TheCloud

I started doing IFS precisely to avoid having to find someone to help me. Not that there's anything wrong with therapy, it's just that my emotions don't work on a weekly schedule, so I need something that works when I need it. It sounds as if you have a passing familiarity with IFS Parts work already. How familiar are you, and what do you get hung up on when you're doing it?

There is a treatment called Internal Family Systems (IFS) that I find helpful for these kinds of issues. I won't bore you with the details, but it's a method that has enabled me to directly address my traumas almost as if they were separate people. I can literally converse with them, and although they aren't always cooperative, one of the fundamental tenets of the system is that there are no bad parts of ourselves, only parts who are misunderstood. Ideally, if you were to use IFS, you would be able to directly converse with the younger version of you who had that horrible experience, to console and empower him to adopt a new perspective on his suffering. It's work that requires a lot of patience and consideration for yourself, because it's not unlike working with truly uncooperative little children at times, but for me it yields consistent and reliable results.

Alan Watts "The Book (on the taboo against knowing who you are)". He literally wrote it as a book one would slip to someone entering adulthood.

@trenton How does your PTSD manifest? Is it like a panic attack, or reliving the trauma?

Seconded. Denied access to healthy physical intimacy, people have a tendency to end up in a bad place psychologically. The desperation for such a thing can easily warp a person's personality. and while I have no formal evidence of such, I strongly suspect that evolution has created fail-safes to ensure reproduction in cases where healthy opportunities are lacking. This psychological switch changes the dynamic from one of connecting with the opposite sex to one of using the opposite sex, and once switched, it can be very difficult to switch back. In men, I believe this can lead to an opportunistic, dominating, and even predatory mindset, because evolution doesn't know the difference between sex and rape and everything in between when it comes to reproduction. For a modern man trying to live an enlightened or at least lawful life, this is a torturous internal conflict. Desperation has men looking for weak vulnerable women rather than appealing to strong stable ones. The worst part of it is that an opportunistic mindset fosters behavior that precludes the possibility of healthy sexual connection with strong stable women, so even "successful" sexual encounters go awry since it was achieved with the wrong mindset and probably the wrong woman, which further reinforces the desperation that led to the conflict in the first place. This is just a hypothesis of mine, and I haven't worked out how it works in women. I suspect something to do with fawning and codependence, since rape is a much less viable option for the prehistoric (or not) woman for multiple reasons. Anyway, the upshot is that I believe healthy sexual encounters are strong reinforcers for a healthy mind and body, and without those reinforcers, a chaotic mindset is hard to avoid.

I was the poster :-) And I wasn't disagreeing with you, or rather I wasn't arguing one way or the other. I should have started with stating that I tentatively agree with everything you had to say about this forum and the way Leo has influenced it. I typically avoid taking such bold stances because I find such arguments have a way of being flawed or incomplete, but that also does lend me a tendency to be wishy-washy and insecure. Part of the reason behind my question on what you do when you end up being wrong is because I'm curious about how one can intelligently manage such boldness and confidence.

I can feel the heat from that, even though it's not directed at me. You clearly put a lot of genuine effort into making proper arguments, but that's exactly why you have to be aware of the possibility that you missed or misunderstood something. Yet you still come forward with such boldness. How do you handle being wrong, procedurally and/or emotionally?

I was a little frightened how exactly this matches my own rules of behavior that I aspire to. I've never written them out this way, but every single one of those rules is one I'm clearly following myself. It feels weird seeing them listed this way. I'm a social idiot, so it's helpful for me to have socially conscious people like you around to explain what behaviors mean in a broader context. My social intelligence is just sufficient enough that things can be explained to me, but I'm simply incapable of cultivating and maintaining a persona the way you describe yourself as doing. Since I've already been inspired to respond, and the OP has expressed no clear motives on what kind of responses she's hoping for, I'll just spitball whatever I think of. Even though I'm following the same rules, my motives for being here have some definite differences. I'm mostly looking for a place to belong. This place definitely isn't it. I'm going to break my rules here and complain rather than be understanding; the average EQ here is abysmal. I wouldn't say my EQ is in any way impressive, as it's something I have had to develop and work hard for, but sometimes I feel like I'm talking about calculus in an elementary school when I suggest that someone here might have a feeling and that feeling might be relevant to their current issues. There just isn't a culture of emotional consciousness here. Trauma isn't talked about, and past experiences aren't looked at as a stimulus for current behaviors, like disembodied heads too fastidious to touch dirt. But, intellect is definitely celebrated here, and that is something I can bring to bear. Other places I find that have a solid EQ lack in IQ, which is even more difficult for me to tolerate. I need places to discuss thoughts and ideas, and to challenge convention, where thinking minds will respond to me in meaningfully unexpected ways. This place is maybe a little more than half of what I'm looking for.

