Iiris

Thanks for those tips! I've never seriously thought about finding some spiritual group. But now that you mentioned it, I'm thinking it would be soo cool to get to know people who are into spirituality, and even get friends like that. Thinking about it makes me excited. It's just shitty that I basically live in the middle of nothing. I don't have facebook either, but I'll do some research on this. At least when I get the hell out of here to some bigger city I could find those kinds of poeple And I play electric guitar in two groups. I think playing is fun but in those groups it's mostly terrible because of the anxiety I wrote about that here some time ago. And also playing in both groups is taking too much of my time, I'll probably leave either one of them

Thanks imma try that ? Yea small steps is probably the most important. I have to actually go to social situations if I want to learn to deal with them I haven’t tried psychedelics but playing with my consciousness sounds like fun. And well they could have some healing effect on me. If I had an opportunity to try them I definitely would

@ZenDancer Thanks for your nice comment It's always nice to hear people tell that their anxiety has gotten better. It makes me have faith in my own future

I definitely haven't embodyed it to the point where I can just love everything that happens, but yes I can see it at some degree. What I don't really understand is how it could have made me stronger if someone said something mean to me in my childhood, more like it made me traumatized and insecure But I can see that every struggle I'm having is an opportunity to grow, and if I relate to my struggles in that way, they help me grow. If I just try to avoid suffering I won't really get anywhere or learn anything. I watched Leo's sage video recently, and now when I'm suffering I sometimes think that that moment is a part of my journey to becoming a sage or something. It makes dealing with the suffering more enjoyable

Getting stressed about quite irrelevant stuff. Like my notes on things being imperfect. I need to know exactly what to do in my life. But I don't know what to do and I can't stand that. Also I don't know in which hecking university I should apply and what to study there. Well, I kinda know what I'm interested in so I'm not completely lost. But still it is a big decision and I don't really know what to do. If I purchased the LP course I wouldn't have time to do it before applying because I also have to study my ass off to get good grades to get to a place I want to get in. But I don't know where I want to get in. Life is difficult. Sometimes I wonder why life can't be just easy peasy. But some asshole decided to make life as difficult as possible... I guess that's me hehe I don't know. Sometimes I can accept confusion and go with the flow of life and just trust that life gets better. And I know that's a healthy way of being and I wonder why I am not always like that. But then I always go back to being neurotic about everything and needing some rule or something to guide me. Leo said that if you have a strong enough vision you don't need to know exactly what to do. I can kinda get that. Maybe I should work on that

Really liked many of those quotes and the book definitely seems great, it's next on my reading list For the last few weeks I've been realising that embracing my suffering is really the key to detaching from it I might definitely have some of that in me I go to see a school psychologist once a month. I'm actually seeing her tomorrow. I think it would be more helpful if I could be a little more relaxed there. I feel so uneasy and can't really think clearly there. I answer her questions with max. one sentence and then look at her like "I think that's it, more questions?". I look at her and feel like she's probably running out of questions and is desperately trying to come up with new ones. I feel like could be able to learn better about myself there if I could think more clearly. But well, maybe I'll learn to be more relaxed if I just go there many times. Also she gives me some exercises, usually I don't really do them. But I don't feel too bad about that, I do my own things which I think are important Yay

Me too, I imagine giving that kid everything that I would've needed as a child I'm happy to hear that you find this helpful. I started this journal just to help myself, but now what motivates me to write here is that someone might get some value out of my writings. I've been very concentrated on helping myself and making my life better, it feels great to give some value to others sometimes Trying my best to not make people feel bad because of me

That's true. What I've heard is that dad didn't have too great of a childhood, now he's reflecting it on us Yeah it get a bit nervous when I see that someone has commented here, I always think that the person who commented is probably pointing out some stupid thing that I wrote. But of course it doesn't go like that, and mostly it's just nice to see that people have written something here

