Joe Zhou

Thank you guys for sharing your insights. I went back and talked with my close friend about this issue, here are some my own answers to the question. 1. Yes, my parents were never intimate, that did reflect on me. 2. Yes, I had an urge for approval. 3. I had many unresolved life issues without action plan. Because I felt my life was a mess, I was anxious about myself all the time. Seeing others doing okay only puts me in a more intense position. 4. I never tried to cultivate fun in life. I was so hardcore on solving problem, making progress, like fighting a war. The truth is only I see life as a war. Nobody else thinks this way, so I am always the intense one. I cannot relax others, and of course will drive away people who are more relaxed than I do. I attract more issues to be solved. Law of attraction. the most practical solution is to cultivate intersts in life, write down action plans for unresolved issues, so that I get to relax. It's not what I say that matters so much, but more of the overall feeling I give people. It really all depends on how I feel. If I am still at war with life, then there will only be comrades and enemies, win and lose. But if I can see life as a game and play it , there can be more fun. The limiting belief is that I am fighting for something. When I need to fight, I reflect lack, desperation, scaricity. Intimacy only happens when people relax and drop their masks. That's what I see.

Hi, I am having difficulty on developing intimacy with people. According to my observation, I have never developed any intimate relationship in at least 7-8 years. By intimate I mean good friends, contact very often that sort of intimate. I never made friends that I can keep contacting, talk about stuff . Not with women, not with men neither. The pattern of my communication with people in general was, once until I knew a bit of their background, general life, I could not find anything other than professional study subjects to talk with. I could talk with professional people about subjects in depth for very long, but that's like a consultation. I had no problem give other people consultation about subjects I know of neither. The result was: I get very good at finding someone to consult with, and people actively consult me about things, but I am missing a whole area of intimate friends. I do meet girls I wish to develop intimacy with, even just as good friends. I wished to be able to have conversation naturally with them. Then again, once I knew the basics of them, like what work do they do, their interests, etc, I just can't advance. I had exactly the same issue with males, it's just that I didn't care as much. It seems like I had conflicted interests: On one hand, I deeply desire intimacy. On the other hand, I just don't care about people and what they do in their life. I felt bored out by people countless times. I felt the stuff they do are impermanent and eventually won't matter at all. So what if my friend gets married, have kids and tell me stuff about their kids? I just could not see how that matters. Even if I had shared interest with someone, such as a movie, we just never gets time to sit down discuss or even watch it together. Everyone is so damn busy with their own life, all the little issues such as work, appointment, kids... It seems I should just get busy on my life and shut up. Then again, I see people who told me they were busy, just make up time for their other friends. So people are not so busy that they really have no time. I'm just not important enough to them for making up time. And I just stay at that level. There must be some limitation in my mindset causing me unable to reach higher intimacy. I think this limitation has nothing to do with knowledge in professional field, which I just kept working hard on. But I simply can't figure out the limiting belief.

@Bob84 I thought that was the situation, but I don't really think so now. I just believed that having sex was something I had to get, so I saw the unwillingness to talk to girls being wrong. And I thought when I got attracted by a girl, the only right answer would be go talk to her. It was quite neurotic thinking. The truth was I wanted to work on myself, and I wanted to do it solely for myself not because of girls liked some attributes. I also believed having sex was the only way of getting the sexual energy out of the way, but the reason I wanted to get it out of the way at first place was because I wanted to focus on self improvement. I just didn't know there were other ways of using it. I was desperate regarding what to do with the whole sex thing. I didn't want to talk to girls very badly. I just believed that if I could stick with a girl, get sex regularly, I would stop worry about what to do with sex. In Leo's words, I was looking for achievement to cover up real problems.

@J. M. Wigglesworth I watched the video several times and still didn't quite understand it...So just breathe with mouth open very deeply? And the sexual energy will automatically move up?

@J. M. Wigglesworth Fascinating! Much appreciated for clarifying . Do you have experience with the breathing technique?

@J. M. Wigglesworth Thank you for the in-depth answer. Can you expand a bit regard completeness without having sex? I sense that even if I have a lot of sex I still won't be complete, since sexual pleasure is short-lasting. I got bothered a lot by sex while I wanted to focus on improving other aspects such as my talent and skills. When I was bothered so much, I thought it's a Maslow's hierarchy issue, gotta have food, sex, shelter handled to move higher. So is the state of completeness attainable without having tons of sex as the foundation of pyramid? Is it possible to let go sex even without having tons of them? Is there any other way for the sexual energy to go other than having sex?

Hi, I often have sexual fantasies involuntarily. This caused me feeling nervous towards women. For example, I wanted to talk to a girl, and in the beginning I really just wanted to talk; but when sexual fantasies step in, it became like this: I wanted to talk to this girl and eventually I can have sex with her. When my motivation became sex, I was constantly afraid of not be able to have sex with her, and I quickly lose all the confidence I had. I gave the power to the woman, so I became powerless, and this psychological pattern just repeats itself. I once dreamed, if I could have sex whenever I need to with a woman I like, then this fantasy problem will just be gone. But that's not going to work, because if I don't approach to women and talk to them, nothing will happen at first place. There was a period of time I was addicted to pornography, indulged the sexual fantasy to its highest degree. It made me become even more difficult with women. and even less confident about myself. There was another period of time I just denied sex, wanted to focus on my career, focus on other aspects of life, but the fantasies are there anyways. I was even more annoyed by the fantasies. There was another period of time, I told myself just accept that I had sexual thoughts about women and do whatever I needed to do. But I didn't solve the power issue. I was still giving power to women and being inconfident. The only difference was I admitted it, Finally, I thought about: What if I tell myself I can be complete without having sex with any woman? Then I felt this sounds dishonest. I didn't want sexual fantasies, but I didn't want to deny sex because of it. So I felt I was at a dead end. Can anyone give me a direction to think about this?

