TheCloud

I've never tried it on psychs, but I don't see any reason not to. I can only imagine that anything that helps your consciousness to flow more freely would be of assistance. The only issue I can foresee is that the conversation might go out of control, with you getting into an argument between your selves that spirals downward if you lack the presence of mind to mediate the conflict. You would know better than me if this is an issue you might have. Even without psychs, if you're persistent and considerate, you can eventually access the locked-up parts of yourself. You don't need to be specific about who exactly you're accessing. If it helps, speak out loud, or speak into a mirror, or use a totem like a sock-puppet or something to represent the other side. You can be like, "Hey, Emotions, can you come out and speak to me?" As you say, your emotions might be so locked up that they don't come out right away. They're so used to being incarcerated that they don't have the words to respond to you yet. So you keep coaxing them, "Hey, Emotions, I'm really listening this time, so even if it's hurtful, I want you to come out and say something." If it feels like someone is getting in the way, talk to them instead. "Hey, Fear, I'm trying to access my Emotions, but it seems like you really hate that. Can we work something out?" Fear isn't your enemy, she's just trying to keep you safe, so if you avoid abusive language or force and peacefully negotiate, you will eventually work something out. Keep trying like this until you find someone to talk to. There will be a lot of unintegrated entities inside you, so you don't have to look for a specific one. Just talk to the one who is easiest to converse with. If you're able to converse, but the conversation always devolves into a dispute, try using "Nonviolent Communication" (NVC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#Overview https://www.cnvc.org/learn/what-is-nvc It's a bit awkward and formulaic, but it will help you if are really having trouble getting along with yourself. Edit: Sometimes, it might be your mental model of others that's interfering, such as your mother or father. Remember, these mental models are just pretending to be the person in question, maybe showing up as a nagging voice in your head or some such. They aren't the real person, they're actually you, so you might have to remind them of that.

Your emotional needs, including loneliness, are your own to meet. What you're trying to accomplish using women is your issue. It's not that women can help other men with their loneliness, but they can't help you; it's that no one can really help you against your own emotions. Sure, you can put off dealing with your loneliness if you find a woman to distract you, but if your loneliness is deep and abiding, it will creep back in no matter what she does for you. In fact, it will come back worse than ever. Then you're in a situation where you blame her for what she won't (can't) help you with. I know it sounds like crappy advice, telling a person who's already lonely that they are in it alone. That's just a hurdle anyone and everyone has to mount in order to actualize themselves. It's what you have to overcome to become a fountain of abundance, rather than a black hole of need. Otherwise, I think your suggestion that we accept criticism too easily is on point. I think it's a toxic side-effect of deeply unprocessed loneliness. People become so desperate for a solution that they'll helplessly accept anything other people suggest, even things they logically know are unreasonable, if only it means that someone will finally be with them. This doesn't lead to the loneliness going away, it just leads to accumulated damage. I don't know about your methods for dealing with it, but certainly accepting unfounded or bad-faith criticism is a real problem.

It's crazy how acceptable bad-faith criticism becomes in peoples' minds. Stuff that essentially amounts to, "You suck, stop trying." Even for myself, though I try never to treat others in that way, I find myself accepting it as normal reality that others might treat me in that way. To be clear, if someone treats other people that way, they are abusive. Accepting abuse becomes normalized, for people who know better than to abuse others. It's really silly and tragic.

What your sisters say about your cousin behind his back is a matter between them and him. You interfering without a plan is what created the current situation. It's not necessarily that you're wrong, but rather that you're naive. It's generally not your job to raise the consciousness level of a relationship that isn't your own, and it's generally understood that what is said behind someone's back is kept behind their back. That's the default. If you refuse to entertain that, then you'd best make it clear that you are allergic to gossip and will leak like a sieve. If you don't make that clear, then you just come across as an unreliable snitch. Some of your relationships will take a hit; gossip is ridiculously common, and not just among women. Even so, it may be an admirable stance to take. Gossip reliably lowers the quality of peoples' relationships.