We just had the domestic of the fucking year. My little sister and my father are both angry teenagers. More is expected from my father. His behavior annoys me very often. He's not violent or anything but his mental health is shit. Sometimes it makes me feel sad but most of the time I'm just angry at him for being such a victim of life. Everything makes him angry and he seems like he's always an inch away from exploding completely. He is in complete denial, cannot look at himself at all. And his mother is dying and it makes him even worse. So my little sister and father had some argument about something, and he took it too seriously and went nuts. Usually I keep my mouth shut about his behavior because nothing good happens when I open it. But now I was so angry that I told him at the dinner table how his behavior makes me feel like shit. Things escalated and my father got very defensive and had a complete mental breakdown in the end. He started telling me how his life is so shitty that he has the right to be angry. He went absolutely nuts. Right now he must be so ashemed of himself. He went off the door outside and came right back to say something to us for like ten times. He said for example something like "I know that you all hate me, but I don't care. I chose this life. And I could go away if I wanted to" and I said to him that I don't hate him. I wanted to say to him that I love him because I do, but I've never been able to say that and I couldn't do it now either. I most definitely love him. Fucking shit. I don't want him to die never hearing me saying that I love him. Crying again!!!!!!! My parents even questioned their marriage, with a good reason. My father can't stand my mother and my mother can't stand my father. But I don't want them to break up. I just want to pretend again that everything is fine. I can remain closed then. If they broke up I would have to open up. Everyone would be asking me how I feel etc. But probably they will stay together for the same reason Ugh. And soon will come the time of awkward silence. Dad won't apologize properly. This is why I don't open my mouth. This journal is getting really negative. But the negative stuff is just the stuff that I the most need to talk about. Oh and also I've learned that if I can't accept that I've done something stupid, I can at least accept that I can't accept it right now. Then the non-acceptance kind of melts away and I can almost accept the stupid thing that I did in the past. Or something like that it goes

I am obsessed with being perfect. When I haven't been perfect I usually can't accept it so I just deny it. I always think that tomorrow I'll really start being perfect and until then I can do whatever I feel like doing. I've been trying to accept myself this week and I succeeded at it better that ever I guess. I let myself down several times this week but I accepted my failures and kept on going even though it felt bad. For example I went to practice with the band and it was terrible again. I was really tensed up the whole time. I started moving my body again when we were finishing up and it has never crackled as much as then. I should've been relaxing, I should've been wathing people in their eyes but I didn't. I hated myself and I didn't want to accept that I failed again, but I still accepted it. At home I had a good cry. I cried because I hated myself and then I gave compassion for hating myself and then I cried more. Now as I'm writing this I feel like crying again lol. Crying is the best thing, it feels good as heck. I don't want to admit to you that I am just this miserable ball of suffering. But I'm still doing it because I know that as long as I'm being honest I'm doing nothing wrong I feel like the problem with myself trying to accept myself this week was that I was at the same time excepting that I will do all this personal development stuff. "I am going to accept myself as I am but also I'll be meditating, relaxing, eating healthy, not being on my phone too much...." Gawd. I need all these rules for myself because I'm afraid. I'm not completely sure what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of being free. Probably I'm afraid of what I'll do when I let myself be free. Maybe I'm afraid of myself! Being perfect is a shield for me. I notice that when I let myself be imperfect I start being fearful about the future I feel like I need to do some challenge where I can do whatever I want to do for a week. Kind of like in the do nothing meditation. And I've also been feeling for a long time like I need a break from my life. A retreat or something. There's just so much stuff in my life and the amount of stuff is just increasing and I can't hold it all anymore. Too much advice, too many things to consider, too many things to do and too little time. All the options make me stressed out.

