I literally figured out the root cause of all my life problems

[Shroomdoctor]

Hey friends

I literally figured out the root cause of all my life problems:

I cant deal with my emotions, which leads to poor impulse control, which gets me into bad situations, addictions, and away from my dream life. This is the reason I have not gotten any results from my self actualization journey. 

 

So this is my first REAl threshhold guardian. This is my current plan:

Read books on emotional mastery disciplin and addiction to get a good grasp of the field.

Learn to sit with negative feelings through daily SDS sessions.

Quit hard addictions that feed my negative dopamin cycle like:

Porn, VideoGames, Smoking, Gambling, Alkohol. (1by1)

 

If you have ANY advice on this problem, ressources, suggestions I would be VERY glad on it.

@Leo Gura Did you always have a high level of disciplin and performing positive actions no matter your personal state or did you had to learn it too?

[Jonac]

Nice plan, just go gently. What worked for me is sitting with negative emotions or strong determination sitting.

[aklacor727]

The process she shows in this video is very helpful 

[Leo Gura]

Working with emotions is very tricky stuff because they are not logical and they completely control one's behavior and thoughts.

Bulling your way through emotional issues with a cold heart and lots of discipline will not work.

Emotional issues require a compassionate, gentle, loving, mindful approach.

It's about becoming heart-centered rather than stuck in your head. It's about feeling into things, feeling into your body.

The whole macho attitude of dominating emotional problems has to go.

[Raptorsin7]

@Shroomdoctor Use positive affirmations to re-program your mind to think good feeling thoughts. Spend as much time as possible with the affirmations and get your thinking in line and see how your feelings change.

[Cepzeu]

Whatever you resist persists

SDSing your addictions will only work if you fully accept them and love them and allow them, rather than tolerating them.

By loving, you learn to let them be, and by learning to let them be, you allow a natural letting go of what doesn't serve you.

Feel them in your body and take a deep breath. On the exhale just let everything be, just relinquish all control.

By allowing something to simply be through your love of it, you do not cling to it, and naturally over time impulses will subside.

Combine this by creating distance from addictions (i.e. selling your console, blocking porn sites, not going to the casino etc.) and you will be well on your way.

[R-Type]

Hi Shroomdoc, 

I'm not an expert on the field of emotional mastery or addictions, but rather a fellow addict who spends some time thinking and researching these topics. 

My current view on this is close to yours, namely that most of us are dealing with a messed up nervous system, which inhibits self regulation.

The causes can be numerous, like emotional or physical trauma, genetic/epigenetic passdown, poor diet, environmental toxins, cultural factors etc... 

The symptoms on the other hand are as numerous as the causes and can included all kinds of chronic illnesses, neuroses, addictions, depression, anxiety - what's even worse is that the symptoms themselves act as causes further down the spiral (until we somewhat hit a homeostatic state on which we keep operating long term). 

As everything is a symptom of the things that happened before and a cause for the thing to come after we can chase the root causes down to the big bang and before. Yet in order to find relief a closer, individual look on our situations is required. 

I agree with Leo, emotions are very tricky, they control our behavior and thoughts and how can we produce good results with our mind that struggles to think properly?  I like the approach to read more about emotions in order to understand them better. The works of Peter Lavigne and Bessel van der Kolk, who pioneerd trauma research and the poly vagal theory, have felt pretty eye opening to me lately. Maybe youll find their work interesting too. According to them: Especially abuse and lack of love by our care givers at an early age appears to take a heavy toll on our later years. Love, acceptance and support is what our mammalian nervous systems needs almost as much as food and shelter. Maslows pyramid of needs applies well herein. Their view doesn't exclude problems that can occur by trauma later in life too (like traumas by fighting in a war zone). Along the line they also discuss several methods on how people can find relief and recovery, ie yoga, exercising, emdr, neurofeedback, communal theater and rhythms, meditation, humming... Just to name a few. The tricky  question is how to apply this in a systemic way and integrate it into our lives. I have no answer on that yet. 

I also like the yogics systematic approach, as they see the human as a whole system which heavily include proper exercise and diet. If I had the time and money I'd go to an ayurvedic treatment clinic as a first step. 

Concerning beating addictions: though they are destructive on the long run, they serve a purpose, which is to calm your system down in one way or another. Dropping one can lead to heightened nervousness and  the increase of the other addictions, or being confronted with depressions. I'm currently at that stage as I dropped cigarettes 3 weeks ago, and today it's kinda rough for the first time, eating habits also became worse. However I think now that breathing feels a bit better it's time to reenter yoga and running in order to further calm the nervous system down and tackle my diet next. I can only speak for myself but sds alone would not work for me at this stage. 

Any ideas, comments, whether agreeing or not, are welcome. We're all together in this and it's cool to help each other. 

Hugs, R

[Gili Trawangan]

Same here, buddy.

I've tried different approaches, and I think the advice you got from the others here is probably the best way. I've been trying to be more loving and accepting of so called bad habits and failure in maintaining so called good habits. They didn't go away so far but the experience of falling back into addiction is a lot less stressful without the added layer of self-hatred. And maybe over time the habit will subside. In the meantime life is much better just because you love and accept what is.

