Eager to evolve - Getting my shit handled journal

[flowboy]

Dear little Erik.

I am sorry for internalizing all that shame and repressing you.

I am sorry for being so harsh with you.

I am sorry for not allowing you the mistakes you needed to make in order to learn.

I will be very patient with you.

I will be compassionate with you.

I will be careful, delicate and patient with you.

I will guide you to figure out how to express yourself in the way you want.

And I will allow for all the mistakes necessary to learn.

Even if no one around me will accept you.

I will accept you.

I know that you need that. And that it's completely okay.

I accept you for all the misunderstandings, and creepy and unfortunate expressions you have gone through, and will have to go through in the future.

You need space and allowance to learn at your own pace.

I look forward to learning many more lessons with you.

I will no longer expect you to have it figured out.

I will no longer expect you to be perfect.

I will allow you and guide you through all the lessons you need to learn.

We will make many mistakes together, and we will laugh about them.

I will hold your hand.

I will never abandon you.

I will be forever patient with you.

All your expressions are okay with me.

No matter how many external people reject or misunderstand us.

I know it's part of our sacred journey.

We will walk it together.

I will never abandon you.

Every expression is sacred and valuable.

I accept every expression from you, no matter how distorted.

No matter how misunderstood.

No matter how externally rejected.

It's you and me together now.

And thank you.

Thank you for guiding me to do this.

Thank you for showing me your needs. Our needs.

Our needs for full, authentic expression.

Together we will walk this path.

No matter how long and winding the road is.

We will have each other.

You will not be alone.

[flowboy]

 

[flowboy]

 

[flowboy]

 

[flowboy]

 

[flowboy]

Decluttering Insights

Getting rid of things has (had?) an emotional blockage for me.

Around ungratefulness.

Insight

Things are but a symbol for love.

When the love has been received and felt, the thing has served its purpose.

 

I tend to fear being "ungrateful" when I consider getting rid of stuff that my parents directly or indirectly provided for.

I went into a memory (the ice cream on the ground) that popped up because it triggered ungratefulness.

Changed the scene.

Actually got an insight and an emotional breakthrough: I already received the love. Thank you. I didn't need the ice cream. Or the book. These are just symbols, permission slips to feel it.

I hug my mother in that scene and throw the ice cream on the ground, this time not out of ungratefulness, but just to show that I know the real value is in the love we feel, not in the symbols.

I still cry as I write this down.

 

1. I will say "Thank you" to what I get rid of, to help me emotionally feel good about it
2. I will clearly separate What brings me joy today from What used to bring me joy

 

[Gregory1]

6 hours ago, flowboy said:

will clearly separate What brings me joy today from What used to bring me joy

You are joy… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNFFSqLWDs8

[flowboy]

So two months after we break up, I suddenly find out that I have this other part of myself who is still in love with her.

What.

Great -.-

I thought my parts were integrated, and I was making such fast progress and doing so well because my achiever-part and child-part had been integrated.

And maybe they have, but now I have a Romantic and a Businessman inside me, and I just had an hour long emotional conversation with them.

They seem to agree and want to work together, but when left to their own devices (Businessman has been thriving the past weeks), they keep kicking over each other's sandcastles.

I don't think it can be resolved in one session.

I'm still confused.

[flowboy]

• I'm organising my first retreat with a friend and busy with onboarding candidates and chasing them down to confirm their attendance
• I'm also booking accomodations for my trip to Spain
• I'm working on my communication skills by studying others and watching myself back
• I'm still creating new content for my coaching program
• I'm having calls
• I'm creating blog posts
• I'm creating youtube videos
• I'm recording podcasts
• I'm creating videos and content for my employee (s)
• I'm making branding decisions

And I'm sure I am omitting a few things.

Even 4 months ago, this workload would have sent me into a full-on panic - shutdown - depression cycle.

Now, I'm fine.

Fine.

What happened to me

Edited March 8, 2022 by flowboy

[Gladius]

Sometimes, for some people, getting so busy can be a healthy way to cope. It's all good as long as you listen to your mind and body. Keep it up!

[flowboy]

Setting Healthy Boundaries & How Natasha used Breathwork to Unblock her Throat Chakra - a fun conversation I had with friends

[flowboy]

Woke up in a sweat, almost holding my breath, twice this morning.