I'm not sure if it has a formal name, but what I recommend to you is a form of self-talk therapy. If you've ever imagined having a conversation with someone who wasn't present, then it's something you can do. You answered your own question; you're afraid. I suspect that there are so many unknown aspects of yourself hidden away, including the crazy psychotic spirit, that your main ego made the executive decision to turn off some of your functions in order to protect you from accessing those potentially disruptive parts of yourself. If you want your emotions back, you're going to need to actively seek out those parts you've been distancing yourself from, and negotiating coexistence with them. The therapy is simple, although it does take practice. You simply act out the parts of both sides of a conversation with yourself. For example, you could have a conversation between the main normal you, and the crazy psychotic spirit you. The two may have different and contradictory goals, but they will for the most part have a prime interest in your well-being. For example: Normal You (n): Hey, I'm having trouble feeling my emotions. Crazy You (c): That's because you locked me up! n: You're a huge trouble-maker! c: Then you're not in trouble now? n: I'm definitely still in trouble, even without you. c: Then stop being so uptight. n: I can't just do that. I need to know that you're going to coexist with all the parts of me that have already been accepted. c: Then you're going to have to help me out with that, because I don't know what needs to happen for me to coexist. The conversation can go somewhat like that. It's very common for both sides to have to make concessions, and the goal is always coexistence and integration between the two parts. The more parts of yourself you unlock and integrate with, the more your natural emotions should return to you. Even if you're uninterested the self-talk therapy, do recognize that you are afraid, and make efforts to face that fear.

Do you want help? Whether or not what you say is true, I think you wish it wasn't and that someone could assist you. If you attack your rescuer/s, your fate is one driven not by outside forces, but by your own behavior.

You'll likely be too sad to worry about that if the time comes, and your remaining parent will likely be too sad to care if you're awkward. If you're obsessing without purpose and you can't stop, that's a personal issue that you ought to look into.

That doesn't sound abnormal. Humans are evolved for physical contact, platonic and sexual. It's not something you're going to think your way out of. Is there a problem?

What you describe sounds like an emotion of unresolved loneliness. This kind of loneliness cannot truly be fulfilled outside yourself, neither by surrounding yourself with the right people, nor by rejecting the wrong ones. It's an emotion that no longer has eyes to see your present situation, so it will never know that you're with wonderful people, or people who have changed for the better. This kind of emotion can spawn all kinds of other crazy emotions, such as hatred and guilt and jealousy, and all kinds of self-defeating choices that come with those emotions. You already recognize the loneliness inside you; look at how desperate you are to belong. Do you really think that there is a person or people somewhere you need to be with in order to resolve your desperation? No, there is no such perfect existence. There is no way to cut off your loneliness without cutting off your own neck; it's a part of you, more even than your hands or feet. Resolution comes through accepting your experience, recognizing all the harm you've caused yourself, and the misguided desperation of your childhood self to cut off the loneliness entirely. Learn how to guide, accept, coexist with, and ultimately integrate with that childhood self who was misled by unbearable loneliness. You'll never find resolution by looking to your family, and you won't even really find it in your therapy group. It's something that only exists through self-exploration.

What emotions is the anger on top of? Repressed emotions come in layers; you're chronically angry because you're frustrated because you're jealous because you're lonely. The deeper the emotion, the older and more embedded and more broadly-affecting it is.

You might be overemphasizing the necessity of dating and sex. You are complete. You don't need some physical connection with another body to be whole. Sure, sex can be great and fulfilling and memorable. So can seeing the Grand Canyon. So can an LSD trip. So can achieving a goal. So can making a friend. Sex can also be a quagmire. Don't start a history of toxic relationships with broken people, or incel desperation. Heal yourself. Society judges sex (and reproduction) to be so much more important than it is, and in doing so the true values of sex are greatly undermined. All this judgement has done is creating generations of "incomplete" people who somehow haven't been having enough sex, or the right sex, or sex with the right people, or enough sex that makes babies. It's ridiculous, and you'd do well to be rid of it, because it's just one more obstacle to you being "enough". Of course, having read about some of your history in a different thread, I can understand how you desperately want to move on with your life in a positive direction after having had your way forward being impeded and misdirected for so much time. Naturally, you want to have sex right away, early and often. First lesson; everything worthwhile takes more time than you want to give it. If you have a lot of fat and want to lose weight, it can take months of rarely having a satisfying meal. If you want to start a business, it can mean years of living near poverty and/or working sweatshop hours. So it goes for any worthwhile endeavor. That includes healing yourself, or finding sexual contentment. It's a long-term commitment, and until you've done it, there are going to be a lot of hindrances. Just as a person with a lot of fat won't be lighter until that fat is gone, just as a person starting a business won't be wealthy until their business wins customers, a person who's healing their mind won't have a harmonious spirit until they've made themselves right. The results come after the effort. You have to be stubborn as hell and keep at it. It maybe isn't what you want to hear, that a satisfying sexual encounter may be months or years in the future. Or, it might not be. It's possible that if you can see with clear eyes, that you'll have a fateful encounter sooner or later, long before you've healed on the whole. It's not as if life stops when you're unwell. But opportunity isn't something that can be recognized through a haze of self-recrimination. You need some kind of clarity.