It's not exactly the same as finding your strength, but that's a good place to start.. People do often come to admire themselves for something they are strong in, or put effort into and become good at something they admire. But sometimes people are talented at or put effort into things they don't particularly care for, too. Someone can be good at their job and still hate it, and someone can be mediocre at a hobby and still love it. When you meet a new person, what is it you really wish you could show or tell them? Do you want to make them laugh? Do you enjoy making people food? Do you like bragging and impressing people with your feats of strength or intellect or creativity or effort? How do you show your best side to others, and what is that best side? As for why you need to know this, it's because self-admiration is the thing that you can keep putting energy into even when you have very little. You did a hard workout last week, then crashed and skipped this week. If you focus your energy into things that aren't aligned with your nature, without knowing what really matters to you, this will always eventually be your result. It's not something practical you can decide with logic; you can't decide that because you see other men were successful in impressing others with their muscles, that your muscles are what's most impressive to you. Before impressing others, you have to impress yourself, and make that your key to making an impression anywhere.

If you suddenly realized enlightenment tomorrow, you would look at the person you just described as being a natural part of the universe. So why are you so down on yourself right now, when your enlightened self isn't? Although in stark reality there are no reasons, to the mind that has not evolved beyond reason, reasons must be given. The reason I would suggest to you is that you lack in self-admiration. What of yourself is it that you try to show people who you want to impress? I suggest this because I believe that whatever it is of yourself that you admire most, that is your key to your highest self. Anyone who does not admire themself for one thing they find truly worth admiration is lost, because without admiration there is no reason to question or wonder or struggle for yourself.

Did you learn or improve anything through this experience to share?

How are you planning to break your present financial situation to her?

And what about your feelings and compatibility? What else is drawing you to her other than that she's a 9/10 who's willing to talk to you?

Sounds as if you have her attention. Do you have plans or intentions for your next step?

What are your top messiest issues?

First of all, emotions are normal. What you're going through is not something that needs to be rejected, or rather, rejecting it might make it worse. Second, what do you do to manage your mental health? You need to find something you can reliably sit down and do to work through things like this.

Good for you! Opportunities aren't always about what we deserve, but what we take action on.

My advice is to focus on your own ability to recognize and accept opportunities with an open mind. They may be few and far between, but even if you're neurodivergent, as long as you are meeting new people and situations, opportunities will appear before you. What matters then is whether you can accept them and are you ready. Are you decisive? Have you honed your strengths, challenged your weaknesses, and kept your mind as open as you need the minds of others to be for you? I'll say it again; unexpected opportunities WILL appear before you, without warning and often with very little time to act. Don't worry about if; prepare for the inevitable when.

I'm moving away from insisting on a mechanically comprehensible meaning of life. The meaning of my life is whatever I'm doing right now. My reason to keep living is to keep doing whatever that happens to be. I know I'm going to die one day, but I don't know when or how. Insisting on knowing everything ultimately leads to insisting on knowing when and how I'm going to die, which is simply an act of suicide.

Is that all there is to it? Like looking in the mirror and saying, "I'm now done being suicidal," and moving on with your life just like that?

It seems contradictory to me to say both "The mind is very powerful" and "It's all in your head" in the same argument. In my experience, "It's all in your head" is typically a statement that dismisses the power of the mind. I'd rather lean toward the mind being very powerful, which is why I suggest facing thoughts with due respect as such. Some thoughts, including thoughts of suicide, can be very slippery and don't want to be faced because they're used to their anonymous power. They don't easily share their secrets. It can be tricky to get to them and find out what you describe of them using the idea of suicide for catharsis or control or escape or whatever it is they really happen to be doing outside the light. I don't really disagree with you, I just want to acknowledge that thoughts are to be first respected, even if they are then to be dismissed.

The main problem I see is anything you two are doing that can't be shared with her husband. Assuming he's not abusive and is mentally stable, the ideal is that she should be able to share anything you two are doing with him. Strict monogamy is ridiculous precisely because it creates situations like this, where men and women following natural feelings but unnatural rules form twisted connections. My first question is; what is her growth potential, as you perceive it? If you talk about honesty and integrity and open relationships and personal growth with her, how much of it can she comprehend? It's only possible to take this relationship from where it is to a healthy place if the people involved can and are willing to comprehend what "healthy" really means and that what they have now is unhealthy.

Same here. Earplug + eyemask has noticeably improved my sleep quality.

Victims imply perpetrators. Who is the perpetrator in this scenario?

Suicide is extreme, and so far as I know, irrevocable. What less extreme options have you tried? Have you given away your possessions and gone on a pilgrimage? Have you tried fasting meditation? Have you tried it again? Have you tried moving somewhere else; if you're in the city, to the country; if you're in the country, to the city; if you're in the east, to the west, or vice versa? Have you tried psychedelics? Have you tried them under spiritual guidance? Have you looked for a different job? Have you openly violated oppressive social norms? My point isn't that you should do all or any of these things. My point is; think about how your fixation is specifically on suicide, when reason would dictate that there are invariably more options to be considered if you are even marginally healthy in body. If you just wait a while, you're going to die anyway. Why insist on receiving early what is already guaranteed?