trenton

I think this post will provide some useful insight into psychological defense mechanisms and how to overcome them. Ever since a traumatic event from when I was about six I have been judgemental toward sex. I very rarely overtly slut shamed anyone, but I did silently judge them and it hurts me. I used to be like the other kids laughing over low brow humor, but I started distancing myself from them. One of the reasons is that I thought they were fools. "Stupid" never felt like the right insult to describe the behavior of the children. It would be more accurate to say that I felt they were sexually improper. Part of the judgement was for fear of punishment. Sometimes I felt sexually harassed. This includes the girl who grabbed my penis in the lunch room. My avoidance of sexually improper conduct caused other people to think I was gay and they started bullying me for it. Even my family suspected I was gay, and I am only now clearing this up with them. Other girls in high school tried flirting with me, but I was silently repelled by their behavior. I saw kids drawing dicks on the walls. Part of me found it funny and I judged myself for it. I look back at the self judgement that comes from slut shaming and it is insane. It placed a ridiculous burden on me. I even judged myself for masturbation and all of my fantasies. Again I used "stupid" instead of "sexually improper." in this process of judging sex, I ended up picking up the belief that lust was sin even though I am not religious and never plan to be. I find it instructive that the human psyche is not designed for truth, but rather self validation. It will cherry pick any belief so long as it serves your identity. Recognizing that the attachment to this belief served the function of validation for my perspective of that time helps to let go. The sense of being morally virtuous is addicting as crack. It has a good feeling to it, but is actually low conscious. I did not understand how it would hurt me. I judged myself for gay and straight fantasies while having intrusive rape fantasies. These intrusive rape fantasies were often accompanied by suicidal thoughts. It's insane how much it hurts. One lesson I take away from the low consciousness of being morally virtuous, is that I call people out for different reasons. Moral righteousness often leads to smugness which In turn makes you seem immoral. It is the hypocrisy of moral superiority and it defeats the purpose of improving your character. My goal in calling people out is not to hurt them or feel superior. My goal is to raise our collective consciousness for the good of myself and others. I do so out of love, not out of the selfish desire to be morally superior. I even implicitly slut shamed my own mother. I wrote a message to her earlier today apologizing for something she may not have picked up on or may have forgotten. I am just now realizing how much mental energy I put into maintaining my memories. I have put a lot of energy into maintaining memories for fear of being self deceived through white washing my memories. This started after the incident from when I was six. In any case, I am trying to rebuild my relationship with mom despite my previous frustration toward her regarding her refusal to evict my abusive step father. I feel that I hurt her feelings unnecessarily in lashing out at her. All of this is the reason I live with my grandma now. My dad was a hypocrite in slut shaming my mom. He had children by multiple women and preached the bible to me. He made me feel bad about myself for masturbation. He called mom a slut when he learned that another man was spending time with her after Mike was evicted. Most men don't hold themselves to higher standards. I try to and it hurts more than you realize just through reading this. The shallowness of pursuing sex never appealed to me, but a genuine emotional connection with someone does. If sex happens in a relationship then fine, I just want love. I judged men and women throughout my life for sexual misconduct. It even found its way into my political beliefs. For example, when looking at an issue like abortion, I felt this underlying sense of disgust at women who abuse the procedure, getting 5 or more abortions. I was never overt, but I noticed that I had this underlying sense of slut shaming which was buried beneath the surface moral arguments against abortion. The anti abortion movement takes this to a greater extreme, but I don't see the need to detail this. It also made me feel morally virtuous again. Judging sex scandals always felt hollow and shallow To me for some reason. It seems like a cheap social outrage To be carried away by. For example, I judged churches for raping kids, but something felt off and dirty about it for some reason. I don't know if this is the reason, but I feel the pain of sexual repression myself and intrusive rape fantasies scare me. It is not hard for me to imagine that someone might snap under this and become an actual rapist. I don't think it makes sense to judge them. I also judged sex songs and dances with revealing clothing. again, the energy that goes into judging sex to the point that songs make me uncomfortable is ridiculous. I am still not desensitized to this. Sometimes I cringe over these songs. Even good songs are ruined when I realize they are about sex but I didn't realize it previously. My dad was interested in strip clubs, but I wasn't. I am afraid of getting a lap dance because I'm afraid of not being able to control myself and I will end up touching her. I probably won't, but I'm afraid anyway. Controlling myself around others had never been issue but I'm afraid it is for some reason. There were people judging my autistic behaviors, but nothing worse than that. To this day the thought of approaching girls In a bar or night club makes me cringe. I would rather approach girls In the open during the day. The series "how to get laid" rubs me the wrong way. It sounds click baity and it implies motives which I dislike. I could watch it. I'm not afraid to anymore. I watched part of the first one. I am judging bars and nightclubs as having lower quality women, possibly as a consequence of my past slut shaming. Would someone care to dispute my belief that approaching women during the day will yield higher quality women? Perhaps my recent experience with a flat earther should be a counter example. I find it ridiculous how close minded they are. In any case, slut shaming seems like a cheap way to make oneself feel morally virtuous and it causes enough pain to make you suicidal. There are probably other examples from high school or through other parts of my life that I don't remember at the moment, but I hope you find value in this message. I wish you nothing but love, good luck.

