LastThursday

@Oeaohoo the response from ChatGPT you gave is interesting. It does seem like the two poles have something in common though. In some way they both want the best outcome for you, one protects, and the other wants connection? All identities at some level in that case want what's best for you, in their own particular way. It's just that in your case they're not playing along, you get so far, then reject the situation. Would you agree? That would seem to be my experience, and I've often come across this in people. How does the self-sabotage arise from this kind of message? I can understand that it would make it hard to allow others to express their love for you, but it only seems like self-sabotage if there are other competing needs there too which are being suppressed. What about more direct self-sabotage like self-injury that would seem related?

What do you think broke in your case? No need to respond if you don't want to go into it. Do you think having an identity around trauma means that anything that challenges that identity is rejected in order to protect it? Maybe there are multiple identities and some are stronger than others, a "Desire" identity and a "Resenment" identity.

It's uncanny how trauma often converts into self-sabotage. I do wonder why that is. What do you think? My reasoning is that it's connected to low self worth, and that attacking yourself is often the only form of control available.

Meditation is not a cure all. What can happen when you meditate over a long time is that it gives you a clarity you didn't have before. Sometimes that clarity reveals negative aspects of yourself you weren't aware of before or just ignored. It's quite natural that in uncovering those negative things you'll think about them more often. There's some research that found that meditation can make some people more unhappy than they were. The problem with negativity is that there is a strong emotional reaction to it, and this stops you from proactively confronting that negativity. The growth actually comes from confronting the bad parts of yourself in the right way (therapy etc). But the silver lining is that over time, meditation can make you more emotionally resilient, and to better regulate your reactions. Clarity is neither good or bad, it just brings things into sharper focus.

Here's my logical step by step approach to these sort of worries: Be aware - educate yourself, how dangerous is it? Is it something you can control? - no then you have no choice right now, forget it and carry on. Are you willing to take action on it? - no, then it probably isn't worrying you enough, forget it and carry on. Take action. In short, worry about what's worth worrying about. Here's an example: Talcum powder may contain asbestos, which is bad for my health with long term use. Yes I can control it, I can stop using it. Talcum powder has benefits to me, in terms of comfort, but stopping using it would be a minor inconvenience. Maybe the negatives outweigh the positives. Ok, I'll stop using it.

I'm with @Zigzag Idiot. Saying that you are "god" in public is asking for trouble. The word carries a lot of emotional charge and to say you're God could be offensive to some. It could only be used if the people understand your context, such as on this forum. Anyway. Even if you believe it in private it's still problematic, because God has the connotation of being omnipotent, which clearly you're not. You're special, but not that special.

Limerence is just one of the stages of romantic love: infatuation. The only difference is that there isn't reciprocation with limerence. Helen Fisher explained it (infatuation) in terms of hormones and biological drives: In my experience the only way out of limerence is to de-escalate the importance of the person in your life and in your thoughts: cut all contact, remove all triggers. But with social media and easy access this is a lot harder nowadays. It's similar to addiction.

Fair enough.

I'll continue in sceptic mode: how would one know how accurately one is perceiving reality? If people can become insane isn't that evidence that it's not possible to know if you're insane or not?

That begs the question: what is sanity?

My first reaction would be "am I deceiving myself?", then, "how can I validate it?". If they both check out, of course, I would become a magician or a god.

This is good series explaining how evolution is able to create complexity without a designer. The series is not complete yet. This is the original video that triggered the series above, interesting in its own right.

Do you equate self-control with mastery? Mastery can be a very long and many faceted process, patience is definitely needed. But mastery is also an incremental process, and you can gain its benefits bit by bit. At some point you won't recognise yourself as the same person anymore, because mastery will have changed you. What seems hopeless at the start is hopeful at the end. Mastery is just what you choose to master. If your hope is to tolerate pain and master it, then that's what you should do. What you're describing about yourself just seems like a problem of motivation. Motivation is complicated. In broad strokes there is positive motivation and negative motivation. Positive motivation are things like, exciting goals, rewards for achievement, satisfaction of completion, recognition, free leisure time. Negative motivation are things like, deadlines, not having money, bad consequences for not completing, letting others down, not keeping to some standard. Some motivation is more neutral, like having a plan, collaborating with people. You need to work with all types of motivation.

Start with recognising that you're not a machine, but a human. You will have disciplined days and undisciplined days, allow yourself that. You will also have only a certain capacity for discipline, and that may be a lot less than you want to achieve your goals. But that capacity can increase with lots of practice. Use techniques like Pomodoro to help stretch your capacity. From a philosophical view you're always doing something, even if it's just sitting there breathing and blinking. You cannot not help but be doing something, 24/7. So disclipline is not a matter of active versus lazy, but of constantly steering your activity in the direction you want. Also, everyone is different. Work out your own psychology. For example, my natural tendency is to be haphazard and go from one task to another, so I just go with it, and allow myself to work in small bursts, and lots of differerent sub-tasks of the main tasks. But, I can also work well with timed tasks, such as 1 hour on task A, 1 hour on task B ans so on. Maybe morning versus afternoon works better. Learn what works for you.

The flipside is that subjects like Solipsism, Free Will, Spiral Dynamics get discussed at all. Isn't it amazing that there's a bunch of people willing to talk about these niche abstract philosophical ideas on a public forum? Yes their definitions and usage get abused and misunderstood, I'm with you on that, but still.