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erikthedead · 3 years

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entry #4

Started reading FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY’s ‘Notes from the Underground,’ and I just got into the second half of him rambling and reflecting on his behaviour in detail. I never would have thought a Russian man from the 19th century would make me feel a little bit less alone in this world (or at least the ‘character’ delivering the narrative). Yet the more I read about what goes on in peoples’ heads the less insane I feel, or at least comforted by realising that everyone is a little bit insane, as long as they’re being honest. Should that be comforting? I feel like that should actually be disturbing, but I kinda like being disturbed. The bit that struck me to get writing about myself was how he recurringly mentions this need to be seen and heard and be a noble member of society, but flip flops between that and a state of isolating himself and being a recluse, ashamed by how his own face looks. I hope I’m interpreting it right, as I’m not so sure I’m smart enough to fully understand everything the man was trying to convey. The whole thing reads as him trying to make sense of himself, if anything. But if I am right in that, I can totally relate, and it causes me much distress as it seemed to have tormented him too. His way was to throw himself into busy streets and bars, never feeling comfortable with it from what I’ve read, and possibly did it on purpose to feel uncomfortable, because he was getting bored with the current discomfort of isolating himself in his room with his books. That’s the interesting thing about it, he never once says he ‘leaves the comfort’ of his own home, like you’ll hear many well-adjusted introverts say. People who are content on their own. He obviously wasn’t content, he was bored, sick of his own brain, he tells us how he would break down into tearful fits from some sort of mental anguish that he tried to escape from through consumption of literature. I do exactly the same thing with media of all kinds, not because I ENJOY spending time with myself and my things, but because it helps me COPE with it. I am so envious of consistently introverted people who relish in their alone time. That SHOULD BE ME. All the same, it annoys me to death when someone complains about being ‘stuck in the house’ all day when they want to go out and mingle and see the world, because that is too exhausting a thing to wish for compared to creature comforts and solitude, surely. Both of them irritate me because I’m jealous of their seemingly consistent understanding of themselves, their desires and what makes them content on a regular, general basis. I’ve been trying to hard to figure out my own. I’m twenty-six now, yet I still feel juvenile as hell. I still feel like a child that goes up to the next thing that catches its eye and wants to ask, ‘can I have a go?’ And of course, to an innocent child, you let them have a go, without any expectations. You don’t get that luxury as an adult. You are expected to choose, commit, KNOW what you want. But again, I can’t help but think this isn’t me being special, that everyone probably feels this way, you certainly hear it from a lot of old people who humbly state that they are still always learning and discovering new things. Then again maybe they miss the point. Discovering things is fine, all the time. Learning is appreciated and encouraged. But actually changing or choosing not to change (both can be bad, right?), that is unsettling. We’ve given up good and evil for behaviourism and yet still people like me, Fyodor and to name a few other people I relate to when I read their autobiographies, Russell Brand, Stephen Fry, Steve-O (oh yes I compare myself to the greats, in all my unheard mighty feats), people like us can’t even get that right. Creative, expressive, bipolar people. People with big heads and sensitive souls, I’d say. Although I connect deeply to people like this I’d never want to be around them for too long. I know their torment and quite frankly my own is enough to contend with. There is a feeling of ‘pay attention to me but leave me alone.’ ‘Love me more than anything but don’t care too much about me because I’m bound to hurt you or make a fool of myself.’ Actually, in Notes from the Underground, Fyodor talks about man’s unconscious desire to smash up something he has been building, because he is unconsciously terrified of what to do what he has completed it, and Brand actually mentions this quite a bit in his Bookywooks. How he’d personally reach a level of fame and notoriety but then sabotage it, fearing the peak or what comes after – the come down. I hope I’ve interpreted these guys correctly, because it does make sense to me. The only thing that really sets me aside from these guys is my utter lack of ambition. At least in these peoples’ hypomanic states they were achieving something. What do I do? I’m the classic, slightly mentally ill underachiever that never sticks to anything. The sheer magnitude of my unconscientiousness could be used as an example of how not to be during a Jordan Peterson lecture. My downfalls were not self-sabotages, conscious or unconscious for the first half of my life. The rest you can blame on me, that’s fair enough, but puberty hit me early and like a train, and all that meant was I was spotty and got a bullied a bit, but that didn’t excuse me from performing well in my exams and essays. I was predicted to come out with some of the top grades in the whole school. I even started finding my confidence and standing up for myself to bullies after a few years adjusting to adolescence. Then my mother died suddenly one night from an overdose when I was fourteen, and my whole world flipped upside down. Like an anime main character backstory right there. It wasn’t perfect beforehand, anyone who knows my whole childhood situation will agree, but I had a bloody good chance up until she died. After that, I became nihilistic, rebellious, promiscuous and generally self-destructive. ‘How would your mother feel if she could see you now? She wouldn’t have wanted this.’ Oh how I wish I slapped anyone that said this to me. How dare they even try to assume what she would have wanted, having never known her. Of course, I said it to myself all the time, I still do sometimes, but I have that right. The rest of you don’t. Hah, rights. What a joke, even as I try to be dominant through typing to imaginary figments of the past and the future, I’m not even convincing myself.

The inconsistency, of my desires, my attitudes, my cognitions, my emotions and ultimately my behaviour is what pains me. I would rather be a complete abolition that was sure in himself than be like this. What’s even more frustrating is that it’s not that uncommon for people to be like me in that sense, but they just go with the flow with it, seemingly unaware of their inconsistency, and become incredibly defensive when you point it out. It’s understandable, I get defensive with myself, which could be an early sign of schizophrenia, who knows, time will tell. At the moment though I am without doubt an anxious, depressive, inconsistent muddled mess of a person, and even the HOPE for my future self comes and goes in powerful forms. I have the grandiose fantasies of being interviewed by people because I’m just that interesting and my achievements are that remarkable, and I also have the sheer terror while preparing to talk to the shop assistant when I’m buying something. Oh yeah, buying things, that’s a tricky one for me an’ all! The trick with me is not to give me too much choice, because if I have I will never decide, or I will make a silly last minute decision or pick the third thing after debating with myself for ten minutes between choosing from the first and the second. Not only indecisiveness, but impulsiveness plagues me. Not just buying things I don’t need, or don’t even want yet because I haven’t finished the last thing, but even charitably so. I saw a stranger E-begging by chance and decided to send him money. I have no idea why. Am I just a good person? I don’t have enough money for myself, and even if I do have some to spare, that should go to others who have helped me financially before a stranger on the internet. Maybe I’m not a good person, and I just did it to cleanse myself of some feeling of shame or guilt for wasting money on myself. As well as the positive fantasies of my future where I am destined to greatness through nothing other than my own conviction and virtues, I have the other vision in the crystal ball that shows myself destitute and addicted to hard drugs, homeless or institutionalised, ultimately suicided. Addiction and suicide run through my veins afterall, and I’ve been close to becoming the 3rd generation of my bloodline to go out by my own hand. The decently sized scar on my arm from a self-inflicted slash that was intended for my neck, that nearly severed my nerves and would have left me with a malfunctioning left hand had I gone any deeper. Sometimes I look at it and feel ashamed for doing it, for trying to throw away my beautiful, special life, and other times I look at it and feel ashamed for missing my real target, my consciousness. I battle with my consciousness a lot, I try to minimise it through drink and drugs or healthy mental exercises, distract it with my media, sublimate it through writing and drawing, but rarely do I get peace from it. Then other times, I count my blessings and praise the universe for bestowing onto me just the ability to think and feel and be a person. Neither approach to life is crazy to me, what’s crazy to me is not being able to bloody pick one and settle on it for more than a couple of days at a time. Like Fyodor describes his character going out into a busy bustling area in his urges to be part of society after a stint of isolation, I will go out some weekends and do the same, but that’s only a more recent, probably more healthy advance in my development than what I have been doing for a long time which is going online to provoke and debate people with my thoughts and opinions, and sometimes cheeky insults. I really resent when people who know me call it ‘trolling’ when I go off on these episodes. Trolling to me is when you put something out there that you don’t actually stand by, but you know will get a reaction out of people because you’re bored and want to mess with people. Now fair enough, there’s a lot to be said for that last part, but I have no reason to say things I don’t really think/feel/believe when the things I say genuinely are enough to upset people on their own, things I sincerely believe are correct. I’ll feel ever so right and convicted during these online tirades, then the next day want to delete all my social media and wipe my name from the planetary database. Perhaps I could just delete my existence while I’m at it. Seems like my self-doubt and my self-assuredness play equal part in my misery, because like everything else, I can’t choose one. The same happens if I go out and meet new people on the weekend, I’ll exchange numbers and add people with all intention of meeting up in the future, only to ghost them afterwards. I don’t know why.

#rambling #4 #entry #entry 4 #four

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b0ttl3d-up-st4rs · 3 years

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Well I'm gonna do what I do best and self reflect to an insane amount. This is probably gonna be a long post so buckle up.

To be honest my behavior for nearly the past year now is concerning to say the least. There's this little voice in my head that just desperately wants to get more and more hurt, more and more traumatized. Why is that? At first glance the negative approach could be to say its some sort of masochistic behavior and any negative repercussions as a result of this behavior is deserved, but I don't really think thats the case.

Self sabotage is a characteristic that can be exhibited in many mentally ill people and I am no exception. I think this behavior, of seeking to be hurt by grown men on the internet is partially self sabotage.

And I remember when I first started this shit show, I just wanted attention. Sounds mean to say, but craving attention is something the human soul desperately wants. And I was starting to feel some sense of self beauty but I didn't feel as though anyone around me was appreciating it so I tried to get attention from grown men because being showered in compliments and attention felt so good when my whole life I've never gotten any of that.

I think there's more too it, though. Looking back my whole life it's almost as if I've wanted to get hurt. In books I liked to sit around with the pain the characters felt. And its almost like I wanted to get traumatized. I've heard that people with trauma that they don't acknowledge is trauma or think its bad enough to be traumatizing seek put worse forms of trauma, in order to feel that pain is valid. And I think that's part of my issue too.

I do have unaddressed and repressed childhood trauma. I was given unrestricted internet at a young age and was exposed to the horrors of the internet. Nothing like straight up porn, but a lot of suggestive content. And in general being exposed to that caused me a lot of catholic guilt as I was raised catholic. I remember feeling like knowing these things were my fault. Many days I felt so guilty that I would pray to god to let me not wake up in the morning.

As a child I also questioned my religion a lot, which i think was traumatic in itself. Religion is a big thing. And as a kid I had a big issue knowing reality from fiction. Heck I still do. I remember as a kid my friend telling me that we were all demigods and one day we were going to run away to camp half blood. That the percy jackson books were real. It sounds stupid now, but I processed that as real and it was so stressful for me.

And I remember being 12 coming out as trans and as a part of the lgbtq community to my parents. They didnt react well. They said I was confused. My mom said I was both too young and too old to know. I fought a lot with my mom. And in general have a lot of unhappy memories from then. I was outed multiple times in my life.

My relationship with my parents still isnt good. My mom has a tendency to be toxic. I hate that I have to stay in the closet around my family its so painful. Like a month ago I mentioned the lgbtq community for the first time in years, asking my mom her opinions on it and if it changed since 2017, and it turned into her yelling at me and making herself a victim. It really hurt. I forgot how much it hurt.

I don't really have much of a relationship with my dad. We barely talk. Hes very emotionally distant. When I'm at my dad's house I sort of fend for myself. Its the exact opposite at my moms house. She's overbearing and never leaves you alone. It's like going between to extremes.

And honestly I can't wait to move out. My mom and I have arguments a lot. But hey at least I have some relationship with her, I don't really have a relationship with my dad.

