Commodent

You do not stop it, you embrace the darkness. Allow it, and get to know it really well. Then it loses its hooks on you.

How about connecting with other people? You didn't mention that in your post.

Isn't that kinda rare though? From the research I have done brain fog seems to be commonly associated with inflammation, which is very dependent on diet and healthy living in general.

It's not very metaphysical, no. He briefly mentions enlightenment sometimes.

You certainly don't express your values a lot, but based on what I saw: Green The post quoted above is basically Green in a nutshell.

Getting in touch with that healing presence within you extends beyond just self-reflection and meditative practices. It's something you cultivate on a minute-to-minute basis, and it's deeply transformational. This is really what any good therapists helps you get in touch with. This ability to be there for yourself. You think you know what I'm talking about, but it really doesn't seem like you do. Maybe your resources were bad, I don't know. Crucial for some people, maybe, if they happen to find a good therapist. Otherwise destructive. Similarly, the resources I mentioned offers a good model for how to relate to yourself and your emotions. Which attains the same thing, really, and is sure to have a healing power. No, traditional psychotherapy got a notoriously bad track record. It entirely depends on the therapist's empathic abilities, which is quite hit and miss. And no, I'm not disregarding the value of meeting other people. As stated, I'm also seeing a therapist sometimes, and I definitely see value in that. I'm simply promoting the ability to be there for yourself, which is really the most important skill one can have IMO. Because, tell me, what do you do when there currently are no therapists in your presence? (Which, I assume, is most of the time).

And I think this is why it is so easy to get stuck on one end of the polarity. People seem to think that either they have all the responsibility, or some other person does. But what people seem to have a hard time understanding is that we all have a mutual responsibility. Nobody are exempt from responsibility. Not me, not you, not that guy. All I'm saying is that exclusively putting all the responsibility on yourself can prevent you from seeing the situation clearly. Life is a complex design of interacting forces, and by refusing to accept that external forces might have affected you negatively you are in my view failing to see the situation as it is. It's just another way for ego to preserve itself. You are dynamic and constantly under influence. Failure to see this is often demonstrated by a lack of compassion. If you are of the mindset that whatever happens to you is 100% your fault, you will naturally project that attitude onto others. I think this is a natural consequence of any dogma. How many times have I not seen people suffer in here, only to have this responsibility shtick slapped in their face and their suffering coldly denied? How we treat others really is a reflection of how we treat ourselves. So if we fail to see the validity of our own blame, anger, pain and suffering, we will by default fail to see the validity of it in others. We will not be able to emphatize, but will instead try to correct it. So in my experience this idea of 100% responsibility is in a twisted sort of way oftentimes used as a way of not taking responsibility for other people's lack of responsibility. Because it's easy to just say "take responsibility" without putting ourselves into their point of view, thus allowing ourselves to stay "above" them and not having to face that same suffering within ourselves. I think what this boils down to is that 100% responsibility is ultimately a dualistic notion, and that clinging to it will bring lots of suffering since it is at odds with reality itself.

Hmm, I do think Leo has a certain responsibility for how his content might be affecting his viewers. With great power comes great responsibility. At the same time, I think the viewer is also responsible for how he relates to the content. The problem is, I have never seen Leo openly admit to this responsibility. Quite the contrary, really. People in here are in general very eager to put all the responsibility on the receiver, which in a sense is a true sentiment but also denies the other side of the coin. Leo HAS a responsibility, and by denying that fact we are doing Leo and this community a huge disservice.