@Zion Given the billions of different possible brain structures within either sex, I will always be forced to generalize. These generalities will never be full proof. For example, men and women perceive colors differently. Women see warmer colors with greater contrast whereas men are greater movement within color. This difference makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint because human societies used to be Hunter gatherer. If men chased after prey to feed the tribe and women picked different berries while using colors to distinguish edibles from poison, then it makes sense that the male and female eyes would be this way. There are also men and women who are blind, so in this way it is not absolutely true that men and women see reality differently. In general, women have faster reaction times when exposed to sudden noises. This makes sense because women tend to be physically weaker which therefore makes them more vulnerable to a physical threat. The evolutionary standpoint makes sense again in this case. Again there are counter examples. There are men and women who are deaf, so they don't all perceive sounds differently. There are also gay men who have faster reaction times than straight men. There could be feminine aspects of the brain integrated into the brain of a gay man. This further blurs the boundary of any absolutely true distinction. I would imagine that men and women experience touch differently. This makes sense because sexual pleasure works differently for different types of bodies. There are still people who are born with both a penis and vagina or who have neither. Ultimately, all boundaries fail to hold up perfectly. The reality is that within any set of billions of neurons in our brains, the possibility for variety is too high. Given this level of variety, you would have to go to every individual and take exactly how that person experiences reality. Some men may have more typically feminine characteristics, and some women may have more typically masculine characteristics. Perhaps the only immutable differences that hold up is when you take a smaller group or two individuals and compare them. In the case of two individuals, the bodies are physically distinct from one another, creating a clear difference. If my focus is on all men and all women, then the sample size is too big and the generalizations will eventually fail given billions of men and women. Is there a better way to approach the differences between men and women?

I feel like there are two distinct truths to this issue which struggle to integrate one another and seemingly contradict. On one hand gender is a social social construct. In fact all identity is imaginary. This can make it easy to get lost in relativism or aperspectival madness. Gender is a social construct because it is an identity created from our physicality. This leads to all kinds of gender roles which vary across cultures. Gender identity includes the assumption that you are the body. If I am not the body, then I could be neither male nor female or I could be every man and woman in existence. On the other hand there are immutable differences between men and women. There are some people who interpret you as sexist or any other negative term when pointing out immutable differences. For example, the difference in brain structure leads to a difference in psychology and how men and women experience life or perceive reality.

I remember he mentioned ethical reasons for wanting to get off of so much meat. He wanted to slowly get back to vegetables, but he needed to figure out what was causing the gut problem. To my knowledge he does not plan on making a life time carnivore diet. He also argued that survival often requires us to hurt others. For example, a squirrel is an oak murdering machine and the cucko bird is a baby murdering machine just on automatic inherent instinct. Hurting others for the sake of survival is nothing personal, but it often feels that way when you are in the midst of conflict.

