jjer94

@JustinS Greetings, fellow INFJ! LOL, thank you for sharing. Story of my life...

@Danielle I'm glad there's someone out there who can relate! I thoroughly enjoy your posts as well, Mrs. Barack Obama. Very wise for your age. Keep on keeping on! <3

infj laundry list. I acquired a recent obsession with MBTI. Taking this personality test three separate times, I got the same result over and over: INFJ. The rarest, most misunderstood personality type in the world. INFJ males apparently make up 0.4% of the population. Straight INFJ males, probably less. #imaspecialsnowflake #egotrip Why didn't I learn this earlier...?!?! It would have saved me years of misery. Learning about the INFJ personality feels like a spiritual awakening. Looking at my life through this lens explains almost everything about me. It explains why: I feel like an alien Very few people understand me I feel like a walking contradiction I often feel at war with myself due to conflicting desires I am a people pleaser and social chameleon, always have been I can connect with anyone but have very few true friends I used to be addicted to video games I had binge eating issues half a year ago I feel disconnected from my body, ungrounded I've had chronic health issues for years People often mistake me for an extrovert I am often confused because I can envision a million different futures and see the opportunity costs My mind travels a million miles per minute I often get analysis paralysis I love mental masturbation I often get deja vu Life feels dream-like I am highly sensitive to others' feelings and can intuit underlying moods I often know when someone is lying I try not to rock the boat, because saying "no" may hurt the others' feelings, and I have to feel their hurt Until I was eight years old, I cried every day Growing up, my Dad and brother would tell me to "stop crying," or "stop being a little girl," or "grow a pair" As a sensate extrovert, my brother says, "just do it", "stop thinking so much", "what are you so afraid of?" People often criticize me for being "too deep" I feel like my body doesn't cooperate with me I live "upstairs," meaning that most of my "me"-ness resides in the third eye and forehead I am quasi-autistic in front of the opposite sex, because my body feels threatened for its life and shuts down When I finally trust someone, I jump off the deep-end and bear it all, which often scares them away I tend to get severely anxious and severely depressed I gravitate towards nihilism When I say I'll do something, I'll do it I'm extremely disciplined I was a straight-A student in school, without needing to study until college I use lots of metaphors and enjoy puns I gravitate towards holistic systems thinking I like using bullet points I have difficulty expressing myself I've nearly thought myself to death I'm sometimes envious of people like Cypher, who are okay with being ignorant I can't hold a day job for more than six months without going slightly crazy I don't get why people my age go straight into a 9-to-5 career without questioning if they really want to do it or whether it will make them happy I feel like "the system" is not made for my personality I think the conventional route - get a job, get married, have kids, retire - is inherently empty and comes with false promises I feel incapable of providing for a family I want to be like yoda when I grow up I have a hard time being present (1.5 years of daily meditation, and I still can't seem to get in the zone) I am extremely future-oriented I value personal growth highly I quit facebook a year ago I'm overstimulated by bright lights, loud noises, and crowds I hate being the center of attention I can't stand small talk I need time to recharge after social interactions If an activity doesn't align with my higher-consciousness values, I eventually stop doing it People often come to me with their problems People often accuse me of playing the psychologist People often share their deepest secrets with me - even people I barely know Whenever something bad happens in any relationship, I immediately blame myself first I see the potential of a person more than I see the actual person I have a strong urge to help others I am a raging perfectionist who sets unrealistically high standards for myself I am self-aware and admit when I'm wrong I often disappear from the face of the earth for extended periods of time (like right now) I have terrible situational awareness At the same time, I find myself crying of gratitude every other day because of the overwhelming beauty of life I am hell-bent on answering the deep existential questions I feel extreme, tender, compassionate puppy-love towards people and things ever since balancing my fourth chakra I make laundry lists like this, hoping that maybe someone out there will understand, while expecting that the reader will either think "WTF?" or "Too much, man..."

being relaxed is funny. Hola. I had a bath today, and now I feel grounded. Funny how being relaxed really puts life into perspective. I start to wonder why I do all the things I do if they don't make me feel this good. It's as though I'm addicted to the tension of doing - like I have to accomplish something extraordinary in my life. But what if the reward for accomplishing something extraordinary... is this? Just relaxation? And in fact, the relaxation wouldn't be sustainable, because once the extraordinary thing is accomplished...onto the next! Ego is like a shark. It can't be still. It can't be here now. It can't be ordinary. Otherwise, its whole motivation system falls apart: What's the point of doing _____ if all I get is a relaxed but brief period of victory? What's the point of doing _____ if everything is already perfect as it is? What's the point of doing _____ if I can't make money from it? What's the point of doing _____ if I don't get recognition for it? What's the point of doing _____ if it doesn't help the world in some tangible way? What's the point of doing _____ if I'm going to be annihilated in the end anyways? Here's why being relaxed is funny: Ego seeks relaxation, but doesn't actually want it.

