TheCloud

Your ultimate deceiver is you, the one who finds self-centered reasons to believe in lies. Humans instinctively prioritize survival, so when self-interest conflicts with truth, we are naturally more inclined toward defending the former.

It's unsurprising that life doesn't end until you die.

Carbs are not an essential dietary element. As long as you eat fat and protein, any carbohydrates you need can be created from gluconeogenesis of amino acids (protein) in your liver. Also, pork fat isn't necessarily unhealthy, it's just fatty. That just means that a little of it has a lot of calories when compared to carbohydrates. For me, a low-carb diet (I try to stay under 30g of carbs a day, not including fiber) does wonders for my health and well-being. My energy is higher and more consistent through the day, as is my mental clarity. You do not want to yo-yo between a low-carb and high-carb diet, though, because your body goes through an adjustment period in both directions and you'll end up making yourself sick. So it's something you have to kind of commit to, and it is very restrictive. Even if you don't go low-carb, I still recommend you try to find alternatives for the least healthy aspects of your diet. For example, can you cut out the frosting on the cake and still satisfy your craving? Can you replace some of the white flour with whole wheat or oatmeal? There are lots of artificial sweeteners on the market, and while people are wary of ones like aspartame (which I personally dislike as well), you are allowed to use your own judgement and find out for yourself. Don't just consider the health-effects of the sweetener, consider the health effects of what it is replacing: sugar. Other than alcohol, sugar is probably the least healthy way to get your calories, and anything that can help you reduce or eliminate it is worth considering. Don't aim for perfection; aim for something better that works with your body and mind, something you can live with for a long time. Try to find a rotation of acceptable foods that satisfy your specific cravings, then find ways to compensate for the deficiencies. Also, supplement electrolytes: potassium, calcium, magnesium. Unless you have kidney issues, there's no risk to it, it's inexpensive, and you almost certainly are out of balance compared to your dietary sodium intake.

Are you apprehensive about your ability to connect with your parents in the event of a tragedy?

That's not a productive discussion, that's me being one-sidedly dictated to. I get the message that you're uninterested in what further I might have to say. Peace, I guess?

@mr_engineer If I've come across as being unwilling to listen to reason, that would be my mistake. I do acknowledge that you have some insights I think are keen and worth developing on. If I've said something inflammatory or in an inflammatory way, beyond conveying my opinion and experience, I hope that you will highlight that for me. I would like to convey a willingness to learn from you in a mutually constructive discussion.

To me, it sounds as if your trace of victim mentality is the idea that you're an (equal) victim of the survival game. You're assuming the survival game is real, so you have no compunctions if you drag others into it. Perhaps your next step could be to develop your humility and consideration for others. If someone is stuck in the survival game, help them get out of it; in the wake of your efforts, you might find yourself falling out of the survival game as well. I'm not intending to accuse you of arrogance or selfishness; it's only that your survival mentality may be fostering a certain mindset. If you develop traits opposite of that mindset, you might find something new.

In terms of diet, I find the key is to find the flavors and textures that are connected to my cravings. For example, crispy, or sweet, or fresh. Then find a nutritious or at least benign source for that sensation. For example, on a low-carb diet, pork rinds can provide the crunchy sensation that would otherwise be satiated with potato chips. So cake might be "soft" and "sweet". You don't necessarily need to fulfill both these cravings with one food; you could find something healthy that's soft, and something else healthy that's sweet, and together those foods replace the less healthy cake.

I would say the same to women. Women who cling to men (or children) to solve their own loneliness are just digging their own graves. That's how battered wives and single mothers and helicopter parents happen. It's a lot worse than ending up an incel. Sure, women have power over men, but it's a soft power. It's the power of men's desire for them. If a man doesn't want them, that power goes away, and there's not much they can do. They don't have the force to fall back on that men do, or at least they aren't as enabled to use force as men are, just as men are not brought up to use the power of appeal the way women are. Sure, you might not hit a woman, but you know you could, and so does she. Where there's power, there's someone who fears it, and she can fear violence just as surely as you might fear rejection. Some women might use a "first strike wins" mentality and undercut you by calling you a creep. So yes, everyone has to resolve their own deep-seated loneliness. It's not a gendered issue.