Two dreams in a row about being lost, having lost something important, no one being able to really help me, the group leaving because their patience is limited and they have to move on - and I'm lost.

First dream - I'm driving in the night and my mom is supposed to drive behind me, in a separate car. We are calling on the phone, but then we get confused on which exit we are taking, and I end up losing her. In the middle of a flyover crossing (or is it a parking garage entry? Some kind of circular stairway for cars), I leave the car and start to look for her in the night. I can't find her. Then, I try to return to the car, to call her - I can't find my car. The only car that I see has a different color. I still try to get into it, but it's really not mine. I've lost my phone, my car and my mom now.

Second dream - I'm walking in a huge horde of people through a muddy path in a forest. We are supposed to walk towards some place to stay, it has a school campy vibe. I realise I've lost my phone. They gave me a special SIM card too - in the letter where they confirmed my signing up to this trip. I report it to some kind of leadership person. They open a folder with all the SIM cards they gave out - mine's not in there. 4 or 5 other people hand me phones they found - none of them are mine. I feel lost. The group is starting to move on - it's a HUGE group, and they can't wait for one guy (kid, I feel like a kid) who lost his phone. I lost something important and no one can help me. And now the group is abandoning me.

Arthur Janov says that dreams are always about something that happened to you - but if the memory is repressed, then the dream becomes a symbolic mashup of the original memory, to deliberately confuse you and help you not remember the original, because that is too painful. Or was once deemed too painful. So then the feeling of the dream is what really happened, but the story gets changed around, and the brain makes a mashup of things from your present and past to create a new story, so that you get protected from recognizing the original story. Kind of like cutting letters out of different magazines in a ransom letter, so you don't recognize the original handwriting, but you still get the message.

I feel like this is true - definitely a lot happened in my past where I felt lost, like I lost something important, or the group lost me, no one waits for me, I lost my mommy - different vague memories come up.

Janov says that imprints tend to run at three levels - the visceral, the feeling brain and the symbolic. Which means that a theme of feeling lost should have its roots before, during or right after birth - meaning it is remembered by the visceral - then it is further compounded upon by early childhood and adolescent traumatic memories - and finally also in daily life it's still a theme. And that's true - at least I walk around with a fear of losing things. I rarely actually lose things, because I'm so afraid of it.

I lost my pipe on the day before I had those dreams - I went back for it and before I found it, I felt a sort of panic - this can't be true, I must not have lost this. Losing things still triggers me. I know someone who lost her phone on the bus so many times - the bus drivers started to recognize her phone. That's incomprehensible to me. Losing something important triggers a primal feeling in me - being lost, being disconnected, hopelessness, imminent death.

So then on the visceral level, something must have happened before or right after birth where I felt like I lost something important. I had a short flash of THAT'S RIGHT I lost my mom, maybe I lost her tit, maybe I was in a crib somewhere and I just lost connection with her and didn't know if she'd come back, so I felt like I was going to die? My mom did tell me about an episode in the hospital where she was unable to come and feed me.

I don't remember what it was, but I want to. Reliving is curative.

I just spent some time trying to relive, trying to get back into that old feeling, trying to cry about it - with limited success. Sure, there's many instances where I felt lost - at primary school, at school camp - all about me feeling lost and the group not waiting for me, just abandoning me, no one helps me or is patient with me. This happened over and over again when I was little.

But there's something there - a sort of gut wrenching feeling on the right side of my tummy that says: "yes - there's a lot of pain there".

Yeah - one shadow work session doesn't fix that, son.

 

I suspect that that's why I had such an irritated reaction to M's childhood stuff - being abandoned by the father is very close to feeling lost, PLUS I also have feelings of being abandoned by the father that I walk around with, just repressing them casually every day, and so probably I just didn't want to be reminded of my own feelings of being lost and abandoned.

THAT MAKES SENSE - I could have been more loving if I didn't have a similar imprint - because of the similar imprint it became too painful.

[flowboy]

Pretty sure "I'm not ready" is a birth feeling for me.

I would rather be the one to make myself "not ready" (by leaving things unfinished), than be ready externally, have everything clean and tidy, and have to feel something deeper. Not ready to be born? Incomplete, not done developing?