This guy is quite inspiring in his vulnerability

I am so ashemed of all of my previous posts. I can't even look at them when I know how many people have seen them. I just come here and write about stuff and then I go away and never look at my writings again, not taking responsibility for anything I've seen people putting captions on their journal posts, I think I could try that too so that people could easily figure out what I'm talking about in each post Expressing myself through playing guitar I've been meaning for quite a long time to share a thing that I think my insecurity very much affects, but I've always felt like there's something more important to tell. I guess that I'll share this now I play electric guitar which is awesome. The shitty thing is that electric guitar is usually played in groups and I don't know how to act in groups. And you need contacts and everything to even be able to form groups and to get to play in places. I've been lucky enough to get invited to join a band by this guy whose job is to like support and help new bands. We practice in the place where that guy runs his "band school", the guy is there with us as we practice. I also play with another group and go to guitar lessons in this fancy music school. It's difficult, but it's not super hard to go and play with that group in the music school because it's quite controlled, I can just go there and play whatever I am asked to play and I don't have to speak to anyone really. However it is very different with that "real band" I have joined because things are more loose and free and I have to be interacting there. When I have an mental image of my typical week, there's this black fog on Wednesday evening when I go to practice with my band, it represents the anxiety and even depression I go through every Wednesday evening. I always feel especially shy and insecure when I go to practice with that band. I think that part of the reason why I feel that way is because my band members are all good musicians and I am just an amateur, and I feel like they are judging whatever I do with my guitar. I've had barely any conversations with my band members even though we've been playing for half a year now. In the band there are two boys and one girl who is the singer and the leader of the band also. I've been talking about some stuff with the girl, but with the boys I haven't talked about anything. And that makes me feel so ashamed because it's just not normal that you have a band but you haven't even spoken to your band members. It feels so hard to open my mouth. I feel like others are just casually talking while I'm sitting there paralyzed. My psychologist tells me that I should just try to talk about some random or even stupid stuff with them, like the weather or something but it's so hard, I can barely look at them. We have a gig in the late spring and thinking about that gives me anxiety. It's a big thing, we're playing among some really good bands there and people are paying to get there and they are getting drunk and everything there. My relatives are going to go from the other side of the fucking country to see me play there. And I can't even interact with my band members. So please god help me! It makes me feel depressed that I have these great opportunities to express myself by playing guitar and to get to know other musicians but I fuck up all of them. I can't enjoy playing with others because I care so much about what people think about my playing. I try to play as normally as possible, so that there's nothing suprising in my playing, so that people won't notice me. I can't play what I want to play or what I feel like playing, I can't play playfully! It's so stupid because I'm just wasting my time trying to please others when I could be experimenting, enjoying and growing. Today I was playing with my dad, my dad was playing the drums and I was playing the guitar. I wasn't able to get anything reasonable out of the guitar. I had the skills to, I just didn't have the confidence, even though I was just playing with my dad! I notice that at home I don't feel the desire to take my guitar and play, I would rather do my homework or something. I feel like if I had better time playing with my band and if I wasn't so terrified of playing in public but rather excited, I would be more inspired to practice. It's sad, but happily I can watch some awesome live concerts and gets serious amounts of inspiration from them. And even if I wasn't inspired I notice that when I just take my guitar and play I often start to enjoy it. Oh and also, we have a book named "zen guitar" in our home and I don't know wtf I've been doing not reading it

Yeah it's like an endless cycle of shoulds, "I shouldn't be stressing about this, I shouldn't be thinking that I shouldn't be stressing about this" etc. It only stops when you change your mindset completely. I'm such a slow writer I don't know how I am able to write so slowly lol I just watched that scene on youtube Thanks, I've been feeling better already

A week ago I suddenly beacame super neurotic about my self-development. I've always been neurotic as fuck, but it got worse. I felt like I had to make some strict rules for my life because otherwise I wouldn't do the things I should do. I wasted many, many hours trying to make some perfect plan for myself and got frustrated because I realised that life is a fucking caos and that I can't do anything about it. At that moment I felt like killing myself, because I felt like life is just and endless struggle. I don't know if that was some kind of ego backlash. I've watched some of Leo's videos about this topic of neuroticism and I've been starting to overcome this. I've been realising that I don't have to make rules for myself, because in each moment I know what I should do. I just don't listen to myself, I shut myself up completely. I don't trust myself, I don't trust that I can give myself value. I've been stressing about my life purpose, but how do I except that I can give value to others if I don't even trust that I can give it to myself? Oh god I have so many things to say about this but I guess I'll share them later so that writing this won't take me three hours again