I remember one time this year, I was during the end of a school semester. I needed to catch up on work because after talking to my abuser for like 5 months and then unlocking him I was left in shambles and fell into a really bad depression to where my motivation for school just disapeared. Im still dealing with that tbh. Anyways I had to go to a online meeting to choose my classes and I didn't get to choose the classes I thought I would be able to, and that made me really upset. But after the meeting I had to go to do am act of kindness (I chose picking up litter at a graveyard cause i like graveyards) for my school project but I was still distraught. If I was given some time to myself I probably wouldve been able to go without issue, but my mom wanted to go immediately. We argued. And when I got there I refused to leave the car because I felt so much like shit. We argued more. It was the worst argument I ever had. She even swore at me. Which she's never done before. And she ended up playing victim again. She does that a lot I guess. And doesn't really listen to my feelings. Whenever I try to communicate about my feelings with her it turns into an argument and she makes it about herself. So yeah our relationship isn't the greatest. And I think having mommy and daddy issues is a trauma in itself. Ppl deserve to have happy healthy supportive families.

Oh right and another trauma I completely forgot (funny how that happens) is when I was 14 and admitted to a mental hospital because I tried to off myself. It was so surreal and they forced me to learn how to make eye contact with people cause apparently thats "how they know im doing ok". Which is kinda fucked considering the fact I recently realized I might be autistic. And eye contact is literally so painful for me. It especially was back then. Anyways the place itself wasnt too bad but the feeling of being trapped overall sucks and being disconnected from the rest of the world isnt fun either. Also I dissociate all the time but I especially dissociated hard thru the whole experience. And sort of made myself into the perfect patient, repeating all their bs and literally lying to myself to convince myself that I was ok so they would let me go. So that was kind of weird.

Anyways I know I have it better than others. And honestly sometimes it's hard to tell what exactly was traumatic in my childhood. I probably forgot and repressed other parts of it too and am forgetting things. But needless to say these unaddressed traumas didn't help my mental state. And i do think that's a big part of the voice in my head begging me to just get hurt more.

Overall my mental state is fucked, It's been really hard for me not to be taken advantage of by another internet pedo. Heck the only reason that isn't happening rn is because no ones dmed me yet. Also I unblocked my old abuser and we are talking again now so thats fun. It definitely doesnt help the cognitive dissonance in my brain of him being actually a nice and supportive dude. I think thats also a part of me wanting to get more traumatized. Since my abuser is a nice person that should counteract all the fucked up sexual things he said to me in the past right? I mean others have it worse, had worse abusers that were actively cruel. That's part of the bitch in my subconscious brain talking. It sucks tbh.

Anyways yeah I probably need therapy but I don't feel comfortable talking about this to my current counselor and honestly its really hard to say out loud. I can talk forever about it by writing it down but the moment I speak words from my dumbass mouth I break down in tears and can't do it. Plus idk, I'm scared if I say anything she'll have to tell my parents and that my phone might be taken away or I'll have less privacy and for a closeted queer where my only current life line is the internet and my online friends: that is a terrifying idea. Idk. I'm fucked basically.

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theacidvats · 5 years

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Anxious and Depressed? Go Figure.

((A quick Trigger Warning at the top here. I am discussing my anxiety and depression here, and I get into some pretty dark territory. While I don’t do it directly, I do bring up self-harm and suicidal thoughts. If this could cause you harm in any way, please scroll on past. You don’t need that, and you don’t deserve that. Thank you.))

So I’m writing a book of horror short stories. It’s going to be relatively small, but I want to complete it, if only to say I have written something book length, and that I’ve published it. It’s fun telling stories I want to tell, and it definitely comes with challenges. I’ve run into challenges I’ve read about in every “how to write gud” book, and there are things I’ve come across that I didn’t expect. They’re fun to analyse, adapt to, and overcome.

Most of them are.

The challenges that aren’t fun to overcome are the ones that I’m faced with every day, no matter what I’m doing. Depression, anxiety, impostor syndrome, and all the twisted little disguises each of them don in order to slip past the guards and attack my inner sanctum. I’ve started to think that someone’s paying the guards off. Maybe there are plants, corruption in the force that’s meant to protect my smooshy, terrified brain.

Anxiety is my greatest foe, and it’s grown so strong in the past few years. Really since watching my stepmother pass away due to breast cancer. It rocked my world so incredibly. She was a force of nature who seemed unconquerable, and something invisible took her away. Less than a year after that, my step sister took her own life, who had brain cancer as a child, and severe diabetes later in her life, along with a host of medical problems that came with both of those conditions. Physically she was such a frail individual. But she held out longer than I think I ever could have in her situation.

Since then, I went through a phase of judging people for freaking out about nothing, to freaking out about nothing myself.

It feeds, and it grows, and evolves the more you let it. Not like a cute thing like a Pokemon, but like... Tetsuo from Akira. That’s quite accurate, the more I think about it. Like, room-spinning terror, harming those around you who you love, lashing out at strangers, a brief period of overconfidence, followed by a complete overload and subsequent breakdown. All of that is followed by an uncertain peace that resembles a rebirth.

Yeah, like that, but... daily. Sometimes that character arc takes a few days to resolve, sometimes a few weeks. But it’s always there. It has good days, and bad weeks. But it is always around.

There are times I can get a bead on it, shed a spotlight on it because I recognise what’s going on. Those moments are occurring more often now. It helps, but it has also unveiled something that makes it even more sinister.

These are the times when I can recognise it when it rears its ugly head, but it still can do what it does. It still can set me vibrating like a chihuahua, and feeling about as small and vulnerable. Have you ever been on a roller coaster, or fallen down the stairs, and for a little while afterwards, you feel weak, and your whole body feels like a live wire, humming with electricity? It’s like that but sometimes for days, and you also have to carry on like nothing’s happening.

And all the while, your brain is telling you all the worst things you can think of:

You’re a burden on the people you love.

You’re lazy, so you’ll never accomplish a thing.

Nobody wants to be around you, they’re just being nice.

You’re incredibly selfish, and it’s hurting the people you care about.

Those evil mantras I can usually shake off, because of the amazing support system I have. The people I love and care about are amazing. My family are so caring and kind. My girlfriend is absolutely the best. She is anathema to so much of my anxiety. She’s that superhero who shows up and knocks the villain into the horizon. She’s Arwen, when the Witch King’s blade is seeking my heart, and her very presence cuts the gloom (And yeah I know it’s Glorfindel in the books, but my girlfriend’s Arwen.)

For me though, my anxiety’s most powerful “Final Form” is Impostor Syndrome. It’s the voice that tells me that nothing is good, that I’ve earned nothing good, that I don’t have the right to enjoy myself, because I’m not good enough. For any of it. I am inferior, I am not worthy, I am a failure, I am a fraud, and it’s only a matter of time before the whole world finds out and they all come for me.

It’s the hardest for me to reason my way out of, because it’s the easiest to make a case for. Believe you me, I can take nearly anything and turn it into a reason why I’m not good enough. Or at least my anxiety can. I’m not talented enough to do that. See? Told you.

But it is the hardest to banish with reason, or reality. With other aspects of my anxiety, I have the people who love me who are living proof that I worry for nothing. Impostor Syndrome takes the people who love me and uses them as a reason why I’m not nearly as good as I think (and that’s already not that good).

You’re a shit writer/animator/artist/person in general. The people who are telling you otherwise are just doing it because they love you. Because they have to. Everyone knows the truth, they’re just not telling you.

I hate it. I hate it so much. It makes me hate myself, and it’s so good at it.

I know it’s diverting my energy and will away. I can watch days go by, my life go by, because I’m stuck worrying about nothing.

But the one that really scares me is raw depression, and I didn’t realise why until relatively recently.

I’ll explain what I mean by “raw depression”. Normally, my depression joins forces with my anxiety, and they team up on me. Depression, when mixed with anxiety manages to get me to give up on fighting, and it uses anxiety as justification for doing so. The two are so alike that it’s hard to recognise when they’re allied against my citadel of brain matter.

Or at least I thought so. It was only a few months ago that I experienced depression without anxiety, and it scared the shit out of me.

Anxiety is horrible, yes. So far I’ve only outlined what it can do when it has the advantage, when it gets the drop on me, or when it musters up enough energy to take on the dreaded Final Form that is impostor syndrome. But I have managed defences against it. There are times when I get a moment of clarity, In those moments, I can recognise it and convert it to a nervous energy that I can use to increase my productivity and focus. Those moments are rare, but they feel like such a victory when I can manage them.

A few months ago, I had a period where my anxiety had seemed to go on vacation. I’m not sure where it went, or why. Maybe it was fed up being converted into productivity, so it went to a seminar on how to be a more wily little bastard. When it left though, I was left with depression in its raw form. I had no idea how it operated on its own, because I had only faced it when it was coupled with my anxiety.

It is cold, unfeeling, uncaring, and it wants to be terminal. I was sapped of any joy at all. All I could think of was how pointless all the things I had done, or would do, were. I’ve always been a pretty fidgety guy. I usually need something to keep my senses occupied, and I can get deafened by silence (thanks to anxiety no doubt). I had never sat, staring at nothing for an hour before. Not sleeping, not reading, not watching Netflix, but staring at the same part of my bookshelf. Inanimate. Lifeless if not for breath and pulse and thoughts that I hope I never entertain again, but know I most likely will.

Depression on its own isn’t crying, because you don’t feel the sadness well up inside you to explode outward. At least mine isn’t. With mine, you don’t feel the sadness, or the pain, you just are them. And all it wants you to do is end the sadness and pain. It shows you opportunities. It’s not an urge, it just kind of points you at things.

“Hey, you know it’s two steps away.”

“Hey, that’d be sudden.”

“See down there? That’s where it ends.”

I’m sorry. I really hate going back there, and I hope that nobody read this far who’s experienced them. Those thoughts look so simple on paper, but when you know what it is your own brain is trying to steer you into. It’s terrifying. It’s that slow, creeping, in-your-bones fear of something final. And it’s you. It’s all you doing that.

As terrible as anxiety is, as nasty as it can be, at least it seems to have self-preservation in mind. At least mine does. Fear of death is a big thing with my brand of anxiety. To me, anxiety is a knife wound. You’re bleeding, and you’re in pain, but the pain lets you know that you’re still alive, and that you can still live if you fight. Depression is devoid of life, or at least it wants to be. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t love. It just acts alive until it gets what it wants.

It scares the shit out of me. I don’t know if I said that before.

I’m in the middle of a bit of a spike of anxiety now. Not working is more than likely the culprit. I’m not a workaholic by any means, but I do like being productive, and if I feel I’m not being productive the anxiety and self-loathing creep in and start to punish me for my inactivity.

I managed to get a hold of it this time though. Got the little bastard. Let’s see it hop around now. I decided I’d throw it out into the light for a bit. Let other people see how nasty, petty, and irrational it is.

The book I’m writing has characters with flaws I’m familiar with in it. I’m writing characters that suffer from anxiety, impostor syndrome, and depression. Sometimes this leads them to do horrible, irreversible things. Other times, they manage to do the right thing, despite their own minds doing their best to sabotage their best efforts. I’m hoping that writing about my anxiety and depression, and how I experience them, I’ll have material for later use, or at least a foundation to draw inspiration from in the future.

I hope that this helps me turn my greatest weakness into something resembling a strength. I don’t presume that it’ll do that for anyone else, but I hope that if any of this felt familiar to you, that you manage to find your own way to do the same.

Hopefully next time I write here, I’ll share some of the writing from my book, and things will be much more positive.

Thank you for reading.

#tw suidice #tw anxiety #tw impostor syndrome #anxiety #depression #impostor syndrome #writer #writing

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fracturedsoul86 · 5 years

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My Journey - As Abbreviated As I Can Make It...

