flowboy

Is it possible that the perfectionistic, critical, non-accepting energy that lives in you, and drives you forward in your self-development, is the same energy that is reflected by your partner when she criticizes you? She feels that you don't accept yourself, and she's mirroring that back to you. She can only feel safe and be accepting of you if you are. So if this feels true to you, I'd say focus on self-love and self acceptance practices for a while, even though that will feel very unnatural to you, and see what it does to your relationship.

Triggers around Abandonment, Approval, Rejection and Control Issues As blissful as I felt last week is as shitty and tense I feel now. I even have trouble making sentences, that's how much my mind is twitching. I can't enjoy food or coffee. I can't seem to focus on work even a little bit, even though I keep closing my tabs and going back to it. I feel angry and sad, and am reminded a bit of when I was a bit depressed. This scares me. I thought I had made great progress. And now I feel more neurotic than ever. I feel dirty and worthless. I'm not wearing clean clothes and don't want to. I didn't brush my teeth or shower, because I didn't feel like it. I woke up on time, but slept in anyway because I didn't feel like being awake. Last weekend I did a workshop that pointed me towards some trauma I clearly have not processed. It didn't come up during Primal. I'm pissed that there is so much more. I thought I was fixed completely and forever! It seems foolish now, but if everything is light and bliss and works perfectly in your favor for two weeks straight, that can be pretty convincing. For the past days I've been tracking down issues I think I have, approval seeking, fear of abandonment, being controlling in some situations. I have asked many people for examples. And now, I feel like shit. I hope it was good for something. Am I supposed to be journaling now? Or working out? Expressing my feelings in some way? Unfortunately, I'm also under stress to complete a task. What was even the reason to go digging so deep, when I haven't even processed my notes from Primal yet? There is an irrational fear that I've just set myself back 2 years and I will now be depressed and without self esteem again. Probably this is just a temporary state caused by bringing so many painful memories to the surface all at once. Also, a friend who also did Primal earlier, reached out to me and said it was normal to be very sensitive some time after, and asked how I was doing and suggested to have contact and offered her support. I am grateful to that. I don't feel like I know who I am right now.

Not sure if it's because of the asking people for feedback, but I got some more examples of where I was being controlling, and I feel like absolute shit today and I'm failing to enjoy even simple things. Also had really weird tense dreams about fighting with my parents. I'm assuming it's part of the process. Not sure what to do next here

I heard in most countries you can meditate basically for free now

@Wekz Indeed a great article! It gave me some insights, I recognized many things and intend to re-read it.

@Wekz Mind sharing the link?

I agree that lyrics about bad behaviour won't make you behave badly, just like video games won't make you shoot people. However, the question was about it affecting the subconscious mind. And yes, it definitely does. And it helps to be aware of it, and use it to your advantage. Angry metal helps me process past emotions. and it helps me do things I don't like. I always wash the dishes with angry music, it helps me push through. It also helps to access past memories, of situations that have emotional baggage attached to them. You will remember better, and be in a state to work through it. The flipside is that if you make a habit of listening to music with an angry vibe, you will start having that angry energy in most of your life situations, and it can affect how you handle things. Getting in touch with negative emotion can be healing as well as help you accomplish things. But too much of it and you will just be a very angry person.

@Wekz I know, it's crazy. I have the stress patterns of my dad, and the underlying dysfunctional beliefs, even though they don't match my own experience. I recently did Primal Deconditioning with Puja Lepp, which helped me massively in bringing a lot of that shit to the surface and processing it properly. But I'm not done. Like your dad, I tend to be triggered when people don't want to come along with me, or want to change plans with me, or even when they are failing to understand something I am explaining. I can feel that as abandonment and overreact. I'm just now becoming conscious of that.

I don't really have many of those. This whole thing started because someone suggested I could be. Edit: no, I do. The questioning has brought up some examples. When taking initiative, or the first step in something that was mutually agreed upon, I can get quite demanding that others follow right this second, or I feel deep abandonment When someone is asking me to explain, and then I can't make them understand, in my mind they are refusing to stop being stupid and this can send me into a rage. It feels like they abandoned me as a friend because they are not going along with my thoughts. Like they promised to understand me and now they broke that promise. When I was in an open relationship, I used strict rules to control her behaviour in situations where the chance for her to emotionally abandon me seemed pretty high. I was fearful of her betraying me/being emotionally disloyal/unfaithful, and I tried to control that by making strict rules and using that as a measure to cling to. And I demonized her for not sticking to them. No acknowledgement: In conversation with for example an attractive girl, anywhere I feel judged/evaluated, I don't acknowledge what people say. I don't respond to it or really process it. Because I'm too scared to see signs that they're not invested, not following me. And it feels like everything I say is useless, because they will discover that I am a loser anyway and ruthlessly mistreat me for it.

@d0ornokey Which thing? I'm using the situations where I get triggered to map out my patterns, collecting feedback from people and figuring out where the pain is coming from, what started it. I can use that information to do emotional work on it, like catharsis, as well as recognizing the patterns more easily so I can make a conscious choice to act differently. In my view that is doing the work. What else could it be? What idea am I dancing around? I'm genuinely curious.

