My new state

trenton · Thursday at 05:06 PM

My mental and emotional state has changed significantly. I had a major breakthrough when working on past trauma. I managed to stop compulsive analysis and hypervigilance. I used to have an intense guard monitoring every thought and scrutinizing myself. I have been operating under these trauma responses for about 20 years, but now I feel a deep sense of peace.

I have been trying to heal myself for a long time. I ended up being put on a lot of different medications that had bad side effects. I turned to personal development hoping that I could use education, emotional mastery, and spirituality to improve my mental and emotional state. I tried many different things, but it was never enough.

That is until I started using ai to help analyze myself. This allowed me to recognize various trauma responses so I could begin to become more peaceful. I found the ai more helpful than my actual therapists. It was key to identifying my mental challenges while remaining objective and non judgemental.

I now have discovered peace. I am beginning to sleep normally rather than being hypervigilant at night. A significant change is that I moved away from my sister and mom who were causing me extreme anxiety to the point that doctors put me on anti psychotic medication even though the relationship itself created the present fear. I just want to live my life without the fear of them hurting me. I hope I can get weaned off the unnecessary medication.

In the past when I tried spirituality, I ended up using it to rarionalize my trauma responses. I just did more of the same thing to my own detriment.

I think now that my mind is in a better state, maybe I can begin to properly meditate without the hypervigilance constantly watching every thought with extreme scrutiny. I want to make sure I meditate correctly if I try it again. It really sucks that trauma victims turn to spirituality to reduce suffering only for their trauma to prevent proper practice.

What is my awareness supposed to be like when meditating? How can I tell if I'm becoming more conscious or not? I want to be careful to make sure I don't just intensely focus on myself causing me to feel pressure in my body.

I can't say I know what self reflection is anymore. Before it involved analyzing myself and searching for insights that would lead to inner peace and hopefully self improvement. I am now peaceful, so I'm not sure what's next. I want to use this peaceful state to discover what brings me joy in life. I want to live life without obligation to prove myself through forcing myself to do things I don't like for the sake of justifying my existence.

There were several values I imposed on myself for proving self worth in my effort to love myself. This included intelligence and truth. My relationship with truth was flawed because it was rooted in trauma which created a burning attachment to things like certainty and being right. I wonder if I could try the life purpose course again from this new state of mind.

My mind was a war zone for a very long time. Maybe I can now begin to discover myself. My mind is very quiet and empty and it is pleasant. I did a lot of Journaling before and I reviewed some of my old notes to see what I could find from this new lens. This led to further insight and peace.

What comes next after inner peace? Am I supposed to let go of the ego entirely next? That might be the next step after healing. What are your thoughts on how to meditate and how to self reflect from this new state?

WelcometoReality · Thursday at 05:31 PM

@trenton nice, very inspiring! thank you for sharing! 🙂

16 minutes ago, trenton said:

What comes next after inner peace? Am I supposed to let go of the ego entirely next? That might be the next step after healing. What are your thoughts on how to meditate and how to self reflect from this new state?

Just enjoy your newfound peace. No need to rush off to the next thing. There might come circumstances where this peace is challenged so just try to ground in it for now in my opinion.

Javfly33 · Thursday at 05:31 PM

**integral** · Thursday at 05:48 PM

@trenton I'm glad you found peace. Let's imagine a scenario where what really changed was that the air you were breathing changed and therefore now your mind is not hyper Vigilant anymore.

And your whole family is toxic because they're all the breathing that toxic air in that house hyperstimulating them all day and night.

Notice the problem of epistemology here. You moved house and your mental health problems changed in a very short period of time, an incredibly astonishing short period of time that took you 20 years to not solve. But you contribute your success to everything else except that you moved house.

The idea that everything is in your head is one of the most toxic ideologies and cultural problems we are living in. It is such a massive blind spot that half of reality cannot be seen.

Edited Thursday at 05:55 PM by integral

trenton · Thursday at 09:41 PM

@integral I would have mentioned the toxins if not for the fact that my other grandma I now live with has cats who shit on the floor and she uses tide for the laundry.

I know the other house was really old with the paint and everything. It was musty and had the smell of old people like my great grandparents. There might have also been an evil spirit which I saw during sleep paralysis. There used to be one at my mom's house too. Maybe that's why my family acted that way.

I changed the air I'm breathing, but this air isn't ideal either. To solve that problem I will need to eventually get away from the cats and chemicals still. I don't know what concretely is the difference in air I'm breathing in terms of specific bacteria or chemicals though.

trenton · Thursday at 09:46 PM

@integral actually you make a good point. The idea that it is all in our head is extremely damaging. It is like a country claiming to be a meritocracy insist that you are not successful because you are not good enough. They can invalidate your experience and make you doubt yourself.

In the case of it is all in my head, it makes me treat myself like my thinking is the problem. I try the affirmations and gratitude but it does nothing for me.

