Having a stage blue shadow

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 hour ago, LordFall said:

What do you find helps you get rid of your mental blocks?

Shit it is such a hard question - mostly because my blocks have been varied and many not just mental. I would categorise most of my blocks to be in the emotional / feeling domain. And all (mental "thought" or feeling) blocks were based on me resisting or having a poor relationship with the thought or feeling. Not the actual feeling itself. The blocks were essentially areas where my mental/emotional energy was being used in maintaining a narrative, judging or rejecting. Once I worked on those - the excess energy that was wasted in the "block" was funnelled/diverted into action because the action simply felt like exactly what I wanted to do. My largest blocks were 1) approval seeking with men (blocking love + feeling as if I needed to earn love) 2) resistance to "wanting" (I was stuck in "should" and had to allow myself to really want something) 3) judging others (blocked an emotion, I cannot feel the emotion behind the judgement if I am busy moralizing) 4) False belief: wanting money was greed 5) False belief: I only excelled because I was a good looking woman and not due to excellence or aptitude. Everyone will have different blocks for sure - and they are often (but not always) linked to our shadows. What we aren't claiming in our experience. This is why I enjoy being triggered on the forum - if I feel okay to judge someone, it tends to indicate I think "I don't do that" but I probably do, and need to investigate it. I had many blocks I slowly worked through. And they all essentially served one purpose: to steal energy away into mental narratives. Energy that I needed to divert back to useful, available energy. Especially to work in commercial construction.

If I think I don't experience something - an emotion or feeling, even a thought - its an immediate call for me to investigate it. I am more often than not just not able to recognise it. I had to sit and redefine emotions and feelings, be able to accurately name and define the feeling. Work out where in my experience they showed up. This was the hardest part of the process for me, as I am not naturally good at identifying the nuances in feelings. Anxiety, worry, concern, sometimes even anticipation - they all (for example) used to feel like the same emotional soup to me. Now I can find the difference in my experience. I used to think I never felt jealousy - but I was actually so busy judging another for some other thing, I was blocking it. ie my mother would show me her amazing op shop finds of silver. I would immediately judge her "she is lazy, doesn't want to work, and just searched for endless dopamine to waste money. She hoards useless stuff". But in reality - I was jealous I couldn't have a day off to hunt for silver. The narrative was feeding my rational brain, bypassing the real emotion of jealously and diverting to suppress the emotion. But that loop > judge > narrative > emotional suppression - that loop! That was where excess energy was looping out of my system like a program eating up memory in a computers OS. In the place of jealousy suddenly happiness for her came up. I had to find those loops. Emotional work, psychology and shadow stuff was a big part - so I think you are onto the right path. There could be other avenues though, this is just what worked for me. It wasn't easy either. I test as INTJ (take that for what it is, MBTI slides into pseudoscience) Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but my inner emotions just aren't so easy to access.

Quote

I think understanding my psychology will help me solve it because otherwise it's like I stand in my own way. 

100% and dovetails with where I was going above - I hope I made sense. I didn't revise the above paragraph, just let the expression happen.

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So I feel like it's an issue of lack of alignment with what I'm doing so I'm not that motivated or it's a problem with my psychology that I gotta solve. How do you keep motivated to work on your construction business?

There are two parts to this that might help - and these are the two things that keep me aligned with the business.

One - I love creative problem solving under heavy constraints. I love having severely restricted variables and finding a solution that works in application and for multiple parties. Basically I love solving complex systems problems. I always have. Since I was a child the times where it felt as if a while afternoon disappeared where involved in creative problem solving. The more complex - the better. Painting, drawing, rendering. Building computers, soldering, circuit boards, software troubleshooting. Engine mods. Troubleshooting in particular. I love the process. LOVE it. This translates perfectly to construction because it is a series of moving parts. No project is the same. Many moving targets. Many variables. Logistics, materials, time, costs, critical path items. Quality control. Love it. So it plays to my strengths. I also love working with SOPs and making them more efficient. Refining processes is so fun! And this is what I need to do - learn from each construction project and refine for the next. I love how much change is involved in the troubleshooting. Repetition is a killer for me.

