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I think finding out why it's there is the only way. The cause might be more hidden, more unconscious, more "prior", earlier in life...? There are great breath-work techniques, visualisations, therapy... Have you tried any of those yet? What has helped you in the past? Do you remember (or have a sense of) when you felt anxiety in your gut the first time...?

Addictions don't have much to do with the rationality, as you've well observed. You might wanna talk to @Nahm or check out his videos/ website/ advice.

Because you don't understand how they're trying to help you (yet). I admit there's a bit of a learning curve to it, but they are actually on your side, always guiding you. So you can see what to resolve next, and what to express next. This is why meditation AND shadow work is the key! Enlightenment has nothing to do with abandoning yourself. That's just an idea in the minds of people who don't like themselves very much. It's a short cut. A by-pass. Emotions are only exhausting when unexpressed. It's counter intuitive but give it a try. Write an angry letter to the people who abandoned you, kick box your anger out, put it into a painting, start a journal,... Neuroticism = Keeping things inside for a long time. This is only so in thinking. Emotions and feelings come one at a time, and can be expressed, as it wants to, one at a time. They will then let go of you naturally.

Something struck me about your post: This, together with biting your lips and tongue... Do you find yourself holding back a lot? Do you feel guilty for needing something? For asking attention? For having a problem or an opinion? Were you ever shamed for speaking? Were you told to shut up? To stay small? Just guessing here... Do you have difficulties with boundaries? Expressing yourself? Are you keeping your art private? What I've found over the years is that those behaviours are learnt in specific situations (usually childhood), where we hear or experience something that makes us unsafe. "We don't have enough money for this child", "You're driving me crazy with your demands!" "If you speak to me again like this, I'll leave and never come back!" - Those are all things parents could say that make us decide we can't be our natural selves. We turn towards ourselves to harm us, because we think we might be burdening or upsetting other people by just being how we are. We turn against ourselves because it's our natural instinct as a child to always make the parents right. So we must, in return, be wrong. Later, we might not even remember those situations consciously anymore. And we might act differently as an adult when someone would say the above things. But as a child, you don't have those kinds of defences. As long as those things are unresolved, we act out the pattern that kept us safe back then. The key is to find out why you started biting your lips and how it kept you safe. You need to enter that experience again in order to resolve it. Everything else is fluff and distraction ime.

Flowers of evil Turning into dust In my bare hands Only truth remains

New vid

Reclaiming the exiled artist child

Definitely have a chat with @flowboy. He's perfect for everything you're talking about.

There are days when you just feel... Grown up as fuck. I tried ordering a new macbook today. Mine has served me well, but it’s time for more storage + editing power. I’m super pleased though how well this thing has been working for the past 5 years. Never had any issues with it (besides storage) and I can still sell it for 600,- Pretty nice. But then I couldn’t order it without a credit card. I realised it was time to get a credit card because I don’t want to depend on other people (usually boyfriends) to borrow me credit cards just so I can oder things. Had a good chat with my bank guy and he made sure it arrives soon. Feeling grown up as hell. Oh, the independence of having my own credit card. Or the dependence. Oh well. Can’t wait for ordering the macbook. I just outlined the first course I want to release and I’m more than excited to shoot and edit. I also brought my car to the garage. There was something wrong with my engine. I wasn’t so upset this time though, chatted to some nice people at the garage and they could fix it immediately. It was much cheaper than I thought and they even cleaned my car & some other minor things that have bugged me for some time. How nice! I payed 317€. 3 & 17 are my lucky numbers so there you go When my car broke down yesterday I had a bit of a moment though. Yesterday was pretty intense. The Christmas get-together at work felt like a Covid-survival meetup. I can’t believe what we’ve gone through the past months. It’s insane. On top of that, one of my colleagues was sent to the hospital yesterday because he may have had a stroke. Sitting in my broke down car later that evening I felt dizzy. “What on earth is going on in this world...?” Also got my proof of recovery from Covid, so I guess l'm a free person again? Haha. Well, at least I'm not needing to shove something up my nose before going places. Oh, and I’m suddenly allowed to go to restaurants again and see friends... Oh boy, we live in a two class society Alright, enough with all those practicalities. Time to balance it out by going for a drink with one of my girlfriends. Can’t wait to catch up with her. I met her at the Radical Honesty workshop and we got along immediately. Feeling cute today Still a little bit of coaching stuff to do tomorrow, but other than that - time to relax, warm up my voice, wrap the last presents, get contemplative and still. A new king is born soon. Gloria in excelsus deo! Candles, Christmas smells and Bach fill my apartment. Do your ears a favour people!

