Emotional dissociation treatment?

[JonasVE12]

Releases happen on it's own. You don't need to take any drugs or any external thing in order to release. Of course containment can help, but you can release now. Ultimately these containers are there to get you to an internal place you already have access to now. So why don't you now? 

Releasing is very simple. Your mind will might make it seem complicated. Maybe it feels like you are broken. 

Learning how to release emotions is a process of learning how to feel, and then reveal what's inside through depth of feeling, and to be with your feelings with full presence and acceptance when you reveal them.

It is a process of doing less. So whenever you want to do something to release, that's already a sign you are not present. There should be a daily intention, daily practice, but other than the thinking that you're going to do the practice, you should turn off your mind completely and sit with the body. Sometimes you have to sit with the body for days, weeks or even months in order for something to come out. 

Releasing an emotion happens when you sit long enough with your own body that it reveals on its own. And then being with the feeling fully without making it wrong, analyzing it, etc. whenever you notice an energy inside yourself that feels like you are forcing, trying, doing, wanting, having, manipulating, etc, you let go of that. You welcome it and then it lets go automatically. It's like meditation. When you notice thoughts coming up and you have this energy of frustration and should's, making the thoughts wrong, you will notice that your meditation won't be effective. It's learning to embrace those thoughts with a loving energy that makes you one with them. 

The same is with releasing. When you sit with your body and you have all this chaos and uncertainty, maybe thinking this doesn't work, 'I need psychedelics or ketamine', notice that and welcome it. 

Welcoming resistance to releasing itself is what most people have to go through in order to reveal what's underneath. Because you can never create depth of feeling if you are in your mind constantly fighting. 

And a thought on using psychedelics and ketamine for releasing. I have used both and then didn't help me feel my emotions at all. Ketamine is dissociative, so that's exactly the opposite what you need. And if you can't reveal/release effectively without any substance, you won't have any significant releases on psychedelics either. You can experience love and courage on them, but that's not releasing your lower emotions. It's just dissociating from them. I was in full bliss states on MDMA with people while internally, while sober, I would be anxious and shameful. And after the MDMA wore of, all those emotions were still there, although I was completely blissed out and confident on mdma.

You can never release what you don't feel. So it's all about learning how to feel what's going on now and digging deeper into your experience, without forcing to. Sometimes you have to let your mind fight for a month straight and just be the observer, full acceptance of what's going on, and naturally, you will sink into your body more and more, and reveal what's going on underneath. 

Whenever you are in avoidance, you will never feel. Even this topic is avoidance. The thought 'I need psychedelics' or 'I need ketamine' is avoidance. 

Let go of everything, of doing, of thinking and your body will reveal what needs to be revealed. 

Literally go sit on a bench for a couple months for the whole day and see what happens.

The reason most people don't feel is because society has made their analytical mind very dense, and thus it becomes harder to feel the body. Even the desire to feel the body will be explored through the analytical mind. 

How much are you trying to understand this? How much do you want to figure it out? Can you even let go of that and just sit with the feelings, or let the intention of letting go uncover the feelings? 

Your sadness is just waiting to be revealed when you sit with yourself long enough, and you give yourself a chance to sink into your body. 

It's like when you are holding a ball and squeeze it very hard and then learning to relax your hand so the ball can start to expand. The same is with learning to feel. 

Edited May 7, 2022 by JonasVE12

[StarStruck]

@JonasVE12 thanks, I think you are right. Ketamine would be a bad choice for me. LSD on the other hand did overwhelm my ego and I had couple of good emotional releases. On low doses it is torture though because my ego just hangs on and resist the experience tooth and nail.

My problem in a nutshell is this. I can feel my bodily sensations, and I have some emotions here and then but when I decide to just sit with them by brain takes over and I'm just analysing and overthinking instead of just being with the feeling. Meditation would do me good to calm the mind but I'm only to do it for 30 minutes and not on a regular basis.

I guess I just have to make a harsh distinction between thoughts (yang) and feelings (yin) and just not respond to the thoughts and just live based on feelings for some while? There are actually people like this. They don't think at all and they just operate on feelings alone.

[JonasVE12]

36 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

@JonasVE12 thanks, I think you are right. Ketamine would be a bad choice for me. LSD on the other hand did overwhelm my ego and I had couple of good emotional releases. On low doses it is torture though because my ego just hangs on and resist the experience tooth and nail.

My problem in a nutshell is this. I can feel my bodily sensations, and I have some emotions here and then but when I decide to just sit with them by brain takes over and I'm just analysing and overthinking instead of just being with the feeling. Meditation would do me good to calm the mind but I'm only to do it for 30 minutes and not on a regular basis.

Can you welcome even that? Can you welcome al of that overthinking and just sit with it? Without doing anything about it? Just observing? That's key. This process is about learning to be happy right now, relaxing into the present moment and welcoming whatever is in your experience, no judgement, just pure being and acceptance. It is the resistance to your overthinking that is keeping you overthink. There is this distinct vibration of acceptance and peace within your body that will eventually overpower the overthinking and let you sink into your body, where you can begin to expand on the sensations, but you have to tap into that gradually. Even when you feel sensations and emotions, there probably is attachment to them. Not wanting them to go away. Forcing them to stay. There probably is also a big push to feel 'I want to feel my sensations, I really need to'. You need to strip down all of those energies until there is just being. It's through small percentages that you grow. So welcome every small percent that you feel more acceptance, EVEN if your goal isn't fully achieved. Regard every succes as an accomplishment, even the small ones. Being able to sit with your overthinking analyzing mind and being able to laugh at it, being happy either way, that's what you need. Because eventually, that acceptance will quieten your mind and create these moments of stillness where you can begin to go deeper into feeling, and it will begin to expand. 