I agree with @jse - keep reputation for posts, but remove the count next to the username. When I was anal about reputation, I was less chimpish about the reputation of any single post and more about the ratio of posts to reputation. Then again, keeping all of it may be useful, because it encourages us to go inward to examine why we care about status so much in the first place. The ranking system wouldn’t be a problem if we all went inward and examined our triggers.

@caelanb Great question! That's the one point I forgot. Ingredients like sugar are physically addictive. Some studies say that sugar can be as addictive as nicotine and cocaine. Combine it with fat, and that is a recipe for disaster (pun definitely intended). Cheese is another one; when digested, a byproduct is casomorphine. With wheat products, it's gluteomorphines. However, most of the time, food addictions are emotionally based. We can get addicted to anything, but food is an easy target. It's pleasurable to consume and suppresses emotions. It's easy to hide or deny a food addiction because everybody eats. So how do people get addicted to food? When they start to depend on it for emotional reasons.

We may have emotional attachments to certain foods. Example: You can't give up mac and cheese because your mom made it for you every other night back in the day, and now you associate it with love. Giving it up feels like giving up love. We may eat out of boredom. We may eat to cover up feelings of anger, sadness, or anxiety. Junk food is the best for this purpose, because it zaps the body of energy, thus suppressing the negative emotions. We may eat because of a lack of self-respect. If we don't love ourselves, then we can guarantee that we will yo-yo. If we love ourselves and treat our body as a temple, then we want to eat healthy as opposed to not wanting to eat junk (i.e. positive motivation). That takes time to cultivate. We may eat as a protection mechanism. For example, many women with histories of abuse are attached to being overweight because it provides not only physical protection, but sexual protection. Culturally speaking, very few guys are attracted to overweight women. If we're ungrounded and live in our heads a lot, giving up meat and other dense protein will be difficult, since those foods are very grounding. The body needs time to heal. Going straight from junk food to raw vegan is like trying to put clean air through a dusty filter. Wiping the dust off that filter will take a long time, which is why a slow transition is best. We may not have enough information. We may need to spend time reading dozens of diet books to synthesize perspectives and find patterns. We need to be observant of direct experience. Which foods give us brain fog, which make us bloat, which make us feel like crap? Finding those foods to eliminate takes time. Which foods give us mental clarity, which give us pure energy, which give us vitality? Finding those foods to eat regularly takes time.

Love it! I'm going to try this on my own. I think the secret to this technique is that you own the emotions that come up. By owning instead of labeling, you reintegrate the shadow. Cheers.

we'll be right back after the commercial break. I think I'm going to take another hiatus from this journal. It's served me well so far. Why? I'm really muddled in the head right now. My thoughts are all over the place, and I'm indecisive. I hit a choke point in my life, and now more than ever I need to ground myself. Get out of my head and into experience: Snowshoeing. Sitting by the wood-burning stove. Sipping a hot drink. Crying my guts out. Laughing my guts out. Holding yoga poses. Breathing. Watching Star Wars (I'm worried that it'll suck), Warm water on the skin. Embracing someone. Spending new years with the whole family. Then, when I feel ready, I will formulate my 2018 goals. My psychology has a tendency to forget the mundane things in life. I get lost in the head and paralyzed with so many choices that I end up getting nothing done. I often forget why I'm doing anything in the first place. Am I doing it out of fear, or am I doing it out of love? Am I doing it in order to become happy, or am I doing it because I am happy? If it's the former, then I may as well die. That's the thing I have a hard time discerning. Am I leaning into the things I resist because I love doing those things, or am I just being a fucking masochist? Or is more shadow work needed? Do I need to work through more traumas? Do I need to read more books? Is there a screw loose in my head? Why do I feel so incapable of doing anything right now? Why do I feel so limited? Why do I cry so much? How can I trust myself? How do I know what "inner knowing" is? How do I know that I'm not just bullshitting myself? How can I possibly get from point A to point B? Yes, definitely muddled in the head. *Sigh*.