What cruel world is this? Nectar of the Gods... It’s the shortest day of the year today. The amount of sleep I need lately is quite high. If left to my own terms, I easily sleep 10 hours a day. I feel stuck. Got up late, don’t really know what to do. There’s many things I could do but I feel heavy. I feel grief. I miss my king. I don’t know what to do... I don’t know where I end. I don’t know where to begin. I can’t get myself to cook. It’s tough to make financial decisions alone. I know I should go outside but it’s almost like I feel unsafe in the world. I retrieve into books. I’m reading 3-4 hours a day at the moment. When trying to think about this whole situation, I can’t. My mind is blank. I have no idea what happened. I can’t project anything into the future. Right now, I just want to feel his warm belly against mine. His deep breath that always calms me down. The timelessness we tap into when our bodies connect. I can’t let my conditioning get in the way of relationships anymore. I need to find a way to deal with my shit, to stand in for my boundaries and grow up in a sense. It’s like I’m in this superstate. On the one hand, business is great, I get tasks done easily, I feel really free and inspired, glad to have some time by myself. On the other hand, nothing makes sense without him in my life. I’d love to be perfectly able to take care of myself well, no matter the circumstances. But that’s just not the reality right now. Or maybe it looks like it from the outside, but there’s hours in my day where I’m completely shut down. Fuck. I need to allow myself to grief this. But how? Burn pictures? Cry? “They say that the world is built for two...” Dear feeling of being frozen in time... I don’t know what to do. I haven’t seen Erik in 1,5 weeks. I know we’ve gotten too close. We said we’d push though this time, spend time with friends and hobbies once both businesses are off the ground... But I think it killed us. We saw it coming. And we did whatever we could to counter the workload... But something still went wrong. We went from partners to business partners. Are we doomed because we have the same interests? Will I never be able to live with someone? I think conditioning is at play from both sides. My life is on fire. And I’m as calm and grounded as never before. It basically doesn’t make sense to write any of this because my mood is changing every 30 seconds. I always want to make sense of situations, and have a plan for the future. But with this, it’s just too early. I'll go back to bed now.

@RendHeaven no joke, I thought about you yesterday. I was thinking that I haven't read from you in a while and I set the intention to reach out to you tomorrow. And then I wake up to this post from you. Haha! Quite epic! Thanks for sharing your story. Bruh. I don't even know what to say. A lot of similarities for sure. I'm guessing we're dealing with similar conditioning here... This though: This made me swallow. I feel that often. That I bring this darkness with me, that is inescapable. He even called it a black pit, that he'll never be able to fill, no matter how hard he tries... And I know, in a sense, that it comes from childhood neglect. And that no person can ever fill up the loneliness I felt when I was little. But I can't help but look for it anyways. I still have a lot to work through in this regard, even though it has gotten a lot better. I know that, one day soon we'll know what happened, why it had to happen and whether this relationship will continue. And no matter the outcome, I trust we'll learn from it beautifully and eventually help other people deal with these situations better... The growth I experience(d) with this man is beyond comparison. And it continues to be so, no matter what the future will hold. This is the only thing I'm sure of at the moment. Anyways, so glad to hear from ya! Big hug!

