ricachica

Personally, being a server/waiter years ago at a restaurant has changed my personality a ton. I used to be very shy and nervous in front of strangers. I developed lots of soft skills with people and completely removed all the social anxiety problems I had most of my life. Just learning to attend to others needs in an appropriate, timely manner helped a lot with basic work skills. It also made me enough money to buy my first car…

@leebus99 My personal end-goal is to become a psychedelic-assisted therapist. I’m 27. Three months ago, I became a clinic coordinator/medical assistant for a psychiatrist. It’s just the psychiatrist, her physician assistant, and me. I’ve been trained to work as a TMS technician and run those treatments on my own, as well as start and monitor esketamine (Spravato) sessions. I’m graduating with my two degrees in Psychology and Human Services this May. I plan to eventually get into a Counseling Masters program to become a MFT/LPCC. From there, become a psychedelic-assisted therapist, in whatever legitimate way that looks like down the road and research changes things. I saw something today that said Colorado can now issue licenses to psychedelic mushroom therapy facilitators . So hopefully something like that here in California one day for me…as “official” as possible. I just started therapy again myself (like last week lol) with a Jungian/Depth psychologist. Hoping to learn a lot from that perspective…especially how to appropriately integrate spirituality in sessions. Honestly I’m just happy to see another person here on this career path and to share experiences on it. I’ll add more thoughts to this thread later!

It means that supposedly a lot of women are reading a lot of books. So much so that it’s like we’re trying to qualify to win a pizza party like we used to in elementary school. There were contests where if a whole class read the most books compared to other classes, we’d win a pizza party for the class lol. Meaning we’re supposedly spending our time doing personal growth vs supposedly males just gambling lol. Again, all relative to personal experience though, it’s pretty generalized. Personally I know lots of men who are in debt for gambling….not really any of my women friends.

From my office on Thursday, 50 miles away from it all. The smoke cloud only got bigger and taller throughout the day. Even though I wasn’t directly affected, indirectly we had patients cancel appointments to help family evacuate, my ex-roommate had her high school burn down, and many in my area are volunteering/donating in some way. An old close friend I’ve cut contact with, but I know she lives one block away from the Sunset fire evacuation range. I have a best friend whose brother lives in Pasadena and he went to high school in Malibu. Haven’t had updates on how his circle is, he might be busy figuring it all out… Watching the smoke on the drive to work has turned me into not wanting to eat red meat again….(once went 4yrs without due to environmental reasons). Gonna pick that up again and slowly cut out meat altogether when feasible for me…just too silly not to when the disasters are visibly nearing your doorstep. Wind is still very strong right now, off and on.

Aww you’re very sweet with your compliments! Thank you. I’m somewhat new here(not to Leo’s vids), but I’ve already noted your comments throughout the forum and always look forward to your well thought out perspectives. I’ll watch your video before bed tonight, thanks for the share.

My first boyfriend in high school dumped me for similar reason. He dumped his previous girlfriend because he thought she was too much drama. I was the opposite, and very conflict avoidant. This stems from childhood, where I saw that my mother was extremely argumentative and I felt it led to my father to separate from her for a few years, which was painful for me. At a young age, I internalized this and vowed to be the opposite of my mother in my future relationships. So when I started dating my boyfriend, I felt pretty proud that in 6 months, we had zero fights. He initially said it felt so good to be with me because I was not drama-filled like his ex. Towards the end, for a week he didn't text me at all...and even though this stressed me out, I suppressed that and never once brought it up. Thinking I was being a good girl for not being combative even in the slightest. Turns out, that was not the best thing to do! He broke up with me after that week, and shocker, he said "I was too nice".... it completely baffled me. I even remember feeling like throwing up cause it was such a whirlwind and not what I expected at all. My whole life up until that point, I thought being the nice complaisant girl is what would save me from heartbreak...turns out no. It was only like 6 months after the break up that it finally clicked with me one morning, and I was like omg! I let the pendulum swing too far in the other extreme! It is extreme and generally unattractive to most to be too drama-filled. It is also extreme and generally unattractive to be way too nice and doormat-like. In hindsight, you bet I should have texted him at least 1 day after he hadn't, not one week! Today, I'm still definitely working on my conflict-avoidance issues, but I'm definitely much more balanced and willing to have an constructive argument at the least. Especially with my current boyfriend who encourages the communication and seeks to get to the root of the problem with me.