There is a reason why nearly everybody fails to awaken. We try all kinds of spiritual practices, yet we are guided by hidden maps which cannot be found by looking inward. Instead these hidden maps influence how we self reflect and we are often blind to how they influence us. Ken Wilber used spiral dynamics as an example of hidden maps, but there are others such as mental disorders, trauma, and the survival drive. The survival drive is the main reason why we fail to awaken. For example, my identity as the mind is not merely an intellectual error, but rather a survival strategy. Through disociating from the external world, I attempt to keep myself safe from those who could hurt me. For example, there was a lot of verbal abuse when I went to school, and I had no control over the situation. This lack of control leads to the I don't care attitude as I live in my head. Of course this can happen everywhere in life like with my mom's abusive boyfriend who she refused to evict no matter how much I begged. Being stuck in my head is designed to remove me from traumatic situations, thus serving as armor from emotional pain and heartbreak. paradoxically, this is how I end up creating most of my suffering as I try to avoid suffering. I end up stuck in my head, judging myself, and giving the ego undue credit for its influence on life both good and bad. Blaming myself is designed to insist on some illusion of control even though deep down I know this not to be true. The repeated self punishment results In feelings of depression and anxiety as well as sleeping problems among other things. The survival drive keeps my attached to falsehoods even if I don't believe them. It could be an unconscious belief or unconsciousness In general which prevents effective self reflection with which to raise our consciousness. In reality identifying as the internal world is optional. If I am not separate from the external world, then the distinction between self and other becomes untenable as the self now includes the entire experience rather than something separate from experience. Identifying as something separate from the external world happens as part of the survival drive and it often cannot be overcome simply through self reflecting. Most of the time we will fail and we will not awaken. Part of the problem is the social stigma around psychedelics. Many of us realistically will not be able to use psychedelics because of our life situation preventing travel or because the legal risks are too great for us. A divide in this forum is created as people with access to tools like psychedelics have a much better chance of awakening than the average Joe working a 9-5 job and doing a bit of meditation. Without making serious changes to the way society functions, it is inevitable that nearly everybody will fail to awaken no matter what guru you follow. No matter how hard we try, given our limitations the survival drive is too strong and it prevents us from self reflecting effectively. Some people try doing this kind of work for 40 years and they fail.

@Israfil Thank you for your support. I just feel so mad and anxious. Logic says "I was just an ignorant child who didn't know better." The human psyche simply does not function through logic alone. I have been struggling with this all my life and I am ready to open to my family on this issue. Part of me still has a lot of suicidal thoughts and a sense of hopelessness because I have been struggling with all of these emotional issues for my entire life to no avail. Of course this was combined with other things like domestic violence, a dysfunctional family, autism, bullying, OCD, drug addiction in my family, and other things. My relationships with other people just felt hollow throughout my life no matter how much they said they loved me. I even turned to spirituality in an attempt to stop this suffering. Everything I have done in life has been the seeking of love, but love is hard. Effort and willpower alone will never be enough to stop this. At least one thing I can revise is that I don't hate myself, but rather I hate my situation from which I am trying to escape and constantly failing. I also need to discuss cptsd with my family, but I know it will start a fight and I am afraid to tell them. We all suffer from some form of this complex trauma because of our dysfunctional family. I can intellectualize all I want in a effort to minimize my trauma, but deep down it never works. This is all just so frustrating, I am working on getting professional help. I am making progress.

In my opinion the moral arguments against incest are very weak for a number of reasons. They depend almost entirely on emotional assertions, arbitrary family lines, the assumption that only living beings of the same species can be part of a family and the assumption of unprotected sex. I will present the counter arguments to these non sensical moral assertions. First of all, our extended family is way larger than most people are willing to admit. If you believe in the Bible for example, then we all came from Adam and Eve. The argument of extended family is not limited to religion, and applies to science as well. If humans evolved from other creatures, making us genetic relatives of apes for instance, then why can't the animals from which we evolved be considered our ancestors? That would technically make it incest even if I had sex with a monkey because it is my very distant cousin. Furthermore, why do we assume that reproduction can only be done with living beings? If you follow the tree of evolution to the beginning, then we all came from multiplying single cell organisms, making them our very distant ancestors. In fact, all of these cells came from matter and energy that originated from the big bang and ultimately formed the universe as we know it. If everything originated from nothing, then why don't we consider the universe itself our God father? The source of life itself would be the beginning of our family, making us all children of the big bang or of God. All beings are interconnected through evolution. The branch of evolution is not limited to living beings. Non living beings are also part of our family. Ultimately, we are all born of the universe which is its own being and its own family. Finally, if we are all one, then there are no separate beings. Therefore, you are always having sex with yourself because the universe is happening within you, not without you. That is my main argument against the moral assertions of incest. My secondary argument includes cultural relativism, because in Egypt they encouraged incest. Although there were genetic defects, this can be avoided through protected sex. From there the emotional assertions are groundless because some people like having sex with other family members. The only real issue with incest is that if someone believes it is immoral, then it will become non consensual. Other than that, there is no sound argument. The universe is your immediate family. What do you think about incest?