Yes, great intuition there! To quote Arthur Janov, the founder of Primal Therapy: "The so-called need for self-esteem, for example, is not basic. A loved child feels wanted and worthy. He isn't spending his adult life trying to boost his ego or to feel important. He was important to the only people who counted when he was a baby - his parents. To be unimportant to them means to have 'low self-esteem'. Being unloved makes one feel unattractive, thus the feeling, 'I could not attract them'. The later struggle then is to attract everyone, regardless of whether or not they really matter to one's life. The neurotic need to be reassured constantly about one's looks happens when you don't feel good about yourself. The child bases his worth in every sense on the love of the parents. Feeling loved allows her to base her worth on yourself." And further: "The treatment for low self-esteem is not about trying to feel worthy, nor of ego-boosting exercises. Quite the opposite. Treatment lies in letting oneself feel the devastating feeling of not being wanted or desired. This allows one to see that the inability to love was the parents' problems and was not due to some inherent flaw in the child. This can only happen when one stops struggling against needing constant reassurance, and feels to its depths the lack of love."

Oshos books are great! Also, The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

What does it mean for something "to matter"? In what sense? This is also my experience The littlest things inspire people to take a different direction in life... You have control over what you create, you don't have control over what others think about it, or how they're moved. A girlfriend told me the other day that she's still thinking about that thing I said to her 2 years ago and it really helps her. To me, it was just a random piece of information at that time. Other times, I think I'm having great insights and it just doesn't stick with anyone else. I think the key is to enjoy what you're doing and not make it dependent on the response you get from the outside. As in: "If you couldn't tell anyone about what you're doing, what would you do?" Also, the youtube documentation is a great tip! I love watching people who are passionate about something, anything.

This is a pretty raw vlog. Funny I decided to film the day before everything went downhill Ah, the irony...

So much happened in the past 48 hours. It’s good to be back into writing. When we decided to split, I felt both relieved and in terror. This relationship was the only thing I was sure of in my life. I have no idea what the next months will bring in terms of work, my family, my friends, my health, money... But I knew this relationship was meant to be. I saw myself getting old with this man. I saw us having children who run through the forest to play and learn... I saw our love becoming deeper and deeper every year. The possibility of this being over for good really pulled the carpet out under my feet. In an attempt to understand what happened I talked to a work colleague today. She just spent 3 weeks in quarantine with her husband and her two kids and she could relate completely. “My husband works in HR at a bank. Just seeing him doing his work on the kitchen table, him calling people,... That whole vibe... I don’t know, I just felt so turned off. Yesterday morning I yelled at him, telling him he should stop treating me like a work colleague.” A few hours later I’m visiting my brother and his wife. They’re in the healthiest marriage I’ve personally witnessed, and they agree: A quarantine in tough. However, my sister in law said “That’s funny that you feel so turned off and like you don’t want to be around him when he works. Because I actually fell in love with your brother when I saw him work. And still to this day, every time I catch him working around the farm... I fall in love with him a little more.” He agrees. “Sometimes I just go and watch her sow sew. I love it.” Hm. So they don’t have that. This made me think. Is it the intense business vibe that’s such a turn off? Or because it’s not an actual, genuine passion with no agenda? This explanation would kind of fit the insight I had a few days ago. I did a writing process, which I didn’t finish. I don’t think I should share it here, but it was basically about work-place egos, about proving yourself, rather than helping people and being genuinely creative, about striving for a better life without realising that all we need is already here. Maybe I’ll share it one day. Anyway, this is a potential angle. But there are others as well. Every time I get out of a relationship I feel this epiphany, this sense of “Ohh! I’m me! And I love it!” Gosh. I can’t believe I keep “loosing myself” in relationships. Why is it so tough for me to keep in touch with myself when I’m in a relationship? Why is it that, as the months go by, my life turns into the one my partner wants to live and i seem to forget about all the things I love and find important? Why am I so hyper focused on the other person, crashing him through a growth spurt like my life depends on it, just to realise: This is not the life I wanna live? This always results in me being incredibly relieved when I’m finally alone. Or maybe it's not that bad and I'm blowing it out of proportion. Still... I’m so bad at keeping some attention on my end, that my ratio of spending time with people vs being alone should probably be 5% vs 95%. It’s like someone said in an INFJ video “You really don't need people. And at the same time you really need people.” I just can’t fucking help but love them, be there for them, help them and do whatever I can to make their life the way they want. Ok, time to stop finding out what happened. Sure, there’s a million ways to think about what happened. Many angles, many stories... But I think there’s nothing to gain there. Let’s look into the future. I feel incredibly grounded. Talking to one of my girlfriends yesterday she said “I’m not worried at all. I’ve rarely experienced you so calm, so in touch with yourself. It’s kind of beautiful to see.” I’ve done so many great things for myself too. I met up with my girlfriends, danced, talked to my primal therapist, wrote, read, played piano... And I have a big list of things I still wanna do in this month that we’re taking to ourselves: Redecorate my apartment, go to the hair dresser, buy some new clothes, print some pictures & journal entries, write poetry, etc. But I also went out and bought a pack of cigarettes. I smoked 3 of them so far and I can really feel it in my lungs. I hate that I can’t sing as well and high as usually. I really want to stop this. I want nothing more than to sing beautiful songs under the Christmas tree next week. And it really freaks me out to hear my voice cracking like this. Yet... I feel like I’m finding my way back to myself quickly. That’s all that really matters. I need to learn to become my home base. And the more time we spend apart, the less I know what he’s doing exactly... The more positive I feel towards him.