I feel like I've opened myself up too much here, I want to hide and take all of this back. But I can't because I'm too deep in this shit to go back so I'm just going to open myself up a little more The more alone and accountable I feel in a difficult social situation, the more confident I feel in it. When I must do something, there is no room left for self-doubt. I'm not sure if it always goes like that, but sometimes it does. I remember for example when I took that terrible class that was all about expressing yourself vocally. We had to have a debate there, and there were only two people on my side and they were pretty quiet both. Usually when there are situations like this in school, I just shut up and hope that others will handle the speaking. But when that debate started I realised that no one from my side would say anything if I wouldn't. So I just started debating and I felt quite confident actually. When you have to survive you survive and maybe you realize that it isn't even that hard. The next thing has nothing to do with anything but I just wanted to share it here because I don't know where else I could share it. I was imaginally sharing this here many times when I was in the shower yesterday lol so I guess I could actually do it. From time to time I get these little glipses of god, and I had some of them yesterday when I was listening to that Leo's What Is God -video. It's like this moment of "what the fuck"ness I would say. That moment when it's not obvious at all that stuff just exists. The reality is weird as heck. Consciousness is weird as heck. When I was in that bus listening I kind of felt my godly nature. I almost understood that it has always been and will always be, that it created itself and that it's always present, pure consciousness. That experience wasn't anything big, but it was something. When I was sitting in that bus, I felt like opening my arms wide and laughing, but I kept my cool because I didn't want to be judged . Yeah but I just wanted to share that even though it's off-topic. It's great to experience the things that you've only heard people talking about before, because experiencing it is completely different than reading or hearing about it.

This was my second time doing this technique properly. I did it the same way as the last time, 20 minutes with shamanic drumming music, and it also felt pretty much the same as then. I couldn't breathe through my mouth the whole time so I alternated between breathing through my mouth and nose. After breathing for some time I felt like I couldn't continue anymore. I grabbed my phone and saw that only seven minutes had passed, there were thirteen left. I felt really exhausted and I wanted to stop, but I kept on breathing and it slowly became easier. It actually started to feel natural and almost enjoyable. The drumming music definitely helps to keep the rhythm. As I was breathing I felt a need to move my body. After 20 minutes had passed I stopped and felt really high. Last time I was afraid that I was going to die or something, but now I knew the effects so I was able to just feel it. My mind was quiet and I felt really peaceful. I heard a buzzing sound. There was a hell of a lot of energy in my hands, also on my head. A weird circle of energy on my face was expanding and contracting. I noticed that I was squinting, looking at my nose lol. I felt pretty relaxed, but I took a look at my hands and they were in this weird shape lifted above the floor, in some kind of spasm. There was energy especially in my little finger and ring finger, ecpecially in my right hand. I had a really weird feeling that there were some kind of plastic over my fingers that started to peel off from my fingertips. I didn't notice any emotional release or weird thoughts, I just felt high. The effects lasted maybe about 15 minutes, and now, a few hours later, I feel completely normal. I was hoping for some kind of emotional release, but maybe it only happens when I do this technique for a longer period of time. Next time I'll try this five minutes longer and see if I find anything new.

@Serotoninluv Thanks for sharing that! In my childhood I also felt like I wasn't good enough if I didn't get approval from my father (until I realized that my father definitely isn't perfect). As I read what you and @moon777light had written, I started thinking that maybe my need to get approval from my father as a child has something to do with my need to impress these father figures. For example, in school I really want most male teachers to think that I am intelligent and gifted and everything, and I also am afraid of their judgement, so I fear to ask questions and to interact with them. And for example before job interviews I always pray that the interviewer is a lady, so that I won't have to care so much of her opinion of me. And in many other situations, I always hope there's a lady . I might also think like that because I just think that women are more compassionate and less judging, but I don't know. And thanks @Empty , I will be staying strong!