Ooh, I can sense that goes deep.

Incomplete = not ready.

I also feel not ready to receive love, quite often, especially when my kitchen is not ready, or the tidiness of my desk or calendar is not ready. Having a friend over or my partner would then feel quite triggering and I'm not ready.

I've been extremely focused on making things complete since I was very young.

At the same time, being so detail-oriented that I needed an impossible amount of time to make things complete, to fulfill my perception of what complete was.

When I start a project and it's nearing readiness, I will inevitably find something extra, that also needs to be done or else it wouldn't be complete.

Then if I would cut off that extra thing, it's like falling into an abyss.

I either complete it or ... death.

And yes, I'm happy to be my own cause of this unready feeling in the present. To leave things on my desk, to create a bit of a mess.

It's great to have something to point to.

Without that...

I feel anxiety rising and a black void opening up.

[flowboy]

Primal session #2

(the following is the raw output of what came up during a primal therapy session, don't take any of this too literally and worry about me )

Exploring a feeling that's been triggered when nothing's working.

Nothing I'm doing is working.

And people criticize/punish me for trying.

I'm in this double bind (thanks Richard)

Pattern is showing up in multiple ways.

I needed to get the fuck out, then I was born. Then everything was WORSE!!

Much worse.

The terror.

i had to go but it's MUCH MUCH WORSE than expected and now I can't breathe and I want to go back.

First it was about my mother.

Being caring and nurturing when I got in fights.

FUCK YOU.

It was all fake.

She didn't see the real pain. She didn't want to.

No one took care to protect me.

The people who where supposed to help me, couldn't, wouldn't help me.

I'm all alone.

And I'm drowning.

Then: anger, wanting to shake my mother for her useless mothering.

Can't you see I need self defence and protection.

Why won't you see that.

Why are you trying to turn me into the sweet kid from the story in your head, while I'm drowning at school in bullying and aggression.

You don't love me.

I am hurting myself so you see my real pain, and still you don't see.

I am hurting myself by getting others to hurt me (omg, insight. I do that a lot)

And still no one is in my corner, no one supports me.

She worries about me but she doesn't get the message.

 

Then: body feels "twisty"

This desperate anger

Ripping open a curtain. I have to rip open the entrance to survive.

It's a spiderey circular entrance/exit

More like a giant anus with folds.

Super weird.

Then I feel this all-consuming desperate anger, I rip it, and...

NOOO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

Terror.

It's worse on the other side.

I feel very baby-ish.

I'm letting out babyish screams.

I feel a sense of being sucked by my solar plexis, can't breathe properly, pressure on my chest, dragged by my skin.

I'm being dragged.

Being handled.

So much light.

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

(I was doing weird twisty movements on the floor for a while without seeing or feeling much)

Then the feelings repeat.

Desperate anger.

Ripping something open with both hands to survive.

Then: terror, noo, being handled, being dragged, wanting to go back.

Double bind.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

I can tell this is about my entire life, somehow.

It's connected to everything.

"Why did no one tell me/teach me/protect me"

THat's a theme that reoccurred a lot as well.

Now I know what it's related to.

Why did no one tell me that being born was worse than staying inside

That's why I feel betrayed.

 

[flowboy]

This desperate ripping-open-curtain thing is all over my life.

It's what I feel when I think about the never ending chore of keeping my house clean.

It's what I feel when I think about still not having my driver's license.

It's what I feel over any way in which my life is not the way I want it and I don't know what to do about it.

[flowboy]

As I approach my 30s, I am reflecting soberly on the traps I can not afford to fall into anymore.

• Lack of consistency
• Living in a crazy dream future, forgetting about the present at hand
• Switching plans too frequently
• Putting a lot of pressure on myself to do a lot every day, unrealistic plans, leading to disappointing myself and weeks and months without action, wallowing in that disappointment, preferring to not think about it and do nothing, or make alternative plans. And endless cycle of hope and hopelessness.

Basically, overvaluing future plans, undervaluing the present moment and doing things right in the present.