thanks for the map, Resistance. "I feel so fucking lost and confused." "Music resonates, it doesn't resonate." "I feel so damn frustrated with my attempts to play guitar again. I still seem to think that I suck." "When will I ever be good enough?" "I don't want to sound like every other musician. I want to be special. I don't want to be ordinary. But I don't want to make music." "Do I really like the sound of guitar that much?" "I'm not a music student. I was never formally taught." "My voice sounds like a constipated giraffe." "I don't know much music, nor am I interested in learning about the history of music." "What's the point? I'm just going to die anyway." "What else am I going to do?" "How will I make ends meet?" "I fucking HATE practicing music. Meditation? Sure. Yoga? Definitely. Reading? Of course. Journaling? You bet. But practicing music? No fucking way." "I was never interested in poetry growing up." "I'm not a poet. I don't even know how poetry works!" "So I just write random shit down and expect it to become a song?" "Nobody gets my lyrics." "It's gotta be perfect. And since you're never perfect, you may as well give up now." "I was never interested in the humanities growing up. I'm a math/science kind of guy. Why music, then?" Thanks for the map, Resistance.

Hey guys. I've been on a creative hiatus for several months now mostly because of this one issue: the inner critic. It's tormenting me and sabotaging my creative efforts, telling me that my work sucks before I even finish it, telling me it'll never be perfect so why even bother. It's totally sapped the joy from the process and has made me doubt whether I should even continue. In dealing with it, here's what I've tried so far: Journaling. I take a statement it says, such as "your work sucks," and analyze the heck out of it. I realize that the statement is totally bogus and based on unrealistic and arbitrary standards. But the critic remains unphased. Bioenergetics. I take the anger from the critic and try releasing it through bioenergetic exercises. But the critic remains unphased. Subpersonalities. I have a dialogue with the critic. The romantic part of me tries to negotiate with the critic, telling it to back off in the creative process and come back after the fact. But the critic doesn't listen. Self-love/mindfulness, a la Matt Kahn. Telling the critic it's okay to feel that way. Loving the critic. Welcoming it in. Feeling the feelings. But that doesn't change the fact that it believes my work sucks, and what ends up happening is that I believe it and don't continue with the creative session. I think that's a hint. Visualizations. I've done visualizations using symbols, light, etc. It feels nice, but the critic remains unphased. Yoga. Two months of daily yoga, huge visceral improvements, but the critic remains unphased. Perhaps this is something much much deeper. Perhaps it's a self-esteem issue - that no matter what I do, I'm not good enough; that no matter how much I try, I won't ever be able to satisfy the inner critic. That part of me still believes the inner critic. Anyway, I just feel a bit confused and hopeless because I've tried so much and nothing's working, which is why I come here. Besides any of the techniques I listed (and psychedelics), how have you guys dealt with your own inner critic? Feel free to share anything that's helped you.

@Leo GuraDo you read the news regularly? If so, what sources do you follow?

insights from the workshop. Last weekend, I had some major emotional releases at the workshop that gave me quite a few insights. I was debating whether to share them because it's one thing to read about it and an entirely different thing to experience them directly. Ahh, fuck it. Here's what I wrote in my personal journal: Abandonment is just a feeling. It's not an actual thing. Existentially speaking, I've never been abandoned before. I had a visceral experience that worth is a complete fiction as well. If there's any worth, it's in the fact of my existence, that's it. By simply existing, I am worthy to exist. When I felt through all of these "bad" feelings, what was left was an intense sense of peace. I simply let go. I didn't need to be defined by those feelings anymore. And in a strange paradoxical way, I felt "held" by groundless reality. There was no sense of time when I was on that table. It was like that one mushroom trip in october, where I had the insight that all of the underlying emotions from the "past" were always in the present in the form of stuck tension, and all that was needed was to feel through them. I've been very emotionally raw ever since that workshop. I woke up at 3 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to bless everyone I know (as Matt Kahn teaches). Quite possibly the greatest use of my restless time in bed. And to you, dear reader: may you be blessed.

wanna hear a joke? Life is getting in the way of my spiritual awakening!