While I always loved creative problem solving complex systems and troubleshooting, I would run out of steam when I had a long term outcome to work to - this lead to the below:

Two - I had to connect with the outcome. I wasn't connecting with the product of my endeavours in previous careers. I had to feel and connect with what I was producing. And in the field I work in (medical, science, pharma, education, defence construction, federal/state contracts) I get to see one thing that made it worth it - the building done. Constructed. A tangible result. And even better - I was able to connect and relate to the outcome because once it was complete I could see the effect. I could visit and see patients getting life saving dialysis treatment. See mentally ill people get the help they needed. Emergency departments treating people in infrastructure I helped build. MRI's, compounding pharmacies, pathologies for quick diagnostics in emergency situations... all of that. These people I see getting treatment - they don't know me. But I know I helped them. I don't really need them to know me at all. Only that in the end, the outcome of my hard work. My rage, anger, tears, jubilation, 16hr days, panic attacks, laughter - my energy - went to supporting society and humanity. I often sit and visualise buildings done and constructed. It helps. But connecting with the outcome of my work was what got me there. Human connection.

One other small remark I might make is regarding spirituality.

It helped. A lot.

No self was huge for me. Self will not being a thing (but still behaving as if I have agency) also. I stopped being so attached to outcome. I just made sure I was taking action when the greatest probability for the outcome I desired would arise. I have no ultimate control (and I was a control freak). I am at the mercy of too many other people, logistics and variables to commit to attaching to an outcome. This helped eliminate 50% of my latent stress. When I started to deconstruct my own experience and the phenomenology of it, I also begun to stop resisting and judging some tasks as "bad" or "good". Folding the laundry became a purely tactile experience. Cutting the vegetables was so auditory and strange, feeling the vibration and pressure as a sharp knife went through a cabbage with a CRUNCH. Sensory experience in any arena is now welcome. I have my preferences of course. But its all just sensation. I don't hate any of it. I just don't resist.

I don't know if any of this resonated. I hope it does! I used to procrastinate a lot.

Connecting to outcome through relationship with people was huge for me. I had to feel the result.

Edited Monday at 05:27 AM by Natasha Tori Maru

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

7 hours ago, LordFall said:

What keeps you around on this forum then? You use it more as a place to vent? 

Because I haven't found those real ass communities that serves my specific goals yet, but I'm slowly starting to discover them. Also I have never been trying to keep myself completely busy like I am trying to now. This is a place for lunatics and lost people, is the way I see it

[something_else]

I think this shadow is quite common among INTP or ADHD type personalities, or those with high openness in Big 5. I relate to it as well. This desire to be unique and special. To lead an interesting life. Eventually you just need to accept that you (probably) aren't fundamentally very special, and that's OK.

Counter-intuitively, when you accept that it makes it easier to accomplish interesting things because it shifts your perspective from "I am special and unique so I deserve Thing" to "I would like Thing in my life, how do I work towards getting Thing".

'Stage Blue shadow' encapsulates this issue really well, because stage blue heavily penalises individual uniqueness while valuing work ethic, monotony, and doing what needs to be done even if it's boring to you.

[LordFall]

@Natasha Tori Maru Thank you for your in depth reply, it does makes a lot of sense, I've read it a few times to really make sense of what you're saying. 

11 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Shit it is such a hard question - mostly because my blocks have been varied and many not just mental. I would categorise most of my blocks to be in the emotional / feeling domain. And all (mental "thought" or feeling) blocks were based on me resisting or having a poor relationship with the thought or feeling. Not the actual feeling itself. The blocks were essentially areas where my mental/emotional energy was being used in maintaining a narrative, judging or rejecting. Once I worked on those - the excess energy that was wasted in the "block" was funnelled/diverted into action because the action simply felt like exactly what I wanted to do. My largest blocks were 1) approval seeking with men (blocking love + feeling as if I needed to earn love) 2) resistance to "wanting" (I was stuck in "should" and had to allow myself to really want something) 3) judging others (blocked an emotion, I cannot feel the emotion behind the judgement if I am busy moralizing) 4) False belief: wanting money was greed 5) False belief: I only excelled because I was a good looking woman and not due to excellence or aptitude. Everyone will have different blocks for sure - and they are often (but not always) linked to our shadows. What we aren't claiming in our experience. This is why I enjoy being triggered on the forum - if I feel okay to judge someone, it tends to indicate I think "I don't do that" but I probably do, and need to investigate it. I had many blocks I slowly worked through. And they all essentially served one purpose: to steal energy away into mental narratives. Energy that I needed to divert back to useful, available energy. Especially to work in commercial construction.