Similarly, my most spiritual experience so far came from a dream I had 7 years ago or so... In my dream, I was sitting on a couch with friends in a living room, when my friend next to me wanted to show me a video on his phone. The video was of an industrial factory farm for cows. It immediately zoned in on this calf, and immediately after that my consciousness was transported completely into the calf. I suddenly was the calf in this industrial factory farm...and all I felt was the most pure and intense fear I have ever felt. I was essentially a confused, terrified, and lone calf not understanding the horrors of what a factory farm is, just feeling the pure and utter lonesome fear of it. I was only this calf for what felt like a split second, when rapidly my conscious awareness snapped back into my human body on the living room couch. I essentially started having what felt like a seizure, my arms were shaking held up in front of me, and my awareness was becoming clouded in a pure white. My friends started freaking out around me and one of them even started doing these strange hand/arm movements in front of my field of vision...whatever she was doing it felt like she was trying to get me to calm down. The bright whiteness became stronger until it was all my consciousness was, and the words "All is One, All is One, All is One," kept chanting from somewhere...I don't know where. My head quite actually felt physical piercing pain from the intensity of the experience, the whiteness was so painful that I finally woke up and started to feel around my head, to which the pain stopped. --- To me, everything being "one" can be the same as there also being "nothing" I suppose. The fear the calf experiences in a factory farm is the same fear I can experience in a similarly unknown and morbid place. There is no difference. Yes, I stopped eating beef for 4 years after that (not that chickens don't experience the same fear, I'm sure). Not that being vegan felt like the main theme of the experience either. Rather that what separates our conscious awareness from everything else around us is artificial. In reality, there is no boundary. Reminds of a video where Leo said we can think of consciousness and oneness like a house...what separates the bedroom from the living room is made up, in reality it's all connected. Is reality "zero", or is it "one"?

I like to talk a lot from personal experience...but when my current boyfriend and I were not yet together and just talking as friends(we were starting to have attraction towards each other at this point but very subtly put), I took my attraction towards him much more seriously after he cried from a talk we were having. Before this, I was wondering if my attraction towards him was just physical, but after this, I knew I cared for him much more than that as it didn't put me off. If anything it made me think of him more and I wanted to take the next steps more seriously. To this day though...he's rarely ever teared up much again and I would say he's fairly masculine when it comes to his emotions. Also believes men shouldn't cry much as it makes them seem weak etc... I tried to let him know that him crying that first time actually was a plus for me...but he didn't seem to understand or buy into it. He is open to expressing anger much more often which is fine, but is quiet and keeps to himself if sad. It's been hard to get him to feel comfortable enough to open up in his sadness, and he usually transforms it into anger. Alternatively, I had a girl best friend in elementary school that I stopped being friends with after some years because this girl would cry fairly often and was hypersensitive. Even at school and in front of people. This put me off, even though she was a girl. Same with a woman best friend I had 2 years ago, who broke down crying hard on my own birthday because a 2 month open relationship side-partner she had said they no longer wanted to see her (she already had a partner and so did that person....nothing about this was serious). I had to stop being friends with her due to how unmanageable and inappropriate I found her crying to be. I definitely find crying to be important, I love crying myself, but I find that the context and extent of the crying to be more important than the gender of who is crying...

Interesting. What does your dating life look like?

The poll won't let me answer because question #2 is mandatory to answer. I do not have any children, so 0. Or maybe it did go through for #1 lol idk. But it does warn me to answer #2 if I try to submit.

Threads like these make me wonder how many men have just platonic female friends…cause it sounds like many don’t even have that. I feel as though if you can’t even make a simple female friend, it’d be more difficult to actually understand females more in a dating sense…lots of misunderstandings between the sexes by being too far removed from each other in a personal way.

If they didn't go to your elementary school, does that mean it gave you a better chance to join them? Meaning that, in your elementary school, it wouldn't have been possible to join the popular girls group who knew who you were? I say that because I also briefly joined the popular girl group in 5th grade out of necessity, when the majority we were all friends with left for a new elementary school after 4th grade. If it wasn't for that circumstance, I would have never been considered to join due to what they probably knew of me (which was just a typical playground/tetherball loving kid, not too hyper girly like them ) I felt really cool for a second and I was essentially tested for a bit in similarly peculiar ways... I did not last long and just could never click with them as much as I really wanted to though. Definitely intimidated haha. But in general I didn't really associate getting a period with getting more male romantic attention, though I am sure I would have if I had viewed that same Girl Scout manual your read, I definitely had a similar line of thinking back then. I viewed periods pretty neutrally. It was definitely more the boobs thing for me at the time... I definitely wore slightly lower cut shirts in 7th grade cause I was proud when they finally come in...oh gosh. My whole friend group did really, we constantly compared boob growth. Funny cause I rarely show cleavage nowadays and it doesn't cross my my mind to use them to "gain" male romantic attention bahahaha.

I was very similar at a young age...I remember passing by the bra section and just wishing for the day I would finally get to buy one because it would mean more attention from the boys. I lied to some boys before and said I finally got a bra lol.... one of them called me out and said "wtf you definitely don't have boobs wdym???". Oh youth.

@Davino To be fair, now that I’m more mentally healthy and mature enough to take it everyday, I have no side effects personally from the birth control pill! Again..personally though.

Yeah I’m pretty sure my 2 best friends who have it would laugh at me if I said this to them…especially since one of them isn’t spiritually-oriented. One of them got tinnitus from going to lots of loud concerts, one of them got it supposedly from covid…and she has numerous other complications from that covid experience like only being able to sleep a few hours at most each night…sounds like brain inflammation? Wondering how those different methods of getting it would affect the outcome of trying Leo’s method.