Pure Imagination

This is a positive event. Presidents shouldn't be able to do unlimited illegal acts and not be held accountable.

@Tanz You are making a false equivalence here. The right's rhetoric in this instance is much more problematic than the left. Take one look at Marjorie Taylor Greene's tweet, you can't find anything remotely as hateful and factually incorrect said on the left. Plus the Democrats have proposed legislation to limit assault weapons and to fund communities. The Republicans aren't proposing anything serious that will actually fix the problem.

The way the right is demonizing transgender people through this tragedy disgusts me. I truly believe these are the beginnings of genocidal rhetoric. Seriously, change these right wing comments from trans to Jew and it's irrily similar to comments from 1930s Germany.

@gettoefl I appreciate your kind words so much. Beautiful, transparent, and inspiring were never things I would have called myself so it is moving that you see me in that way. All I can do right now is take life a minute at a time while I recover, so I am very thankful to receive your support ❤️

That is a huge trap I have fallen into most of my life. I was born an empath and unfortunately developed into a people pleaser. And I tended to project onto others, assuming that they care about others as much as I do. It has been a tough pill for me to swallow realizing how rare those qualities actually are in most people. I watched this video of Leo's when it was first released, but it wasn't until recently that I grasped the depth of this message:

Thank you for your videos. I watch them all.

If you had a genuine spiritual experience, then of course it was true for you. Any materialist telling you that it was just bs in your head would be wrong about that. You can feel how transformative and hopefully positive the experience affects your life, so don't let people gaslight you by saying it wasn't real. But as per Leo's video, also be careful about deluding yourself. Approach your spiritual experiences with skepticism, but at the same time don't let people invalidate it was woo woo or whatever. Especially if it is creating positive change in your life, and with your relationships with others.

I wanted to start this post off by saying that I am an incredibly neurodivergent person. Spirituality, empathy, and sensitivity come very easily to me, and some people may think that's a great thing, but it is actually detrimental to my life in many ways. So much so that I have realized lately that it's been almost a spiritual practice for me finding out every day how much differently I experience reality compared to most people. It's quite radical; I can't overstate this enough. I am a guy who is very sensitive, so much so that I feel emotions so deeply to the point that it makes socializing extremely difficult. For most people, socializing requires some degree of holding back emotions one feels to fit in with whoever they are socializing with. Well I have almost no ability to hold back my emotions. I also have deep social anxiety problems, which puts many people off because I can't hide my feelings and they tend to think they did something wrong when I can't hold back my anxiety. And I experience anxiety with every relationship I have, even with my closest friends and family. So obviously I am a huge introvert and prefer to be alone almost all the time. So to the topic, I met a guy about five years ago who I seemingly clicked very well with romantically and sexually. He always showered me with praise, said how attractive he thought I was, and was always candid about the fact that he only wanted to be with me and no one else. On our third date, we played a game of twenty questions and one of the questions he came up with was "What is your biggest pet peeve in relationships?" When he answered, he said that he absolutely hated being lied to. Being the sensitive person I am, I took that incredibly to heart, so much so I had internalized that he was one of the most honest people I had ever met. He also constantly accused me of sleeping with guys behind his back, claiming that I'm just so beautiful that I couldn't stay with someone like him. This was absolutely untrue; I take loyalty very seriously. But he would always, seemingly jokingly, make these comments that I had to be cheating on him. I would always playfully reassure him that this was not the case; it is totally true even to this day that I have never cheated on him. Well fast forward to 2021 and we get married. I was so happy that I finally found someone who loved me and who I seemingly clicked with so well. One of my wedding vows to him was that I wanted our marriage to be based on total honesty with one another. As you probably predicted, things turned South very quickly. Midway through 2022, I started seeing sex apps appear on his phone. I confronted him about them several times, but he always just told me that they were never actually there and that I was just seeing things. I know myself better than that though, and eventually I found hard evidence that he had been cheating on me repeatedly behind my back. In a rage, I confronted him about it, and he still had the nerve to downplay the whole thing. He couldn't deny the hard evidence I had, but he told this ridiculous story that it was only urges and he never acted on the things I had evidence of. It was also at this point that he admitted to me that he had controlling problems, and that he is controlling me too much. When he first said this, I didn't even believe him. I never thought that this guy, who I thought was so honest and considerate, would be controlling me so much. I thought that he was just self-conscious of his own tendencies and that he wasn't controlling me nearly as much as he thought. Little did I know how much I was wrong about that. I found out in the months afterwards that he got a hacker to hack most of my devices. This hacker enabled him and my husband to spy on me constantly, spied on and altered my OneNote journals, attempted to delete the evidence I had of his cheating, and stole a nude photo of me and used it as a profile picture for a sex app. I confronted my husband about this and to this day he acknowledges that there is a hacker that is out to get me, but denies that he asked the hacker to hack me. Which is absolute bullshit as you can obviously tell. My husband during much of last year preyed on my sensitivities. He tried to instill beliefs in me like that I didn't listen to him well enough and that my problems were so bad, that I should look past his "problems" because my anxiety and depression were just as bad if not worse. But obviously those aren't the words of someone who is capable of a healthy relationship, at least with me. Now I just want to underscore that my patience with him reached a breaking point at the end of last year, and we are now officially separated, and that I will seek a divorce when I am ready. He is incredibly manipulative though and has tried to get me to stay with him, I assume because he thinks I am naive and easily controlled. Which may have been true for a while, but I now know that I have the strength and support system to end our dysfunctional relationship. So I guess the moral of this story is....I want to say to people here on the forum who are more conscious and self-aware than most people: the vast majority of people are not as conscious as you are. People are totally capable of taking advantage of your good nature. Learn to vet people. If I had trusted my gut about this guy on our first date, I knew there was something off about him. If I had just followed that feeing, I would have avoided years of this manipulation and gaslighting. I am glad I caught it all when I did because I was ready to drop my whole life and adopt kids with this guy. Now I know that will absolutely never, ever happen. I still question so many things about my own reality. I know it will probably take me years to undue all of these negative beliefs about myself that my husband helped instill to controll me. I am on the path of recovery, and I am holding my support systems tight. Including this forum. Thank you to all for reading and at the very least letting me vent. Hopefully you learned something from this incredibly painful experience I had to endure.