Update: this may be bad. I continued doing Leo's forgiveness exercise. It was never what happened with my sister that actually traumatized me, but rather mom's reaction to it. I was terrified, weak, crying uncontrollably, and blaming myself. It never occurred to me to blame mom for hurting me because I put all the blame on myself and I have been doing this for many situations throughout my life. It is hard to forgive other people when I blame myself for so much of what happened throughout life. Forgiveness is still happening when I let go of self blame. Deep down I know this self blame not to be true, yet I give the ego undue credit anyway. I would be a very peaceful and happy human being If I let go of self blame entirely, or at least if I held onto it to a far lesser degree than I did. I am letting go little by little. This started to become less about forgiveness and more about processing intense fear. I have been suffering from many psychological conditions. Ever since the incident, I have been hyper vigilant and self conscious. I experience a lot of harsh self judgement often to the point of suicidal thoughts, which although I never act on, sometimes they are more intense. I am attached to this hyper vigilance and self consciousness because I am afraid of what will happen if I loosen up. This mental state translates into anxiety and sleeping issues. I often get shock waves running up my lower spine all the way up to my head and sometimes it is painful. I often lay awake for hours unable to sleep. I am taking pills for anxiety that seem to be helping and the forgiveness exercise helps as well. I also have been diagnosed with depression and I still have several symptoms of mild or moderate depression. I have been mentally scarred by the incident for years and my mind comes back to it frequently. I am afraid of acting on various thoughts and impulses. Repressing these thoughts and impulses often leads to muscle spasms and talking in gibberish. My family notices it when I do it, but they don't say anything. These muscle spasms are rooted in harsh self judgement when I don't trust myself to be a good person. This issue is becoming less about forgiveness. I am actually showing symptoms of ptsd. I feel like I need to discuss this with a therapist. The traumatic event may have actually been that bad. I have been living in constant suffering, self judgement, hyper vigilance, and a tense body for years. It is like living in my own habitual punishment. no matter how much spirituality, emotional mastery, and intellectual exercises I try, it never seems to be enough. I have been trying my best to heal all of this and to love myself for years, but it was always hard. I might actually need more help.

@Danioover9000 definitely different levels of development will lead to different passions. The way you describe false passion sounds a ton like me. I have a disconnect between thinking and feeling. I am working on being more open with my family about my feelings to see if I can harmonize my mind and emotions somehow. The reason I suppress my feelings is because that is what people will judge me for the most and it is the most sensitive and hurts the most. It is also what I judge myself for the most. This makes it impossible to find true passion by your standards because I will always have doubts due to the conflict between body and mind or thought and feeling. I notice my logic moves faster than my feelings.

I find this issue interesting and instructive. Oftentimes people dedicate a lot of time and energy to things they think they are passionate about, but really they are misaligned with their authentic values. I want to discuss aspects of the false passion and how we should address it if we find that we or someone we know has one. The false passion has a certain feeling to it. It is usually heated, angry, and accompanied by a victim mindset. It is biased and holds one side as objective due to emotional impulses. It is unable to weigh the pros and cons of both perspectives. It has a lot of harsh judgements of the other side, especially moral judgements. It makes us feel resentful and often powerless as we try to change things that we think will make us happy, but they turn out to be hollow political ideals. Especially, pay attention to this hollowness of our moral assertions and the positions we get hung up on. Any collective issue or individual issue could easily become a false passion. A huge red flag is if the media sensationalized the issue. This can be issues like terrorism, gun control, a presidential election, sex scandals, LGBTQ, abortion, and many other issues. There are some people who end up dedicating their lives to debunking the bible as part of a band wagon against religion. Any issue in which we take a firm position and claim it to be true no matter how we feel deep down has nothing to do with truth. There is a fundamental misalignment with our core values. This is why we pursue things that we think will make us happy, but it turns out they don't. The false passion is characterized by making small issues into big issues. This includes things like the M&Ms mascot, micro aggressions, and maybe others. It gets tricky because to some people small issues seem big to them because it affects them personally. The false passion is characterized by controversy and outrageous facts. These outrageous facts may be statistics on mortality rates within any given issue. One example might be the circumcision dilemma. Some men get so angry that they disown their parents over the foreskin of their penis. A potentially controversial fact would be that sometimes the knife slips during a circumcision and it causes the infant to die. This could easily be a big fight about individual liberty and collective well being once people are whipped up into a frenzy. What are the qualities of the false passion, and can you give other examples?

