Eager to evolve - Getting my shit handled journal

[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.

[flowboy]

I feel like I'm on the brink of a breakthrough insight.

I've been contemplating what true therapy is, and how it relates to manifestation and magic.

What some people call shadow work, is just changing your beliefs and feelings in the present so that your life becomes better.

As within, so without.

Examples of magic:

• Existential Kink
• Affirmations
• Manifestation
• Magic
• Sex Magick
• Sedona method
• The Work
• Gratitude journaling
• Prayer

All of these work with the 3rd line, and limiting beliefs and neurotic struggles are removed to enable a smooth manifestation of what one wants in the present.

They work with the subconscious as well - they penetrate into the unconscious beliefs and attitudes and change them. That causes someone to behave and perceive in a way that is more conducive to getting what they want.

That does not mean that they penetrate the 2nd line.

There is repression and gating on all levels, so there are subconscious 3rd line beliefs, attitudes and desires.

In the 3rd line unconscious, the symbolizing on situations, objects, relationship and people also lives.

This can be rewired with a practice like EK, so that someone stops their self-destructive behavior.

 

But where does the repressed 2nd and 1st line Pain go?

Nowhere.

Some forms of shadow work do touch it a bit - if it includes an old-feeling inquiry or the pain of parts - then a tiny bit of grief can be felt, which is relieving but not curative, because it doesn't include full first-person conscious reliving, and if there is the symbol of the "inner child" in the mix, then the psyche is still fragmented. I hypothesize that the fragmentation keeps the true Pain at a safe distance while allowing the 3rd line to be improved and rewired. The 3-2-1 method involves first person perspective, so depending on how far one takes that, it could constitute a "symbolic reliving" or a "fragmented reliving" as Stone calls it, which according to him is curative.

And then some variants also add a bit of unreality - forgiveness, recontextualisation, "changing the scene" into the mix.

This is condemned as dangerous folly by Janov, Jenson and also Miller - creating a groove from real unfelt Pain into unreality, thereby cutting off a pathway to healing. The inner child can not be given what it needed then, now. Neither can the inner baby. Trying to rewire a traumatic birth memory into a good one, as rebirthers have tried to do, just forces that high valence Pain to find another way out, perhaps seizures, perhaps migraines, perhaps colitis, while damaging someone's connection and pathway to let it out.

I've worked with people whose 2nd line memories are polluted with "helper" figures - older selves, older brothers, saviours that weren't really there - it makes it almost impossible to focus on the original scene. They think they are done with it, but they have just created more neurosis, more unreality.

I hypothesize that hypnosis and EMDR work in similar ways. Reinforcing the disconnection between the memory and the Pain. Which probably does remove a certain triggering pathway, but the pain has to find another way out eventually.

I recall my friend who was driven to suicide after receiving EMDR therapy relating to her traumatic childhood.

Before EMDR, she was a functioning neurotic. She was restless, unsuccessful in relationships, suffering with the consequences of attachment trauma, the source of lots of drama when she was triggered, and constantly seeking something she never seemed to find - or even be able to recognize when it was right in front of her.

But she was stable, reasonably happy, had found friends that loved her and accepted her for her quirkiness, and she had found a purpose. She was a happy-go-lucky free spirit, always able to manifest something she wanted to create, always had people ready to help. Alternative healing methods like rebirthing had helped her a lot, and she was now helping other people with it.

Then she decided: perhaps I'm missing out by not doing any mainstream therapy. And signed up for doctor-sanctioned EMDR sessions.

Within months, she was paranoid and suicidally depressed.

The last thing I ever heard from her were hostile messages containing paranoid ideas about how I had tried to ruin her life in different ways. I was not the only one she pushed away.

She committed suicide within a few months of starting that therapy.

Back then, I didn't know what to think - isn't EMDR supposed to relieve trauma?

Now, what I guess happened, is that some high-valence painful memories were brought up to "process", EMDR was used to disconnect the Pain from the memory, and then the part of the pain that was not consciously processed, had to find another way out.

One of those ways can be paranoid or psychotic ideas, as Janov teaches.

An effect of traumatic birth Pain - which I know she had - not finding its way to consciousness but overwhelming the psyche, is a hopeless, death feeling being projected onto current reality. That's how people come to believe that there is no way out but suicide.

There is a reason that EMDR is not recommended for early trauma, but rather for individual incidents later in life.

I believe that the therapist has misapplied her method.

I also believe that the "rebirthing" my friend had done some years earlier, might have done some damage to her ability to process the birth pain, by attempting to install a "new, better" birth memory, which can not be done. This could have contributed to her sudden episode of darkness.

But I digress.

Magic and manifestation are effective techniques to help someone develop the attitudes and perceptions that most efficiently get them what they want in the present. It does that by removing the unhelpful attitudes and perceptions, and neurotic symbolizations.

These unhelpful attitudes, perceptions and symbolizations can however be important clues to find and heal the cause of someone's neurosis.

I'm not sure what happens if you magic them all away - but I suspect their root cause doesn't just disappear.

Perhaps other neurotic attitudes and symbolization just keep popping up indefinitely - like playing Whack-a-Mole.

Perhaps this is why people say that shadow work is never done.

It is a misunderstanding of the difference between magic and healing.

 

The brain rebalances itself constantly, it maintains homeostasis.

Unfelt old feelings of being unwanted create unhelpful attitudes and beliefs.

Feeling those unfelt feelings removes the need for those unhelpful attitudes and beliefs, and people do start to improve their lives without the help of magic and manifestation. They develop healthier attitudes, slowly, but they last.

Using magic and faith is faster at creating healthy attitudes, which can also create fast results in someone's life.

But it must be continuously practiced.

Or regularly refreshed.

This is why people get addicted to their religion, why faith must be regularly practiced.

For some.

This has also been my experience with affirmations. I use affirmations, I get what I want... for a while. Then my mind creates new reasons for why I can't get what I want this time.

Homeostasis.

It's actually quite obvious.

People have negative thoughts, and then they remind themselves - or each other - to have Faith.

And it works for a while - as long as they can hold on to that faith, their life improves.

As long as someone can maintain the thought "I am loved", their relationships go better.

This is why people gratitude journal every day and keep doing it.

They have to.

A daily dose of healthy 3rd line.

If they stop, their mind reverts back to rumination and thoughts of worthlessness, nobody wants me, et cetera.

Because their traumatic pain is still there, untouched.

Regression therapy diminishes that, and people drop their unhelpful beliefs slowly, but permanently.

I would say that even CBT can be categorized as magic - if we define magic as getting a daily dose of healthy 3rd line in order to make short term improvements in life.

Okay, now I am satisfied with my contemplation.

Edited January 12, 2023 by flowboy