flowboy

@Emrie I get that it's unpleasant when people are rude and oblivious, but I think it would bother you a lot less if you had less of a shadow about it. What I mean is: People tend to get the most annoyed at behaviors that they forbid themselves to do, and are related to something they wish they could let themselves do. You mentioned that you take a lot of care to not be rude. I think that you'd be happier if you let yourself act a little more selfishly, risk offending people a little bit to take a chance on getting what you want. Just letting down that guard of judgment a little bit. I'm not saying be rude! I'm saying: the diminished, more benevolent version of it. Assertive. Are you letting yourself be assertive? Are you letting yourself go assertively after someone you feel attracted to, and enjoy sexual initiative and success without guilt? I think on some level you want to, and there would be benefit to exploring that side of yourself.

Gonna say something a bit out of left field here: A good way to make whatever you do look completely natural, is to get yourself into a state where it IS completely natural (for you). That way, the awkwardness is only on her side, and she'll get pulled into your frame. The way I would recommend going about it, is not ejaculating for 30 days. That way, your body will be in a state where it realises it needs to socialize. You'll find yourself doing all kinds of things without having to force anything. It's magic. (sidenote: I don't condone nofap ideology. touch yourself whenever you want. just refrain from ejaculating for 4 weeks. it's simple impulse control, any adult can do it.)

@StarStruck Spot on. In which way are you working on it, which techniques are you using? With regards to the situation: you never want the topic of money to break the flow of conversation. It shouldn't be a big deal, period. That doesn't mean that you pay for whatever she wants. It can also mean that she pays for the next thing, or for the whole date, it just needs to flow naturally. If it's a big enough deal to you that you're willing to stop the conversation and set a boundary regarding to who pays for what, that's a turnoff. But even if you don't bring it up at all, she will sense that you have bad boundaries, and that's why they keep ghosting you. Here's what you should have done: You invited her for a coffee She says let's get a beer now You realise that you don't feel like getting alcoholic drinks You say: actually don't feel like getting drinks now, but why don't we do that after your dinner with colleagues. I'll pick you up from there at 9 Point being: The boundary crossing happened BEFORE payment was even the topic at hand. You didn't want to get drinks.

Haven't heard you say "and I love her"... Do you? From your post it seems like you are very disconnected from your feelings. Like your girlfriend is this thing with practical requirements (must be pretty, must give good sex), and now it stopped working like a broken toy. There's no judgment here. I get into that mode sometimes. But if that's the case, then no relationship can work, neither with her nor with another girl, as long as you're disconnected from feeling.

Because it won't. Lack of self-love comes from being incompletely loved as a child. To reach a state similar to those who have never had issues loving themselves, meaning self-love is SO default that you don't need a word for it, or to waste another thought on it, it's just there, the unfulfilled needs of childhood have to be FULLY uncovered and felt. Unless your meditation sessions leave you crying and screaming for mommy, you're not healing. What meditation CAN do, which IS helpful (but not curative), is learn to ignore and pay less attention to the unfelt pain of childhood. Before your mind goes "I don't have childhood pain / I've already dealt with it" - no you haven't, you just think you do. Unless self-love is so natural and default for you that it doesn't need to be thought about and reminded of and affirmed, or even conceived of, there is more. That's what it means for something to be unconscious. Repressed. It means that you're going to believe that it's not there. The psyche is powerful at repressing, keeping what's unconscious in the shadows. Through meditation, you can learn to repress better. You can learn to keep a calmer mind, train it to remain calmer in stressful situations. Cutting off all links between the conscious experience and the unconscious unprocessed pain. Leaving it buried. Festering. Giving you wild dreams. Nightmares. Addictions. Endless pursuit of what doesn't fulfill you. Tests have been done on people claiming to be enlightened through meditation. Their endorphin levels were through the roof. Meaning their repression system was working overtime. They were feeling blissed out, having no idea that their bodies and subconscious were still chronically stressed. This is not to knock meditation, consciousness and a calm mind are very useful to train. Don't confuse it with healing.