@trenton I don't know you in person, but from what you say, I think of you as being among the better possible outcomes for your situation. This is because, despite all the pain and abuse in your past, done both to you and by you, you have developed and retained the most important thing; the capacity to self-reflect. Usually, the greater a person's misdeeds, the greater the lengths they will go to to deny them and deny their victims. Self-reflection becomes impossible, because they could never bear to see what is there to be reflected. Think of your father, and what he would have had to go through to look into the mirror and realize his wrongs. Once someone reaches the point where they can't self-reflect, where it's so painful to look in the mirror that they forget they even can, their bottom line deteriorates. Adding to the wrongs becomes easier, and admitting them becomes harder. That's one reason that self-reflection is so vital. It's the only way up, and it works no matter how deep you've gone. In this situation where you have so much personal turmoil, and so many traumas, I recommend you try to focus on one thing at a time. The most painful traumas are often the ones we inflict on ourselves through our wrongdoing, so figuring how you should make amends to those you've wronged (if the victim wants your amends, and doesn't want you to just leave them alone) is a great place to start. Remember, you aren't always the only one in the wrong; many situations have multiple contributing factors and individuals. For example, the felonies you committed under your father's guidance; you might have to admit some responsibility, but you are by no means the only responsible party. The part you played may end up being surprisingly small and easily amendable. In other situations, two people wrong each other at roughly the same time. It still matters whether you were first or second, but in neither case are you the only one. This isn't where you have to start. Any trauma is worth resolving, and every trauma must eventually find resolution if you want to see your way through all this. It's a skill set you will not regret developing. It's a form of empathy and self-compassion.

I was in college at the time. I had been reading Ayn Rand at the time, whose main premise is selfishness, and was contemplating how to achieve pinnacle selfishness, when the division between actions taken for "self" and for "others" became so blurry when closely examined. It was a normal day, except for some reason the word "is" kept bouncing around my head. My mouth kept wanting to say sentences with "is" in them, but I also couldn't complete those sentences. I went on a walk, then sat down to meditate. After a while I saw my body floating in a field of pure white. "Is this me?" No, I'm not my body, I could lose an arm and still be me. So my body dissolved, leaving only a brain and spinal cord. But that was still my body. So that dissolved too, leaving just white. That's when I realized that "I" is actually "IS". There are no objects and no nouns, only actions and verbs. It's impossible to describe in a language fully dependent on nouns, but ISing is the only existence I have, and actions are timeless. They only exist in the present, and never extend back or forward beyond that. The act of existing, of ISing, is the only existence anything ever has. Anything that does not act as itself, is not. This also dissolves the dispute between "self" and "other", because neither are anything. It's not exactly a God realization, but an IS realization. I started laughing, and couldn't stop giggling for about an hour afterward. From then on, it was tough, though. I had no framework to actualize this realization in my life, so for a few years after that, I was groundless and bitter until I started figuring things out.

"A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given" Bible verse taken a bit out of context :-P

1- Low-carb or keto diet, under 50g of carbs a day. My energy levels become more consistent, my hunger becomes more manageable, and I have better mental clarity. 2- Electrolyte supplementation. K, Ca, and Mg (usually no need to supplement Na). Especially Magnesium, has had a substantial impact on my daily alertness and stamina. 3- Prophylactic analgesics (aspirin and acetaminophen). This one is less general advice. I have a tendency where, under mental or physical stress, I get headaches. With my physical labor job, on long hot days this can be debilitating. I've found that taking a dose of aspirin and acetaminophen in the morning will prevent most of my issues. If you have pain, don't be afraid to try this. I regret the years of unnecessary pain I went through trying to minimize my medicine intake, worrying it was somehow bad for me. Pain is worse for the body than otc medication, if it's a chronic issue with no treatable cause. Be careful not to overdose on acetaminophen, it can be hidden in medications other than Tylenol.

@Sugarcoat It's how I pick up chicks. It's a great method that should start working in the next hundred years or so. I'm going to live really long because I'm so enlightened, you know. Actually, the only reason I'm going to live so long is so I can pick up more chicks. That's all enlightenment really is, is picking up chicks. You're not into hot bods or interesting conversation, right? All women want is a dude who's super-enlightened and better than everyone else.

That's only half-true. The Truth is both very hard and very easy, because it's Everything. It's your ego that wants to say it's "just hard" or "just easy" and lock it down. If you stop meditation and Truth-seeking and go full orange for a while, and end up finding the Truth, then how can it be said that you ever left the spiritual path? Edit: I'm not spiritually enlightened, so take this with a proverbial grain of salt.

