Judy2

i haven't fully experienced either but have had glimpses of both. in my understanding, the two are quite distinct. you don't "need" one to experience the other. during an OBE you still experience yourself as a separate entity travelling through non-physical dimensions. but there can also be experiences of unity/God realisations occurring during these journeys. God realisation is the dissolution of the sense of a separate self (basically you flip inside out and become everything). leaving the physical body is not necessary; rather, God realisation is a metaphysical recontextualisation of what it means to be/have a body in the first place. the body can still be here as part of your consciousness, no problem with that. your visual field doesn't have to change for God realisation to occur, either - of course it can, but that's not the core of it.

my father is also overweight. but he also has very questionable views on nutrition. my brother is ripped, though. dentists have literally told me that i should consider having surgery for my jaw because it's so narrow. so i'm not making that up:) i know you don't believe me but i have direct experience of being at different BMI ranges and how people treat me differently in relation to it. sure, BMI ~11-14 maybe isn't perceived as that attractive (though there was one thirty-something-year-old dude messaging me recently on the basis of Instagram pictures from many years ago when i was an anorexic minor and said he wanted to meet me? don't know what's up with that but it's creepy; and several people have said i looked so cute when i was emaciated - yourself included). but the real problem is i've had direct experience of being maybe BMI 22ish vs BMI 17 or 18, and at 17/18 i wasn't healthy at all, but unfortunately, that's the kind of skinny that people can still think of as healthy, and that's also when i got more attention than i ever did at healthier BMIs (where i also felt more stable with my behaviour independent of the BMI charts). that's incredibly painful to deal with.

my mum and grandma are both overweight and i worry a little bit that it's in my genes (ugh). but my mum was very skinny when she was younger, it's just that menopause hit her bad. so i wonder what habits i can pick up now to epigenetically prevent this kind of fate....exercising a lot is the only solution i've come up with so far. my idea is i'll get so used to it that i'll still want to exercise a lot when i'm 50, and then menopause won't be so tough on me. if anyone can think of something else, those tips are very welcome, though.

sessions with my therapist are just so weird. i can't tell if it's because he does a good job, better than therapists i've had before, or if it's simply weird and not necessarily good. at the beginning of every session, he asks what my wishes or goals are. we pick a topic, and then he ask three or four times as we talk what it's like for me to talk about a certain topic, and urges me to give a name to the emotion. usually there is no emotion other than amusement and smiles, and i try really hard to give a proper answer but all that ever comes to mind is "it's fine". then we just circle around different topics and he asks a lot about how certain things connect to my past, and basically it's always the same questions on repeat...and it all just feels so fake to talk things through? like so unnecessary, and it doesn't do much other than make me feel super awkward giving interviews about myself that don't do anything. i hate talking about myself in that kind of setting, it feels so wrong. i feel so stupid trying to play along with that game and just speak about random associations forming in my head, and most of the time i don't feel anything anyway. we've never once come up with a solution, either. it's simply such an odd game when he pretends to care and i answer mechanically, but he doesn't actually care and only says all those things because he thinks they'll shift something inside me, which they usually don't.

i could also sit at home all day and be miserable. Italy would have been an option, too, but my Italian got a bit rusty and i'd like to take a class to get back into it before i book a trip there. in the UK, i can speak English, i know my way around London, but i've never travelled further up north, even though the Lake District and Scotland are on my personal bucket list. there's nature and beautiful architecture all over the country and, depending on where you go, the ocean. this is also the reward trip i had promised myself to go on for finishing my undergraduate degree, since that was quite hard for me mentally.....and i need to get out for a while and explore. i think that will be good for my mind. besides, i live close to an airport now, so i'm primed to want to pollute the environment every time i look up at the sky.

(:

really looking forward to it now!

@integral thank you!