To me it has very much been to reclaim these disowned parts of myself. Those parts of myself that I had proclaimed as "not me", disrespected and oftentimes even tried to get rid of. This was done by digging into my past, and seeing the inherent validity of any thoughts and feelings that were experienced. I let myself be with those emotions, giving them total allowance to be as they are. Giving them the love, care and attention they had ultimately always wanted. This was essentially the integration of emotions and memories. A move away from the strictly left-brain thinking that had predominantly driven my attitudes. The left-brain developed respect for the right-brain, and the right-brain in turn developed warmth for both the left-brain and itself. Experientially, this could be described as inner harmony. Some say the purpose of life is to undo negative karma and gain positive karma. I'd say it is to resolve trauma, both individually and collectively. Which is the same thing, really. Regarding your specific issue, I can say that I have very much struggled with the same in the past year or so. Feeling like there is too much out there to be discovered in a lifetime. I think it has much to do with re-awakening the part of me that is fearful of wasting my life. And I suspect that same fear might be running in you. Note that this is also a problem of integration. Integrating the part of you that is perfectly content in the moment, with the part of you that is striving towards something greater. I think one way of dealing with this feeling of hurry is to meditate on the impermanence of everything we build and accumulate. Whatever kind of understanding you build up will eventually be destroyed. Your life and all your actions will eventually be forgotten. The culture you live in, will fall apart. Nothing will last. So ultimately, there really was nothing to hurry about. You will never reach the end. No matter how far you go, it will be destroyed not even midway through. So what more is there to strive for really, other than balance in the process? I know myself that striking the right balance can be a very confusing thing, as there really is no one to tell you what is the right balance is for you. I would, however, like to say as a general principle; whenever there is confusion, move towards order. Get the chaos out of your head, and put it into a system you can easily adhere to. Deeply contemplate the balance you would like to have, and put it down on paper as a concrete plan. This way you will avoid mental clutter and simply acting on autopilot throughout the day, which is a recipe for imbalances.

Very insightful. Thank you for sharing this.

Then what more is there to say? Go out there, and meet more girls! You know yourself what is the best for you

A more practical advice would be to talk to yourself like you would talk to a small child or loved one. We all KNOW how to act lovingly and not hurt people, so simply apply that knowledge to yourself. Try talking to yourself like you'd talk to a loved one for a couple of minutes, and notice how you'll feel. It might feel fake, but talk compassionately to that feeling too. This is extremely powerful, once you get into the habit of doing it.