As a man currently in his dream relationship, and with a good history of past relationships, I can only assume that you haven't experienced a fulfilling relationship, because it's not possible to have been in love & union with someone and still believe that a business transaction can compete with that. What I want you to realise is that your thoughts are no replacement for experience. It doesn't matter what point you argue here, or who wins, or who convinces who. You won't know until you've lived it. Don't you care about actually living and experiencing?

@Indianonymous Congratulations on achieving all of that by 30, that's amazing. And also congratulations on noticing that it doesn't make you feel permanently amazing, and it doesn't fill the emptiness. Most people only find out by 50, 60, or never! So that's good. Here's what I can tell you from experience of me and also helping others doing deep inner work at various ages & stages: Low self-worth can not be fixed externally "self-esteem boosts" aren't real, accomplishments, titles, possessions and clothes do nothing. Even philantropy and charity don't make a dent. A powerful life purpose statement that is all about helping others, doesn't cut it. Even that will become an independable liferaft for your ego to cling onto when the internalized worthlessness grabs your ankles and pulls you under. There is nothing to add, there is only something to subtract. That something is the layer of conditioning, old experiences and pain that is too buried for you to remember, but still very much in the way of the high self worth that is your birthright, valuing yourself in a way that comes so natural that you don't even think about it. This is your default state Lack of self-love can not be fixed by adding 'self-love' Self-love practices are a band-aid if you have to think about them. Meditation, while beneficial, will not heal this. Being nice and taking good care of yourself and respecting yourself all come naturally when the underlying feeling of lack (of love) has been remedied. Before that, you'll find yourself chasing. Not chasing money, but chasing doing nice things for yourself. A temporary feeling of appreciation and love, which also doesn't last no matter how many fun things you do. This is actually good news, it means that you don't need external achievements, possessions, or experiences ever again to feel complete. The only thing that is needed, is to access deeper layers of your psyche and excise whatever is blocking your unconditional self-love and self-worth. A painful but rewarding process, for those who are ready. Feel free to DM me for some recommendations if you're interested in this path.

Thank you! That's helpful. Were you worried about it being too hard on her and it hurting / breaking your relationship? I would be, I think What was the turning point like when you started to be resurrected?

@Vladimir When you say you remained dead for 18 months, what was your body doing at that time? Was Vladimir still talking, breathing, going to work whilst feeling dead inside? Was his body just laying in bed the whole time, like a depression? Would you say it was what people mean by a dark night of the soul? What is it like to be dead in a body? What was it like for your wife, did she worry, could you explain, did she have to care for you?

@Judy2 No I personally don't, but I'm sure there's people here that do! I personally never really get the sniffles, only when I'm really in pain do I take paracetamol (when I had covid) And even then I just suffer through it on many days instead of taking it. I'm actually unfamiliar with what "cold medication" is ... in the Netherlands we don't take medication when we have a cold But a fever can really hurt. I still take paracetamol for that when it gets bad, I'd love an alternative for that too... but I don't know. Perhaps @Michael569 knows something?

Yes. Ibuprofen kills your stomach lining and paracetamol poisons the liver and gives your child adhd if you take it during pregnancy. I'm not an expert on this but I do remember this anecdote from a friend who sees a lot of suicidal patients: When a patient is brought into the ER with an overdose of pills (from a suicide attempt, under the influence or not), the question is always: Did they take a bunch of psychiatric medications, like sleeping pills or antidepressants? If that's all they took, they can pump the stomach, give IV fluids and have good hopes of the patient waking up. Or did they swallow a pack of OTC cough medicine, or pain relievers that have paracetamol in them? Well, fuck, then they're dead.

@BlessedLion Amazing experience. She is not your person. She is just a stop on the way. I haven't heard you say that you feel a deep connection with her. If you did, you would know. In my experience, the desire to be noncommittal follows from not feeling a deep connection. So there is no basis for an open relationship here. Because there is no basis for a relationship. When you meet someone you can go deep with, you will know. It's just not this one.

Contact me privately and I'll show you how.

