DianaFr

I’m probably risking looking like a failure to you, but here is my experience. I started my healing journey more or less consciously around 23, now I’m 34 and, guess what, I’m still healing! So I have invested already over a decade and will continue to do so probably for the rest of my life. So when you ask how to speed this process up, my first response is – you can’t really speed it up. You will heal no more and no less than how your inner timing permits and how ready you are to move on to the next level. Also, healing is not really a linear process. Rather, it moves in spirals, so you will probably revisit the same issues multiple times but every time you do, you will have become already a bit wiser and more aware, so you will be able to look at your wounds from a more refined perspective. Here’s what I’ve learned along my healing journey. 1. You cannot undo your past, so you better own it and make peace with it. 2. Self-acceptance is a key to any healing, and it kind of goes hand in hand with the previous point. 3. It’s useless to try to control your healing. It will take it’s time and you better ride with it (otherwise, you create a lot of resistance and make things even worse). Trusting the process is the best. 4. Every relapse is not a step back but a learning experience. If you can choose to view it that way, first, you will cultivate self-compassion which in and of itself is a very healing quality, and second, here is your chance to speed things up because when you heal, you don’t go against yourself, no matter how bad you think you have failed. Instead you become your best friend and supporter, and this attitude allows the process to unfold naturally. 5. It’s important to explore your motivation and understand why you want to heal. What is it that you desire the most deep down in your heart. Chances are high that the very traumas you have endured have a lot to do with the purpose of your life. If you want to heal just to feel good and be normal, probably it won’t take you very far. But if you can see the higher good that comes from healing, if you can see yourself becoming a more compassionate, driven, resourceful human being that is a positive force in the world, now we’re talking. Having a higher purpose and meaning completely changes the way you look at your suffering. Healing ceases to be a destination. It becomes an integral part of your life's path, where you keep growing and learning and doing your best to make your journey worthwile. To sum it all up, you speed your healing up by not speeding it up.

Have you been able to identify the cause of your anxiety? It’s possible it’s a symptom of a deeper problem, and if that’s the case, fighting anxiety would be just like cutting off the branches of a tree when what you need to do is go to the root to get rid of the thing. I don’t have any good online resources in mind. I find CBT very useful, though, but in my experience it works best when one has addressed the deeper issue and then uses CBT to install positive thinking and behaving habits on top of a positive foundation. Fixing anxiety is somewhat similar to fixing the indicator light on your car panel telling you that your about to run out of gas. You can disable the alarm system of your car not to hear it beep and not to get annoyed by it but if you do it you have no way to tell when your car needs maintenance. I can share what was helpful for me. I used to have severe anxiety, up to the point I couldn’t leave my home, do my job, eat in public, pay for my groceries or do many more things that normal people do every day without even thinking. I was really struggling and I felt miserable. The most important shift that needed to happen for me was how I viewed my anxiety. I used to think there was something very wrong with me and that I responded to situations absolutely inadequately. It was when I started to view my anxiety as a completely adequate response when things started to change for the positive. Given all my past experiences and conditionings, it would be abnormal and completely inadequate to respond normally under those circumstances, for anyone. So my anxiety was a very correct and point on reflection of what was going on deep down. I completely changed the way I treated myself. I became compassionate and very understanding of my weirdness and irrational fears, and I gradually changed my life in accordance with the needs of that anxious and crippled aspect of me. I gave myself promise to never ever abandon myself, no matter how “unacceptable” or “wrong” parts of me would be. And it worked! Of course, it’s not a miracle cure but it was a significant turning point for me to finally accept myself like no one had accepted me before. If you feel my story somewhat resonates with you, I wholeheartedly suggest you ask yourself this one question. If your anxiety was a completely correct and adequate response, what would it tell you about yourself?

I'm glad my thoughts resonated with you. If at any point you feel you need to talk to someone, feel free to PM me. Be well <3

Have you tried to answer that question? “What if I don’t make it?” What would happen if you didn’t make it? “…my life depends on healing my shadows and being confident about myself.” Why? What is so bad about living with shadows and not being confident about yourself? I don’t necessarily need to know your answers to these questions. They are for you to look deeply within yourself and see what wants to come up. I can sense much tension and resistance behind your post. It’s like you are desperately trying to pass the spirituality test with an A grade because – so it seems – you think that achieving spiritual perfection (healing your shadow) is a ticket to healthy life. I may be totally off, of course, and if that’s the case, I apologize. But what if you didn’t try so hard? What if your illness is desperately trying to tell you – please stop fixing and perfecting every single bit about yourself? What if all your shadow really wants is your unconditional presence – without ever trying to change it? You are not damaged or broken in any way. I’m not saying that to diminish the hardship you’re going through or to deny your illness. I’m saying that because that’s what I feel in my heart. You don’t need to fix yourself to deserve health and positive future. You already deserve it, right now, even being unhealthy, full of fear and overwhelmed. I hope you will be able to see that about yourself, too. Once more – my apologies, if I missed it or upset you in any way. I just want you to know that you are enough.