At the base of this there is a feeling of failure. The unrealistic plans are to make up for the already perceived failure, the crazy fast ramp-up times of activity I expected from myself served to motivate me that my sense of being a failure was soon to be obliterated with action, and never felt again. The inevitable disappointment that followed such a plan felt too much like failure, which couldn't be tolerated, so I would quickly cover it up with a new plan, a different way of doing things, effectively blaming and replacing the method to escape the feeling of personal failure.

And why is failure so personal to me, and the feeling of it intolerable, while someone else might be fine not meeting a certain goal?

After all it's not a big deal. Failure is just learning, the only way to really fail is to quit, et cetera.

Well, Gabor Mate states in his book Scattered that the ADHD adult lives with the pain of a failure which is much older than the first goals he remembers not meeting.

A failure to get unconditional positive regard from a caregiver.

Some attention that was needed but not given, some expression or emotion that there was no space for.

This pain lives in the implicit memory, meaning the related events are not consciously accessible, but the emotional imprint is still there.

What do I think?

I have started to suspect that that could be true in my case.

The reason that I suspect that, is that there's something 'off' in the communication with especially my dad.

Intimate topics are to be avoided.

We don't say that we love one another in this family. (or if we do, it sounds weird and forced)

We don't hug.

Me and my dad, we don't talk about emotional pain.

We don't talk about bullying.

We don't talk about feeling fear or threat.

We don't talk about sex.

We don't talk about dating, or how to navigate it.

What would happen if we did?

He would start to rant about negative experiences he had, ways people have screwed him over, he would let his pain out on me.

I can see how this leaves no space for a developing child to share his own feelings and experiences safely.

How I didn't even dream of talking about how fearful I felt about going to school.

 

Do I know for sure?

No, I don't, this is a hypothesis. I'm a huge enthusiast of Janov's Primal theory, which says that every significant childhood pain can be remembered and felt in therapy, the complete memory can be recovered, situation, feeling, sounds and all. And until you do, you don't really know how things felt, it's all speculation.

And a theoretical understanding of your own conditioning does very little for healing.

 

The awkwardness with my dad is a clue though.

Another one is how I respond to one of my friends.

He is one with a very stern, often disapproving or moody, invalidating disposition. It's easy to project father parts onto him.

During the past week, staying with him and another friend, I notice that I'm scared to contradict or criticize him, for fear of a discussion escalating.

And suddenly my friend B is mom, and my friend A is dad, and the feeling is exactly the same as the weird dynamic when I used to be at the dinner table at home with my parents, and the air is so tense. There's certain things I'm not allowed to say, or my dad will explode. First at me, then my mom will get anxious and hysterically come to my rescue.

[flowboy]

It's like the veil between me and my childhood pains is getting thinner.

I passed 4 teenagers under a bridge in the dark.

They were really innocent looking teenagers, standing around smoking some weed.

I'm a nearly 30 year old man, having a surge of adrenaline and near panic, and part of me was sure I was going to get attacked.

This is not something I'll just leave behind or grow out of.

 

I notice that the ever-hungry objectification of women is getting more intense.

A part of me is just compulsive about that, never satisfied.

It's no wonder that from this state, in this mode of being, my past attempts at conversation didn't go so well.

There's very little friendly, positive intention.

It's more a desire to use and possess.

And there's a dark jealousy and anger that has been surfacing.

I feel jealous and anger towards anyone who has a higher income, better career than me.

And a part of me feels anger when I see beautiful women.

Not towards the woman, but towards ... life?

About the unfairness of growing up with intense social anxiety, precluding me from successful interactions.

That's not going anywhere either, just by itself.

Edited October 22, 2022 by flowboy

[flowboy]

Agenda & Crazy Plan versus Presence

With the help of my girlfriend, I was confronted with a pattern: making crazily elaborate plans that take me away from presence, from 'being here' with the other people.

There is this dissociation that I have habitually walked around with, since university or perhaps earlier.

Sometimes it took the form of "I have this insane to-do list so I can't be present with these people"

Sometimes it's a story of "I have my own plan to escape these circumstances, and if I associate too much with other people, they will distract me from my plans and it will end badly". Ending badly meaning: I will end up average, not rich, not special, "just like them".

Fundamentally it seems to be hypervigilance.

Constantly checking whether my current action is still in line with my master plan. Is it still the shortest path?

And the other way around: what is my plan again? what does that mean I should be doing right now?

