Cathal

I think I really need to learn how to make a friend at this point, or someone that I can build any type of relationship, friendship, anything. I'm 24 now It's really hitting me during this spiritual work, that I need to at least bring these boundaries (such as not trusting, sceptisism, pain, abandonment) to surface and I really need the mirror to do this. It's extremely hard to do alone. My lack of compassion is really killing me at this point, my day to day is unbearable. Like I have never had one in my life, not really a friend. I had no one to lean back on/talk about during being in my abusive household growing up, getting bullied by 20+ people. Idk man, I have no idea how to deal with this shit. I have a therapist but it's like, not a friend. We surface stuff up but it's like maybe once a month it's not enough. I'm like a very emotional sensitive guy who has a lot of compassion, like an odd amount. I care about everything but I can't feel it anymore, it's like my soul was crushed by the world. How do I make friends? Where do I look for people? Every time I looked I never found anyone. Idk how to do it

Hey my first real suicide attempt was actually doing shrooms I had before a few times but it wasn't all the way like shrooms. I sat in a puddle of blood in utter bliss knowing it's all over truly and I had latched onto thoughts of my mother and me when I was a child. I really learned my lesson when I got up and realized I wasn't going to die, I just sat still for a long time. I calmed down and contemplated what the actual fuuuck happened. Basically man it's like understanding you can choose to surrender or to resist, that's all it is. I know it's sooo simple to say this but it's really just having the awareness that with certain waves of feeling (although in the present moment of being in that state it can feel unbearable) it's actually mostly the resistance causing your freakout because you're still clinging onto your model of reality. Just surrender yourself into whatever happens, make a vow. Practice laying down and meditate by surrendering to everything whatever it is you're feeling no matter how horrible, just sink into it. Like stick your face into it and be with it, you'll see you can become meditative like this and have a lot more confidence knowing you won't get caught up in the trip and make it hell for yourself. But I must say I have built a lot of confidence by the traditional stuff rather than the insanely high states of consciousness psychedelics can put you in, I have spent a looooooot of time reading watching and thinking, practicing the more traditional stuff from buddhism, yogic practices etc and the ratio of traditional layed out brick by brick stuff that's all out there right now to doing psychedelics imo should be like 10:1 So I think if you're doing fuck all inbetween your trips to resolve stuff you will constantly be in that terror of not trusting yourself to let go fully.

to forgive people that abused me, and myself for allowing it to shape me the way it did. to work on surfacing and letting go of holding onto that hate, the struggle is the resistance to forgiveness. there so much stuff there that i've been ignoring my whole life, now that i know i can't run from it i just sit with it.. unbearable but we press on, all of us, we know what we really want in this life

@mandyjw "Sometimes if we're too fixated on the lack of the close deeper relationship we miss the beauty in casual interactions, and it's always from these that deeper connections form." yeah this is very much true, i find it so hard to appreciate casual things you know? i have lacked connection, i really never knew it or experienced it my whole life but i feel the lack as if something was never right, it's definitely just the way my parents raised me and the fucked up family i was in, so i always as i see it now was very unconsciously driven to find deep connection but i never did. so i think actually i probs just dismissed most connections that were inbetween nothing and everything, or casual stuff. still, the longing is actually a part of disconnecting from my self really. do you think a person must work on themselves to a point? i don't know i hesitate to say i feel this isn't so normal, to have this much pressure. even the thought of just hanging out with strangers makes me tremor like what the fuk, it cripples me. the anxiety is just like holy shit, the amount of things i need to let go of being bullied so much. i think perhaps i need to work on myself more ( and that bullying stuff) but i can't figure out if that's a copout or the truth of it

@asifarahim it's like.. hmm, the loneliness i cannot consciously feel it's more like.. the behaviors developed now, that i isolated myself when in social situations i tend to tremor a lot, shake a lot, sweat stuff like that then reaaaally puts me off from putting myself out their. but i just KNOW i have to just do this, some way somehow it's like my body just goes into freeze expecting to be abused so it's really like fucking hell quite the resistance to what i'm trying to do man, i can't change it. it's really autonomous i can meet girls and be comfortable but it's usually using dating apps and shit, it's much much harder for me to meet strangers that are meeting for the sake of just hanging out, that thought cripples me i'm actually terrified of meeting such people because i feel like after so many years of wearing a mask (and the as i said physiological consquences of that) whenever i showed my true side i would condemned cause it's a bit eccentric you know? especially in the town i grew up holy fuk. thanks, yeah. well i'm pretty determined to open up to someone but i guess i still have a lot of work to do with the fear of not being understood, i wonder will it further add to the trauma. maybe some more work on myself as a whole will help pull the weight of off making friends and physically going to places with them instead of the comfort of the internet