Maybe my social anxiety hasn't changed but everything else has. I am so much more mature than I was a year ago. I am more present and more aware of my mind process. And my relation to my social anxiety has changed completely. A few years ago I wasn't able to admit to myself that I have some problems. And when I admitted it, I hated my social anxiety and I hated myself for having it. I still hate this. But also I've learned to develop a sense of humor about this. I've learned to be less ashamed of myself for having this, and I have more compassion for myself now. I believe that my social anxiety will slowly fade away as my relation to it changes. Something that I've learned in the past few weeks is that it isn't about waiting for my social anxiety go away. It is about accepting it completely and loving the hell out of myself as I am, now.

I am fucking amazing

Thanks for reminding me. I tend to think that If i just tried hard enough, I could do anything I’m afraid of. Then when I fail, I blame myself for not trying hard enough. But I’m a human and I’m not perfect, and sometimes I just can’t do things I want myself to do. I’m going to be trying that! Yeah I thought that too. When I only talk about this I start to feel like it’s the only thing I have. That’s nice to hear ? It seems that many people have noticed this journal, but I still feel like I’m just talking to myself here and that makes me feel unmotivated. When there’s no one posting anything here I feel like this journal is forgotten, but of course that’s not true. But anyways, I really appreciate all the support you have given ?

I'm not sure what to do with this journal. Should I write about concrete things that are happening in my life, or should I just write about how I feel? Probably both. I could also write about things that don't have so much to do with social anxiety. To be really honest I'm not even sure if this journal is actually doing much good I often feel like I am just wasting my time writing these journal post. It's nice to share things on this journal but I feel like I am not really connecting to people here. I guess I'll keep on going with this for awhile and then see if I want to continue.

Sometimes I just don’t have compassion for myself. I don’t want to be like this. I feel like I am getting nowhere. I want to see progress. Every time I try to socialize it’s the same, I feel like I’m not good enough and I make everything awkward. I want to break free from this, but I can’t. This takes so much energy, and it takes my focus from the things that I actually want to focus on. I’m just so tired of this! I don’t want to be negative but goddam this is frustrating

Thanks, I will!

I remember cycling to a friend's house, where there were going to be people I didn't know. I felt anxious. Then I somehow realised that I don't have to be anxious. I could actually enjoy that. It's really hard to let go of anxiety, but in a way it's also very easy and simple. Then realised that I don't want to let go of my anxiety. I was thinking about this a moment ago and I realised it even better. I'm afraid to enjoy other people. I don't want to change how things have always been. I don't know, I feel like this goes really deep. Might it be that I don't even believe that I deserve to enjoy other people? I don't know. I'm just happy that I maybe found something new.

I don't like to talk about my social life with my family. Like they don't already know how big of a loner I am... I just feel like I'm a loser because I have social anxiety and I don't want them to think that I'm a loser. I don't like to talk to anyone about this because of that. Even on this journal I notice myself wanting to act like this isn't so bad. I don't want to be pitful, I want to be cooool. My psychologist has challenged me to talk to my mom about my shyness. She said that I don't have to like make my mom sit down and tell everything. I can just tell little things here and there when we're having a conversation. It was a relief to hear that I actually don't have to tell everybody everything in one go. I've actually opened myself up a little to my family even before we discussed this. I am not trying to hide everything from them as I used to. It feels good to be more open. We had a terrible dinner conversation a few days ago, at least on my part. Somehow we started to talk about people in my school. My sister said something like: "You don't have any friends. Why don't you hang out with anybody?" She definitely doesn't understand that these things should not be discussed. So I was very uncomfortable and I said something like "Because I don't want to. And because I don't have time to. And because I don't have energy to........and because I am scared" and then the decibels in that room increased like hell, everyone started laughing ruthfully. And then they started interviewing me about boyfriends and everything, it was just terrible. But actually kind of liberating too. I can again be a little bit more honest with them.