I've never tried it on psychs, but I don't see any reason not to. I can only imagine that anything that helps your consciousness to flow more freely would be of assistance. The only issue I can foresee is that the conversation might go out of control, with you getting into an argument between your selves that spirals downward if you lack the presence of mind to mediate the conflict. You would know better than me if this is an issue you might have. Even without psychs, if you're persistent and considerate, you can eventually access the locked-up parts of yourself. You don't need to be specific about who exactly you're accessing. If it helps, speak out loud, or speak into a mirror, or use a totem like a sock-puppet or something to represent the other side. You can be like, "Hey, Emotions, can you come out and speak to me?" As you say, your emotions might be so locked up that they don't come out right away. They're so used to being incarcerated that they don't have the words to respond to you yet. So you keep coaxing them, "Hey, Emotions, I'm really listening this time, so even if it's hurtful, I want you to come out and say something." If it feels like someone is getting in the way, talk to them instead. "Hey, Fear, I'm trying to access my Emotions, but it seems like you really hate that. Can we work something out?" Fear isn't your enemy, she's just trying to keep you safe, so if you avoid abusive language or force and peacefully negotiate, you will eventually work something out. Keep trying like this until you find someone to talk to. There will be a lot of unintegrated entities inside you, so you don't have to look for a specific one. Just talk to the one who is easiest to converse with. If you're able to converse, but the conversation always devolves into a dispute, try using "Nonviolent Communication" (NVC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication#Overview https://www.cnvc.org/learn/what-is-nvc It's a bit awkward and formulaic, but it will help you if are really having trouble getting along with yourself. Edit: Sometimes, it might be your mental model of others that's interfering, such as your mother or father. Remember, these mental models are just pretending to be the person in question, maybe showing up as a nagging voice in your head or some such. They aren't the real person, they're actually you, so you might have to remind them of that.

Your emotional needs, including loneliness, are your own to meet. What you're trying to accomplish using women is your issue. It's not that women can help other men with their loneliness, but they can't help you; it's that no one can really help you against your own emotions. Sure, you can put off dealing with your loneliness if you find a woman to distract you, but if your loneliness is deep and abiding, it will creep back in no matter what she does for you. In fact, it will come back worse than ever. Then you're in a situation where you blame her for what she won't (can't) help you with. I know it sounds like crappy advice, telling a person who's already lonely that they are in it alone. That's just a hurdle anyone and everyone has to mount in order to actualize themselves. It's what you have to overcome to become a fountain of abundance, rather than a black hole of need. Otherwise, I think your suggestion that we accept criticism too easily is on point. I think it's a toxic side-effect of deeply unprocessed loneliness. People become so desperate for a solution that they'll helplessly accept anything other people suggest, even things they logically know are unreasonable, if only it means that someone will finally be with them. This doesn't lead to the loneliness going away, it just leads to accumulated damage. I don't know about your methods for dealing with it, but certainly accepting unfounded or bad-faith criticism is a real problem.

It's crazy how acceptable bad-faith criticism becomes in peoples' minds. Stuff that essentially amounts to, "You suck, stop trying." Even for myself, though I try never to treat others in that way, I find myself accepting it as normal reality that others might treat me in that way. To be clear, if someone treats other people that way, they are abusive. Accepting abuse becomes normalized, for people who know better than to abuse others. It's really silly and tragic.

What your sisters say about your cousin behind his back is a matter between them and him. You interfering without a plan is what created the current situation. It's not necessarily that you're wrong, but rather that you're naive. It's generally not your job to raise the consciousness level of a relationship that isn't your own, and it's generally understood that what is said behind someone's back is kept behind their back. That's the default. If you refuse to entertain that, then you'd best make it clear that you are allergic to gossip and will leak like a sieve. If you don't make that clear, then you just come across as an unreliable snitch. Some of your relationships will take a hit; gossip is ridiculously common, and not just among women. Even so, it may be an admirable stance to take. Gossip reliably lowers the quality of peoples' relationships.