@Goldzilla how to ditch the old when it feels like no matter what you do it doesn't stop clinging, attachment? that's how i describe my dark night, it just wont fuck off the attachment is so intense i feel like it will take a long ttime to heal.. a long shoot me with ak47

hey tim, actually the first time i did mushrooms i also tried to kill myself, i had absolutely no fucking idea what spirituality meant what psychedelics were and basically the first wave of terror i got totally lost in trains of thought and fully immersed in suicidal fantasy and still have big marks on my wrist and neck because i also feel like i haven't been here in years. for me, it's dissociation basically. i also was prescribed ssris, snris, mood stabalizers, anti-psychotics, i went manic, i went numb to unbearable points wondering why the fuck is existing this painful? a total inability to experience connecting to anything, it can be the most cruel feeling on the planet. for me it was a lot of neglecting myself being raised the way i was and right now trying to let go of all the attachments i developed of the years. so including visiting professionals and institutes perhaps you could find yourself a real healer, someone who has been through a lot of suffering and found themselves giving back with sincerity. letting yourself trust them, building a relationship and opening up to your armoured traumas that need work. parenting yourself so to say, building a healthy ego so you can transcend it, that's what i believe from my experience, the sick voice in our head cannot be fixed through sitting still for several weeks even with great understanding, it needs proper healing. because that's just the world we're born into, we need deep real healing to cope with how backwards we went. you're not broken and i don't think anti-depressants will really fix the doing the work on the boundaries of your mind. microdosing psychedelics will dissolve the boundaries and give you a little freedom for a while, but i hope you don't neglect the amount of work you need to realize you must do on yourself and the time involved, i'm still having trouble accepting just how much work needs to be done. you really cannot step one baby step in front of yourself, you just break and return to baseline. baseline is your start and end, it all happens right now. sorry i don't have microdosing advice but good luck.

@Thought Art @Nahm thank you for ur replies i decided to try this strong determination sitting, i basically just sat for 1 hour and my mind went wild.. like holy shit, but i kind of lent my attention towards all the emotions, at a point i felt content. i've been doing this for a couple of days, a few times a day. really kind of empties me, or at least dissipates a little trash driving me crazy. like holy shit being in survival mode is... every thought and feeling is DEFEND THE BASE, it's crazy

I've been pretty dedicated to spiritual and psychological work ever since I did psychedelics a few months ago and moving on from hedonism, but each time I get even a slight glimpse of the present moment through whatever means I just splurge out getting high as possible on video games, food, music and it's exactly what I did my whole life as a kid. It's really weird actually, it's like so intense that i'm making up for 'lost time' or something, like I really want to get high high high because my life beyond 14 or 15 has been pretty shit. 24 now. Video games have been my whole life, since I was 3 or 4 from being amazing immersive experiences to coping mechanisms to literal complete escape from reality they just don't bring me what I want anymore, I cannot enjoy them... and that makes me really quite sad. When this reality hit me that I couldn't enjoy video games that is when suffering truly began for me. Really. I struggle with accepting these things. But I am trying. It's almost like i'm starting to develop a fear of coming into the present because it's like it's almost more comfortable to be numb and disconnected but not unbearably depressed than to get the sweetness of the present and come back to my baseline. I think I am very slowly seeking real purpose in life but get caught up with: the moment i'm capable of enjoying things without the baseline of anhedonia and dissociation I splurge out and just get as high as fucking possible, rather than pursuing truth and how I can transform myself and ultimately my goal or transforming others. Any thoughts ? Maybe it's cause I have absolutely nothing to do

Does anyone have any sources where I can understand how to intergrate/tap into my masculinity? It is heavily repressed. Basically as a kid saw my Dad for a angry/regret ridden tyrant and said I will never be like that. But I suppressed my aggression and abillity to stand up for myself, let everyone bully me, I was so enmeshed i've never in my life built a stable identity. I kind of feel like a broken child and I work mainly on the inner child stuff, but the shadow or as I describe it to myself my very imbalanced masculine energy that I want to express/feel/understand. Any of that stuff spark any authors/videos etc I could look at ? thx

and the sick thing is i sometimes believe if i get rid of this body i can have a more capable life to do something to help others. it's a conflict with this almost like; unstable need to help save the planet vs the unbearable lethargy and stuck purely in the physical navigating entirely by myself literally no friends nor family anymore lol = day to day insanity i wouldnt wish on anyone