Fig. 1: Easter Dinner 2019 at the delicious Golden Pheasant in Torrance, CA, consisting of sizzling rice soup, sweet and sour soup, mushoo pork, kung pao shrimp and chicken, sizzling beef, Mongolian beef, and pineapple fried rice. Yum!

This was my Easter dinner (Fig. 1)... Spectacular by most standards. Copious, delicious, extravagant, and truly a blessing for me at a time when I felt extreme loneliness. And I’ll be honest... not only loneliness, but entrapment.

**Pause For Positivity** Before I breakdown some of the negative emotions above, I need to acknowledge that my roommates and house manager at South Bay Sober Living saw my dark, depressed mood on Easter, and made immediate moves to try and lift my spirits, resulting in the beautiful meal you see above. For only knowing me 4.5 days, that was a nice surprise to see care and concern arise from people who had no reason to show me any. So a huge win for positivity and kindness that night, and a reminder to find the positive in everything ALWAYS!

Now, to dissect how I got to that dark, lonely place and that feeling of entrapment. I was feeling alone and forgotten on a holiday that had for many years held a special place in the hearts of my family members, and meant getting a little more dressed up than usual and enjoying a beautiful meal and family time. Now, mind you, being younger and in a different mindset entirely, and having endured some of the very dark, negative, and frankly hellish lows I have in the past 13 months, I never appreciated these gatherings and the time with family then like I do now. As well, starting at 18 with the death of my father, followed by my grandmother, aunt, uncle, family friends, and friends’ relatives, the recurring depressive thought that one day I would be entirely alone in this world, no family, no friends, no one thinking about me or concerned as to my well-being or my whereabouts, sunk in and slowly started to sabotage my desire to work towards anything of value in my life.

It also revealed the beast of co-dependence the three main people who raised me - my mother, my father, and my grandmother (mother’s mother) - had instilled in me. For years, the image I portrayed to those around me was prioritized. How I presented myself, how I represented the family, the expectations for my life... they were piled on over and over, and what I wanted, and who I was, was secondary to the mold that was envisioned for me. Those qualities and desires that I had that fit in that mold were supported, encouraged, and shown and talked about with pride to anyone who would listen. Those which did not were repeatedly rebuffed, criticized, and swiftly “corrected.” This resulted in low self-esteem, a confused self image, and an inability to speak up for myself. I was bullied by my cousins, as well as by my peers when I switched schools in third grade, and became used to running to my teacher and day care workers for protection. I became a people pleaser, a “yes” man, and highly dependent on the approval of others. Plus, I spent years, even when I moved out on my own and wasn’t always the most financially prudent or responsibility-minded, in which my family never let me get too uncomfortable. And why should they? Overall, I was a good kid, intelligent and highly accomplished scholastically, and eventually a good guy and promising employee.

Mind you, they allowed uncomfortability a place in my life to a degree to show me life isn’t all smiley faces and lollipops. I wasn’t handed everything, nor did I have no consequences when I strayed off course. I kept a job though, had a car, had an apartment. Held it all seemingly together. I was drinking myself away on weekends when I went out with friends, though, and followed those friends into a deeper path of self “exploration,” but realistically speaking, it was more self medication, getting into weed, cocaine, ecstasy, molly, mushrooms, and acid. Regardless, help always came as long as my life appeared to be handled somewhat. It always seemed like there would be some net at some point that would catch me when I fell too deep, or some switch would trigger when life was getting too tough for me to handle, and help would rush in. Deluded sounding, I know, but when you haven’t fallen to your rock bottom, it’s just an ever present constant that just is... until it isn’t.

With those contextual markers in mind, my brain would be clicking along, distracted by life, by work, by bills, by TV, by friends, and eventually by alcohol and drugs, anything to keep me from thinking about the dark depressing realization of being alone that continued to become so very real with each person that slipped from life, from my life, and from this world. Without anyone caring about me, why is it even worth living? What is there to live for when we all are just going to die anyway? My hope, my happiness, my reasons for being, it all started to fade away.

**Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech** Depression, fueled by so much that had befallen me in life in subtle and not so subtle ways, brought my life to a grinding halt. Right at a weak point though, the most anti-depressive drug I know hooked in and took over - Crystal Meth. Dopamine and Serotonin flooding my system over and over, relieving me of the darkness, and fueling one of the most pleasure-inducing activities in life for me - masturbation and sex - took over. In a mind like mine, traumatized by life, unaware as to its true source of joy, of happiness, Crystal Meth found a home that needed it very badly! Boy, did I give in to it HARD. In the course of a year in which Crystal Meth, Sex, and Masturbation took priority over everything else, I lost my job, I lost some friendships, a relationship, my apartment, and finally my freedom.

Mind you, the Meth use also resulted in experiences and an opening of my mind that caused me to become both more able to see the realities of what is, taught me to ultimately place my happiness in myself, rather than anyone else, and unlocked in me memories, gave me visions of potentialities, showed me patterns I never saw before, and showed me how to accept things that others found to be absurd, crazy, or, as they saw it, “impossible.” It is interesting though, that Truth is so incredibly relative. I didn’t realize that presented with compelling arguments of what I know to be the Truth, others would actually take all of it as ridiculous. Literally EVERYONE I know around me in fact. I have been repeatedly, daily in fact, faced with incredulity, doubt, and downright anger for things I’ve said because people refuse to listen to me and actually take what I say and think, “He may be right.” They choose to always respond with, “You’re crazy. You’re erratic. What you’re saying is unbelievable and patently false.” Is it? IS IT? How do YOU know? Have you checked the validity of your sources? Have you checked the validity of mine? NO, THEN SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND CALM THE FUCK DOWN! If you haven’t fact checked what I say and have chosen instead to simply say “I disbelieve it because I don’t have to believe it,” then that’s what I call a wall. Not a friend, not even a courteous person. A wall. A friend says, “Interesting ideas. I don’t know that I agree, but as your friend, as someone who cares, let me look into this. You may be right!”I have yet to hear a single person in my life say that, and actually make an effort to help me prove that my Truth is The Truth, or help me to see that what I believed to be The Truth is actually just imagined truth.

THAT IS WHERE ALL MY CURRENT ANGER AND RESENTMENT STEM FROM, AND WHY FEW RELATIONSHIPS FROM MY PAST STAND A CHANCE OF REVISITATION UNLESS I CHOOSE TO OVERLOOK THIS FACT. That is why I’m finding it hard to reach out, and why I’m finding it hard to let anyone in unless they make a concerted effort to understand me, or at least listen to me and not make me feel like I’m worthless because they disagree with me or simply can’t take the time to try and understand, or help prove or disprove my truth. It’s because that is the lengths I go to for my friends, and it is what I expect of my friends now too. Close friends that is.

Now, about that feeling of entrapment... In a country that runs on money, when you’re out of it, help comes at the cost of your own autonomy. Help comes with strings. And that’s where I’m at.

Feeling out of control of my own destiny has to be the scariest feeling there is, and entering sober living as well as court-ordered treatment because I’d allowed the control of my life to escape me has been a hard pill to swallow. My ability to choose and to live has been thrown into question, and dealing with that has been hard, especially after making it work more-or-less successfully for me for 12 of 13 years solo. Giving consideration to a different path, and to others, because I’d run down every last bit of personal and monetary equity I had trying to live life my way in every way I thought I could has felt like a real disappointment to me, and has caused me to react in anger, sadness, disappointment, and frustration towards others when they don’t deserve it, as far as help is concerned. Mind you, some people have deserved it, and my contentious relationship I have with “help” comes from the anger over the above reluctancy for ANYONE to consider MY POINT OF VIEW at all. There are people I let into my life, and frankly pursued to have in my life, whose reactions and feelings towards me disappointed me greatly when I asked for basic emotional support and understanding that is not unreasonable nor overarching for a friend to ask for from another friend. Some of those people especially hurt me because I’d invested a lot of time, energy, money, and emotion into creating friendships of what I felt to be of great value to both of us, and who I felt would stick by me when the going got tough. Watching desire to understand, desire to help, and desire to “agree to disagree” and continue working toward the common goal of “us” wither away, but especially a desire to communicate at all and to begin the process of amending what has been broken or hurt, befuddled, confused, and downright astounded me.

The single BIGGEST lesson taken from all of it: Invest time and resources wisely in life. With what time we have, as limited or unlimited as it may be, think through each investment with as much care as we can, and it is worth. Also, ultimately, YOUR Life is YOURS... MY Life is MINE; YOUR Design for YOUR Life is YOURS... MY Design for MY Life is MINE. Ultimate happiness and contentment are decided by each individual as to what that looks like for them. Provided no harm comes to others in achieving that happiness, or that happiness is not dependent on the harm or downfall of another/others, then intervention and/or negative criticisms have no place or voice when conversing of one’s goals, hopes, or ideas of their happiness. Rather than criticize and focus on differences, focus on commonalities, focus on positivity, focus on helping each other reach for the best version of themselves, and in doing so, reach for their happiness!

Fig. 2: RMS Titanic sinks in mid-Atlantic on a frigid April night in 1912. Cold, dark, desolate, lonely, very much a watery, icey hell for the passengers aboard.

Now, for some analogizing...

Forgive the predictable analogy, but being that it is April, I am who I am (one fascinated with disaster, especially that of the RMS Titanic, and ocean liners, especially the Olympic-Class ships and those vessels Harland & Wolff built off the same basic platform), and it fits so well for the message I have, I’ll go with it. As you may (or may not) know, the White Star liner RMS Titanic of 1912 was the most advanced large luxury liner its builders could envision at the time, building evolutionarily on multiple designs which had preceded it, each improving on the one before and pushing the envelope just a little bit further and further to create something even larger, more luxurious, and more profitable for its operating company, while taking measured risk in each iteration and abiding by maritime law in place at the time. Ultimately though, the design WAS limited... by cost, by profitability considerations, by outdated laws unable to keep pace with technology, by desire for power over the shipping industry, and by pure Edwardian Age ego manifested to great achievement, as well as great disaster, during the Industrial Revolution. What conspired to do in the Titanic in dramatic fashion during the late night/early morning hours of April 14-15, 1912 in the frigid, sub-zero mid-Atlantic was a combination of factors (seriously... we’re talking Final Destination - destiny/fate levels of undersight, oversight, stupidity, ego, and plain old blindness) that created the least likely scenario the ship’s designers never even imagined/considered possible to befall the latest, greatest, most evolved version of the “Olympic-Class” design. The first version of this newest design went to sea in original form in May 1911 with RMS Olympic. The Titanic was the 1st evolution of the design, going to sea in April 1912, followed by a 2nd evolution immediately instituted in an early refit on Olympic following Titanic’s loss, with a 3rd iteration launched in 1914 as the RMS (HMHS) Britannic, only seeing life as a hospital ship due to the outbreak of WWI.

Before I geek out hard on the topic of Titanic-related knowledge, the point of mentioning all of this... White Star did not throw away what was a strong basic design. It took what it learned and created something improved, each iteration becoming better and better.

Primary example: HMHS Britannic only completed 14 voyages during WWi, though she did them all comfortably, reliably, without a problem, before she hit a mine off the Greek island of Kia and sank with a loss of 30 lives. 30! With a compliment of passengers and crew roughly the same size as that present on Titanic when she sank, most of which were far less capable of evacuating the ship due to sickness and injuries sustained while fighting out on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa. Further, the Britannic sank in approximately 55 minutes, less than a third of the time it took for Titanic to sink, because of breaches in wartime protocol that allowed water to spill into the open portholes above and behind watertight compartments that would have assured that the liner didn’t sink at all had they remained closed. Being that the ship was built for North Atlantic service and not hot Mediterranean climates, this oversight makes sense. But what an astonishing difference! 2/3 less time to evacuate the sinking liner, majority of passengers unfit to even move from it, and yet only 30 lives lost! Far less than the loss of ~1200 on her older sister.