I see a lot of doing in your writing, and although it is just a form of communication, I sense the energy behind it, the pushing, and that's why you keep being in the spins. Let the world and feeling come to you, don't try, just be and let whatever happen, happen. And let go of the goal to feel. Release your need to feel. It's keeping feeling away. 

Whenever you sit down to feel, or you try to meditate, and you start to feel frustration and resistance coming up. Have you ever tried sitting with that resistance for a couple more hours? It will intensify first. But if you persist through that, you will notice you sinking deeper into feeling and relaxation. 

For some people, a vipassana retreat is hell. For other people, it's blissful and no effort at all. Your ability to do 10 day vipassana retreat says everything. 

 

 

36 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

I guess I just have to make a harsh distinction between thoughts (yang) and feelings (yin) and just not respond to the thoughts and just live based on feelings for some while? There are actually people like this. They don't think at all and they just operate on feelings alone.

Completely, yes. Let the thoughts go crazy. Be the observer of your body, feel the energy of your present experience. Feel the confusion in your body, don't focus on the thoughts inside confusion, notice the sensations, the feelings. Play with them. Dance with them and love them. Just like you can put your awareness on the feeling in your hand, or your feet, you can put your awareness on your internal somatic field and play with the energy inside that field. Like breathing out, breathing in, can you notice any relaxation? Not trying to relax, just breathing in and breathing out and noticing how your body feels when you do so. Or putting an imaginary straw inside your heart, letting all the tension come out as fluid?

It's like approach anxiety when approaching women, when you feel anxious, we try to avoid and resist it, while when you put your attention inside that feeling, you feel it fully, and you accept it being there in your body, it will go away. You can learn to love that feeling and don't judge it. It's the attachment to that feeling which let it persist. Maybe you can't fully let it go in 1 hour. Maybe it takes a couple days or weeks to stay with the feeling of approach anxiety, but when you sit with it, with enough presence, eventually you will be able to let it go. 

My biggest tip would be to welcome that this process takes time to understand and master. You grow small amounts. Change happens after having trust and consistency in this process. You will feel more and more as you do this. 

[Ulax]

13 hours ago, StarStruck said:

I think you might be right. To be honest I found IFS to be a little childish and I didn't give it a serious try. I still have the book with the notes so I might just do self-help and ask my therapist for assistance. He is familiar with system therapy and schema therapy which is closely related to IFS. My current view on IFS is that it is very helpful but I just have to give it a serious try.

Sometimes I do feel deep emotions like sadness. Yesterday I had to friendzone a girl I liked because of my no-fap journey and self-healing.  These sensitive parts (sensitive side of me) do exist but like you say they are tucked away by conditioning and protected by old guards that are no longer needed.

Fairs dude. Sounds good. Good luck.

Also, if you're keen, I've been using these IFS meditations from the Ifs institute store:

https://ifs-institute.com/store/245

Have personally found them useful for self-work

Edited May 8, 2022 by Ulax

[ll Ontology ll]

19 hours ago, StarStruck said:

Which book of Stan Grof do you recommend? I remember scrolling through couple of his ebooks but it was very theoretical and no a lot of practical application.

 

 

@ll Ontology ll I appreciate your honest input. Your story sounds very similar to my. A lot of intellectualization. I will look into your topic. Perhaps we should try Ketamine? Have you watched Leo's latest video? Ketamine just sounds like it was made for me. Obviously I will use it for insights and not as an easy way out. 

What I learned about myself is this: no need to make easy stuff more complicated than it is. Easy problems need easy solutions. Difficult problems need difficult solutions. The ordeal is to correctly assess the situation. It is a matter of accurate "mentalization". Having the right holistic picture of a problem is much powerful than understanding all the nitty-gritty (details) of problem. Most of the time we don't even need to understand all the unnecessary nitty-gritty.

Yeah cool man, maybe after I get through this Heart work. Just being prudent with the whole adding drugs to my personal development, don't think I'm ready for it.

Wish you the best. Anything else, just send a shout.

[Loving Radiance]

On 6.5.2022 at 8:37 AM, StarStruck said:

My last option would be to take 500 ug LSD to see if that will smash my overcontrolling ego

A shaman advised me to do Iboga for the reason of lasting personality change (because it doesn't only cure addiction). This protocol of where you microdose it for 6 weeks to begin the process and then have a weekend of full Iboga. On the other side, I'm skeptical towards any lasting drastic changes from psychedelics this quick, usually that would be traumatic.

 

Besides the therapy methods you try out, I'd suggest you do shamanic breathing to access the suppressed emotions and also using emotional release tools (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLKmB51wF7NlDZgRnxUlt7BF60VQtciuH).

 

Edited May 9, 2022 by Loving Radiance

[StarStruck]

Thanks for the advice guys. I took a lot of notes and I have a lot of things to work on so I appreciate it

The most difficult part for me will be to silence my hyper thinking, and I won't be to silence my thinking with thinking. And that is a frustration for me as a thinker.

Meditating and shit is a real hassle for me but when I do it for 30 minutes or something I never regret it. I'm going to do my best to drill in the habit of meditating because just thinking just doesn't cut it any more. This is not a problem that I can think my way out of.