I'm going to give you my read on it, and allow myself to be a little direct with you. You can disagree and that's perfectly fine: The highlighted parts are what's really keeping you from being an art director. They are judgments/false beliefs, pieces of shadow, that need to be transcended for you to be what you envision yourself being. If you don't investigate and overcome these limiters, you will never be an art director. The 10-15 year timeframe is an illusion, you may as well say 'not'. People change so much in that time span that it's not realistic or useful to plan that far ahead. I think it's an unconscious smokescreen for a mindset block. You've got a reason for not going for it, and that reason will not be fixed by waiting 10 years. Only challenging your beliefs will help, and you may as well start now. To unpack that: You're keeping a belief that the only way to move up quickly in the world is through shady and manipulative ways. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, if you go find some and challenge this belief, you'll find the real fear that is fuelling it. You'r keeping a belief that introverts can't lead people. Again, plenty of evidence to the contrary. I advise you to go find some, because if you keep believing that introverts are incompatible with leadership positions, you'll never get there. You're keeping a belief that leaders 'command around people', in other words, you judge leadership. Same here: not true, but if you hang on to that and don't dismantle that belief, it's not that 10-15 years will change anything. Until you challenge this part. Networking and contacts are blockers for you, I assume this relates to the 'introvert' thought. I can relate, I am also an introvert and don't like networking. Waiting 10-15 years will not magically change that. If this is a requirement for your dream, you should be networking and building contacts today. Anything else is procrastination.

@RendHeaven I hope she reads your words not just one time but many times on different days. I think you provided a wise, integrous and heartfelt satsang to her personally. If she'd like a practical exercise to try, I've gotten good feedback on this video of mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjG_4MSZDP0 Which might help her too, at least get a start in the journey of feeling deeper.

That's a commonly made mistake, that one could simply think really hard and remember what past event is really bothering them. It's understandable, but rests on a mistaken view of the psyche and the unconscious. For something to become conditioning/trauma, means it is repressed from conscious access. The repression system, consisting of gating mechanisms in the brain + the endorphin production system, literally prevents the person from remembering. Often times the entire memory is inaccessible then, and other times the events and facts are somewhat accessible but not the emotional depth of it. This is when people remember their childhood as "fine" and nice and uneventful, or feels like somethings were a bit hard but they dealt with it just fine, but that's not at all how it really felt. There's no thinking your way around it, because the body is doing its best to block conscious access. In the mean time, this stored pain bubbles up to the surface in moments that the repression system is not paying attention, or overloaded/busy dealing with something else. An everyday life stressor causes an anxiety attack. The person has nightmares or even night terrors. Or, more commonly, emotionally overreact, with anxiety or anger, to an everyday interpersonal situation, because it is similar enough to the original buried painful memory to make the emotion bubble up to the surface, whilst at the same time the repression system is still working hard to protect the person at all cost from the truth of what painful thing he/she is really being reminded of. Thus, overreaction and projection are born.

In general, I think it is good to not only do what everyone else does, for example: yes an artist should have an instagram and a portfolio on artist websites, but literally every artist has one, so you're in high competition there if your only touchpoint is online. People like to hire people from their own network, if they qualify. Even if I've seen someone face to face only once, that person is a lot more real to me than just a digital profile. If the world is trending towards using social media to get clients, stand out by doing the opposite: meet lots of people face to face.

This is why I asked these concrete questions. What does it mean to you, to break into the field? This is just an expression. Does it mean being an art director? What does being an art director mean to you? Is it someone who gets creative assignments and works on them with a team? If it is that, for example, and I'm just speaking in terms of what it means to you: What is the difference between that and what you are doing? Because if that is what you want to do, you could go get an assignment and go put some freelance artists together to do it with you, and become an art director in one day. Provided that you already have the contacts. I would suppose that perhaps what you're missing is contacts, networking. Knowing people in companies that need art, knowing lots of freelance artists that trust you. But that could be me projecting, since it is my weakness which I have to work on. I tend to be shy about what I do, and introducing myself to people who might need my services, or know people who might, is scary, therefore building contacts has been the one glaringly obvious thing that I have omitted doing. So what's the concrete difference between what you are doing, and what the person who you want to be is doing? Is it skill? Is it contacts? Something else?