[crab12]

Interesting find. Say you get a wave of anxiety, how do you react to it currently? What's the mechanism that triggers the addiction behavior?

[kag101]

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Working with emotions is very tricky stuff because they are not logical and they completely control one's behavior and thoughts.

Bulling your way through emotional issues with a cold heart and lots of discipline will not work.

Emotional issues require a compassionate, gentle, loving, mindful approach.

It's about becoming heart-centered rather than stuck in your head. It's about feeling into things, feeling into your body.

The whole macho attitude of dominating emotional problems has to go.

??????

[Farnaby]

18 minutes ago, crab12 said:

Interesting find. Say you get a wave of anxiety, how do you react to it currently? What's the mechanism that triggers the addiction behavior?

IME, what works best is showing the part that feels the anxiety compassion and love. Talking internally to it like you would talk to a scared child. Also, not trying to get rid of it, but feeling into it, using some grounding techniques so it doesn't become too overwhelming. 

Being with someone who can feel calm around you when you're feeling anxious is very potent too, because this co-regulation slowly teaches you how to self-regulate. Have a look at the Polyvagal Theory, it's really useful  

[Naviy]

Here is a little trick that I'm recently experimenting with.

1) Try to feel an emotion as a purely physical feeling. Treat it like a physical feeling. If it's grief, for example, treat it like pain in a bruised leg. Try to have this attitude to an emotion.

2) Then just apply care and love to this feeling. Know that you have all the reasons to have this feeling. Know that this feeling is something which was created by the force of the world itself. So it is not very wise to resist the will of the world, which has put this feeling in your life right now. Care about it. Give it attention, but don't engage too much in thinking. Know that it is just neutral energy. Acknowledge it. Take care of yourself too. If your feelings tell you to go for a walk, then go, do not force yourself too much when a strong negative emotion is present. Listen to what your intuition and body ask. For this you will need mindfulness skills which you can develop through daily meditation.    

 

Also you will need mindfulness skills to distinguish between egoic self-pity, stories, self deception and the real voice of self love, care and intuition in such situations.  

Edited January 25, 2020 by Naviy

[Nahm]

On 1/23/2020 at 11:18 AM, Shroomdoctor said:

 

Learn to sit with negative feelings through daily SDS sessions.

 

If you continue to believe there are “negative feelings”....then you are continuing to believe thoughts which do not feel good to you...and blaming it on the feelings. 

Feeling is fine, no problem at all. 

Inspect the thoughts instead, in accordance with feeling. Listen to feeling. Realize the thoughts which don’t feel good, are thoughts which don’t feel good. 

Write down the thought which doesn’t feel good. Look at the emotional scale.

Identify where that thought falls on the scale, how it feels. Then move up one, two, maybe three on the scale, and reconsider that same thought, in the light of the ‘higher on the scale’ feeling. 

 

On 1/23/2020 at 11:18 AM, Shroomdoctor said:

I can’t deal with my emotions

Using that thought as an example....

How does it feel, in reference to the scale?   I’ll assume it feels like Pessimism. 

Then, consider Hopefulness. Can you feel some hope...

”I could learn, I could inspect...and I can see where more awareness, and understanding...could lead to feeling better.”

Then, consider Positive Expectation. Can you feel some positive expectation...

”Other people have done this, and awareness & understanding have worked for them. Matter of fact, awareness & understanding have always worked for me. Always revealed insights, always led to understanding & feeling better”.

Then, consider Enthusiasm / Eagerness / Happiness...

”This is going to be awesome. What I want most, is to feel good. It’s about time I gave this my full attention. I’ve noticed in the past that when I choose good feeling thoughts, and let go of thoughts that don’t feel good...great stuff happens....I know what enthusiasm feels like. I’m eager to continue feeling better and better”

Then, consider passion....

“I know what I love. I recognize there’s some resistant thoughts that come up. I also know that doing what I love doing simply feels good to me. I can always let go of resistant thinking about what doesn’t feel good, and do something I enjoy. I can see how letting a thought go, and doing something  I like, in and of itself, feels better. I know that when I do this, mind is cleared, without resistant thoughts and with a fresh approach, the passion in me always arises.”

Then, consider Empowerment....

“I can do this. I can be patient, I can inspect each thought, and I can choose a better feeling thought, and I know feeling better is everything, and that everything I am wanting comes from feeling better. Thankfully, this up to me, and though it takes time, I can do this.“

Then, consider Love...

“I know when I choose thoughts of appreciation, it just feels good. I know that at any time I want to, I can choose to appreciate, I can choose to do what I love, share love with others, and choose better feeling loving thoughts on my behalf as well. “

 

[Richard Alpert]

https://focusing.org/

[Naviy]

On 1/27/2020 at 10:49 PM, Richard Alpert said:

https://focusing.org/

wow that's interesting, thank you 

[Aquarius]

I remember @Leo Gura mentioning in one of his videos that for certain serious problems therapy is what works, because it saves you a lot of time and effort. Of course, do the work, buy and read the books, meditate, but I'm just saying that sometimes you need someone. However this is just a suggestion. Good luck anyway, @Shroomdoctor !!