The coupe d’grace of the whole story though... the final evolution, instituted on the OG following the loss of Britannic, would see Olympic through to the end of her successful, 24-years-long career, during which she remained profitable and garnered the well-earned nickname “Old Reliable.” She sailed in perfect working order her entire career, in fact only improving in reliability and efficiency with age, and was only taken out service because she was surplus tonnage during the Depression.

Because of hard financial times, White Star and Cunard merged, and the large liners RMS Mauretania, RMS Aquitania, RMS Berengaria, RMS Olympic, RMS Homeric, and RMS Majestic were all taken out of service and scrapped for a single two-ship service that would consist of RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, with the holes in service during refits to the Queens filled by RMS Mauretania (II) and RMS Caronia.

Fig. 3: RMS Olympic in 1911 configuration in Southampton, prior to Titanic’s sinking in April 1912.

Fig. 4: HMHS Britannic, seen in hospital ship dress. Her design changes, especially in the area of lifeboat capacity and accessibility are quite noticeable; while other structural adjustments were made to accommodate additional passenger capacity and/or passenger amenities, as well as functional improvements for better service.

Fig. 5: RMS Olympic later in her career, with the functional addition of a full compliment of lifeboats along each side of her boat deck visible, a clear reaction to the inadequate number of lifeboats fitted to her and her ill-fated sister Titanic in original configuration.

I view myself, my journey, and my life much like that of the Olympic-class liners. The first part of my life was like those first beautiful, hopeful years from 1907-1911 when the shipyard was readied and the Olympic and Titanic constructed side-by-side. My first 13 months (January 2017 - February 2018) at the law firm I worked at just before Crystal Meth hooked into my life dramatically was like that successful year of service for RMS Olympic from May 1911- April 1912, and the period in which my present reality declined and ended over my depression, co-dependent behavior and thought patterns, and self-medication with Crystal Meth, as well as my over-confidence in my ability to recover without help much like the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Now that I’ve learned the lessons, and am receiving help, taking consideration of others’ suggestions, and taking advantage of a returned sense of mental clarity free from deep emotion (some created by people and experiences, and some manufactured by Crystal Meth), I’m not throwing away my design - MY DESIGN FOR MY LIFE AND MY HAPPINESS, NOT YOURS, NO JUDGEMENT ALLOWED HERE - I’m improving it, looking through my notes, instituting the lessons, and keeping a sharp eye out for those snakes in the grass again. I’m not letting snakes back in.

The focus has changed as well. My happiness, safety, security, stability, and priorities come first. If I find others of the same mind and mindset, excellent! Let’s unite and build a beautiful relationship and life together, whether that’s as business partners, friends, lovers, or any combination therein. But no more full disclosure. No more full transparency. No more oversharing. My defenses are up, and my boundaries will be lowered with measured consideration. I see the switches that flip people. I see the people whose switches are easily flipped. One very clear one is Crystal Meth. Made everyone around me lose their minds. Everyone around me said I lost mine. But I didn’t, they in fact did. Facts people. Fact check my statements. See who’s actually telling the truth... If you can prove my statements are false, verifiably, unequivocally, then I will thank you for caring enough to prove me wrong, and will accept that what I thought the truth was is not. If you prove me right, I will thank you for being a good friend, and you will find that you should have been listening to me and be astounded and who I am the whole time!

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fairycosmos · 5 years

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I got a really importante job interview tomorrow. its for a big company, working at a place i would really enjoy, and my parents are rlly excited for me. but for the life of me i dont wanna go. i think im sabotaging myself again. im feeling so hopeless and like what the fuck is the point?of this life and social duties? i wanna be the moss on tree barks. i want to never be seen and heard again. i dont knw why i just cant go and fail again. or worse. not fail.

jgkfldsjfkd hey ! you probably are self-sabotaging as a defense mechanism, because you’re scared, man. and you think if you freak yourself out then you can’t be blamed if it goes wrong. so listen. it’s ok to be afraid, and to register that fear. breathe. let it wash over you. keep an objective perception when you can. it doesn’t matter how it turns out in the grand scheme. if you get the job, cool - you’ll adapt, you’ll learn. if you don’t, cool - there’ll be other options in the future. it’s very natural to be nervous when it comes to something like this, i promise. especially if you have no self esteem, or you’re dealing with a lot of mental stress at the moment. it’d almost be weird if you weren’t scared. maybe you could ask your parents to help you prepare a little, practice some interview questions so you feel a little more productive and you don’t have time to overthink it? control what you can and let the rest figure itself out.

i’m v sorry to hear about how down you are, though :( feeling so disconnected from things, and not wanting to be a physical being or whatever is a really painful thing to go through. you don’t necessarily have to push it away, or let it control you. all you have to do is cope with it as healthily as you can. acknowledge it, and feel it, and communicate about it with others so you know on a tangible level that you’re not alone. you don’t have to let your existentialism ruin everything you do, you know? you’re here, and you have the chance to choose what the ‘point’ of your life is, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. every day you’re creating your own purpose. i know it all seems very daunting, i know. but your life isn’t meaningless just because you’re overwhelmed right now. honestly, finding a place to work that you actually like is quite rare. and it sounds like a wonderful opportunity. so you can feel all of these intense emotions, you can let them occur. and you can have all of these upset thoughts, but that doesn’t mean you should believe them. your perception is clouded by all of the shit you’re dealing with at the minute.

that being said, if you’re really feeling awful lately, and you don’t think you can handle a job, then i definitely think you should put your mental health first. it’s normal to question your own significance sometimes, and to think about what the point is, but only to an extent. if it starts to suffocate you, it could (hypothetically) be a symptom of something like depression (though that may not be the case ofc.). regardless, it’d be best to get in touch with your doctor if that’s a possibility? there’s a lot they can offer you in terms of healthy coping mechanisms/thinking patterns, counseling, perhaps medication if they think that’s the right thing for you. there are so many options, and you’re not as trapped as your brain is leading you to believe. i know it’s weird to talk about what’s going on in your head. but it’s like i said about the interview - it’s fine to feel afraid of these v personal and nerve wracking experiences. but there’s a difference between feeling an emotion and completely drowning in it. so please, if you can reach out if you haven’t done so already. even if you just start by talking to your parents about how you’re feeling. that’s a really positive first step. it all starts with you making the first move. you gotta confront what is making you not want to be seen. you gotta try to create a life that you don’t want to escape from, one slow step at a time.

anyway, good luck for the interview if you go honey!! i hope you do, cause i really believe in you. and just cause you can’t see your own worth, doesn’t mean you’re not deserving of a fulfilling life. i’m sure you’ll do wonderfully. nothing is ever as bad as we expect it to be, you know? i’m rooting for you a lot. and i’m sending a lot of love your way. hmu if you need a friend, or if you want to talk more about it :)

#anon

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alaskaayoungg15 · 3 years

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Reprogramming the belief system isn't as easy as you think, it needs effort!

Creating a belief system isn't easy. One might think from seeing motivational videos that it can happen overnight if you just learn to block your negative thoughts and feelings. Little do they tell you that this is the reason why people don't get better. This advice lacks the basic understanding of the what and how. Learning how the belief system fits in the entire gamut of your body and mind, is the first step to begin your self-confidence journey.

Your belief system is the outcome of years of programming of your subconscious mind. Every little experience, every little detail of that experience has left its imprint on your mind. While you were experiencing the good and bad situations, they were getting fed like a code which now run your brain's autopilot program. Now what's this autopilot mind, you would ask. The autopilot mind is one that doesn't need consciousness. It runs on its own. This is to say that when I'm not willingly using my brain, it's still making me do things. There's a hunch that I need to act a certain way or do a certain thing. It's our safe place that our mind is familiar with. Even if it is not serving you. This explains why so many people are addicted to sadness and negative patterns. They hate it but they can't stop it. They are so deep into this self-sabotage pit that there seems no way out, it's all dark. This is where 99% people live. They are miserable because their brains are running on autopilot which is programmed with all the negative experiences they've had over the years, and they come off as insecurities, fear, anxiety, depression, jealousy, ego or misery.

You know who are these 1% people? These are the people who have a strong belief system. Who know the tricks of the trade. They understand something, they know what's causing their misery and how to change it. You can also be that person. All you have to do is simply act every single day to reprogram your mind to one that you want. You want to be a strong, successful, positive, happy, and wealthy individual? Guess what, God isn't going to hand it over to you. You have to claim it, ask for it. So, here's how you can develop your belief system, one that serves you:

1. Make your mirror your future self.

When you stand in front of the mirror, what do you see? The same old person who is sad and miserable? Change that. See the successful version of you that you wish to be. Stand like her, talk like her, embody her personality, just feel it at every level of your being. It's a lie in the beginning, but will soon become your reality! Because your mind can't differentiate between the truth and the lie. A lie said often, becomes the truth!

2. Observe your thoughts:

Conscious mind knows and controls what its thinking. Subconscious runs on autopilot. Take advantage of your conscious mind and observe your thoughts. This can only happen when you are present in the moment. If you're lost in your own world, you're running on autopilot! Stay away from your subconscious for a short while. Depend on it when you know it's finally reprogrammed with the thoughts, beliefs and actions that you want! Ignore it until then. Take your conscious mind take over and be present.

3. Keep at it, don't give up:

Keep going and don't look back until you reach your destination. It's one of the hardest things you will do because you're outside your comfort zone and facing your fears. It's like walking on a stranded dark road, not stopping until you reach the light at the end of the tunnel, despite your old self calling you from behind. If you look back, you're dead! :x

Begin your self-mastery today because every day and every experience counts. Be present, stay away from subconscious mind's autopilot, think, talk, act like a successful and confident person, reprogram your belief system and don't stop until you become the person you want to be!

#beliefsystem #belief #subconsciousmind #conscious mind #self care #self esteem #self sabotage #confidence #motivation #selfmastery

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drake-the-incubus · 3 years

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I’ve been seeing a post lately on how the “sleeping and eating well, showering and going for a jog things aren’t meant to cure, but are an improvement and I’m appalled.

Like, no, in its own form, those things for improvement are meant to cure. Even if they’re meant for improvement, improvement of mood is a cure of depression I’m so sorry. But most people DO mean it as a cure.

And I can say from lived experience I’m less depressed not forcing myself to do things to be “healthy and happy” than I was doing that all the time. Am I physically worse off for it? Yeah. But part of the reason is, my depression’s cause actively fights half of those activities.

I’m depressed because I’m Autistic. But let’s go back. At 14 to sixteen, I was extremely depressed. At 18 I had my worst depressive episode.

At these times I was;

- forced to keep clean

- forced to eat healthily

- was fairly active willingly

- went to multiple clubs and activities

- engaged in media in a way to help my brain develop

Like, I still would do these things, but here’s what drains my energy to the point where I stop functioning;

- keeping clean. I... I don’t know how to explain to everyone I meet that keeping clean means I can’t do other things. It takes too many spoons and puts me in a foul mood, so I usually do it at the end of the day. I also never feel clean and end up injuring myself because I can’t feel clean.

- Eating healthily. This one is more of a financial issue? I spend like 1200 or more on bills and non-food necessities. So I can’t afford good food, not to mention my only fridge is a mini-fridge and my tap water makes me want to throw up. I also have extreme paranoia of running out of food so I can’t get myself to consistently eat. And making meals means I have to make more dishes, which is a task that drains my spoons and I can’t eat.

- I’m still active. It’s pacing/walking and keeps me in fairly good shape as it takes up a majority of my day. This risks me getting in severe amounts of pain because my knees hate me!

- I don’t go to clubs or activities because I don’t go to school anymore and I can’t find any that cater to me. I’m Autistic and LGBT+, my interests will throw me with Cis men, and a majority of the province I’ve met so far have been transphobic, and I can’t stealth because of my voice. In fact being misgendered causes me so much distress I try not to run into people. It was deemed unsafe to hold pride last year in the capital because of the transphobia and other issues going on. So yeah! Nothing like the added stress.