@Nahm why is the boredom this insufferable? i feel like.. it shouldnt be this bad. im talking like going through intense waves of suicidal ideation when i sit in it. i break pretty easily. and you are right i just thought about it for a while, i feel like i already know what to do and seeking the window of oppurtunity is procrastination in disguise, i'm just expectating at some point of this inner work i'll have more compassion available and therefore more consistent motivation to do the things i want to do i just don't rn. i feel expected of myself to do stuff bcus i know I CAN because there's soooo much suffering and here i am, capable, but at the same time I CANT because i have barely enough motivation to clean myself. i just feel like sometimes theres so many things fundamentally so out of my awareness, some severely repressed emotions, sometimes draining all this life out of me. u know, it just dissolves with the psychedelics, it's absolute freedom and peace from nuerosis. coming back into my physical body, feels like theres so much trash i just wanna get rid of it. but yeah thanks

Meditation Journaling Self-Study Forgiveness/Compassion cultivation Contemplation (habits, emotions, lifestyle) Talk to other people about shit you don't even care about Holotropic breathing/Wim hoff method EMDR Yoga Qigong Talk therapy Affirmations Sleep Diet De-armouring (vunrability with someone else) Psychedelics (with intergration) Shadow work Surrendering practices (laying down is good doing that)

@NoSelfSelf ye its kinda the despair of no longer having a bottom to the pit even if you try, now it's just endless falling into this suffering. idk its unbearable, i just wish i could enjoy something like fucking art or walking or feel anything

This is really relatable especially because a guy I sometimes talk to recommended that book and recently I had really implemented it two times, really glued myself to a subtle emotion to the point in came in waves of grief and eventually dissipated into a very peaceful warmth. It does kind of throw everything into the haze. Time by so painfully slow, there is no consistent enjoyment hence the passing of time is so noticable I genuinely feel at 24 years old I have been here for way too long because I have been dissociated for like 6 years now. It's my baseline I guess surviving the onslaught of traumas. You start craving emotions, anything to work with. Give me perverted shame, give me primal rage, give me fucking empathy towards videos of cats on youtube. But I guess you also learn that whatever comes up is what you're ready to process and the expectations really take away the things you want a point. I'm hopeful though that I could actually change although my suicidal ideation remains the pull of it is less it just kind of lingers in the backround, I have also very recently only realized what spirituality was. Within 5 months I was able to do quite a bit and had some genuine glimpses being fully present in my body. I have been pretty hardcore ever since I did psychedelics, before that my life was isolate>survive> play with hedonism. I think it's so fucking important to have a therapist, the mirror has helped me so much more than I thought. A lot of inner child work for me really pulls me out of the dissociation for a bit. There is so much pain in my body that now that I built trust with my therapist it surfaces up so fast, wish I could talk to her more than once a month. I also think the feeling guilty when expectating yourself to 'feel' is very important to be aware of. When you're dissociated, you cannot feel empathy. So when you're expectating yourself to be the person you were prior to dissociating you still haven't fully accepted this is what you're experiencing right now and prob just makes u feel shittier. Are you hypervigilant? Going to write to you practically what has helped me in the last 5 months since I started to intentionally love myself (the positive stuff that works). Holotropic breathing (if not your thing) Wim hoff method 3 rounds in a row does it Metta Meditation + ofc just meditation Running on the spot till I cant move Cold exposure Yoga...? When I actually follow a real hatha yoga instructor it works Talk therapy Social interaction during the 'glimpses' where your heart is open more can be quite intergrating. Ultimately doing psychedelics has shown me this dissociation is just like another wall of protection, it's not like a deep loss of body or mind where you're floating around like a ghost but it's simply a more intense state of protecting what you're identified with. If I could change anything or recommend something is change your environment and who you surround yourself with (if anyone, when possible) with non triggering folk. Can't rush it, take it easy but keep taking it as it presents itself. It sucks but... those glimpses are so sweet can you imagine how much ecstacy is waiting for you?

hey I need some advice. I want to clean up and find a stable diet that really benefits my body and mind as best I can get it and aids my current issues and with more context to this post, the aid of herbs/medicine or supplements because I have a bad knowledge of it all, I take 0 drugs anymore just a multivitiman. I'd appreciate it. I eat one hour a day in the morning, to keep it simple I eat like vegans do. I deal with quite a bit of energy lethargy, emotional disconnection, dissociation and possible endocrine system damage from a cocktail of prescription drugs when I was younger. I would describe my day to day state of being in 'freeze' from the abuse and intense anxiety I went through, calming relaxing stuff I enjoy it makes it much easier to explore myself like meditation and helps me with going into therapy, like feeling safe? I think i'm a kapha-pitta-vata (kapha and pitta are almost the same) dosha in ayurveda, I fuckin cannot really wrap my head around that system but if that helps ya...