@Yimpa I do want to take psychedelics. I am not saying it is impossible for me to ever try them. Given my current life situation it is not possible, but this could change. I am currently trying to convince my boss to give me a raise.

I have been undergoing a transformation with the help of Leo's forgiveness video. I am becoming more open to my emotions and I recognize that suppressing them can be very problematic. It can create a lot tension in the body. I rewatched Leo's video on body awareness and he recommended getting a massager. I am trying to relax my body and mind which makes me feel kind of tired. I was looking for a massager, and they looked kind of weird. I tried to get a good a look at the box, but there were security tags, blocking the label. I thought it was some kind of back or shoulder massager. Nobody said anything or judged me for it. Seeing this behavior, I know I don't need to be embarrassed when buying condoms, so in a way it helped me. I brought it home and my family started getting embarrassed. My sisters found it hilarious that I thought it was a back massager. I don't have a girlfriend and it might be a minute before I get one to share this with, so it will have to be returned. I should probably study other examples of sex toys. Should I just order a massage gun or chair off of Amazon?

I did some further research and discovered that I had some misconceptions about female anatomy. In Senior Health, I was given an over simplified explanation of the female reproductive system and we never covered the vulva. I was told that the penis goes into the vagina. Then at the height of sexual arousal, the man ejaculates, releasing semen and sperm. The sperm travels through the uterus and into the fallopian tube where fertilization happens. The egg is released from the ovary. The egg and sperm combine to form a zygote which is implanted in the uterus. The zygote then becomes a blastocyst, then an embryo, then a fetus. After about nine months, it is born as an infant. First, I discovered that the vagina and uterus are connected by the cervix. Then I studied the vulva, which is commonly confused with the vagina, which is lower than I thought. The vulva has a libia minora on top and a libia majora on the bottom. The vagina is the bottom hole, located beneath the urinary tract. I discovered that there is a clitoris toward the top of the vulva. It consists of a hood and a gland. The clitoris is the pleasure center of the vulva, and this explains why the female sex toy was shaped in a such a strange way. It vibrates inside the vagina and at the same time vibrates near the clitoris at different levels of intensity. I then looked at the male reproductive system to check for misconceptions. I was wondering why my balls moved, and it is because of the temperature. When it is cold, they move up and when it is hot they move down. The scrotum holds the testicles which are connected to the epididymus. The epididymus is connected to the vas deferens which leads to the ejaculatory gland. This then goes out the penis. The penis naturally has foreskin which is meant to protect the tip called the glans penis. I don't have this foreskin because my family removed it for medical reasons when I was an infant. I notice that the glans penis is sensitive to touch and sometimes is a little irritable. Sometimes, I feel this discomfort in my pants as I start fidgeting. I start adjusting my legs and penis because I feel the tip rubbing against the cloth in my pants and underwear. Is this a problem with underwear size, or is it preventable with some kind of penis sheath to compensate for the lack of foreskin?

Repressing your feelings can tear your life apart. It can lead to intense self judgement, bodily tension, and it can easily sour your other relationships due to the damage caused to yourself. It causes a lot more than anxiety attacks and depression. It can reach the point of constant suicidal thoughts, paranoia, muscle spasms, speaking on tongues, memory loss, racing thoughts, sleeping problems, and much much more. You may be driven to taken medicine, but it is a band aid on a festering wound. Repressing our emotions is a root cause of mental illness that medicine often fails to cure. I want you to be free and happy. It can be scary to let your feelings flow, but look at the alternative of repressing your feelings. Being truthful seems like the better option for your mind, your body, and your relationships.