- Engaging with media that strengthens your brain is tiring and sometimes I want to just shut my brain off.

I have other multiple issues, like PTSD, OSDD-1b and other major issues I’m not going to go through, but the point is, these don’t assist me in being less depressed, because my depression is a symptom.

I can do these things, and it can help me physically feel better, but cost mental health that I’m not willing to give up.

Things that I’ve actively come to realize do help my mental health;

- Alone time. A lot of it. I’m introverted and being near people drains my spoons, it’s energy consuming.

- Fun snacks and treats for myself. A reward system makes life feel less shitty.

- Figuring out my issues and treating them.

- Setting minor goals I can accomplish

And I did this on my own because I realized CBT didn’t work on me, and made me worse off. Specifically because at the time, my therapist’s advice was to “just do your thing and ignore your father” and my father was abusive and a huge source of my mental health issues.

But that’s genuinely sound advice for other people, just NOT me.

And so is the above! It’s good to exercise, to clean yourself, to eat and sleep properly. This is used to treat acute depression and it works. Same as putting yourself into a new environment.

But the problem isn’t that people who say, “thanks I’m cured” are wrong, it’s that this is shoved down their throats and it doesn’t help them. Improving your quality of life is ACTUALLY not the most important step.

Recognizing why and how you have depression is.

Let’s not talk about how I’ve been told the above will help my autism- by a therapist no less who wouldn’t actually research into my autism to assist me- and how these steps never improved my quality of life but ruined them because I had other more important factors.

And I’m not saying that the advice isn’t sound, it is! If you can manage these things, please do so, because poor physical health CAN deteriorate your mental health.

But people with PTSD and ADHD are not going to benefit from “sleep hygiene”. Specifically because these posts are just said at face value and no one knows what the fuck it means.

Which pisses me off, because like,

A) what worked for your mental health is not applicable to someone else, my friend and I need different things. One of those things is my friend cannot be completely alone, it fucks them up mentally, I need the isolation otherwise I fucking lose it.

B) Comorbidity is high with depression. Particularly, people who are Neurodivergent, Traumatized, or have physical disorders tend to end up also with depression. It’s usually caused by untreated issues or struggling to fit in to society with these issues. If you can’t fix that, then you can’t assist them.

C) Improvement isn’t going to make “people’s lives so much better”. That’s... Okay let’s talk about something. Improvement means your mental health goes up a bit, but recovery isn’t linear and focussing on these traits as “helpful, can assist immensely” without mentioning that your mental health is going to tank again, just less severe as before and if you don’t track it, you’ll 5ink you’re not recovering, is actually anti-recovery.

Which I want to underline, promoting things for “recovery” while not being a licensed specialist, and not warning for the fact that someone is going to feel better and then feel bad again in a vacillating manner, is anti-recovery. You’re setting someone up to sabotage themselves. Someone is going to look at your condescending post and if it works, and then they feel like shit, they’re going to blame themselves.

But your little spicy posts on how saying, “thanks I’m cured” is anti-recovery and it’s not about curing people, doesn’t WORK if you leave out the narrative of people telling us that this cures us.

You’re erasing the narrative on why people react that way to make them seem anti-recovery, and no, these people genuinely want assistance, they’re just fucking tired of the same bullshit without substance and you’re an idiot.

If I’m allowed to tell my step-father to fuck off for unsolicited mental health advice, I’m allowed to tell a random stranger on the net with a post devoid of actual advice to also fuck off.

So, TDLR;

Mental health is very tricky and while physically taking care of yourself can help, it’s not actually sound advice. There’s more to recovery than that and it’s fairly anti-recovery in itself as it never addresses how recovery is about feeling better and feeling bad again because mental health is a bitch.

No one should be making sweeping statements on what assists with depression or other disorders, and everything should be posited as, “this may not work” and should definitely have a disclaimer of, “if it does work and then stops working that’s a process of recovery, and continue doing it as you would take your meds to settle in”.

What are my credentials?

- Psychology as a special interest and career path.

- 4 years of medical fuckery with recovery before I broke off until I can actively find someone to assist me and get the rest of my diagnoses’.

- I’ve lived this. Genuinely lived this issue, and know other people to. This comes from years of knowing depressed people who have other disorders and are marginalized.

Final Note; Please take care of yourselves as best as possible, do what’s within your means and don’t put yourself down for struggling. Try new coping mechanisms out if you see them, to see how your mood is after a bit.

Remember your mental health is important, but figuring out what does and doesn’t work takes practice, and recovery is never linear. Let yourself fall again, because climbing back isn’t going to slowly get easier.

#mental health #depression #why do I have the sinking feeling someone is going to see this and be upset over it

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tulsipatel-blog1 · 6 years

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Im very prone to overthinking practically everything its definetly one of my biggest strengths/weaknesses i cant seem to get the ideas and dreams out of my head as long as i can remember i have been very aloof sensitive and anxious i think my parents and brother worry about me too much and the recent idea that i dont care has also hit them i know that they dont know that i took forever to get to this good of a mental state ive been struggling in and out of weird mentalities my whole life and today and recently has been the most stable although its not completely stable which i dont think it will ever be ive been trying to be better trying to find the beauty in every day (cause literally im so fucking lucky and all it took was to accept myself to recognize it) trying to read books that clear the fog in my head trying to take action and put my dreams to action trying to make reality more like my fantasies the colors sounds emotions activities i want to line them up ive spent years waiting for nothing is something i realized something that was so hard for me to accept and something else ive learned to accept is my life is perfectly fine now as long as im present and trying to make the best of every situation-good or bad-im perfectly good and ill get better everyday.

So im in eleventh grade and prom recently passed and ive been recently thinking about the hype towards these four so very insignificant yet very significant years of a persons life. i didnt attend prom it didnt feel right and i truly truly had no desire to go i dont have many friends and maybe im too sensitive but i know im just gonna be standing at the party dreaming up better versions of it with more positive accepting people wishing i was less shy and whatever my brain can fantasize im also way too observant ive been since i was little ive always struggled with social anxiety and negative mindsets. kindergarten thru elementary school my fondest memories were just moments with my cousins and i had a good group of friends in middle school. 9th grade was horrible i was depressed and i sat in the bathroom for lunch watching kpop videos or walked around the school over and over alone feeling numb and on the brink of tears almost always mental breakdowns on top of mental breakdown on top of a shit ton of homework i had to because of IB 10th grade was a blurry year i switched schools and my mental health was better foggy insecure but better still lonely inside 11th grade after a summer of mom getting a eye surgery and a wedding mom fell into depression was anxious and having panic attacks dads been struggling with work and they have both been going downhill for the past year and a half yet i think its getting better maybe im just more positive though and my brothers in college so all this alone time and the sketchy moods kept me in my much better but still foggy mood mid into eleventh grade something changed for me i made happiness a priority i made believing myself(in my dreams, actions) priority i made loving myself a priority i made accepting myself(and others)a priority i made lessening feelings of my social anxiety jealousy negativity self sabotaging beliefs and everyday im trying to improve and i feel so much better mentally more happy more present imperfect and whatever comes my way i know i can work through it im ok im excited and im proud and thankful for everythings happened

edit: im pretty sure i wrote this about a year ago around the same time of year and its my twelth grade year. For the first time, ive never seen such improvement in myself for my ability to talk to people i feel comfortable open and i can start conversations. i made a decision to not force any friendships and let things evolve naturally and i dont criticize myself as much for being boring or socially awkward finally realized the more i criticized myself the more i held myself back from feeling comfortable in my own body realized its better to be around people who are struggling through the same things i go through such as difficulty creating close relationships awkwardness nerdyness emotional instability etc i think i spent too much time imagining that i would be close friends with people who had very similar interests as me but were still extremely different i felt that their personalities were ignorant selective and exclusive which is fine ive learned that we are beautiful and different and not meant for each other and thats fine and i really should assume less about people even if my everything in my gut says im right its important to let people go if it doesnt work out and love and appreciate all the humans i hope i come out of highschool grateful even though i hated most of it i wanna be grateful for the memories and friends

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colmenerodwyane96 · 4 years

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Premature Ejaculation Facts Blindsiding Tips

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gethealthy18-blog · 4 years

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311: Getting Unstuck From Self-Sabotage With Erin Pheil of MindFix

New Post has been published on https://healingawerness.com/news/311-getting-unstuck-from-self-sabotage-with-erin-pheil-of-mindfix/

311: Getting Unstuck From Self-Sabotage With Erin Pheil of MindFix

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And this episode is all about self-sabotage and imposter syndrome and self-confidence and removing mental roadblocks that are barriers to success or happiness or just to functioning the best that we can in daily life. Because I am here with Erin Pheil, who’s the founder of The MindFix Group, and she has a track record of helping people get permanent fast results from a lot of these things. Her work and her words have been featured all over and she has an unheard-of 95% success rate with the average time it takes her clients to see measurable results in areas where they have been stuck for years. Most people think it takes a lot of time and effort to remove these mental roadblocks or to alleviate self-sabotage and it needs therapy and action. And she explains why we cannot think ourselves out of these kinds of situations or even therapy ourselves out of these situations and how to really truly get unstuck.

So I’ve worked with Erin myself and it was fascinating to see the mental changes that happened, and she explains today how to start that process in your own life and also a magic question that we can ask to help make sure that we’re setting our kids up with a good mental state from a really early age. So I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Erin, welcome and thanks for being here.

Erin: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Katie: Well, I am so excited to chat with you and I knew I had to have you on when I heard you present at a conference I was at recently. And in fact, the room, they’re like a lot of entrepreneurs and highly successful people and I watched you speak to them and I also watched the room as everybody just got quiet and was really tuned into what you were saying. And then I talked to a lot of people after who were like, “That was just worth the price of being here.” And so I knew I had to have you on and to share you. And I think for context, it would be really helpful if you could start with your own background and kind of your story and how you got to this place that you are today.

Erin: Sure. I have a bit of an odd story in that I never could have planned it out, even if I had a million years to plan and I’m the planning type. And it’s not really a story I would have asked on myself or anybody else. So I’ll share that. I actually got my graduate degree in digital media after a undergraduate degree in psychology and it was right around the dot-com boom. And I had, I was at a crossroads of what to do and I just was so in love with this idea of websites and being able to build and design and create that I ended up, straight out of graduate school, going off and building a web agency. And it was just me. And then I brought on one person and then we grew and we grew. And over the next 16 years or so, we grew into an award-winning nationally-ranked web agency.

And on the outside, everything looked really good. You know, we were increasing revenue and profit every year, we were making millions for ourselves and for our clients. We were winning awards. We had Fortune 500 companies as our clients. It looked good from the outside and it was for a while. After around a decade and a handful of years or so, though, I started to have this really weird nagging feeling like, “I don’t wanna do this the rest of my life. I don’t want it. This is not fulfilling anymore.” And yet I didn’t know what to do with that. Building websites and strategy and consulting is all I’d ever known.

And so this idea of “I’m supposed to be doing something different” was terrifying for me, and I had no clue what else I could possibly do in the world. So, while I was continuing to build the agency in the background, I started reading all these books and taking courses about what’s my unique ability in life and what else could I possibly do and what else am I interested in. And I didn’t find anything. And so this low-level terror kind of kept creeping up every, you know, a few times a month as I realized like, “Oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do with the rest of my life?”