....these past few days, i've finally brought up the courage to book my summer holiday....i'm going to England and Scotland, and i've started looking forward to it immensely. originally, i had thought that i would go only as far up north as Edinburgh, but then i realised the Highlands are even further north. hadn't booked my flight back anyway, and in an impulsive moment i decided that i should travel as far as Inverness. scary, and this feels very wrong and impulsive, but i'm also really excited now. i wrote a paper about a Scottish novel (Sunset Song) a couple of years ago, and now i've had this idea that i could go to Aberdeen, too, and see the villages where the novel is set.

would you mind sharing what company/organisation she works for?

@Joseph Maynor so i have to start making snacks for my grandchildren today, i assume. and try to be healthy and happy... shoot.

@Natasha Tori Maru(: i can't wait to be 80 just chill all day and make snacks for my grandchildren.

@Majedi'll keep that in mind:) thanks.

okay, agreed:) that sounds nice.

yeah i get what you mean:)

isn't that the worst feeling lol? but i appreciate the advice:) i'll try to be more relaxed about it.

@Majedokay cool:) could you maybe give an example?

yes. i mean it's just a lot of pressure to have to decide now what specific degrees to invest my time into, which will then be the basis for the rest of my life and determine how i'll spend my time every day and who i'll be, essentially. for many careers, there are very specific rules and it's not as easy to switch once you have chosen one path.

no, i don't want to start a business. generally speaking, the safety of being employed seems appealing.

i'm in an oddly good mood today. almost happy. it's beyond me how my mood keeps swinging from one extreme to the other and right back, but maybe i shouldn't question that and just let myself be happy. :). for God's sake, just this one time.

i have a degree in English literature and while i did feel passionate about it during my studies, i also found that there are some limitations in the kind of social impact you can have on the world if all you do is analyse century-year-old books and write papers about fictional characters (even if these individuals reflect social and cultural trends). what is your take on this? if you consider the model Ikigai (you can google that briefly if you don't know what i am talking about), you could also say that some elements aren't covered with a career in literature. the value you provide for others, and maybe the dimension of whether people are willing to pay you for what you do. of course, universities are willing to pay, but what is the higher goal of your research and teaching? i would be really curious to hear how you feel about that:)

oh, you don't know the kinds of books people read these days:) but i get your point.

@Schizophonia i don't know how to explain why it can be problematic but there are complex reasons. sometimes it's like switching addictions when they still talk about food 24/7. this is not the case with every creator, but with some it's pretty evident. personally, i'm too scared to give a career in social media a try anyway. i don't have to try it to know my brain wouldn't handle it well to be praised and loved on the one hand and criticised and attacked, perhaps on a very personal level, on the other. and just the act of choosing what others get to see and what they don't see, essentially manipulating the picture they have of me and marketing myself....idk it's not for me. that being said, i have considered writing a book to share about my experiences, but i never get very far when trying to write it. i'm kind of recovered but in many, many ways, i still feel so un-recovered and vulnerable. that's a weird place to be in, and it makes it hard to talk about my past. maybe cause i'd force myself to come up with some conclusion to put to all of it, when there is none, and i cannot exactly make sense of any of it, nor myself. i think a lot of my present struggles have to do with wanting to live up to how lucky i was surviving that. maybe i should have held onto anorexia, because i'm not exactly happy now, either. maybe i should have died, when i was so close to it. i don't exactly see how me dramatically "surviving" something so deep was important when i look at my life today. doesn't help that i have ginormous expectations to be or become something special because i can always tell myself where i came from. i can always compare myself to the version of me that i was when i was still in school and felt like i didn't even exist on the same dimension of body types as my peers because underweight was all i was. maybe that's the challenge, too. you would think that life gets easier with recovery. for me, it's at least just as messy, if not more, and i hate that. i'm not really proud enough of myself to want to put myself out there and make myself a target for people's criticism, projections, and insecurities.

@Schizophoniai think that kind of "look i'm recovered now"-content can be problematic and triggering for both the creators and the audience, tbh.

@ryank940maybe if you wash your brown rice really well, soak it for an hour, then wash it again, this might help? brown rice takes a long time to cook, anyway, so the soaking would also reduce the cooking time.