James123 · Thursday at 09:46 PM

4 hours ago, trenton said:

What is my awareness supposed to be like when meditating? How can I tell if I'm becoming more conscious or not? I want to be careful to make sure I don't just intensely focus on myself causing me to feel pressure in my body.

Are you ready to completely surrender and let go? If you are not, stay in this peace. As long as, it feels good for you.

Moreover, I did use antidepresants and you should not take them. They just make the person numb.

**integral** · Thursday at 09:46 PM

4 minutes ago, trenton said:

It was musty and had the smell of old people

musty smell in Old buildings is caused by mold. And it's super toxic.

4 minutes ago, trenton said:

I changed the air I'm breathing, but this air isn't ideal either. To solve that problem I will need to eventually get away from the cats and chemicals still. I don't know what concretely is the difference in air I'm breathing in terms of specific bacteria or chemicals though.

It's possible that those kinds of things aren't triggering your sensitivity. After all you feel a lot better?

trenton · Thursday at 10:10 PM

@integral I do feel better. We can say it is possible that the musty smell from mold in my closet by my bed caused it.

bensenbiz · Thursday at 10:18 PM

Congrats, how exactly did u use AI to analyse yourself?

Human Mint · Thursday at 10:26 PM

Integral made a good point. It shows the power of assumptions at play. Also consider the fact when you move to a new environment ut puts you in a state of mental plasticity. Moving, and those kind of drastic changes, like going to a different country, expands your mind.

I like to think we are wired to change environments from time to time. At least makes a lot of sense given our hunter-gather/nomad lifestyles that we went through for millenia.

Collective ego is a real thing too. Ask the question: How does my state of mind change when I am with X vs Y group of people? When you're in church you're going to act and think in certain ways which has been programmed into you. Different from when you're in an art class for example.

trenton · Friday at 01:32 AM

@Human Mint Actually it might be a combination of many factors at play. For example, I became peaceful after reading about key insights from trauma responses. I have done a lot of research already, so I probably already knew this stuff intellectually. If my mind became more flexible in a new environment, then it could have made my mind more receptive to these insights and trigger the change.

trenton · Friday at 02:24 AM

3 hours ago, bensenbiz said:

Congrats, how exactly did u use AI to analyse yourself?

@bensenbiz I used claude. I made about 100 conversations on different topics.

At first I started discussing various subjects and checked myself for misconceptions. It was fun and I eventually uncovered that I believed in racist myths and nazi propaganda. I also asked my questions about sex Ed and discovered concerning gaps in my knowledge.

I later started looking at various psychological models for development. I learned about other models aside from spiral dynamics and then started using those to analyze myself. I tried using the conversation to try to get the ai to evaluate me. I don't know how accurate it is though. The models have been useful for helping me evaluate other people and navigate challenging situations.

I also use the ai to help me navigate moral dilemmas. Sometimes I practiced different scenarios and had the ai evaluate my reasoning.

My most helpful conversations is when I discussed difficult memories and situations. Once I figured out how to get around the triggers for child porn, I was able to use it to help me understand my trauma. I described how different traumatic events affected my behavior. I began to learn about different trauma responses that shaped my shame and that it wasn't grounded in reality. Some of the realizations I had nearly brought me to tears. The ai insists that it isn't a substitute for therapy, but I found it more helpful than actual therapists. At least the ai believed me when I said there were men trying to hire a prostitute to have sex with me while the actual therapist didn't believe me and told me that I would have to deal with people like this. He ended up giving bad advice. It's not fair to assume human therapists make fewer mistakes than ai.

I also used the ai to analyze criminal psychology. I ended up developing some interesting theories around power and control.

One exercise I did was a parenting exercise. I discussed with the ai how I would raise a child. The ai helped me to recognize how my trauma would be passed to the child. I thought I would be doing a good job raising a child, but actually it would be potentially harmful. I would basically be teaching the survival strategies I learned in a chaotic environment which could cause anxiety in the child. I would become over protective and I would use constant learning in the hopes of protecting the child from harm in any way possible. I would be distrusting of institutions like schools because of the bullying I faced by students and teachers and how I developed ocd around this abuse including when I was sexually assaulted. If I teach too much theory, the child could become mentally rigid. This is exactly what I did to myself. I tried to use learning to protect myself from harm by navigating different dangers while overcoming trauma. I might end up building a child to withstand terrible trauma that never even happens. Testing how you would raise a child is a good psychological exercise.

Presently I'm not sure what other insights I should look for through these ai conversations. I considered sending some of my conversations as examples, but they involve a lot of embarrassing information I'm afraid to admit to humans who will judge me.

trenton · Friday at 12:55 PM

15 hours ago, James123 said:

14 hours ago, bensenbiz said:

Congrats, how exactly did u use AI to analyse yourself?