Gladius

@studentofthegame Journaling is a great tool. A simple trick I heard on a Ted talk is to remind yourself the best 3 moments of the day when going to bed, every single night for a month. It'll become a habit and it worked for me. Regarding therapy, a couple comments: - According to Pete Walker, a good moment to leave your therapist is when you find at least one trustworthy and reliable partner or friend who can be your new confident. As a rule of thumb, of course. - My therapist uses EMDR. It can be challenging and tough to face so much emotions in a moment, but it worked wonders. Keep it up!

Short update: The plan is still on. The pitching event has been delayed until Monday. Next week I'm off from work, so it will be an appropriate time to sit and decide on next goals. Have a nice day.

My theory is that horror movies are sign of good mental health. When you are able to watch them and not get too stressed, you are able to differentiate real world and fantasy from your mind. As CPTSD survivor, I always dreaded horror movies. Lately, as part of my therapy, I forced myself to watch some of those movies. I'm really glad I did, since I could watch good movies like "It" and learn a lot from the characters facing their fears. Also, as Leo says, it is a way of doing what is emotionally uncomfortable. Now some friends are going to a really hardcore horror theme park and they want me to join. I'm wondering if it would be healthy to do it in order to definitely leave my fears behind. Any thoughts on this?

@studentofthegame Thanks dude! Yeah, I'm glad to be in this forum to keep me on track. I took a screenwriting course last year, and we're on the final stage these weeks. I'll keep posting about it for sure, it's my priority at the moment.

@studentofthegame It gives me a sense whether I had a deep sleep that night, so I can take measures to improve the quality of my sleep if it's not going well. For me it's impossible to have a routine right now, my job is on shift basis, so I work some days morning, afternoon, or night. One of my main goals is to change that so I can have a routine.

Sleep is essential. I bought one of those digital wristbands to track my sleep. The xiaomi one costs around 20$ and it gives you a good idea whether you're actually reaching deep sleep, and a ton more of stuff I don't really use. Keep it up!

In the middle of this "recovery" process, I almost forgot I started this as a solution-oriented journal. In one week there is this final pitch at the academy. This will be my top priority these days. Rehearsing and taking care of myself will be key. I'm gonna say NO to everything that bothers me in some way to reach the date in peak shape. Afterwards, I'll review goals. Have a nice day.

Giving myself permission has been key in my recovery. Permission to make mistakes, to speak up, to say no or to be unproductive without feeling bad. These last months I have smoked, which I never did before. I also tried some drugs, like MDMA. I'd say that was quite a therapeutical experience. You can feel love all around and get a sense of what it must be to be totally healed. However, I'm aware of the secondary effects of this consumption. As a way of self-parenting, I'm going back to set some healthy rules to my inner kid. Therefore, I'm not going to spend any more money in tobacco, or any kind of recreational drugs. I want to live a long and prosper live and there's no room for that stuff. Alcohol is so deeply rooted in this culture it's not gonna be easy to give up. I only drink it socially but still I'll try to keep it to a minimum. I had a bachelor's party yesterday and wouldn't been able to keep the party going with a little bit of booze. By the way, we booked a virtual reality experience for this party and it did blew my mind. Really recommended if you wanna test how your brain believes anything you feed him with. Have a nice day.

@Leo Gura Thanks Leo! I didn't mention I'm still in the "mastery" process, so still I have never been paid for this craft. As soon as I foresee just the smallest income, I'll jump into it.

I'm working a frustrating boring job which I can pretty much combine with my creative projects. My worry is that all the hours I invest in that job end up "damaging" my creativity somehow, so I'm constantly thinking of quitting the job and living from my savings to "keep the spark alive". The problem is I already tried that in the past and I ended up reapplying to my former company. Any views or experience on that? Thank you very much!

"If you're going through hell, keep going" W. Churchill.

One of my main struggles during last months is whether I should quit my job or not. Every time there is big workload, stress takes over and a little voice inside my head urges me to quit. Then, for a few hours I become truly determined to give notice to my boss to quit the job, take some time off, and look for something else I might like better. However, the next morning I usually feel calmer. Another part of me tells me it's not that bad, I have a good income and enough free time for my personal projects. Besides, I already quit jobs in the past and it didn't work well. I promised myself I would endure in this job until I found something else. So I arrive to an agreement with myself to keep combining job and personal projects. Until the next stressful day arrives, and I'm back to the loop. My hopes are in the next weeks some alternative will actually come true. If not, I'll start applying to other jobs. In the acting course I took last week I was told I'm totally disconnected from emotions. Little do they know I'm reading "The Tao of fully feeling" to solve that. I'm completely mental. I'm not using my impulse anymore. I only hope the damage is not permanent. Meanwhile, I'm still visiting the therapist, reading Pete Walker and taking it easy. Healing is a slow and painful process, but it is taking place. And I'm proud of that. Have a nice day.

Well, that was a pretty ambitious plan my friend. I tried to tackle too much at once at the beginning of journaling here. It worked for a while but -spoiler alert- I ended up burning out, ironically. That's why I finally broke down in smaller goals and tasks. I'm not saying that's what happened to you, it's just what came to my mind after reading your post. Keep it up!

This is a really good journal, you have a good knowledge of yourself and also a really good writer. Keep it up.