@SunnyNewDay That's the problem. Very many therapists don't really have experience healing themselves, which makes them incapable of healing others. And if they come across as naive they OBVIOUSLY haven't healed their own issues, as it demonstrates a severe lack of empathy. Believing you are fully healed is also the biggest, and most common, form of denial. The large presence of unhealthy people in the psychiatric profession is a well-known phenomena. Long quote ahead. “It is often said that psychotherapists suffer from an emotional disturbance. My purpose so far has been to clarify the extent to which this assertion can be shown to have a basis in experience. The therapist’s sensibility, empathy, responsiveness, and powerful “antennae” indicate that as a child he probably used to fulfill other people’s needs and to repress his own. Of course, there is the theoretical possibility that a sensitive child could have had parents who did not need to misuse him—parents who saw him as he really was, understood him, and tolerated and respected his feelings. Although such a child would develop a healthy sense of security, one could hardly expect that he would later take up the profession of psychotherapy; that he would cultivate and develop his sensitivity to others to the same extent as those whose parents used them to gratify their own needs; and that he would ever be able to understand sufficiently—without the basis of experience—what it means to “have killed” one’s self. I think that our childhood fate can indeed enable us to practice psychotherapy, but only if we have been given the chance, through our own therapy, to live with the reality of our past and to give up the most flagrant of our illusions. This means tolerating the knowledge that, to avoid losing the “love” of our parents, we were compelled to gratify their unconscious needs at the cost of our own emotional development. It also means being able to experience the resentment and mourning aroused by our parents’ failure to fulfill our primary needs. If we have never consciously lived through this despair and the resulting rage, and have therefore never been able to work through it, we will be in danger of transferring this situation, which then would remain unconscious, onto our patients. It would not be surprising if our unconscious need should find no better way than to make use of a weaker person. Most readily available for exploitation are one’s own children or one’s patients, who at times are as obedient and as dependent on their therapists as children are on their parents. A patient with “antennae” for his therapist’s unconscious will react promptly. If he senses that it is important to his therapist to have patients who soon become autonomous and behave with self-confidence, he will quickly feel himself autonomous and react accordingly. He can do that; he can do anything that is expected of him. But because this autonomy is not genuine, it soon ends in depression. True autonomy is preceded by the experience of being dependent. True liberation can be found only beyond the deep ambivalence of infantile dependence. When he presents material that fits the therapist’s knowledge, concepts, and skills—and therefore also his expectations—the patient satisfies his therapists wish for approval, echo, understanding, and for being taken seriously. In this way the therapist exercises the same sort of unconscious manipulation as that to which he was exposed as a child. A child can never see through unconscious manipulation. It is like the air he breathes; he knows no other, and it appears to him to be the only breathable air. What happens if we don’t recognize the harmful quality of this air, even in adulthood? We will pass this harm on to others, while pretending that we are acting only for their own good. The more insight I gain into the unconscious manipulation of children by their parents, the more urgent it seems to me that we resolve our repression. Not only as parents but also as therapists, we must be willing to face our history. Only after painfully experiencing and accepting our own truth can we be free from the hope that we might still find an understanding, empathic “parent”—perhaps in a patient—who will be at our disposal. This temptation to seek a parent among our patients should not be underestimated; our own parents seldom or never listened to us with such rapt attention as our patients usually do, and they never revealed their inner world to us as clearly and honestly as do our patients at times. Only the never-ending work of mourning can help us from lapsing into the illusion that we have found the parent we once urgently needed—empathic and open, understanding and understandable, honest and available, helpful and loving, feeling, transparent, clear, without unintelligible contradictions. Such a parent was never ours, for a mother can react empathically only to the extent that she has become free of her own childhood; when she denies the vicissitudes of her early life, she wears invisible chains. Children who are intelligent, alert, attentive, sensitive, and completely attuned to the mothers well-being are entirely at her disposal. Transparent, clear, and reliable, they are easy to manipulate as long as their true self (their emotional world) remains in the cellar of the glass house in which they have to live—sometimes until puberty or until they come to therapy, and very often until they have become parents themselves. Robert, now thirty-one, could never be sad or cry as a child, without being aware that he was making his beloved mother unhappy and very unsure of herself. The extremely sensitive child felt himself warded off by his mother, who had been in a concentration camp as a child but had never spoken about it. Not until her son was grown up and could ask her questions did she tell him that she had been one of eighty children who had had to watch their parents going into the gas chambers and that not one child had cried. Because “cheerfulness” was the trait that had saved her life in childhood, her own children’s tears threatened her equilibrium. Throughout his childhood this son had tried to be cheerful. He could express glimpses of his true self and his feelings only in obsessive perversions, which seemed alien, shameful, and incomprehensible to him until he began to grasp their real meaning. One is totally defenseless against this sort of manipulation in childhood. The tragedy is that the parents too have no defense against it, as long as they refuse to face their own history. If the repression stays unresolved, the parents’ childhood tragedy is unconsciously continued on in their children. Another example may illustrate this more clearly. A father who as a child had often been frightened by the anxiety attacks of his periodically schizophrenic mother and was never given an explanation enjoyed telling his beloved small daughter gruesome stories. He always laughed at her fears and afterward comforted her with the words: “But it is only a made-up story. You don’t need to be scared, you are here with me.” In this way he could manipulate his child’s fear and have the feeling of being strong. His conscious wish was to give the child something valuable of which he himself had been deprived, namely protection, comfort, and explanations. But what he unconsciously handed on was his own childhood fear, the expectation of disaster, and the unanswered question (also from his childhood): Why does this person I love frighten me so much? Probably everybody has a more or less concealed inner chamber that she hides even from herself and in which the props of her childhood drama are to be found. Those who will be most affected by the contents of this hidden chamber are her children. When the mother was a child she hardly had a chance to understand what happened; she could only develop symptoms. As an adult in therapy, however, she can resolve these symptoms if she allows herself to feel what they were able to disguise: feelings of horror, indignation, despair, and helpless rage. Can it be an accident that Heinrich Pestalozzi—who was fatherless from his sixth year onward and emotionally neglected despite the presence of his mother and of a nurse—neglected his only son, although he was capable, on the other hand, of giving orphan children genuine warmth and fatherliness? This son was finally considered to be mentally defective, although he had been an intelligent child.* He died at the age of thirty. Both his life and his death caused Pestalozzi much pain and guilt (Ganz, 1966, Lavater-Sloman, 1977). It was also Pestalozzi who is reputed to have said: “You can drive the devil out of your garden but you will find him again in the garden of your son.” From "The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Alice Miller Most people getting into spirituality I think. If you read my post history you will see that I have warned against spiritual bypassing plentiful of times. But truth be told, you don't need a therapist to avoid this. And I do not generally consider this place a healthy place. Some people might have use of an artificially induced high, but I'd argue that is rarely the case. And you obviously don't need medications to avoid re traumatization. Even if someone have decided to go see a therapist I would advice them to read "The Tao of Fully Feeling" first. If not they might not be able to recognize a bad one. I could be talking about this for hours upon hours, but we are obviously set on our positions so I suggest we end it here.