There is more progress being made. With my previous identity being torn down with all of the stirred up trauma, I started having a jumbled mind. My previous mask had fallen apart because it was sweeping all of these emotions into my body. I felt a lot of confusion and frustration as I wanted to recreate a cohesive identity. I didn't see a need to be attached to all these theories and intellectual positions anymore. I didn't see the point in holding onto these mental constructions. I remembered who I was as a child before all of this trauma and over protective attitude. I wasn't always like this. For example, people with autism have the stereotype of being introverts, but the reality is that many of them are more naturally extroverted which is suppressed due to bullying. Likewise, I used to be much more open as a child. I used to be good at remembering people's names. As I became more withdrawn and afraid of the outer world, I started getting worse at remembering names. I didn't care as much for others felt because I was dissociated and living in my head. At first I thought had more control over my thoughts and feelings, but in fact this illusion fell apart as well. My feelings worsened as I stayed hidden for fear of being hurt. I am starting to open up more with other people again. I am getting better at remembering names again like Anthony, Randy, and Margie. It helps to know that I'm not alone as I reconnect to the world which I had come to fear. I have been struggling with various dysfunctions in my body and mind. The tension in my body is linked to various self judgements. As my self judgements ease and the suicidal thoughts subside, so too will the tension in my body. It often led to twitching, strange noises, and saying things like "I hate myself" out loud. I know these judgements to not be true because I am fundamentally good. At the moment, my body and mind is partially in this old attitude still. I am focusing on my body and mind as I release the painful tension throughout both. These strange outbursts continued as I went to a movie with my brother and sisters. I was struggling with inner bodily tension and various thought patterns. My family often looks at me like something is wrong when I suddenly make these outbursts of gibberish. They usually brush it off and overlook it. I know them to be rooted in self judgement, and I hope to free myself in This process. Beneath the tension there is an authentic inner joy. This inner joy is love.

@tadpole Coincidentally, I have been contemplating this recently as well. All my life I have been struggling for control over my thoughts and feelings, but our control over life is very limited and it hurts as we try to control life. My thoughts and feelings happen to me. I never chose to be a human who experiences thoughts and feelings. Judging thoughts and feelings in such a way that it attacks your sense of self love and self worth is very damaging because as humans we over estimate the control we have over life. As we allow our thoughts and feelings to flow, they happen to us and they change. You don't let go of thoughts, thoughts let go of you. Likewise, self reflection is happening to me as insights come in and my feelings continue to change.

I wish I could put a million likes on this video.

I see no better place to document the transformation that forgiveness has allowed. All my life, I have been over protective. I was afraid and wanted to avoid trauma and being hurt. This over protection is what caused most of the suffering in my life because I was afraid and trying to avoid suffering. The only way for me to experience love would be to take off my armor and be vulnerable, but this was the last thing I wanted to do. I was protective in my family life when I avoided them by staying in my room. It didn't help that my older sister and mother had anger issues, nor did it help that there were episodes of domestic violence between mom and step dad who were drug addicts that stole my money. I was afraid of making any small mistake which would set them off, so I hid. I was protective in my school life. I was afraid of the other kids who were bullying me. In response, I isolated myself from the other kids, but this backfired. I became an easy target because I was alone. I needed to double check everything to make sure the other kids didn't steal from me or write fa* on my jacket. Instead of keeping my backpack by my side, I moved to keeping it under my feet. This over protection in school was reinforced through the sexually inappropriate behaviors of other kids. After what happened with my sister, I became very closed to sex and judgemental of sex, not because of sex itself, but because of the punishment associated with it. I saw the other kids as fools as they constantly got themselves in trouble with humping other kids, drawing penises on the walls, and other childish behaviors. I used to laugh with the other kids about all of this myself, but I had changed because I was afraid of punishment. Sexual harassment didn't help. There was one girl who grabbed my penis twice and another girl who followed me around trying to get me to have an orgy. I was immediately uncomfortable with any girl attempting to make me look or feel slutty. Deep down I wanted a relationship in which I could express my authentic feelings, but it seemed to me that it was not possible. I stayed closed. I have been protective in my hyper vigilance when it came to any selfish thought or impulse. I judged myself very harshly and didn't want to hurt others. This included the possibility of using autism as an excuse to get away with selfishness which scared me. It included making people uncomfortable with my weird behaviors no matter how hard I tried to be good. All of my judgements paralyzed me as I feared doing anything remotely wrong. This led to all kinds of "what if I do this?" The fear of not being able to control myself made me more protective as I created fears which didn't exist. I am prone to catastrophizing and coming up with scenarios that lead to suicidal thoughts. This includes the paralysis that I feel when attempting to approach a woman. I see millions of things that could go wrong because I don't trust myself to be a good person. My defense from strong negative emotions include repression, dissociation, and isolation. I have constantly wanted to remain separate from others as I lived in my own little bubble trying to be safe. In fact my over protection led to suicidal thoughts. I therefore tried to protect myself from over protection by being more protective for fear that I would kill myself, or cause harm to others. In truth the solution was to drop my armor, which was the last thing I wanted to do. I was ignorant and did not understand how to cope with all of my fears as I did my best to avoid trauma. This over protection is what traumatized me the most. In a way the possibility of suicide was comforting. I constantly felt like I was not in control of my life no matter how hard I tried. The ability to kill myself and eliminate all the suffering I didn't understand helped me to feel easier about my life. Suicidal thoughts are therefore a defense mechanism for strong negative emotions such as fear, shame, guilt, self hatred and others. There is a visualization I like to do in exercising forgiveness. I visualize the child who is acting over protective because he is afraid. He is ignorant and is struggling to cope with fear. Deep down he wants love, but struggles to love himself. He has several issues with depression and anxiety as he tries to protect himself from trauma while doing his best to be a good person. Although he tries to be a good person, he cannot help but fail and he blames himself harshly. He is afraid of his own selfishness and is unable to love himself, even though he tries to. all he wants is safety. I see the weakness and vulnerability in this child. I give him a hug as I tell him it's okay to be scared. I'm not mad at you. You are only trying to be good and you deserve to be loved. It makes me cry when I do this visualization, including now. This is the child who needs to be forgiven. Part of me still feels the need to be protective because I'm scared. I notice the tension in my back and shoulders dissolving, but then coming back. I don't want to be hurt, but in doing so I block out love. This makes me feel conflicted and unsure as to whether or not I should stop being protective because of my doubts and fears. I might need to ease into being less protective.