I have only really tried 5-meo once, back in 2016. I wrote a trip report on the forum linked below. It was the deepest awakening of my life by far. And it seemed to actually bring out my social anxiety more - almost like it was easier to hide before the trip, but 5-meo made it so I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I have been hesitant to try 5-meo again for many reasons, but if you think it has trauma healing potential it may be worth revisiting.

It has been going on my whole life as far back as I can remember. It actually does happen with my husband, but to a much lesser degree. Probably because I have discussed this in detail with him and he is very supportive. It’s an across the board thing that I feel with literally every person.

This is exactly how it feels. It’s such a crippling problem because you’re right, socializing is forced in life. Which is why I want to heal. Life is miserable when I hate socializing, but I’m part of a social species.

I have dove into this issue head first many times. I have done numerous psychedelic trips trying to heal this problem, but I have yet to have any tangible results. If anything, diving deep into the feelings just make them happen more frequently after the fact.

I agree. I feel like I can never show my true face because deep down I hate socializing, so instead I must act inauthentically around others. Socialization is necessary, so I feel like I have to put up a positive front even though I actually hate it. I have done a lot of work with various psychedelics (over 150 trips), but they have yet to help me much with this problem. They’ll get me into a positive state with almost no anxiety, but I can’t maintain that while I’m not tripping.

I have been on various medications in the past - currently on nothing. SSRIs have helped a little, but I can tell they’re just a bandaid on a gaping wound. Adderall has helped me with social confidence, that’s probably the medication that has helped me the most. I would preferably deal with this without medication but I am open to anything honestly.

Thank you for the response. This is definitely true, but the learned helplessness feels real to me. I have tried affirmations, journaling, etc to change this but to no real avail yet. Rest assured this issue of mine is something I think about every day - I spend most of my free time doing practices to heal from it. And I’m sick of having hardly any results from years of this.