@4201 What happens when you escape?

@PurpleTree In general, it's empathy and kindness. For me, the most powerful technique to forgive myself has been the inner child work. To forgive others, it's necessary to place yourself in their shoes and understand their perspective without judgement. But mostly forgiveness is a practice of self-love. You choose to release yourself from the negative attachments formed by putting blame on others and yourself.

@Chives99 Why do you want to be in a relationship? I mean, do you have any positive reasons, other than fear of dying alone in an awful shame? (Having a relationship unfortunately doesn't guarantee you a nice death...) You may be right, in some sense, that people who are not necessarily ordinary, may be limited in the field of dating. But it really depends on the perspective, I guess. There are all kinds of people in the world, and some of them will be your people, including the opposite sex. Most of them will not be. You want to focus on those who are or could potentially be. It could be a good idea to be interested in people in general. Like you said - there is so much more to life, and you never know who you will meet as you enjoy and develop yours. My friendly advice is - don't take it so seriously. Don't take yourself too seriously. You are young, life is somewhat long and there is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of who you are or how your life has been if you have done your best to live it fully.

@ColeMC01 You haven't really been in love, have you?

I guess it depends on your values... What is noble and more developed for you. I can' t say that being a scientist is more noble than, for example, a firefighter or gardener. They are all people doing their jobs. All of them can potentially produce massive value. All of them can put their heart and soul into what they're doing. Or not. I was a molecular and cell biologist for over a decade. I've met quite a few scientists. There are many ego-driven and power hungry folks among them, and there are also those that are motivated by higher ideals, ideas and a need to help. I definitely don't respect scientists more than any other person. We are all human at the end of the day. I think our professions and educations don't matter that much. It's our unique personal qualities and what we do about them that make the whole difference in terms of something being more or less developed.

Practice, practice, practice! Start thinking in English. Record videos with yourself talking (great for feedback). Read a lot to keep your vocabulary rich. Write a lot as well. Become proficient in a few topics you feel really passionate about. Are there any English language courses next to you that you could take? I'm not a native English speaker myself. What helped me was reading A LOT aloud. Actually I started doing that already back at school when I was a kid. Just took my English textbook and read stories from it. My problem for a really long time was being too shy to speak. I was so afraid of making mistakes that I could barely open my mouth. My breakthrough moments were going to study abroad (didn't have much chance), starting to regularly write a blog, and, recently, making YouTube videos.

Such a good excuse to get away with things

I don’t really buy the idea that life purpose can be “found”. I also don’t think that life purpose is the same as one’s passion. They’re definitely closely linked, but not the same. I have spent my entire life looking for “my purpose”. And I’m a deeply passionate person, I have always known what I’m passionate about and I have deliberately pursued those things, built my career around them, worked really, really hard which I could do since I have always been internally driven and motivated by my passion. What I’ve learned? Passion is something to explore, build upon and learn from, and as you do that you grow and mature, not only professionally, but also mentally, emotionally and character-wise. And this is exactly that take-away that matters the most. Passion can fade. Your values and priorities may change, and they will. Life will also happen, all sorts of things will happen. What I want to say is that if you put your life purpose outside of yourself (attach it to certain activities, external conditions, etc.), you risk a lot to lose a lot. What if your passion is playing football and you decide that your life purpose is to become a football player, but then you get injured and lose your ability to play for good? What happens to you then? Silly example, but still… Being a football player is just a temporary expression of your life purpose. Your purpose is rather something that you create, not find, and by creation I mean adding meaning to the things you do, meaning that matters to you. But first you must discover what matters to you and why. The more you get it, the more purposeful your life gets. These days when I’m a new mom and my whole day (and night) revolves around my baby’s needs, it’s a real challenge to find uninterrupted time when I’m sane enough and not terribly tired to keep up with my passions. If I viewed them as my entire life purpose, I would feel miserable knowing that I’m not living it, since all I’m doing now is changing diapers and washing bottles which is as far from my purpose as possible. But it’s not about the act of changing diapers, and it’s not even about those things I’m passionate about but don’t have time for. It’s about what all that means to me and my ability to see how that meaning adds to my purpose and molds it. I think you would not have to worry about finding your purpose, if you asked yourself this one question – what constitutes a meaningful day for me? You ask yourself this every day, and you make your day meaningful. The answer will change slightly day by day and a lot over time, but today you don’t have to look too far ahead to find your purpose. It’s already with you.