Lots of emotions coming up these days. Still in the same position as I posted last time. In the middle of this turmoil, there will be some crucial events. I'm pitching my project twice and I'm submitting the final draft to the school. Besides, I'm still visiting this therapist every other week, and reading "The Tao of Fully feeling". This book is opening me up so much that it leaves me literally exhausted. I'm sleeping a lot. Furthermore, I can't exercise as I usually like to do it. I came back from the surfing camp with my ribs injured, and that needs several weeks of complete rest to heal properly. Actually, this could be a good analogy of what's going on on a emotional level. I noticed I'm quite alone (not lonely) lately. I need to acknowledge I'm going through some rough days. Probably I'm not so much fun to be around at the moment. That's ok. Still confident about the future though, for some reason. My intention is to keep it simple, being nice to myself and letting feelings do their thing. Have a nice day!

Do you think there can be any positive outcome from a conscious use of social media? I have an internal debate regarding this, deleting and reinstalling them many times.

After such big achievement, some "lazy time" is not only allowed but totally necessary. A bit of self-indulgence never hurt nobody (I hope Leo doesn't read me). Congrats man!

@studentofthegame Many thanks for reading!

God bless shadow work and Carl Jung. It would be way easier for me to abandon therapy, quit journaling, forget about the books, and just "move on". Digging in my past is being incredibly painful. I've been brutally honest to myself lately. Acknowledging I've been walking around numb and traumatized most of my life is a very, very bitter pill to swallow. But if I gave up I would be living in the same loop until the day I leave this world. All kinds of new emotions are bubbling up these days. When I'm at home, by myself, I'm wondering if it's worth it to work so much on this. Once I'm out the door, either at work, or with friends, I got the answer: It's essential. I can feel how life gets easier. I'm connecting better to people, I'm aware of my inner and outer critic, and my inner child is so taken care of. The skin issues I had for 20 years are finally gone. Just like that. *snaps. Yesterday I went to the wedding of a close friend, and I found myself having so much fun. It had been a long time since I had so-much-real-fun. My goal now is to keep doing this. Sounds cliche, but I do believe now when you fix yourself on the inside, things solve themselves on the outside. By the way, I'm devouring "The Tao of Fully Feeling". Every word ressonates with me. Grateful for that as well. Have a nice day.

@Leonora Many thanks. Sure, you can work on it by yourself. There are tons of free content on the internet with all these concepts. If you can buy books, I'd suggest to start with Pete Walker. He wrote a lot about it. @studentofthegame Thank you, sir. That's a really good question. Now what? My main goal is to change to a more creative career, where I can use the skills I learned on this journey. If I can meet a nice girl along the way, that would be great too. I guess I just want a "normal" life now?

It's about time I write my story here. I think it's the right place to share it in case someone ressonates with it. I'm writing all this from a position of understanding, I hope there is no blame or anger in here. I recently learned I was an emotionally neglected child. If you met my parents, you would say they're nice people. I had food on the table, good education, nice clothes, extra curricular activities, and so on. But. I felt no one really cared about me. I spent much time alone, even though I had two healthy parents and a sister under the same roof. I remember being very shy and insecure from early age. And my parents shaming me for being so shy, which was a never-ending cycle. I can't recall them being happy for any of my achievements. My father was specially rough or absent. They were arguing a lot, not minding if they were in front of me. When I was 8 until 14, my sister had a serious eating disorder, which brought even more fighting at home. I learned to just shut up while watching TV or observing them talking. For years. At 13, I was transferred to a public school, where I didn't know anyone. Unexpectedly for me, I was bullied. At the beginning, I was shocked: I'm tall, atractive, and intelligent, so I didn't understand why that was happening to me (looking back, I believe that was the reason). The problem is, I was so insecure by then, I couldn't stand up to bullies. It took me several months to do it, and still I walked afraid until the end of high school. After that, I dragged problems all my life: Poor decision-making, toxic relationships, people pleasing, oh and terrible skin disease... you name it. My love life was frustrating, since beautiful women approached me but I constantly sabotaged myself. My professional career was going nowhere and I was isolating more and more. However, I was living in denial, still trying to lead a "normal" life but running on empty. By the way, "running on empty" is a good book someone recommended me here. Discovering Leo and Actualized helped a lot. However, I have been living in denial for most of my adult life. I'm 34 now, and I realise how precious time is. This summer I tried (again) visiting a therapist, and I nailed it. She's not only warm and understanding, but knew how to do EMDR which was so helpful. My skin issues are gone, my relationships are more authentic and I'm almost not dwelling in the past anymore. Also journaling here and the people I met along the way helped a lot. I'm really grateful for that. So my only advice would be to face your demons, even if it's not pleasant at all. The sole fact of tagging some concepts like cptsd, emotional neglect, autosabotage, inner child, outer critic... is huge. Life gets better and better now, and I'm confident there's a lot of room for improvement. Being through this journey gave me skills most people don't have. It sounds quite dark... FYI I missed the good stuff that happened in my life for the sake of simplicity

I had that belief for years when I discovered Actualized.org. However, a good therapist and external sources (like Pete Walker books) will help you to unplug that from your brain. Good luck.

@Commodent Nice. I feel like reading "The Tao" now, it ressonates with me more. I thought it was like a sequel to the "Complex". Thanks again.

@studentofthegame Cool, same here! I also liked recently "The Lost World" by Conan-Doyle. And I think I read every page Tolkien and Jules Verne wrote. I'll try to post more about books, I'm a slow reader though.

@Commodent @studentofthegame Many many thanks both of you then. I don't know how else could I had these insights. I ordered the book on Amazon and it arrives on Tuesday, I'll write about it for sure. Should I read the first one (Complex PTSD) before?