And then one day, one day I woke up, I went on a bike ride as I do most days as I was training for this mountain bike race. And I stepped off my bike and there was this little twinge of electricity in my left ankle. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but within one week, suddenly I was this person who had chronic pain, chronic mystery pain, pain that had no real cause, no reason and no doctors could figure it out. So I started going to physical therapists and massage therapists. And then I started to go see chiropractors who then referred me to orthopedic surgeons. And this kept escalating. And every time I’d go to more and more doctors and they’d go, “There’s nothing wrong with you. The X-rays and the MRIs are showing nothing. But I’m really sorry the pain seems to be spreading, but we can’t find anything.”

So imagine me living this Groundhog’s Day of increasing pain that was spreading throughout my body, spending all this money every single day, literally five days a week going to more and more doctors and specialists, and everybody shrugging going, “I don’t know what to tell you. Go see this guy.” And over the course of the year, this escalated to the point where I found myself sitting in a brain surgeon’s office having, like, this panic attack going, “I thought I was this healthy, 30-something entrepreneur and now I’m having a panic attack in a brain surgeon’s office, not knowing what the rest of my life is gonna be. I can’t have fun. I can’t grow my business. No one can help me. I’m helpless. I’m hopeless. There’s nothing to look forward to.”

And my anxiety shot through the roof, my depression shot through the roof. I became fully suicidal because I was like, “There’s nothing to live for. There is no hope. No one can help me. I don’t wanna keep doing this the rest of my life. It’s been 500, 700 days. Every day I wake up and it’s the same thing. And I’m no closer to getting, being better,” and I almost wanna start crying just thinking about it, how horrible it was. Like every day, all day, go to sleep, wake up. And it was the same.

So what ended up happening and where everything took a turn and my life path veered off in a different direction is because my mental health got so bad, I started to go see kind of this therapist or counselor, kind of adviser woman. And one day I was sitting in her office and she looked at me and she said, “Erin, do you know why you are so miserable and in so much pain?” And I wanted to, like, smack her. I’m like, “It’s because I’m in chronic pain. That’s why everything is awful. It’s horrible.” And she said, “‘No. No, no, no, no.” She goes, “The lens through which you see your life is so dirty, it’s so clouded. Everything you’re experiencing as you go through your day today is just skewed. You have these bizarre, weird, unhealthy beliefs that you’re clinging on to that are literally changing everything that you see. Everything you’re perceiving that’s happening to you is really, really distorted.” And I said, “Give me an example, give me two examples. I don’t know what you mean.”

And she said, “Well, for example, you are so strongly attached to the belief that if you slow down with work or life, it means you’re lazy and not valuable.” And she’s like that belief by itself is keeping you from being able to slow down and take rests and allow your body to heal. You’re go, go, go, go, go, go, go every day and your body’s asking for rest. But you are clinging to that belief and it’s crushing you.”

She also said another example is you truly believe that your entire self-worth is based on what you achieve. And right now you can’t achieve a lot because you need to take a break. And so your whole self, like everything that you feel about yourself and who you are and your value as a person, has drastically just plummeted because you can’t achieve. And she’s like, you have a bunch of these things going on in your head with the way that you think and what you believe to be true. And it’s that, that’s what’s crushing you. The things that you believe and how you see your life, those are what’s crushing you, not what’s actually happening and it’s creating this spiral.

So, turns out she had this brilliant insight, but when I asked her how we could fix it, she actually didn’t know. She gave me some answer like you’re gonna have to increase your visits and come in three times a week and we’ll explore it over the upcoming years with love and faith and stuff like that. There was no answer. So, I got super motivated to go out on a journey and explore how the heck I could actually change what I deeply, deeply believe to be true. Not just on an intellectual level like when you read a book, but what I could really, like, I’m pointing at my heart right now, at my chest. Like what I could change in here, like what I could really, really change and how I could convince myself that what I’ve been clinging to all these years maybe wasn’t the truth.

So, I took the next year and I traveled and I studied and I researched and I became my own science experiment. And along the way, combined a number of different methodologies into my own method that not only worked on me, but rapidly started to help colleagues and friends and people who saw the change in me and were asking for help. And before I knew it, as my agency was still growing, I had a line out the door, a wait list of people who wanted help from me to change the direction of their lives and change what they believe to be true and get unstuck from things that had been holding them back. And that is how I ended up with this new business. You know, new for me, at least back then, called “The MindFix Group” that I never ever would have planned or could’ve planned out even if I tried.

Katie: That’s amazing. And it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from, I have a lot of favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius, but one of them being, “It’s not events that disturb people, it’s their judgments concerning them.” And, like, he talks a lot about how we have complete control over our attitude and our reactions and our internal reality even if we can’t control the external. And I feel like that was something that, you know, was really pivotal in your journey that you found out. And I hear so much in my own story of what you said about, like, kind of growing up with that idea that you aren’t good enough or internalizing that or that you are the sum of your accomplishments. Those were things that I internalized early as well. And I love that you started with also the mind-body connection and talking about how you were in physical, chronic pain, but that the answer wasn’t necessarily just a physical answer. And I think that’s something that’s more well known right now and so important, which is that, how our brain and our emotions and our heart can affect our biology in a very physical way. So, can you talk a little bit about that? Like how there is actually such a connection there?

Erin: Absolutely. And it’s interesting because for the first, I don’t know, a year, year and a half, that mind-body connection, it never crossed my mind. I had physical pain. So, of course, all I invested my time and energy into was going to doctors. That was it. And the reason is, when I reflected upon this, I went back and thought about my upbringing and my dad owned his own business. And back in the ’80s, we had, you know, this PPO insurance plan, which they would brag about and say it was so much better than everybody else’s health plans. And it was fantastic. So whenever my brother or I or my mom had any physical pain, the first thing we did is we went straight to the doctor. The doctor, the medical doctor would always know what was best. You know, allergies or sniffling, straight to the allergy doctor. You know, we had a pain in our arm, we went straight to the doctor. That was the old way of thinking.

And because I had been raised in that environment, of course, I had this belief that if you feel physical pain, the thing that you do is you just go straight to a doctor and the doctor will know the right answer. I had absorbed that and that’d become a belief. And so, not shockingly, when this happened to me, it didn’t cross my mind that there could be anything mental or emotional going on. And then with all of the research and all of the books and all of the incredible information that’s come out in the past decade, there’s so much now that shows that physical pain can be a byproduct of emotional and mental issues that go unaddressed. That’s why so many people, I think, myself included, experience these bizarre physical pains and can’t find answers as we keep looking for a purely physical solution.

What I found, though, as I continued to do research was this remarkable connection between our emotional and mental health in the state of our emotions and how our bodies feel. I came across these really interesting studies, like they took two groups of people and they scratched them like, so that there were bloody scratches, I think, on their arms. And one group of people, they kind of set off, had them go on their own way. And the other group of people, they subjected them to a tremendous amount of stress and made sure that their stress hormones kind of went through the roof. And what they found was after, I forget, it was like a week or something like that, a short period of time, the people who had gone on in their normal lives, their cuts, not shockingly, were healing and they were healing beautifully. But then they looked at the people that they had subjected to tons of stress and what they noticed was fascinating in that their cuts were not healing. Like stress, the stress hormone actually starts to shut down your immune system and your capability to heal your body. So when people are like, “It doesn’t matter, I just live a stressed lifestyle,” it’s actually impacting your ability to care for your body in a massive way.

Katie: Yeah, that makes so much sense. I read a book a while back called “The Body Keeps the Score,” and it was fascinating to me to, like, really have that explained on a scientific level as well, just how important that connection is because I was one of those that for so many years just thought like, “I’ll deal with the emotions later,” “I’ll sleep when I die,” “I can push through anything.” It turns out that’s not actually the case. And that you tend to get, like, really stuck when you don’t deal with emotions. And that was something in your presentation at the conference that really stood out to me because you explained kind of this model of the brain and how a lot of the stuff we do, even when we’re trying to work through mental stuff, it’s like we’re working on this little tiny part of the conscious, but that there’s so much more to it. So can you kind of walk through the explanation you gave for that?

Erin: Sure. So what happens is between the, from when we’re born up until the age of about seven or so, we are walking around in this kind of theta brainwave state, which is similar to what people experience when they get hypnotized. So this means that as children, we are highly, highly suggestible. We’re like little sponges running around. And it’s almost as if we’re carrying around these tape recorders and microphones and we’re absorbing and we’re on auto record for everything that our parents and adults are saying. And we’re just recording. We’re recording, we’re recording. So the things that we hear, whether it’s, “I’m a good girl,” or, “Cats are nice,” or, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I don’t deserve things,” or, “Money is very hard to make,” or, “Work must be stressful,” whatever it is, whatever we hear, we don’t really have the capacity to empathize. We don’t have the capacity to analyze or reason what we hear. We just record it and it gets stored kind of like in these little auto-loops that play in the background. And those get locked into our subconscious mind.

So, people walk around thinking that they’re fully aware of all of their thoughts and all of the reasons why they take the actions they do during the day, why they’re feeling the way they feel and why they think the thoughts that they think. But really, what we’re aware of is our conscious mind. You know, the stuff that’s going on in our prefrontal cortex. And that’s like, depending on who you talk to, somewhere around 5% of our decisions and our choices as we go throughout our day. Ninety-five percent of what we do and feel and think during the day is actually powered by our subconscious mind. And people like to scoff at that and go, “Absolutely not.”

And it’s easy because you’re not aware of it. It really is the stuff underneath the iceberg. And the subconscious mind does not learn the way that our conscious mind does. So, you can read a book and you can read all about emotions and you can read about meditation and you can read about how to be a better spouse or how to be a more effective entrepreneur or how to be a better mom or how to be a better friend. And that information can be learned by your conscious mind. It’s not being learned by your subconscious mind, though. That is just worrying in the background with these tapes of what was learned in that theta state from zero to age seven. So you might read a book about being a great friend, but you might have learned during elementary school that friends will leave you and that you aren’t likable.

And if those tapes are playing in the background and yet you learn things and put those into your conscious mind, it’s really hard for that 5% to override those deep tapes that keep playing over and over and over again in that 95% that is your subconscious mind. So oftentimes, we’ll be trying to achieve something or work towards a goal or improve relationships. And yet in the background, we have all these things in the subconscious that are literally pulling us in the opposite direction, creating tension and creating a lack of alignment between what we believe at a deep, deep, subconscious level and then what our conscious mind says that we want.

Katie: That is so fascinating to me. And in like another analogy you used, you talked about like if, you know, if you have this story that you’re not likable, you’re gonna see proof of that kind of everywhere. Just like I compared it to like, if you’re going to buy a new car, you see that car everywhere because you’re paying attention to it. And so, like, that really struck with me and I would love if you could also explain it through the Santa Claus example. And I will say if anyone’s listening with children and Santa is an important thing in your family, this might be a part not to listen to but would you explain the concept there because I think that, like, really hit home, I know, for me and for a lot of people in the room who were like, “Oh, wow.”

Erin: Absolutely. So I’ll explain kind of two things in a row. I’ll explain how, what our subconscious beliefs, how they work as lenses, which is what you just alluded to, which I think is so beautiful. And I just wanna provide an example so that people can really get that because if they can walk away with it, with this understanding, they can start to see it everywhere in their lives and when they’re talking with other people. And then I can dive into the Santa Claus explanation. Does that work?

Katie: That sounds great.

Erin: Okay, cool. So what you just mentioned is how, what people believe to be true in their subconscious impacts how they perceive literally everything that they see during their daily lives. So let’s take an example of a kid who goes off to elementary school. And for some reason, they’re, you know, they’re very smart and maybe they’re not super cute yet, or they don’t wear the coolest clothes and they’re not popular. Maybe they get bullied, maybe they get teased, maybe they don’t get picked for the sports teams out at recess. And over the course of time, you know, age five, age six, age seven, the child reaches this conclusion just based on their experience at school that they aren’t likable, right? And so that gets locked into their subconscious. They’re in this theta state. It’s a conclusion they come to. And then that becomes one of those tapes, worrying in the background over and over and over and over and over again in their subconscious, kind of like locked in there for eternity. Unless there’s, one of the few ways that you can unlock subconscious beliefs is dealt with or comes along later in their life. But that just keeps going over and over and over. “I’m not likable.” And that gets locked into the subconscious.