He spent 12-16 hours a day drawing for 4 years. He does character design, basically draws monsters for a living, now also employs other freelancers to draw monsters and takes a cut, makes a few thousand a month passively that way now, on top of the assignments he actively works on, which he obviously gets to be picky with now. Are you creating an imaginary barrier between yourself and some far-away identity, such as you being an "art director"? What does an art director do? Does he get assignments and then organise other artists to work on those assignments with him as a team? (I'm guessing) Then do that. Boom, now you're an art director. No one is going to give you the title, you have to put the castle together yourself and then crown yourself king.

@Fuku I feel for you man. I've spent most of my life having anxieties and obsessively thinking and analyzing about what's wrong with me, talking about it to family members and friends, and then sometimes it seemed like mostly what was wrong with me was that... in and of itself. But that realisation was not satisfying nor curative. The more I'm doing deep inner work and learning about myself, the more I'm making connections of how I came to be this way and how I can get out of it. I guarantee you that your mental state has a reason, I could even help you figure it out. Don't think of "trauma" as some dramatic event that other people had happen to them and you didn't. Everyone has conditioning. Past is interconnected to future, until deconditioning happens. More often than not, things go back to the earliest years including birth.

Burnout is a function of workload over agency x purpose It’s much harder to burnout on something that is meaningful to you. So if you’re going to work long hours, invent a framework where it’s not just a means to an end (for money).

@Space Here's what AI can't take away - personalization. A painting that objectively looks as good as one created by a human - that's one thing. Art was never purely a competition of skill. A painting or drawing that is about a human experience, or even capturing a personal relationship with real people - that will always feel more special than a machine generated whatever. Exactly because YOU created it from your perspective. That will have meaning to people who know you. Don't take your humanness out of the equation. You are your niche.

This desperate ripping-open-curtain thing is all over my life. It's what I feel when I think about the never ending chore of keeping my house clean. It's what I feel when I think about still not having my driver's license. It's what I feel over any way in which my life is not the way I want it and I don't know what to do about it.

Primal session #2 (the following is the raw output of what came up during a primal therapy session, don't take any of this too literally and worry about me ) Exploring a feeling that's been triggered when nothing's working. Nothing I'm doing is working. And people criticize/punish me for trying. I'm in this double bind (thanks Richard) Pattern is showing up in multiple ways. I needed to get the fuck out, then I was born. Then everything was WORSE!! Much worse. The terror. i had to go but it's MUCH MUCH WORSE than expected and now I can't breathe and I want to go back. First it was about my mother. Being caring and nurturing when I got in fights. FUCK YOU. It was all fake. She didn't see the real pain. She didn't want to. No one took care to protect me. The people who where supposed to help me, couldn't, wouldn't help me. I'm all alone. And I'm drowning. Then: anger, wanting to shake my mother for her useless mothering. Can't you see I need self defence and protection. Why won't you see that. Why are you trying to turn me into the sweet kid from the story in your head, while I'm drowning at school in bullying and aggression. You don't love me. I am hurting myself so you see my real pain, and still you don't see. I am hurting myself by getting others to hurt me (omg, insight. I do that a lot) And still no one is in my corner, no one supports me. She worries about me but she doesn't get the message. Then: body feels "twisty" This desperate anger Ripping open a curtain. I have to rip open the entrance to survive. It's a spiderey circular entrance/exit More like a giant anus with folds. Super weird. Then I feel this all-consuming desperate anger, I rip it, and... NOOO. NO. NO. NO. NO. Terror. It's worse on the other side. I feel very baby-ish. I'm letting out babyish screams. I feel a sense of being sucked by my solar plexis, can't breathe properly, pressure on my chest, dragged by my skin. I'm being dragged. Being handled. So much light. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. (I was doing weird twisty movements on the floor for a while without seeing or feeling much) Then the feelings repeat. Desperate anger. Ripping something open with both hands to survive. Then: terror, noo, being handled, being dragged, wanting to go back. Double bind. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I can tell this is about my entire life, somehow. It's connected to everything. "Why did no one tell me/teach me/protect me" THat's a theme that reoccurred a lot as well. Now I know what it's related to. Why did no one tell me that being born was worse than staying inside That's why I feel betrayed.

@actually Geweldig! Werk aan de winkel dus. Go get that natural high back