I feel like I no longer stand by my initial position on incest. I now feel like it is silly to be making all of these arguments to begin with. I look at the arguments and wonder what's the point. I don't see what it would accomplish if society accepted all of this. They could just look at all of these arguments and say so what.

@Realms of Wonder thank you for the support. I feel more brave because of the exercise, which I have now done twice. This time my mind started flowing through a lot of little things. I even recognized how my ignorance and unconsciousness lead me to making this thread. I have dissolved the resistance I felt before. I have been hyper vigilant all of my life, thinking I was doing good. I have been scared of every selfish impulse. Part of this may have to do with autism and hyper sensitivity to strong emotions especially as a child. I was terrified and sad a lot to the point that I hid in my room most of my life. The process of forgiving this child makes me cry.

Update: I talked with my sister and my mom. Apparently, my sister was so young that it is hard for her to remember the event. Mom vaguely remembers it. I thought I was around 7 or 8, but I might have been 6, I don't remember. Maybe my sister was 4, but I don't know how many months. I just don't remember how old we were. I wanted to help Jordan heal before I could forgive myself. Jordan didn't seem upset at all. She and mom were more upset because of how upset I seemed. I told them that I felt like I didn't deserve to be loved. I put my hands over my face and started crying. This has been making me feel horrible forever. It was probably Jordan who was rubbing my back, but I didn't look. They felt bad not because of the event, but because I felt horrible all this time and they didn't know how hurt I was. Mom told me to say three good things about myself. The first one was that I loved Jordan because she deserved to be loved. The second was that I am fundamentally good and when I hurt people it is inadvertently. The third one is that I choose truth over self deception, the first example being that I refused to call this a nightmare, and the second being that I deserve to be loved. Mom asked if there was anything else I needed to talk about. She asked if I ever did it again or wanted to. For a moment I thought about saying I wanted to have sex with my sisters. I was conflicted inside because I couldn't tell if I really wanted to have sex with them or not. In the moment I was too weak to come out and say I want to have sex with my sisters. I told mom that for a moment I just thought about having sex with Jordan. Mom and Jordan said that it was because of the memory we just discussed, but I had doubts. Eventually, mom left to make dinner. I stayed upstairs with Jordan as we watched a streamer play chess. I analyzed the game as they went along. I explained to Jordan my calculations and thinking methods along the way. White could have checkmated black much more easily. I told Jordan that weaker players have this tendency to just grab material immediately when they could end the game with checkmate. In the game, white just took the black queen instead of just killing the king. When I look at the board I intuitively look for checkmate patterns when attacking the king. Otherwise the game drags on and on when you could just rip off the bandaid. Jordan often struggles with finding checkmate even when she is clearly winning. I told her that she could just study some typical endgame mating nets. These patterns are second nature to me. During the game I started frowning and felt like crying again. I notice this beginner tendency in myself, but in a different form. When I see an aggressive or promising move, I often fail to consider more powerful alternatives. This is why I often get a good position, but I fail to convert and I get a draw against strong resistance. In fact it ends up taking more mental effort when you don't put in the extra effort up front to find a more powerful alternative. Paradoxically, I often need to trust my intuition and playing alternatives often leads me astray. After the game was over and white finally won, I asked Jordan if she had any games. We started