That person goes off into high school, becomes popular, becomes a successful employee at their job later in life. So you’d think they would learn that they are in fact very likable and they end up having a bunch of friends. So it seems like no big deal. But here’s the thing, that belief becomes this tape, right, that’s playing in the background. They’ve got, “I’m not likable.” That’s sitting in their subconscious. So even if their conscious mind is like, “No, I’m very likable,” it’s still there causing challenges in the background and the subconscious.

So what happens when you have a belief that’s sitting in your subconscious? We can talk about, later, how to test if you have a belief. There’s some really simple things people can do to see if they have a subconscious belief or not. But let’s say you have that, what happens is it acts like a lens, almost like a pair of glasses through which all of the experiences that you, all the events that you experience in your day-to-day life get filtered.

So Katie, if you and I are having a conversation in a hallway and Susie walks by us and we both look at her, and Susie glances at us and then glances away and keeps walking and she doesn’t say anything, if I was that little kid who had created that belief and come to that conclusion, “I’m not likable,” that’s going to filter that experience for me. I’m going to see Susie walk by, look at us, and because I have the belief deep down that I’m not likable, the possibility, the thought, “Oh, Susie doesn’t like me. Susie is angry at me. I did something wrong. Susie is not a fan of me. Oh, shoot,” those are the kinds of thoughts that may trickle up. They may not be at the forefront of my mind, but they may cross my mind and literally make me pause, even just for a millisecond as I’m talking to you. It will cross my mind that Susie is angry at me or she doesn’t like me or that I’ve done something wrong.

Meanwhile, if you don’t have that belief anywhere in your subconscious and you see Susie look at us and she keeps walking, it won’t even occur to you that Susie is angry at you. And if it does, it’ll just be out of curiosity. The types of thoughts you may have are, “Oh, wonder if Susie’s having a bad day? Huh. I wonder what’s going on with Susie. I wonder if she even noticed us. She looks like she’s in her own little world.” So the way we both perceive this exact same event, the way our, you know, I might have feelings of anxiety, you might have feelings of curiosity, what we think and what we feel are going to be impacted by the subconscious beliefs that we do or do not have.

So that’s how our beliefs can act as these lenses that literally impact how we perceive what’s going on. So these events that occur that are actually neutral, we can take them as negative or scary just because of the beliefs that are in our subconscious that were picked up at a young age. Does that make sense?

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense.

Erin: Cool. So then you had asked me to talk about kind of the Santa Claus revelation. One thing that we do at MindFix is we have found that there are a number of, for every pattern that someone has, whether it’s getting triggered by a spouse, getting upset when kids do something specific, dealing with really bad perfectionism, having fear of rejection, whatever somebody’s pattern is that they experience regularly and that frustrates them, there’s usually a cluster of subconscious beliefs kind of worrying in the background that are causing people to act in that way. And they sit there and they go, “I’m broken. Everything I’ve tried, it won’t work. Like, nothing can change. I’ve been trying to change for so long, I don’t get it.” And it’s not, people don’t need more information added to their conscious mind. They don’t need more girlfriends sitting there going, “You go, girl, you’re powerful, you’re amazing. You can do this.” Because that just gets added to the conscious mind.

What people need is to go in and investigate what those old tapes and beliefs are that are pulling in the opposite direction and that are causing people to act in a certain way. So once you can identify, say, what the beliefs are that are causing the problems, it’s actually possible to eliminate them. And once you eliminate a really old, outdated subconscious belief, it’s really magical because what happens is your thoughts change, your emotions change, and your actions change immediately, effortlessly, without practice. And the most beautiful, easiest, elegant example I can give is when a belief in Santa Claus goes away for a child.

So up until a certain age, different for every kid, they sit there and they believe with all of their might and all of their heart that Santa Claus is real, that Santa Claus loves them and that Santa Claus is going to show up and bring them gifts on December 25th each year. And if you talk with them and you go, “I don’t know if Santa Claus is real,” they’ll go, “He absolutely is. I’ve got books with pictures, we sing songs about him. I have so much proof. I have so much evidence. He is so real. This is not up for discussion. He is real.”

And then, there comes the day, you know, like cookies get left out, milk gets left out, songs get sung. And then there comes the day when, whether it’s with a friend or a parent, there’s “the discussion,” “the conversation” where this child suddenly realizes, like all the dominoes fall. And he realizes he never actually saw Santa Claus ever. Those boots were dad’s boots. That Santa Claus was the mall Santa Claus, that’s why his beard fell off. Timmy was talking about Santa Claus doesn’t fit. Oh, my God. And everything kind of comes together. And the realization happens that Santa Claus isn’t real.

And in an instant, that belief is completely dissolved. It is completely eliminated. It goes away in the blink of an eye. And what’s interesting to notice is it doesn’t come back. You know, people go, “Oh, if you get rid of a belief, it’ll come back.” Well, the belief in Santa Claus never comes back. I’ve never heard of somebody turning 47 and suddenly they’re like, “You know, I kind of think, I’m starting to wonder if Santa Claus might actually be real. You know, I’m really questioning that.” Like, it doesn’t come back. And not only that, if you think about the thoughts that a child has, they stop thinking about writing letters to the North Pole. They stop thinking about asking questions about Santa. If you think about their emotions, if you ask them, “Do you love Santa Claus?” They’re gonna laugh. They’re like, “Love him? He’s not real. Why would I experience love for someone’s that’s not real?”

And then if you look, their actions instantly change. The moment the belief goes away, there’s no reason to leave out milk. There’s no reason to leave out cookies every single December 24th. The kids will just stop doing that. So thoughts change, emotions change, actions change instantly the moment a belief is eliminated. And the same is true for different beliefs, whether it’s self-beliefs, beliefs about how the world work, beliefs about how others interact with us. When we are stuck, oftentimes, we go about and we try to collect more information or we try to change our actions or our behaviors or our habits. But that’s the wrong way.

Imagine trying to get a kid to stop leaving milk and cookies out. “Hey, just stop it. Just don’t do it anymore.” And they’re sitting there and if they still have the belief that Santa Claus is real, they’re gonna push against you and go, “No, but I got to leave the milk and cookies out. I’ve got to.” And if you’re trying to change their behavior and just asking them to change their actions, that’s gonna be extremely stressful for them. Can they do it? Sure. You know, gun to our head, we can do anything. Forced, you know, if we’re forced, we can do anything, but that’s gonna be really stressful for a kid if you tell them to stop acting in a certain way and tell them to stop leaving out milk and leaving out cookies if they still have the belief that Santa Claus is real.

If you really want them to change their actions and you’re like, “Okay, this is enough with having to make all these cookies on Christmas Eve and this is enough, like we don’t drink milk in this household. I don’t wanna have to get the milk anymore,” the way to change their actions is to go in, pluck out the belief in Santa Claus and then suddenly, the thoughts, the emotions and the actions all cascade and change automatically.

Katie: I love that explanation. And it makes so much sense. I think… Well, I’ve gotten to work with you a little bit and I’ve seen it firsthand in my own life, and I also relate it to, I experienced sexual trauma when I was younger and not in the zero to seven age. I was in high school. But on that, I think I had internalized a belief that I was not safe in my body. And so as a way to protect against that, I think I like, because in the time after that, I gained quite a bit of weight and I think that was a physical shield. It was a protection that my brain was using to make me feel safer in my body. And part of, maybe the story was, you know, “If I looked like this, that will never happen again,” or whatever it may be.

And I tried for years to change the actions and to just eat less and less and less and less and less, which I did and still didn’t lose the weight or exercise more or just be so stressed about it. And it wasn’t until I changed that belief and realized I am safe in my body that all of the rest of it changed effortlessly. Now, if I tried to eat more than I was hungry for, my body just won’t let me. It’s like, “I’m full, stop eating.” But I tried for years. It just changed, like you said, change the action, change all the external expressions and it wasn’t until I got to that core subconscious that I didn’t realize was even running that I was able to just kind of, like, it was overnight, like a switch. My brain just changed. So you mentioned before, like, there’s ways to know if you have a subconscious belief and I think that’s a great starting point. So can you walk us through some examples of how you can know?

Erin: Absolutely. And before I do, I just wanna touch upon what you just said because it was so, so brilliant. First, I wanna clarify, not all beliefs or subconscious beliefs are stored or locked in by the age of seven. There’s just a large number that are, and during that time period, we literally are just sponges. So beliefs can be formed with repetition as we get older, they can be formed from like what you experienced with traumas. Like, one trauma can lead to a whole host of beliefs that get formed. And then as we go through life just repeating experiences over and over and over, if we, you know, get out of high school and our first four jobs, our bosses are terr-, you know, super mean, we might come to the conclusion that, you know, work is a frustrating place and bosses are bad people.

So, I want just wanted to make that clarification. It’s not like, zero to seven, everything’s locked in and done by that age. It’s just a lot happens during that time period. And it’s also, you gave such a perfect, beautiful example of what happens where you can have a belief that gets stored. You know, “It’s not safe to be in my body.” “Perhaps if I look a certain way, I’ll be creating safety.” If that gets locked in, but then your conscious mind is like, “I wanna lose weight,” you’re gonna experience an internal tug-of-war where part of you is like, “Let’s lose weight,” and part of you is like, “Hell no, that is not safe. I’m going to do everything against you possible.” And people experience things like that when they want to maybe get a raise or start a new business.

And yet part of them grew up and they were raised in, you know, believing that if you make a lot of money, you can’t possibly have a happy family or you will have absolutely no free time to enjoy your life. So we can have these conflicting, conscious desires that go against what we subconsciously believe. And that’s where we begin to really deep self-sabotage, where we feel stuck, where we feel like we’re holding ourselves back. Where we keep saying like, “I keep trying to change. I keep trying to do this over and over and over and yet it’s not working.”

So I can almost guarantee that anytime someone feels like they’re holding themselves back, they’re stuck or they’re just going in loops or, like, there’s an invisible tug-of-war that they consciously want something, but there are loops in their subconscious that are saying, “Go the other way. I am going to sabotage this because it’s not safe. It’s not gonna be good. I don’t actually want what’s gonna come. The consequences are gonna be really bad.” So I just wanted to kind of clarify those two things. Does that make sense?

Katie: Yeah, it does. Thanks for clarifying that.

Erin: Okay, cool. So you had asked how can someone know if they have a belief? Like, if it’s in the subconscious, how can you possibly know if you believe something to be true? And there’s a handful of really interesting filters, very simple, that absolutely anybody can use. They can run any statement through these filters. And if any of them come out positive, it’s very, very, very, very, very likely that their subconscious or even conscious mind believes them to be true. So beliefs are a bit like being pregnant. You’re not, like, kinda sorta pregnant. You just are or you aren’t. You have a belief or you don’t. So even if it’s a kind of, “It’s kind of there,” you have the belief. It may not be as strong, but it’s either there or it isn’t.

So, what we can do is we can take any statement at all, you know. “Men are evil,” or, “I’m not good enough.” “Making money is stressful.” Anything that is a statement and what we can do is run it through three filters. So the first thing I do to see if someone believes something to be true is I ask them, “Does it feel real? Does it feel like the truth?” This is really, really simple. Like, “Does it feel like saying, ‘I am a woman’?” “Does it feel like saying, ‘Two plus two equals four’?” Oftentimes when I’m working with someone and they have a belief, I say something, they’ll say it out loud and they literally physically start nodding their head up and down because it just feels so real. It feels like the truth. It feels like saying the sky is blue. And that is the first easiest way is just when you’re sitting there and you’re like, “Yeah, it feels like the truth. It just is the truth. It feels like saying, ‘I am a female.’” So that’s the first filter.