These constant recalculations cause me to use up a lot of brain power thinking about the future.

Not enjoying the present. Not able to enjoy a moment with other people for long.

Also, because there is so much fear involved, fear of missing out on a certain outcome, that new versions and slightly altered plans are being spun up constantly.

Then I tend to spend a lot of time writing them out, trying to pin down a guarantee of a certain life outcome.

And I get really attached to those plans, meaning that when I change my mind about a course of action, I have to painfully throw out a very large collection of information and hypothetical next steps.

I'm not nimble that way.

Everything better than being here, apparently!

There is a fear of the present.

Because what if I just let go and enjoy the present moment?

That would be accepting my fate.

In the past, that meant not getting girls and getting bullied. At some point in high school, I came to the conclusion that my current friends were losers and I had to escape them and try to join the winners. A negative mindset that brought a world of pain.

ADHD

In 'Scattered', Gabor postulates that the fear of the present moment, often described as boredom, or the inability to stand one's own mind, is too reminiscent of the feeling of being emotionally alone. It could be that there's something deeper going on for me as well, that it didn't start in high school. In fact, I do suspect it. But since my Primal work hasn't gone to this layer yet, I can't be sure.

One suspect is a period where I was hospitalized as a baby or small child. My mother had to leave me there for some time, and it was long enough that her milk dried up afterwards. This could have given me the separation anxiety and aloneness, and lack of motherly comfort that I often try to quench as an adult by sucking on a cigarette or pipe. But this is just a suspicion.

Agendas are Icky

We instinctively don't like it when someone we interact with has an agenda. When we sense that they have thought lots of steps ahead and we are just one of the steps, we feel manipulated. When we aren't one of the steps, then we feel like the person is not really present, or doesn't really value us, which is true.

I wonder if, because it is part of a Soul's purpose here, to be present with what is, that that is why we don't like agendas!

Letting go of the agenda does not mean that the good outcome won't happen!

It's perfectly fine and feels good to everyone to stay in the moment and follow natural curiosity.

Step by step.

Not knowing, letting it unfold. If good things follow then everyone is good with that.

We accuse others of "having had a plan all along" like it is a bad thing.

Well, in a certain sense it is, because a plan takes one out of Trust, so someone with an elaborate plan is not very open to trusting Source to bring him his gifts in an organic, unpredictable, creative way.

[flowboy]

Reminder to self: I never zone out during client sessions.

Some parts of a coaching business are quite difficult for me, I can do them but very inefficiently and I zone out a lot / don't easily get in the zone.

Such things are marketing activities for example.

But the core of the value, the coaching itself, is where I never have this problem.

Also responding to other people's questions or input gets me in the zone. Hence the Q&A videos and posts. Perhaps Q&A lives and in-person workshops is the only marketing that I should do.

[flowboy]

My failures for the past 4 months have all come down to an emotional issue. Lol.

I didn't even spot this until I pushed past it.

Working on a 100 things at once, creating intricate systems of chaos and complexity, living in the mind instead of in reality, it's due to some fear of loss of imaginary potential. That fear was not offset by a the visceral experience of how little time I actually have.

Now, when I think of browsing the forum or something else, I just remember that I'm 30 and time is fucking ticking.

The vastness of things that I just don't have time for.

It feels like I've integrated that knowing of limitation, rather than having to beat myself up over it whilst secretly cheating.

Now I can throw things away.

Now I feel like I have the balls and the energy to move forward unhindered.

I used to be slowed down by conflicts with imaginary other results that would never manifest.

No more.

No time.

I used to go into chill mode early in the day, take long for breakfast, take long breaks, take long detours.

Then veer off to a stressful other end of the spectrum: "panic productivity mode" - where I would make myself work until 23:00 and still not be happy. Under all that stress and self hate I could also not see clearly what was important and what wasn't - I couldn't throw anything out because I already felt low on results - so why admit even more stuff I'm not going to do?

I hope that me seeing this game, means that I am transcending it.

Things that I did that maybe helped:

• Going into feminine mode and crying in my girlfriend's arms
• Cultivating pushing through in the morning, high expectations combined with fixed stop time + active recovery
• parts work sessions with myself
• yoga in the morning.