@Gregory1 @Myioko I really appreciate both of you! Thanks for jumping in here and leaving those thoughtful comments.

I can relate a little, yeah. I think it's ok to acknowledge to yourself that you don't enjoy your work that much (anymore). It's super important though to work on something you're passionate about, or on a career switch. So you know you have a way out. I personally solve it by having "work" days and "creative" days, where I work on my own things. I mean hey, you're not alone. Only 11% of working people really enjoy their jobs. Maybe you can find something you enjoy about it though. Or a way to make it more enjoyable for you. I remember working at a bakery for a few months and I didn't really enjoy the work in and of itself. But I saw it as an opportunity to analyse people's moods from day to day. I built a connection. I was at awe seeing what a smile could do to people. Or what not getting their favourite sandwich does to them. Breathtaking psychological studies you can conduct in a bakery, I'm telling you. Then I found this video later, and realised, this is what I did. Maybe it helps you too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJiznzUJGM&t=96s

I don't think certification is very important. Just think of a way to make meditation accessible / fun for people. Maybe you could make guided meditation videos, an app, write a book or develop a method for organisations on how to bring meditation into their daily work. The possibilities are endless. I would ask myself "What's keeping people from enjoying meditation?" And then solve that problem.

Hey, I'd first recommend doing Leo's LP course to find out exactly what you're passionate about. It will take you a few months to get through it, but if you take the course seriously, it will really provide you a roadmap for what to do next, what to buy, etc. It's also great since it's relatively cheap. Also, there are great courses/coaches who offer both coaching + business for the same price, or cheaper. Coaching is a lot about knowing what you want & then just a lot of action taking. Trying things out, making it better,... Imo, the course you'll choose will not make a huge difference. There's a bunch of great courses out there teaching you marketing or how to structure talking to clients. But that's all secondary imo. If you're aligned with your passion, you'll have a ton of energy to overcome any block that comes your way. Hence my recommendation to do the LP course first. Being clear about what you want will get you extremely far.

@ThinAir maybe?