@kag101(Sorry, I do not intend to quote you kag, but my phone won't let me remove it.) Other people familiar with the field, both people I know studying psychology and people in the profession. LOTS of weird people apparently. It makes sense really. People who grew up in a dysfunctional family dynamic where they were their caregivers therapist (which is quite common), as well as people who just want to fix their own problems. Both of them applied to me, and I was tempted to do the same. You're still shoving it under the rug, if only temporarily. That's why I said I hoped she had made him aware of it, so that he doesn't falsely believe it is a permanent solution. That's why I recommend resources which I KNOW are good. By recommending people a therapist I am much more likely to set them up for failure. Dismiss it as self work jargon as much as you like. But for the sake of accuracy I can say that this is not something I have learned from neither Facebook groups nor spiritual communities. Ultimately I don't really care whether someone goes to therapy or not. I just felt like offering some perspective to OPs post, which I thought seemed very one-sided and itself dogmatic. The general attitude in society is that if you struggle mentally you SHOULD get a therapist, but I'm just here saying there is definitely no should. It's a very disempowering thing to believe you need a therapist to heal. And as already mentioned I see a therapist myself sometimes and I have accredited it some value, so I'm really not coming from a place of dogma here. If you have never gone to a therapist then by all means try it and see how it makes you feel.

@kag101 @kag101(Pardon the double quote. For some reason I can't remove it on phone) Again, none of the things you mention are things you can't cultivate within yourself. I know that because I've done so, and I know it has worked the same way for many others. Look up Daniel Mackler on YouTube. He's a former therapist who speaks very favourly of self-therapy. Remember, a therapist can only really take you up to the point to where they're at. And from that point on, you're on your own. If you don't have the skill to heal yourself, you will only be able to heal as long as there are someone more healed than you. This is a major problem. Obviously not. I'm saying you shouldn't pick one alternative that is likely to be destructive when there is another one which is almost guaranteed to bring good results and also much more rewarding in the long run. A psychiatrist can be nice if you find a good one, but it is by no means necessary to heal, like you make it out to be. I'd advice you to look up Internal Family Systems. It's a quite efficient approach to self-therapy, I actually read about it first in a trauma recovery book packed with cutting-edge research, "Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors" by Janina Fisher. And yes, my therapist was very good. She did all the things you speak of so fondly, amongst other things. Edit: And also, by taking medication you are just sweeping the problem under your rug. I hope your therapist has made you aware of that.

I'm noticing that you wrote "potential", meaning it doesn't have to be. Do you mean that the test itself is bad, or are you referring to the fact that people will misinterpret and abuse the test results? I remember getting too attached to the scale a couple of years ago when I read "Letting Go", which put me in a pretty bad place. So I could definitely see that happening. And I see that doing a muscle test on kinesiologic muscle test itself only calibrates to 605, so the test itself seems to agree with you @Lento From my understanding there seems to be pretty extensive scientific evidence. The most famous example is probably a lecture with about a thousand people where they handed out 500 sealed envelopes containing artificial sweeteners, and the remaining 500 containing organic vitamin C. So the audience did not know what was in them. They then had them do the muscle test on each other, and the people with artificial sweeteners in their envelope instantly went weak, while those with vitamin C went strong. This was consistent throughout the audience. There's a lot more research though (double-blinded studies etc.), which he writes about in the book. It amazed me too when I first read it. How is it possible? I don't remember exactly how, but it was something to do with strange attractors and hierarchical energy patterns that makes our consciousness. If I had my computer available I'd share more direct quotes.

@Leo Gura Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I read something in "Power vs. Force" by David R. Hawkins and came to think of this conversation. Thought you might be interested. This was really what I was talking about, I simply wasn't aware at the time that the body's accuracy was that good. Of course, if you eat tasty food you will get that immediate gratification, but if you listen very deeply you will be able to intuit whether it is actually life-promoting. And that even when the mind is naïve of harmful substances in the food!