@Nahm Hi thanks for the offer of help. Yeah I was just looking at people link people making sausages or some shit and didn't know what my post turned into, but I wanted to ask you about nootropics. Was anything actually helpful? I have been concerned about my nervous system and my body not producing certain hormones from maybe my thyroids or something in the endocrine system, I don't know really. I just have a gut feeling about it from everything I read and my life and drug use. Do you know anything about that stuff or would any nootropics help? I never really tried nootropics because I really got sick of tolerance, actually with most drugs. I drink caffeine and a multi-vit btw, spices like tumeric + neem, ginger Thanks

I'm basically stuck at the top. I've been experiencing 4 as my baseline for a few years. Chronic percieved danger numbed me out to the point of suicidal thoughts on a daily basis. Became a big hedonistic bastard to cope with that, definitely had some effects on me physiologically. (full body tremors, constant shaking) Psychedelics and sometimes meditation pulls me into the present moment. I feel alive, I feel the warmth of the sun and the sound of birds, feeling of the wind and beauty of music. There is a lot of pain in never letting go of anything, it was the vow I took as a kid to never express myself eg. I wouldn't be like my father who was a kind of bipolar tyrant. But my understanding has developed so much since then obviously and now I'm kind of taking care of myself, but this dissociation stuff is life destroying. Example: hypervigilance, (I was bullied a lot in school, that was... 7 years ago) and I still experience this kind of state where my awareness gets aroused so intensly I get pulled from threat to threat to threat when I see other people around, cars, noises, it shuts down my ability to connect and keeps me numbed out and tensed up EVERYWHERE i go. fucking torture bruv I mean it has sucked the life out of me literally. I've been trying to find out how to feel grounded in the present more. I've done just about everything I've researched, mindfullness, somatic experiencing, breathwork, meditation, changing diet. It feels a bit like a disability truly now. Does anyone have any advice on coming out of this state? Day-to-day it's just surviving and not living. I really want to change.

@Thought Art yeah i found one. shes a very spiritual person with a really interesting story and really actually nice to talk too. but her actions (breaks, constant schedule changing, hanging out with her friends and cancelling our appoinment and shit like that) idk maybe it's the part of me not wanting to trust someone but also sometimes pull this sceptic out of me making it hard to trust. but yeah, i don't think there's anyone who couldn't use a therapist (could be a friend/family if u have that) having a truly trustworthy mirror reveals a lot of very buried stuff

i really feel like it's a simple case of exposing myself to a new environment/experiences, but i just cannot find this environment that i feel safe to fully shake the demon in me. well.. enough to express myself and to make my messed up identity realize there is no more danger, and it's safe to experience the present. but i really need that support and i can admit that, it just does not work by yourself, it's like a whole part of my brain turns on in a social environment that i really need to be in, i donno if anyone knows communities that do weekly mental health video calls honestly i can't find a single one on discord. i'm gonna just make my own at this point what i feel like people who are experiencing this freeze state or dissociation from the present moment is some kind of exposure. because the response is isolation, and i am in isolation right now doing 'healing work' but this is also healing and i just really need to fucking recgonize i have to put myself in a social situation that it feels actually safe. the thought of just walking around shoots my anxiety through the roof, i mean this attachment comes from a deep root of being picked on by 20+ people in a small town growing up mostly. if anyone does know any communities like this or discords or zoom /whatever feel free to reply, thankz

@Wilhelm44 yeah also a strange situation i'm in i literally live in a town by myself where i don't know anyone and don't speak the language of this country x d but i've been looking online. it's difficult to find that group of people for sure, i still haven't

@Wilhelm44 Quite a bit since my mushroom trip. Before that I was cutting, spending all day on video games + drugs and basically locked myself in isolation. Self-love is very difficult, I find it really quite hard to apply to myself. Feels like a lot of empty words, the intention is always sincere though. Meditation, yoga, sometimes I journal, eat pretty good, trying to learn art. I'm just so incompetant on how to be a human being, I'm 24 and learning how to talk to people, I actually have intense anxiety that I don't fully realize. I've only been taking is more serious for a few months at this point, this dissociation thing is really crippling tho cause i really don't understand what to do about it. But yeah, I can acknowledge I have taken some steps at least, still I would like more progress. I can accept this present moment but I know I can do more. Thanks for the suggestion i'll try that visualization stuff. You're right I have quite a few of that identity to being a victim. It's difficult to truly let go of that stuff, kinda shaped my whole life

Hey could you comment your favourite resources eg. person/book for working on your inner child? thanks

@Loving Radiance thanks!

@_Archangel_ or just reply with the name of the book