I'm not sure if it has a formal name, but what I recommend to you is a form of self-talk therapy. If you've ever imagined having a conversation with someone who wasn't present, then it's something you can do. You answered your own question; you're afraid. I suspect that there are so many unknown aspects of yourself hidden away, including the crazy psychotic spirit, that your main ego made the executive decision to turn off some of your functions in order to protect you from accessing those potentially disruptive parts of yourself. If you want your emotions back, you're going to need to actively seek out those parts you've been distancing yourself from, and negotiating coexistence with them. The therapy is simple, although it does take practice. You simply act out the parts of both sides of a conversation with yourself. For example, you could have a conversation between the main normal you, and the crazy psychotic spirit you. The two may have different and contradictory goals, but they will for the most part have a prime interest in your well-being. For example: Normal You (n): Hey, I'm having trouble feeling my emotions. Crazy You (c): That's because you locked me up! n: You're a huge trouble-maker! c: Then you're not in trouble now? n: I'm definitely still in trouble, even without you. c: Then stop being so uptight. n: I can't just do that. I need to know that you're going to coexist with all the parts of me that have already been accepted. c: Then you're going to have to help me out with that, because I don't know what needs to happen for me to coexist. The conversation can go somewhat like that. It's very common for both sides to have to make concessions, and the goal is always coexistence and integration between the two parts. The more parts of yourself you unlock and integrate with, the more your natural emotions should return to you. Even if you're uninterested the self-talk therapy, do recognize that you are afraid, and make efforts to face that fear.

Do you want help? Whether or not what you say is true, I think you wish it wasn't and that someone could assist you. If you attack your rescuer/s, your fate is one driven not by outside forces, but by your own behavior.

You'll likely be too sad to worry about that if the time comes, and your remaining parent will likely be too sad to care if you're awkward. If you're obsessing without purpose and you can't stop, that's a personal issue that you ought to look into.

That doesn't sound abnormal. Humans are evolved for physical contact, platonic and sexual. It's not something you're going to think your way out of. Is there a problem?

What you describe sounds like an emotion of unresolved loneliness. This kind of loneliness cannot truly be fulfilled outside yourself, neither by surrounding yourself with the right people, nor by rejecting the wrong ones. It's an emotion that no longer has eyes to see your present situation, so it will never know that you're with wonderful people, or people who have changed for the better. This kind of emotion can spawn all kinds of other crazy emotions, such as hatred and guilt and jealousy, and all kinds of self-defeating choices that come with those emotions. You already recognize the loneliness inside you; look at how desperate you are to belong. Do you really think that there is a person or people somewhere you need to be with in order to resolve your desperation? No, there is no such perfect existence. There is no way to cut off your loneliness without cutting off your own neck; it's a part of you, more even than your hands or feet. Resolution comes through accepting your experience, recognizing all the harm you've caused yourself, and the misguided desperation of your childhood self to cut off the loneliness entirely. Learn how to guide, accept, coexist with, and ultimately integrate with that childhood self who was misled by unbearable loneliness. You'll never find resolution by looking to your family, and you won't even really find it in your therapy group. It's something that only exists through self-exploration.

What emotions is the anger on top of? Repressed emotions come in layers; you're chronically angry because you're frustrated because you're jealous because you're lonely. The deeper the emotion, the older and more embedded and more broadly-affecting it is.

You might be overemphasizing the necessity of dating and sex. You are complete. You don't need some physical connection with another body to be whole. Sure, sex can be great and fulfilling and memorable. So can seeing the Grand Canyon. So can an LSD trip. So can achieving a goal. So can making a friend. Sex can also be a quagmire. Don't start a history of toxic relationships with broken people, or incel desperation. Heal yourself. Society judges sex (and reproduction) to be so much more important than it is, and in doing so the true values of sex are greatly undermined. All this judgement has done is creating generations of "incomplete" people who somehow haven't been having enough sex, or the right sex, or sex with the right people, or enough sex that makes babies. It's ridiculous, and you'd do well to be rid of it, because it's just one more obstacle to you being "enough". Of course, having read about some of your history in a different thread, I can understand how you desperately want to move on with your life in a positive direction after having had your way forward being impeded and misdirected for so much time. Naturally, you want to have sex right away, early and often. First lesson; everything worthwhile takes more time than you want to give it. If you have a lot of fat and want to lose weight, it can take months of rarely having a satisfying meal. If you want to start a business, it can mean years of living near poverty and/or working sweatshop hours. So it goes for any worthwhile endeavor. That includes healing yourself, or finding sexual contentment. It's a long-term commitment, and until you've done it, there are going to be a lot of hindrances. Just as a person with a lot of fat won't be lighter until that fat is gone, just as a person starting a business won't be wealthy until their business wins customers, a person who's healing their mind won't have a harmonious spirit until they've made themselves right. The results come after the effort. You have to be stubborn as hell and keep at it. It maybe isn't what you want to hear, that a satisfying sexual encounter may be months or years in the future. Or, it might not be. It's possible that if you can see with clear eyes, that you'll have a fateful encounter sooner or later, long before you've healed on the whole. It's not as if life stops when you're unwell. But opportunity isn't something that can be recognized through a haze of self-recrimination. You need some kind of clarity.