@Shin My point is that I feel like the warrior energy is not represented in your otherwise comprehensive list. The fighting for freedom. If this evolved man is determined to not go against anyone else's agenda, people can't count on him to protect them. or even change anything for the better. He will be floating like a leaf in the wind, turning the other cheek, not accepting a promotion at work because someone else wanted it, not getting his business off the ground because the competition doesn't want him to, and avoiding conflict because he doesn't want to see it. He won't knock out a robber when he sees a grandmother's purse being stolen. He will not prevent a rape when it is occurring right in front of him, because that goes against the agenda of the rapist. He is unable to be hard when necessary. He can't tell his children they can't have a toy, because that goes against their agenda. There is no masculine compassion. And the feminine can't feel safe around him. I don't agree that the examples I gave rarely apply. But even if that were true, what would the evolved man do in those cases? Likewise, you could say that in modern societies it is very rare to have to die for your mission. But you still mention it at the top of your list

As someone working through related shit, my take on it is that you can indeed use it to drive you forward, but people will still be able to feel the toxic energy from that shadow off you. Some people it will bother more than others. Girls will smell it from a mile away. That said, you don't need to be perfectly free of unprocessed trauma to have good relationships with people. I recommend picking your favorite form of shadow work practice. Anything where you zone in on the emotion that was created by a traumatic situation from long ago, and not analyse it but use your body to express it. You probably never raged and cried at full force about it. Enough. In my experience, this is a way to really transform it, instead of suppressing it and having it run your life from the shadows. Handy tools are a long-ass playlist of angry songs and a mattress/pillow to beat on. Try to do it for at least an hour. Several is better. See how you feel then Have I told you all about how great my week of Primal therapy was for me yet?

But others will. You can't expect to charm everyone else into being as evolved as you are. In other words, you will have ruthless competition bent on taking away your source of income. And many times you can't convince them to cooperate. In that case, the evolved man will have to make choices that go against his unevolved competitor's agenda, or his evolved family will go hungry.

@Shin There are modern situations that call for protecting your tribe's interests. Let's do a more contemporary example. How can he make money for his family, if he runs a company that has competition, whose agenda is to take the entire marketshare for themselves? I would say that being a man means that he fully accepts that whatever choice he makes, it will be good for some and bad for others.

I guarantee that you will repeat this pattern for yourself in some situations of your life. Or a mirror pattern that you developed as a reaction to it. So if you can't change the actual people you got it from, you can at least break the cycle by working through it in yourself. Note that this doesn't mean trying to do the opposite that your dad would. That is also reactionary. So yeah, you can redirect your energy to really feel into what your dad's patterns have done to you, the imprint that it has left on you and your behaviour, and try to be as conscious as possible about that.

@Shin Powerful line, that one. Great points in general. Then how can he protect his tribe, if someone else's agenda is to steal the food and rape the women?

@Bill W It's not about what is between the legs, but you can distinguish between yin and yang, the feminine and masculine energies that every human both has.

I asked around about the controlling thing. Me: Would you say I'm a controlling asshole? I got some feedback and am trying to figure out if it holds water. Ex girlfriend A: "Pickup is asshole-ish in my view.. generally I think you mostly do use your empathy when you make decisions and you do care about the people you like! Still, I get the impression that you are (lately) very self-centered and super busy with your issues/problems/needs..which might make them appear very important.. maybe more important than the interests of others in some areas.. but I don't know, you seem to have changed a lot. Controlling? Yes, but luckily not to others but yourself.. it feels tight even when I am hearing about all todo's and planning. I am sorry to say but it seems that you are kind of desperate with those structuring things.. which is really sad if I am right. I don't think that the way you try to control yourself can be of any help in a long term perspective.." Me: Would you say I'm a controlling asshole? I got some feedback and am trying to figure out if it holds water. Best Friend J: "I think not. You can sometimes be a person who tries to force his beliefs onto others. Which naturally also has positive sides to it, but I don't know whether that falls under 'controlling asshole'." So far, it seems like I'm not generally a controlling person towards others, in the sense that I try to control their behaviour. But apparently I've been known to force my ideas self-righteously upon others. This is probably related to what I'm looking for in this thread. This thought experiment has made me realise some situations where I do get controlling: when I'm invested in something and take the first step, I desperately control others to follow me and take the same step right the fuck now, or I feel abandoned. I wrote that one down for myself to think about further. But I've asked some more people, we'll see.

Well I'm still not quite sure what I think of @Flatworld Crusades's interpretation, but it's very clear that I was triggered and got unnecessarily defensive. I sent her an apology which I hope she'll accept. I was quite out of line and I feel pretty embarrassed.

@LastThursday I agree. I love honesty.

Wow. That's beautiful! Thank you @Nahm Deep and powerful these words. Will take some time to 'cook' in me. Feels true

I asked some other ex girlfriends and a long time friend who is a psychologist. We'll see Still, I am pretty sure that I didn't give enough information in this thread to determine that I engage in a negative way, or am being controlling. And the "offensive" part is just weird to me, seems like it's personal for her. Also, I don't think offensive is a bad thing. If I'm not offending people at times, I'm not being honest.

@Shin Interesting. It hasn't come up previously when I did an ego feedback workshop which was pretty harsh. But I did learn there to take feedback in as if it were true. Try it on, see if it fits. So I will consider it and ask around a bit. Thank you

I don't know, I really feel like there was anger behind that last message, and I can't trust someone to be helpful if they have a chip on the wrong shoulder That said, I don't like being called controlling, my ex girlfriend used to accuse me of being a controlling asshole.

@Flatworld Crusades I think you are heavily projecting and really missing the mark here. I am baring my soul, expecting to be met with respect and responsibility, apparently to be rewarded with judgment and immaturity. I am willing to look into aspects of me that I share with most people, whereas you seem to be trying to demonize me for what I shared. You abused the power I gave you. You have crossed a line. Please don't respond again.