9pm. Coming home to an empty apartment. I've spent the last 30 hours at work. With half of my colleagues in quarantine, everyone's struggling to keep the place running. And I can't turn my back on them now. This community is my family. And still, driving home in my car right now I felt like I'm about to pass out. I was so checked out that I forgot where I was for a moment. And that on the road that I'm taking almost daily. Random thoughts flashing through my head. "Your colleague will be mad that you didn't help him better." "I still have to get those candles for my mom." "How am I gonna manage all the appointments I have tomorrow?" "Oh God, I need to wash my hair." "My back hurts." "I should really go dancing again" "I think there's no food at home" It all doesn't make sense. On top of that, Erik and I are in the biggest crisis we've ever had in our relationship. After almost one year of being together, this could be it. Or not. I don't know. But this seems like a serious death portal. I don't know when I'm gonna see him again. We need some distance, that's for sure. But it feels like we've accidentally caused some irreversible damage to our connection. "I feel like a cat that has been stroked too many times", he said. We're not having sex. I'm freaking out on Sunday, telling him I can't do this anymore. He can barely look at me. It's disgusting. I feel disgusting. I don't feel admired, wanted or appreciated. I just want him out. So bad. And so he does. Finally. But this is going beyond some "pulling-away" - cycle. This is serious shit. I'm actually happy that he left. I feel like I'm providing my own masculine now, in a healthy way. I don't feel attracted to him, I don't feel owned. I feel like I have no boyfriend. But not in a reactive or hurt way. Just as a fact. It feels like we're two sheets of ice in the middle of the ocean, drifting apart. Dead for each other. Is this it? It feels like we accidentally killed something that is beyond restore. Without even really realising it. We've gone through a lot in the past, but we somehow got blindsided here. Quarantine, business stuff, conditioning... Something happened. He just feels like someone I know now. The crazy femininity that he usually triggers in me... Gone. Is this something some time apart can fix? I'm not sure. But we definitely need it. It's difficult to restore something when it's not even clear to us what happened. I still can't put my finger on the actual problem... What happened? Anyways. I'm not sure if work is the thing that is killing me right now, or the thing that's keeping me alive. I feel like I'm being crushed either way. I'm frozen in time. Juggling the coaching business on the side with videos, calls, e-mails, and legal stuff to figure out, calculating finances... I don't even know how I'm doing what I'm doing right now to be honest. Yet I have endless energy for my clients. I love figuring things out with them. Tells me I'm on the right track. I'm also gonna get more coaching myself. So much pain was triggered in the past weeks. I'm basically alternating between fierce independence and "Nobody loves me. Nobody wants to spend time with me." Definitely more to be healed there. I'm gonna do more primal therapy. Gosh, it's December 15th. Christmas used to be my time. I got in the mood 2 months up front. Singing Christmas songs in choirs, going to the forest with my dad to pick a tree, baking cookies, making thoughtful gifts... None of that this year. One week to go and there's no tree, no singing... gifts from amazon. Lol. What happened? But writing saves me every time. I don't know how, but it really does. Probably the whole "expression is key" - thing the kids keep raving about these days.

Video this week for any beginner coaches out there

Having no secrets.

Yes, this is a very "normal" reaction to trauma. What you described is you responding to the past, not to the present. Those feelings still linger inside of you, unprocessed... And they're acting up. Asking you to do something with it. It's already a great step that you're aware of where it's coming from. The next step is grieving and working through what happened to you. Grieving the "original event", letting out your anger and sadness about it. There are some great visualisations about that. I'll see if I can find something useful on youtube and I'll pm you. Or you could find a friend, a mentor, a therapist or someone who holds space for you while you go through the event again. That, in my experience, IS KEY! I've tried a lot of talk therapy and "limiting beliefs exercises", but nothing really made a difference in the end. Changing how you interpret the situation is not gonna be a long term solution ime. It's not getting to the "root". Emotional hurt has nothing to do whatsoever with cognition. Understanding why you feel a certain way doesn't change how you feel. Dealing with an issue on an emotional level will cut the time it "bothers" you by a lot. When you then see clearly where these limiting beliefs are coming from, they'll evaporate for the most part.