I've had some experiences as well, so I would like to chime in. The first therapist I went to was pretty bad and didn't really help me at all. The second time I did a bit more research and found one that is really good. She is a psychomotor physiotherapist so she has good knowledge on both the psyche and the body and how they relate, as well as trauma. So in terms of competence, she is pretty cutting-edge. Every time I went there I felt at ease and it was overall a very pleasant experience, and she did all the right things in my view. This makes me rather confident saying this: That healing presence you find in another therapist, that is definitely something you can cultivate within yourself. I stopped going eventually, because it is rather expensive and it was obvious to both of us that I had built up pretty big momentum on my own. So now I mostly just go there whenever I feel like I need a second opinion on something. I had already gotten in touch with this healing presence before going to my (second) therapist, and I suspect that's why even this really good therapist didn't have much effect on me. Going to therapy feels very much the same like writing in my journal, or talking to a good friend. It helps, but nothing you can't do on your own. If you would like getting in touch with that healing presence yourself, simply read "The Tao of Fully Feeling" by Pete Walker and watch Daniel Mackler on YouTube, and spend some good amount of time intergrating that message. It honestly feels too risky advicing someone to get therapy. The psychiatric profession tends to attract really many unhealthy people, moreso than other professions. And if you end up with a bad one, which you probably will, it's very likely to just make things worse. I will rather just recommend the resources above, which I know are good.

It's super efficient, as you don't really have to spend time making sure everyone are on board with it. You can just implement whatever needs to be done, without having to spend years fighting over the issue.

What is it that you truly want from a romantic relationship? What does it look like viscerally? Try reliving that experience again and again, until it becomes ingrained in your daily experience. Until you no longer need another person to meet that need for you. The best relationships do not arise from a place of dependency, but rather, from a place of abundance.

By staying fixed I mean not changing, yes. You can make them more joyful by: Focusing on a positive vision that brings you joy. The vision you have for bringing this change. Simply being aware of it helps a lot. Talk to the resisting parts of you with compassion (which itself might cause a backlash if you're not used to it). Work with them and not fight with them. But now that I think about it, I have certainly experienced lots of change where I did not experience any form of ego backlash. Through grieving and dealing with emotional blockages, so much change simply happens organically. And the deepest change is never really planned. The best you can do is really just to lay the foundation for it. I sometimes wonder if there's really any point trying to make a change, because the most prominent and joyful growth has almost always happened when I was not asking for it. When I just relaxed and let my foot off the pedal. And I did not grow in the direction I had expected either. So yeah, I think any change should definitely be rooted in what brings you joy. Focus on the joyful things you want more of in life, and change will come joyfully and naturally. Of course, it might take some work getting there, but it will be firmly grounded in joy which makes you so much more likely to succeed. Sorry for the rambling, I can clarify if you have any questions. Also, I'm pretty sure my dad has OCD, and I definitely have tendencies towards it myself. You might know this already, but OCD is essentially fear that something bad is going to happen, same with anxiety. And what's the opposite of fear? Faith. So yeah, if you you want to break out of that worrying state of mind you have to take a leap of faith and trust that things are going to work out in the end. That you have everything you need. The thing you're doing now? Stop doing that, you have all the answers you need. What will happen when you stop? You don't know. Take the leap.

Ultimately, there are no problems. What you're describing is simply a natural consequence of change. And unless you plan on staying fixed as a person for the rest of your life, these kinds of ego backlashes will keep happening. Of course, you will become better at handling it and the process will become a lot more joyful, but it won't stop happening. Personally I think healing is a lifelong journey, and I'm not really aware of anyone who are "fully healed". You will likely keep discovering new things about your past, painful stuff that shaped you and the way you perceive things. But by becoming aware of it and grieving it out of your system, you will be freed. So it's not very complicated work. Reconnect to the authentic experience and see the validity of your pain. No need intellectualizing.

For most people, yes. They are just trying to find a way to cope with their pain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_bypass I've been there myself. I used spirituality as a tool for suppressing pain, and every time I felt pain I considered it a failure of my spiritual practice. But avoiding pain won't get you anywhere. The most growth comes from facing it directly, and accepting it as an innate part of the human experience. Surrender to it, and it becomes a thing of beauty.

@Therock I've always had trouble being accepted by men. With girls however, no problem. Heck, you even look like me. The exact same forehead, brows, nose, beard and skin color. Very interesting. I have nothing insightful to offer, but I'd be interested to hear if you find a good way to deal with the issue. Just curious, do you feel like you have a very sensitive nature that you feel like you have to hide away?