Yes, I know what you’re talking about. I have the same fear and I have been struggling with if for nearly my entire life. The cause for me was a childhood trauma – I lost an attachment figure (my grandfather) at an early age and it messed my life up in many ways. I learned that my loved ones I depended on can suddenly depart and get erased from my life, and I transferred that fear on other people that were taking care of me as a child and later to every romantic partner I had. What has helped me. Realizing that my fear is not predictive, that when I feel it, it’s not indicating that something bad has happened to my loved one, but that it merely points to the situation that I experienced as a child. I came to this realization once I noticed that as soon as I ended my relationship with somebody, the fear about them went away as well. I stopped caring whether they answered or not. So that fear is just my stuff that is not pointing towards any real danger, simply reminding me to keep healing my childhood trauma. Another thing that helped is to accept that I have no control over other people’s life and death. That is something I can’t control, and this realization made me focus more on building my life skills and spending my time in a meaningful way. We never know what and when will happen. So we better do something useful with the time we have and appreciate the people we share our journey with. I suggest you try to decipher the meaning you have attached to the possibility of losing your loved one. What is that part of you that finds coping with death so horrific? What would happen to you if somebody actually died? What are you actually afraid of? As far as I have found out, at the very root of that is the massive amount of pain and suffering we think we will have no way of overcoming and which would eventually lead to our own demise. But is that really true? If there was a way to lead a good life even after losing somebody, what would it be and how woold it look like? Basically, this thing becomes pretty existential. But anyway, at least I shared

@Raptorsin7 Clean you room! Seriously Watch this video to find out why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGuow4yRtn8 I would also like to add a few things. I really resent my parents for how i turned out Your parents can be blamed for the way you turned out, at least partly. But from this point on you can blame only yourself for choosing to stay the person your parents raised. My thought process is completely toxic, and my habits are toxic as well Are they really? Every single thought that comes into your mind is toxic? Is wanting to change a toxic thought? Is wanting to be happy a toxic thought? Your own words… I guess you also have some good and healthy habits, too. You do brush your teeth every day, or drink water, or sleep? My point is – if only you wanted, you could notice how only a fraction of your thought process is toxic and the same goes for habits. That may be a lot still, but it’s probably not true that absolutely everything about your thoughts is toxic. If I’m right, how do you discard the evidence of the opposite? I take no responsibility for my life, and i'm a perpetual victim as well What do you get out of it? How does it serve you to be a victim? I know my life's a mess and i want to be happy and functional You’re aiming way too high… Becoming happy and functional from a place you’re at currently would be the same as to ask somebody with broken legs to win a marathon. What if you can never attain this goal? What if no matter how hard you try you can never be happy and functional? If that’s the case, you condemn yourself to live a life of constant failure. If you have broken legs, you don’t think about winning marathons, especially if you have never run one before. You focus on healing your legs, you move on to learning to walk without aid again, you keep on building muscle strength, you get your normal basic walking ability back, then you perhaps decide to go jogging for some 15 mins, maybe it goes well and you make it a daily practice. You find a way to enjoy this process and have gratitude for how far you’ve come. And there may come a day when you decide to take your practice to the next level and develop your skills further. And perhaps one day you enter a marathon, and perhaps you finish it and eventually win. However, the main issue is not about having big goals. The issue is that those big goals make your current self look and feel miserable by comparison. You will become resistant towards that goal and self-sabotage to avoid becoming an even bigger failure. If the goal actually feels attainable, there’s a bigger chance you will achieve it, since why not?

Hi! People see that death is bad or sad because it is! It’s bad because it takes our loved ones away, and it’s very, very sad because the loss hurts like hell. But at the same time it’s one of the most natural things ever. Things must die in order to keep the cycle of life going. So it is definitely ok for you to die. It is ok to die for everyone, and we all will at some point. I just don’t see how that excludes love for life and appreciating its beauty. Life and death is not mutually exclusive. It’s the two sides of the same coin and one cannot exist without the other. By accepting death as normal you don't have to stop living. Just the opposite - you can have an even fuller and more complete life, since you know it's not gonna last forever.

Why not stop chasing your life purpose but create one instead? For most part, life IS pretty meaningless and painful, and we are here for a very short amount of time. At one point you will be gone and after a while nobody will really remember who you were. But there's also some magic to that. Why not enjoy yourself while you last? But true enjoyment comes from creating meaning, not seeking for it.