in social situations. I feel like I can get along with absolutely anyone! All I have to do is using my empathy skills put on their mindset like clothing.

Where does this come from?

My therapist figured out that when I was a kid that I hid who I was especially in front of my parents as a social survival mechanism. I actually morphed my persona/identity in order to be accepted and loved by my parents. For they did not love me or appreciate me for who I really was. My mom loves her personal created projection of me. My gf witnessed this first hand meeting my mother for a 1-on-1 coffee once.

This as a child made me very angry as well, but I bottled the anger often, until as a teenager it began bursting. Hence the feelings of confrontation when around religious people. It’s a proactive almost emotional response to protecting my identity. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it all. It’s still a rather confused mess for me in some ways.

In dreams I often find myself projected into people, acting as others, yet observing myself from the outside simultaneously often doing very bad things. Social deviance of some kind which leads to that survival anxiety rush. Social survival anxiety rush is the dominant feeling in my bad dreams/nightmares.

Being able to adapt in social environments definitely has it’s benefits but it’s too much and NOT beneficial when I start acting like a girl around girls.

I feel like I can adopt other peoples mindsets/worldviews/emotional reality quite well, however one thing I tend NOT to do, which ENFP’s tend to be good at, is I don’t match people’s energy very well. It might be an activation thing, I’m not sure, but it is an issue that a fellow pua pointed out to me once. My energy level is often way to high/excited and I need to tone it down a bit.

Another thing my gf pointed out, is I tend not to change how I act when I am around people I feel truly understand me and appreciate me for who I am. Which admittedly is somewhat rare. My therapist had me imagining I had parents that accepted me, which was one of the most difficult imagining exercises ever. (I wrote about this earlier on the forum here) So from an Somatic-therapy point of view it appears I have to go back to my childhood, Imagine my primary caretakers (or surrogate caretakers…much easier to imagine) loved me for who I actually was in order to release this social morphing survival-like anxiety emotional complex I have.

Anxiety experienced in the body

I have been practicing some self-Somatic-therapy type stuff lately and having some excellent results.

Firstly anxiety is my number one most strongly and most commonly felt “negative” emotion. I feel that negative emotion more than any other such as, anger, sadness, contempt, fear, disgust, shame, etc. Which leads me to an interesting question. What is your most commonly felt negative emotion? What is your most strongly felt negative emotion? Likewise what about positive?

If it takes you some time to figure the answer out, it means you are not very in tune with your emotional world. Personal emotional awareness is key in order to enact change. Hence why I have been practicing this. It’s rather tough, but it’s good practice to often ask yourself, what emotion am I currently feeling, how does it make my body feel, where is it located, do I like this emotion, why is it there, what purpose is it serving?

For myself I discovered my most common emotional state is a slight case of anxiety felt across my entire torso, stomach and chest. Even when I am sitting and relaxing a hint of that feeling exists. I have to put effort into changing it into a feeling of being content. So I have been doing that periodically throughout the day. It means I have to stop my crazy fast thought stream, and pay attention to my body specifically the emotion I am feeling in my torso.

One thing I realized is that it appears anxiety and it’s opposite the feeling of being content/relaxed, appear to use the exact same felt nervous system structure in my body. It’s the same pathway! In the past I have tended to dissociate from this part of my body, going into my head under circumstances of moderate to intense anxiety. It’s like when your standing in front of a crowd and your nervous about presenting, and you fake confidence, ignoring your body and focusing intensely on the task at hand with your mind. This style of coping was something I had basically adopted permanently as a way of being! Not good! The reaction became subconscious and thus evaded my cognitive awareness…until now.

By focusing on the felt feeling of content/relaxedness I find it gives me incredible confidence, and slows my hyperactive cognitive mind way down. It’s still a bit tough for me to do in social situations, however I am getting better. I constantly have to bring awareness to this phenomena. One thing I realized is that since it uses the same nervous system pathway as anxiety, I can switch between the two very, very quickly. This disturbed me slightly however, It makes the path of regulating these emotions very stark and with good contrast. As I become more aware of the positive emotion, my brain builds new pathways cementing that feeling and making it more permanent and accessible. In fact the feeling grows of being content/relaxed grows with intensity overtime and this is incredibly exciting.

Neurons that fire together, wire together. So thus I am now re-programming my subconscious reactions on an emotional level for various contexts, primarily social. My goal here is mastery of emotional regulation. Particularly the anxiety/relaxed axis. This is the far superior method to “Fake it till you make it” because you don’t run the risk of learning emotional suppression. By tuning into the feeling of emotional confidence (relaxed/content state) you can conjure it at will and this is where true authentic confidence comes from.