@trenton I don't know you in person, but from what you say, I think of you as being among the better possible outcomes for your situation. This is because, despite all the pain and abuse in your past, done both to you and by you, you have developed and retained the most important thing; the capacity to self-reflect. Usually, the greater a person's misdeeds, the greater the lengths they will go to to deny them and deny their victims. Self-reflection becomes impossible, because they could never bear to see what is there to be reflected. Think of your father, and what he would have had to go through to look into the mirror and realize his wrongs. Once someone reaches the point where they can't self-reflect, where it's so painful to look in the mirror that they forget they even can, their bottom line deteriorates. Adding to the wrongs becomes easier, and admitting them becomes harder. That's one reason that self-reflection is so vital. It's the only way up, and it works no matter how deep you've gone. In this situation where you have so much personal turmoil, and so many traumas, I recommend you try to focus on one thing at a time. The most painful traumas are often the ones we inflict on ourselves through our wrongdoing, so figuring how you should make amends to those you've wronged (if the victim wants your amends, and doesn't want you to just leave them alone) is a great place to start. Remember, you aren't always the only one in the wrong; many situations have multiple contributing factors and individuals. For example, the felonies you committed under your father's guidance; you might have to admit some responsibility, but you are by no means the only responsible party. The part you played may end up being surprisingly small and easily amendable. In other situations, two people wrong each other at roughly the same time. It still matters whether you were first or second, but in neither case are you the only one. This isn't where you have to start. Any trauma is worth resolving, and every trauma must eventually find resolution if you want to see your way through all this. It's a skill set you will not regret developing. It's a form of empathy and self-compassion.

I was in college at the time. I had been reading Ayn Rand at the time, whose main premise is selfishness, and was contemplating how to achieve pinnacle selfishness, when the division between actions taken for "self" and for "others" became so blurry when closely examined. It was a normal day, except for some reason the word "is" kept bouncing around my head. My mouth kept wanting to say sentences with "is" in them, but I also couldn't complete those sentences. I went on a walk, then sat down to meditate. After a while I saw my body floating in a field of pure white. "Is this me?" No, I'm not my body, I could lose an arm and still be me. So my body dissolved, leaving only a brain and spinal cord. But that was still my body. So that dissolved too, leaving just white. That's when I realized that "I" is actually "IS". There are no objects and no nouns, only actions and verbs. It's impossible to describe in a language fully dependent on nouns, but ISing is the only existence I have, and actions are timeless. They only exist in the present, and never extend back or forward beyond that. The act of existing, of ISing, is the only existence anything ever has. Anything that does not act as itself, is not. This also dissolves the dispute between "self" and "other", because neither are anything. It's not exactly a God realization, but an IS realization. I started laughing, and couldn't stop giggling for about an hour afterward. From then on, it was tough, though. I had no framework to actualize this realization in my life, so for a few years after that, I was groundless and bitter until I started figuring things out.

"A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given" Bible verse taken a bit out of context :-P

@Sugarcoat It's how I pick up chicks. It's a great method that should start working in the next hundred years or so. I'm going to live really long because I'm so enlightened, you know. Actually, the only reason I'm going to live so long is so I can pick up more chicks. That's all enlightenment really is, is picking up chicks. You're not into hot bods or interesting conversation, right? All women want is a dude who's super-enlightened and better than everyone else.

That's only half-true. The Truth is both very hard and very easy, because it's Everything. It's your ego that wants to say it's "just hard" or "just easy" and lock it down. If you stop meditation and Truth-seeking and go full orange for a while, and end up finding the Truth, then how can it be said that you ever left the spiritual path? Edit: I'm not spiritually enlightened, so take this with a proverbial grain of salt.