@Phill

@kieranperez It seems like a tangent, but it really isn't. If you believe that mind, body, and spirit are intimately connected (they are), then you sure as heck can manipulate your thoughts by manipulating your body. The easiest example is to compare how you feel before and after physical exercise. But hatha yoga is different because it's integral - including body, mind, and spirit: Body: The poses strengthen your muscles and bring you back into your body. More importantly, they help release unconciously held tensions in your body that are associated with different emotions...that are associated with different limiting beliefs in your mind. Mind: The practice is meditative, requiring you to focus on your breath. Hatha yoga uses a special breathing technique that helps bring prana to all areas of the body. After a practice, you will feel it flowing through all of your limbs. I call it "happy energy" because of how good it feels. Spirit: You set a prayer/intention before every practice, which actively changes your outlook on and off the mat. I can almost guarantee that after doing daily hatha yoga for a month straight, you will look back on your post here and laugh with curiosity.

You said it better than I did! "I need help in order to accomplish _______ because I want ________ and feel capable of getting it" Versus "I need help in order to fix _______ because I don't know what I want, I don't feel capable of making my own decisions, and I would rather be rescued and/or told what to do"

@haai14 I'm currently using these beginner hatha yoga courses: https://www.udemy.com/seane-corn/learn/v4/overview https://www.udemy.com/mystic-flow-by-seane-corn/learn/v4/overview She is wonderful. udemy goes on sale a lot, so be sure to wait before you buy full price.

Have you ever tried yoga before? If you start a daily yoga habit alongside your meditation, within a month you will feel viscerally different, guaranteed. You may find that the "trapped" mentality loses its hold when you learn to re-connect with the body and start releasing all of the unconscious stuck tensions. Sometimes, actively seeking verbal advice/validation from others is a defense mechanism and only digs you deeper into despair. Your body knows better. Coming from someone who made fun of yoga until two months ago, it's definitely worth a try! I understand it's a struggle, but I wish you all the best.

If you had hair, what would be your hairstyle?

in the presence of a sage. I spent this weekend in a workshop with an intuitive enlightened woman. We learned different energy holds for releasing emotions. And boy, did they release. First off, meeting an enlightened being. Holy shit. You know how spiritual circles say that simply being in the presence of a master changes you? It's not bullshit. That's a real thing. Simply being in the presence of this woman made me more conscious and more at ease. She's also been developing her intuition for a few decades now, and it's crazy accurate. She was able to sense the areas of tension in my body as well as the associated emotions at any time. My own intuition has skyrocketed as a consequence. The crazy part is, at the start of this year, I didn't believe in chakras, auras, and all that subtle-body stuff. I thought it was all New-Age BS, as Jed McKenna likes to call it. But when you get a direct experience of these things, it flips your worldview upside-down. Life just keeps getting deeper and deeper. It's turtles all the way down! The woman told me that compared to the thousands of clients she's worked with, I'm a natural at energy healing. Probably because of all the spiritual purification work I've done over the past year. Maybe this is something worth looking into. Either way, I met a potential mentor, which is pretty cool I guess...

What @Naviy said. Also, take these along for the ride. <3

the catch-22 of wanting. I mentioned something in my last journal entry which I will call "the catch-22 of wanting." Here it is: You can't know what you want until you go out and try things, and you can't know the right things to try without first knowing what you want. It's a strange thing, indeed. Do we really know what's good for us? What if it's not? Here are some examples: How do I know if I want to have kids, if I've never had kids before? What if I fucking hate it, and I'm stuck with them for twenty years? What then? How do I know if I want to become a performer if I've never been on the road before? What if I love performing but hate road life? What then? How do I know if I want to become a doctor after eight-plus years of studying? What if I love learning about medicine but hate the actual clinical time? What if I wasted eight years of my life just to figure that out? How do I know if I want to become enlightened if I have no idea what it's like to live with no ego? What if I meditate and self-enquire my ass off for twenty years and get nowhere? What then? And so on. I find it funny how we feel so certain about what we want most of the time, and then when we get it, we're like, "Oh shit. This is not what I expected." (Especially with consciousness work. Hoooooooly hell.) That's why I like the idea of little bets - basically test-driving your desires before you dive head-first into them. Of course, that's hard to do with the kids example. But every other one, I think it's a good idea. This whole topic is also covered in the book Stumbling on Happiness. As a solution to the catch-22 of wanting, the author suggests asking the people who you want to be like if they're happy. Kind of a dumb anticlimactic solution, right? Anyway. I felt the need to elaborate on this because it's one of my core issues at the moment. Maybe it's just an innate part of life, and I ought not to try and "solve" it.