Find or give yourself a way forward. If you live with trauma putting immovable obstacles in your path or impossible weights on your shoulder, you'll feel every little thing that you can never get away from, and all you can do is thrash and curse and scream in place without a way forward. Trauma forms in layers, and you need to resolve it all. Resolve trauma, and resolve trauma, and resolve more trauma, until you get down to the immovable and impossible that's stopping you. It's frustrating. You'll go from -10, to -9, to -8.5, and it always feels the same because it's always negative, you might look better on the outside but you still feel stuck, until that day you go from -0.5 to +0.5. The absolute difference won't be any more than you've already experienced going from -8 to -7, but the qualitative shift from minus to plus will change everything. That's your way forward. That's resilience.

Seconded. Nix the jealousy. "Cheating" is a construct; there are toxic relationships where both partners are "faithful", there are healthy relationships where the partners are not sexually exclusive. What's important is communication, honesty, and good faith. Jealousy precludes good faith. If you obsess over cheating, you won't properly perform those duties. If she does cheat, perform your duties and find out what's really going on. If you focus on your obsession more than you focus on her, you're both going to hate it and have a bad time.

You're very clear about the things that you've done, but nowhere do you mention the things that were done to or that happened to you. Resolving trauma isn't just a one-sided ordeal where you admit fault, then admit fault. then admit fault. To be at peace means being able to dispassionately observe, which means seeing BOTH sides. Not just the side where you're the monster, but also the side where you were and are living with monstrous relationships. It's admirable that you're not making excuses for your behaviors, but I don't believe for a second that you did all those things you mentioned with nothing ever having been done to or around you to reinforce it. Don't just bring the hammer down; actually, stop bringing the hammer down at all. Look at both sides.

It's your relationship with your mother that is toxic, not you or your mother. So what's wrong with it? Do you call each other bad names? Do you drag up past mistakes as weapons to use against each other? Do you verbally compare each other, unfavorably, to other people or an ideal? Do you stonewall, refusing to talk about certain subjects, and forcing the topic to change when the discussion goes in an unfavorable direction? Do you mock each other? Do you preach, or scream, at each other without stopping to listen and consider? These are all hallmark toxic communication methods. Do any of them describe how you two relate, from either one or both sides?

I would NOT recommend a novice drinker to drop a C-note on Scotch, of all liquors. It's the one liquor I've ever had to pour into a friend's drink because I couldn't take it. I'm not knocking it; it's just that it's one of those divisive things that you either love or hate, like cilantro. IMO, Rum or Bourbon would be much easier to start off with, with no need to break the bank to get one that's drinkable. @LSD-Rumi I'd say your first issue is that it sounds as if you drank alone at home, possibly the cheapest bottom-shelf quality, without any mixer being mentioned, as if you were taking medicine. Atmosphere is important for enjoying alcohol. If you don't have friends who drink together, I wouldn't recommend you bother trying to start drinking yourself. Not everyone who drinks alone is an alcoholic, but a habit of drinking alone is one of the major steps on the path to alcoholism. Drink with friends and have a good attitude about it, or don't bother. You're not missing anything if you haven't drunk 250mL of booze straight from a plastic bottle alone in a dark basement with a grimace on your face. That's nobody's idea of a good time.

With this, I'm not sure it's necessary to advise you any further, but if I had to say one thing, it would be to focus on finding new friends, a new group, and/or a new goal to focus on. Find something good and positive for the new true you, so your focus on your old baggage has a chance to fade out.

In life, you will inevitably take losses from "bad actors", people who relate to you in bad faith. I'm not enlightened, but I know this isn't something enlightenment can spare you from. At best, you'll be spared from ignorantly getting involved with a bad actor, but eventually a situation will force you into contact. So how determined are you on the path of spiritual development? Would you rather seek harmony with all the universe including your former friend, or would you rather win this one time against this bad actor who doesn't have a clue what she's doing to herself? The only way you have to beat her is to join her at her level. You don't want to do that. You might take a loss on your group project, or you might make a gain. Something that really matters, though, is keeping your composure. I'm not suggesting to give up. Do the project as well as you can while being stymied and potentially sabotaged. What if you end up taking a loss? You're in harmony with all that exists, you don't need to care.

What's odd to me is that there don't seem to have ever been any grounds for friendship between you two. How did you ever conclude that you were besties? I suspect that one key to resolving this situation is figuring out how you got into it in the first place.