I started taking cold showers to conditioning myself to cold. I will come back after sometime and update the changes.

Thank you. That was very inspiring. I think the body fat is a factor but fear of cold plays the center role. May I ask, if my immune system is not functioning well(due to long term unhealthy lifestyle), would exposure to cold temperature cause sickness(such as fever, coughing) more easily? Everyone around me believes this as a common sense, but maybe it is not the real case?

Hi, I feel cold quite easily, and I often get more sluggish while feeling cold. I live in Canada, so there are at least 4 month of cold weather. In harsh time I was even afraid to go out for grocery. I don't want to be so affected by weather conditions, but I don't know how to change. I am quite skinny for my whole life, people around me said I had too little body fat so I feel cold easily. I don't know if that was true or not. I need to admit I don't exercise, so that might be a contributor. Not sure though. Besides exercise, Is there any diet tip or other suggestions to improve my condition? Thank you.

I started this post by thinking of "how to overcome" as well, but now I don't think "over" or "rise" is the correct attitude to resolve the problem. FindingPeace gave me some clues to introspect the foundation of my belief, so I went into it, looking for more details in a humble manner rather than standing above and look at the outcomes. And I made some discovery quite soon. I could never discovered more details by an attitude of wanting to overpower the problem. The eagerness to overpower is blinding. Think of the overcoming mindset as a local governor inspecting the town, and think of the introspect mindset as a tourist talking to local people. The governor holds power thus the town folks are afraid to reveal the truth, whereas the tourist holds little power so the folks don't mind reveal more. Even if the governor tries for 10 years, as long as he holds the power, folks won't talk. This is at least why I couldn't have some insights earlier, and it might apply to you at a degree, too. I think it'll be useful to contemplate on the questions FindingPeace asked me, "What do you think self-worth is? What would you need in order to feel 'worthy'? And from whose perspective are you judging yourself? From yours or the eyes of others? What criteria are you judging yourself against?

Hey everyone, after processing what you said and did some experiment on my own, I had personal insight to the question I asked. I want to share with you. The reason I felt having low self-worth was the failure of recongnizing values. I could not see value in pain, confusion, nervousness, all the commonly known "negative feelings". For instance, when I read a book, I didn't get it, I wanted to quit reading because there was confusion. I defined confusion as a bad fruit in the basket. What I failed to see was, confusion could be the fundation of read again and find out! I always desired long lasting motivation; yet I didn't link motivation with the "negative reactions". I thought motivation only came from " positive feedback". Naturally, I could never have full motivation since life didn't give 100% "positive feed back". I didn't even feel living full life, since I only granted meaning to a portion of my experience, and I denied the rest. The more accurate way of looking at my life is, life gives me 100% feedback, all I need is to accept all of them, so I live a full life. The postive negative differentiation was ridiculous. Read a book and felt confused? Good! Then I'm more likely to find out the true meaning. Rather than attempting to drive the confusion away, I can choose to welcome it as a guest, let it stay however long it wants to. In conclusion, my low-worthy complex, sense of insecurity was due to self- denial and rejection of reality. In Leo's word, "neurosis". In order to completely dissolve this issue, I not only need to accept what I am akready aware, but also need to fundamentally expand my awarewness to be closer to the reality. It's a long journey and I have just started.

Thank you, I would like to ask for more detail regarding meditating on my strength. Currently I meditate by do nothing and not interfer emerging thoughts. I don't know other methods.

Does the thoughts of the collective mean the common values in the society? Today I had a moment that might be a disidentification: I had some tasks I decided to finish today. When I had little time left, I became anxious. I suddenly asked myself: did the situation "make me anxious"? Or did I make a rule to feel anxious whenever similar situation happens? I realized that the situation might had absloutely no relation to my feelings. At that moment, I felt it's prosperous to think a situation have power over me. So can I put it this way: all the situations I believed that caused me emotional changes, positive or negative, had actually no influence on me at all? And all along it was me deciding how I should feel? And I can be free from my own rules by recognizing them as my rules rather than the "objective rules"? Furthermore, there were never "objective rules" at first place, all the rules are human fabrication?

I contemplated on the questions regarding self-worth. I noticed that the answers vary from time to time. For example, sometimes I feel need achievement to feel worthy, yet when I actually achieved something I suddenly would feel I need something else. Same goes for perspective, criteria, there isn't any solid ground. So, my self-worthy concept is a collective of little judgements based on different criteria; these judgements are simplistic statements of what "the problem" is. Because there are so many different answers to "the problem", I don't know which one is true. I end up with a simplistic conclusion: I have so many problems. I must be very low worthy for having so many problems. The real problem seems to be just a sense of insecurity. All the answers I come up with are rationalization of this feeling, trying to make it tangible/external. When the problem is tangible/external, it looks easier to be solved. For example, achievement is at least attainable via action. Even though I have reached this point, there are still strong objections inside my mind. I have these almost mad voices shouting for focusing on the external problems. So can I say that my ego is inherently insecure, and it just wants to create distractions to protect itself? And everyone who has an ego all have this sense of insecurity, unless they work on the ego? If I want to stop the suffering, I need to stop distracting myself with external works and focusing on the awareness of ego?