looking at games, but then I started thinking about having sex with her again. I felt movement in my penis and was worried that I would violate my sister. I felt too scared to stay, so I wanted to leave. I was about to tell mom that I wanted to have sex with my sisters, but she was busy cooking dinner and the dog was back in. It barks at me a lot and it is loud. I decided to leave and eat at the other house. I understood that today I was too weak to tell the full truth. I got home and ate some BLTs. I didn't eat a lot, but I felt stuffed again and had a hard time eating. I've been losing my appetite. Finally, I went back to my room. I texted mom about my sexual feelings toward my sisters and my suicidal thoughts. She told me not to tell my sisters yet, because it would make us both very uncomfortable. She texted back the following article. I read through it and a lot of it describes me exactly. https://www.treatmyocd.com/what-is-ocd/common-fears/fear-of-incest-ocd I am diagnosed with ocd. It worsened with bullying at school as other kids were stealing from me, punching me, sexually harassing me, one girl who grabbed my penis twice, writing fa* on my jacket, stealing my homework and lunch, some girls following me around, and a boy who made me very uncomfortable at the urinal and I have been afraid to use the urinal ever since. I use the stall whenever I can. I have a lot of suicidal thoughts that I never act on and I constantly think I'm a horrible person even though I know it isn't true. I struggle with uncertainty a lot. I am worried that I will hurt other people. I want to be a good person, but I am scared of any impulse to be selfish or hurt someone. The thought of killing myself came back. Anyway, I should probably do the exercise again, but I'm tired and I have work tomorrow. I know I still need to cry, but I'm exhausted. In any case I love myself whether in strength or in weakness.

I know I was just an ignorant child who didn't mean to hurt my sister, but I feel like I don't deserve to be forgiven. I have a lot of resistance to continuing the exercise. I felt like I didn't deserve to be loved. I think my sister deserves to be loved, but I don't deserve to be forgiven. I don't know when I will force myself to do the exercise again. I feel like when I do these exercises and listen to these videos, they are only for me. I think I have to take some kind of action before I can continue forgiving myself. I think I need to apologize to my sister for inadvertently traumatizing her for the rest of her life. She deserves to be loved and I cannot forgive myself until the weight of my actions are lifted off of her. "I want to die" was a thought that flicked through my mind for a second. I note these thoughts when they happen.

Update: I am ready to try the exercise again. I already am crying. I feel very bad. Because of me, my sister had to live with this. I don't know how much I hurt her. I'm sorry for hurting my sister this deeply for the rest of her life. It makes me hate myself. Part of me doesn't want to go through this again, but I have nothing better to do. I want to be strong and love myself. I feel like I am too weak to love myself, but I will try anyway.

Update: it was not over and still isn't. I did the exercise in forgiveness. It was emotionally exhausting. I cried, wet myself a bit, and eventually tasted dead skin from my mouth which was gross. I started crying in the morning again. I plan on doing the exercise again, but needed a break. I picked up more tissues from the super market, so I should be fine. All my life I have been trying to love myself, but I couldn't do it. I was too weak and afraid. I punished myself for years believing that I did not deserve to be loved because I am too weak to love the ignorant 8 year old. I felt unlovable. I noticed my inability to love myself. I did my best to love my inability to love myself. This made me cry a lot. the hardest thing to love is our own selfishness. I'll spare the rest of the details. I just feel cold. I want warmth. I will lay down in bed before I do the exercise again. @Leo Gura thank you

@Leo Gura anyway, I did the exercise. I'm exhausted, so I'll explain the results tomorrow.