The thing is, as you can imagine, our mind is pretty darn effective. And so if we took all of these beliefs that are sitting on our subconscious and we really connected to them and we really fully felt into, “I am stupid,” “I am not good enough,” “I am not important,” “Making money is hard,” and we really connected to that, we’d probably have a hard time getting out of bed every day. So, our mind, being this really effective machine, kind of disconnects us from some of these beliefs. Kind of pushes them down, like a beach ball underneath the water, kind of suppresses some of these things and goes, “Nope, nope. Consciously, you don’t believe that at all. You know, you’re a smart, successful, powerful woman. You’re fantastic. You’re an incredible mother. You’re amazing. You’re a kind friend. You’re a fantastic spouse. You’ve got this, girl,” you know, and we pump ourselves up with these positive things and we wanna disconnect from some of these uncomfortable beliefs and loops that are sitting in our subconscious.

So I’ve had people where I’ll ask them to say something like, you know, I was at an event recently and someone was walking around and not connecting with people. And she came over to me and I said, “Just out of curiosity, say out loud, ‘I am a burden.’” Because she was saying like, “I just, I can’t ask people for their time. I feel weird and guilty if I interrupt a conversation or if I ask people to talk about myself,” I said, “Say out loud, ‘I am a burden.’” And she said it and her eyes were kind of glazed and she was disconnected and she’s like, “No, no, that doesn’t feel like the truth. Sorry, I don’t think I believe that.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. So, that didn’t work with the first filter. Let’s try something different.”

So we tried the second filter on her and the second filter is when you say something out loud, even if it doesn’t feel like the truth, filter number two is, do you feel an emotion with it? So some people I’ve worked with will say a statement, they’ll sit with it and they’ll go, “Oh. Ooh, that was uncomfortable.” Or they’ll say, “Oh, my God, that makes me sad to say it.” Or, “Ooh, I don’t want… Oh, gosh, that makes me kind of angry. I don’t…” Like, there’s some emotion that comes out.

If you make a statement that you just don’t believe to be true, something like, “I am a vampire,” you don’t get a big surge of emotion. You don’t get a sad feeling when you say that. There’s just no emotional reaction. So if you say something and your subconscious believes it to be true, it’s quite possible you might feel an emotional reaction. Now, this woman at the party, she’s like, “Nope, no emotion there. I really don’t believe I think this is true. I’m sorry. I think you’re off-topic.” And I said, “Let’s try one last thing. I want you to say it out loud one more time and I want you to feel into your body. I want you to tell me if you feel any physical sensations.” And she’s like, “Okay.” So she said, “I am a burden.” And she paused and then she looked at me with, her eyes just went huge and she went, “Oh, my gosh.” She’s like, “I have a little pain in my stomach and it feels like my throat is tightening up.”

So the third filter you can use to see if you have a belief is do you feel it physically somewhere in your body? And again, this is your subconscious going, “Okay, I’m not gonna have your conscious mind actually believe this, but I’m storing it down here and this is my way of telling you that, yes, you believe it.” Because, again, try saying “I am a giraffe.” Try saying, “I wear a size 36 shoe,” something that you just don’t believe. Your body’s not gonna send you any physical sensations. It doesn’t have to be pain. I’ve had people go, “Oh, there’s this weird energy over the bridge of my nose,” or, “My toe wants to start tapping.” But that’s only the case if some part of you believes it to be true.

So the first filter is, does it feel real? Does it feel like the truth? The second filter is, do you experience an emotion when you sit with the statement? And the third filter is, do you feel it physically in your body? There’s is a fourth one sometimes that I see on rare occasions and that’s when you ask somebody something and it’s almost like it’s so uncomfortable for them, they zone out and they literally forget the question. They forget what they were asking themselves. They’re like, “Wait, what’s going on?” And the brain is kind of, the mind is making them seem confused. “I’m not clear on what you’re asking.” And it’s almost like it’s trying to throw up hurdles. Like, “Don’t come near here. We don’t wanna look at this.” So, but the first three, for 99% of people, you can use to determine, do you feel, do you believe something to be true?

And I’ve had, you know, professors, professional athletes, businessmen making, you know, over $100 million. I’ve had people of all walks of life, incredible successes, use these filters on basic statements like, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not important,” “I’m stupid.” And they’re shocked to find that when they peel away, you know, and look underneath the surface and look underneath the carpet, “Holy cow, look at this little bit of dust that’s been accumulating that I’ve been fighting against and trying to convince myself my whole life that those things didn’t exist.”

Katie: That’s amazing. And I know, like I’ll share my own experience which was that I had one that was deeply internalized, which was that I was not good enough despite, like, there was evidence that obviously would’ve shown I was at least good at some things. And I had internalized that a lot. And after, so before working with you and I said that out loud, it felt like there was like a lead vest on my chest. Like when you get an x-ray and they put a lead vest on you. And by the time I had let go of that, it felt like just saying, “I am a giraffe.” Like, it’s just words. So I know the next logical question that people are gonna have if they’re listening is like, “Okay, great, cool. How do we change a belief?” And I know you have a system for this, but walk us through at a high level, like, what happens when we’re able to change the belief and how that works.

Erin: Yeah. So, it is one of my life goals to be able to teach this to people so that someday, people can do it on themselves. But I have yet to figure that out. I still can’t do it on… You know, I do this thousands of times a year over and over and over and I still can’t do it on myself. I need someone else to do it with me. So we have a really simple process that is a series of questions and it kind of simulates what happens when a parent has a conversation with a child and the child goes through this process of rearranging what’s in their mind and understands that everything they ever saw didn’t actually mean that Santa Claus was real. It actually meant the opposite. So it’s helping people understand and really get that what they’re convinced they saw, they didn’t actually see. And it allows the mind to let go of its death grip on, “This is the truth. This is absolutely how it is. I’ve seen evidence of it,” and it allows the mind to let go of it. And when it lets go of it, it’s a permanent opening. It doesn’t come back.

Katie: I got it. Okay. Yeah. And having an experience that I know, like it makes so much sense now.

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Katie: I know a lot of people listening are parents, most of the people listening, in fact. And that was a question I had for you personally was if so much of this is formative in those first seven years, obviously, we’re all as parents going to do things that affect our kids in a way that we don’t want. But are there things we can do to help our kids in that zero to seven, kind of theta state to develop good beliefs?

Erin: Yes. Oh, my God, this is my favorite question. There is one, literally one magical question that if all parents left hospitals with this one question, our entire world would be so different. It would be so different. There’s one question you can use as a parent to totally change, like, how your child feels about himself or herself. And I’ll share that question with you. So the question that you want to be asking yourself every day as you have interactions with your kids, as you teach your kids lessons, as you have conversations with your kids, is this, “What is my child concluding about this interaction?” That’s literally it.

So let me give an example. Let’s say you have a mom who just got a really shocking phone call from the hospital. So she needs to be on this phone call. Somebody in the family is in the hospital. It’s an emergency. She’s on the phone, she’s getting the news, and then suddenly, you know, her child comes walking in and says, “Mommy, mommy, look at my picture. Look at my drawing. I want you to look at my drawing,” because all children want three things, attention, affection, and acknowledgement, right? So the child comes in, “Look at me, look at my picture. Mom, look.” So a, you know, “normal” parent or someone who’s not asking themselves this important question all the time might go, “Shhhhh, Honey,” and then kind of, you know, wave the child off. “Go in the other room. Don’t… Mommy’s busy. Just go, go, go, go. This is very important. Go away.” Right? Something like that. “Shh,” shush our kid away.

And most people would say, “Well, that’s understandable. She’s on an emergency call. That’s fine.” But children during this stage of development can only come to conclusions about themselves. “This is happening because of me.” They’re in the egocentric stage of development. So, when they experience mom doing that, they don’t have empathy. They can’t put themselves in mom’s shoes like an adult can. The only conclusion they can come to is about themselves. And so the conclusion they’re gonna reach in that interaction is going to be about them. It’s gonna be, “I’m not important. I’m not lovable.” And they’re gonna walk away. And those are the only conclusions they’re gonna reach.

Now, if a parent, if you’re on the phone and you’re having this conversation with the hospital and the child comes in, even though you’re under stress and that one question rolls through your mind, “What is my child going to conclude from this interaction?” You might just take an extra four seconds and act differently. And you might go, “Honey, mom is on the phone with the hospital. This is a very urgent, very important conversation. I love you deeply. I care about you so much and I cannot wait to see your picture. Can you please give mommy 10 minutes and then I am gonna spend lots of time with you later looking at your picture and giving you lots of hugs. Can you please go to the other room? I love you so much.”

You add in a few additional statements and you can still be stressed. You can still send your child away. You can still do what you need to do. You can still have the time to yourself, but with the, and the child may still be cranky. They may still want your attention. They may still pout and leave the room and go Wah! and whine, but they will not conclude that they are not loved. They will not conclude that they are not important. That is what changes everything because children cannot come to adult-level conclusions. They cannot empathize. They cannot put themselves in your shoes. They cannot understand what they’re going through. All of their conclusions are, “I caused this. This is happening to me because I am “blank’.”

So if you can always ask yourself, “What is my child concluding?” especially about himself or herself from this interaction, you’ll be providing a lot more statements like, “I love you,” and, “You’re very important to me and”, “You’re very special. You’re very smart,” and so that children don’t come to false conclusions about themselves because they’re not able to come to these logical interpretations of your actions that makes sense for an adult but not to them. That can literally change the entire, your entire future for your child, their sense of self and their sense of self-esteem.

Katie: So as a, like a short follow-up to that plea, is it, I mean, because as you said that to me when, when you said it in person, I was thinking, “Oh, I wish I could go back and kind of redo so many things in the past with my kids.” And I’ve got kids who are past seven years old. Is there still a way we can start, like, using that language even when they’re older and hopefully help, like, rebuild that even though that, we weren’t using it when they were really young?

Erin: Absolutely. And I think these are the kinds of conversations where we can say like, you know, “I made a mistake,” or, “I got angry, I’d like to apologize and show them that this is what happens when we make mistakes. This is what happens when, you know, apologies are things that we do when we mess up.” It’s never too late and even though it’s harder to override things that were kind of locked in at a young age, we definitely don’t wanna go around going, “Well, past seven. Nothing we can do here,” and kind of like, “There we go.” We do wanna continue to set examples and we can’t override things as kids age.

Katie: Got it. And I know I wanna respect your time because you have another interview today. I will make sure that, you’ve mentioned a few things and you’ve written about them on your website. I’ll make sure I link to those in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. And I know that you also have a blog on your site as well as a free training and people can find you there. But really quickly, where can people find you online and any parting advice for someone who’s like, “Oh, my gosh, how do I take part?”

Erin: Sure. So people can find me at my website, which is mindfixgroup.com. I’m also pretty active still on Facebook on just my personal profile. You can look me up, Erin Pheil, I’m literally the only Erin Pheil on Facebook. Pretty easy to find. If someone’s curious and wants to learn more, I’d invite them to take a look through the blog on our website. There’s plenty of articles there. And then, like you mentioned, we also have a training that’s still being offered for free. It’s one full hour, it’s in video, it’s a video and anybody can watch it and that’s… It goes a level deeper than what we talked about today in the interview and would be a really great addition to anybody who’s curious and wants to learn more.

Katie: Perfect. Erin, I know how busy you are. Thank you so much for sharing today and for the time. Like I said, it made a big difference for me personally and I think, hopefully, you’ve helped a lot of our listeners today as well.

Erin: Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.

Katie: And as always, thanks to all of you for listening and sharing one of your most valuable assets, your time, with us today. We’re so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/mindfix/

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