If I think I don't experience something - an emotion or feeling, even a thought - its an immediate call for me to investigate it. I am more often than not just not able to recognise it. I had to sit and redefine emotions and feelings, be able to accurately name and define the feeling. Work out where in my experience they showed up. This was the hardest part of the process for me, as I am not naturally good at identifying the nuances in feelings. Anxiety, worry, concern, sometimes even anticipation - they all (for example) used to feel like the same emotional soup to me. Now I can find the difference in my experience. I used to think I never felt jealousy - but I was actually so busy judging another for some other thing, I was blocking it. ie my mother would show me her amazing op shop finds of silver. I would immediately judge her "she is lazy, doesn't want to work, and just searched for endless dopamine to waste money. She hoards useless stuff". But in reality - I was jealous I couldn't have a day off to hunt for silver. The narrative was feeding my rational brain, bypassing the real emotion of jealously and diverting to suppress the emotion. But that loop > judge > narrative > emotional suppression - that loop! That was where excess energy was looping out of my system like a program eating up memory in a computers OS. In the place of jealousy suddenly happiness for her came up. I had to find those loops. Emotional work, psychology and shadow stuff was a big part - so I think you are onto the right path. There could be other avenues though, this is just what worked for me. It wasn't easy either. I test as INTJ (take that for what it is, MBTI slides into pseudoscience) Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but my inner emotions just aren't so easy to access.

My takeaway is that I should sit down and write down my blocks because yeah I also can't really label them and just feel a mix of frustration and negative energy that leads me to avoiding work a lot of times or just working in short bursts to meet deadlines in a way that stops myself from reaching that excellence. 

11 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

One other small remark I might make is regarding spirituality.

It helped. A lot.

No self was huge for me. Self will not being a thing (but still behaving as if I have agency) also. I stopped being so attached to outcome. I just made sure I was taking action when the greatest probability for the outcome I desired would arise. I have no ultimate control (and I was a control freak). I am at the mercy of too many other people, logistics and variables to commit to attaching to an outcome. This helped eliminate 50% of my latent stress. When I started to deconstruct my own experience and the phenomenology of it, I also begun to stop resisting and judging some tasks as "bad" or "good". Folding the laundry became a purely tactile experience. Cutting the vegetables was so auditory and strange, feeling the vibration and pressure as a sharp knife went through a cabbage with a CRUNCH. Sensory experience in any arena is now welcome. I have my preferences of course. But its all just sensation. I don't hate any of it. I just don't resist.

I don't know if any of this resonated. I hope it does! I used to procrastinate a lot.

Connecting to outcome through relationship with people was huge for me. I had to feel the result.

This part I relate with as well. As I mentioned the other day I'm a very competitive individual and I love control but there is definitely a lesson in surrendering ultimate control to gain more micro control that I need to figure out because some parts of me are definitely stuck in some weird resentment that I haven't fully figured out yeah that is giving me a lot of resistance. 

11 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I test as INTJ (take that for what it is, MBTI slides into pseudoscience) Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but my inner emotions just aren't so easy to access.

 

The MBTI distinction here is super fascinating. INTJ vs. my INTP really highlights the exact execution gap I’ve been trying to bridge.

As an INTJ, your Te/Ni stack naturally drives you to be process-oriented and outcome-driven. Sounds like you genuinely enjoy refining SOPs, organizing logistical moving parts, and seeing the physical, tangible building in the end

As an INTP (Ti/Ne), I tend to be framework-oriented and concept-driven. I get obsessed with solving the abstract puzzle or building the mental architecture, but once the system is "understood" in my head, my brain treats the actual mechanical execution as a monotonous chore.

I've been having trouble pushing past this and the business bro advice I keep listening to JUsT Do It DISCipline > MotivVATION is not helping that much. 

5 hours ago, something_else said:

I think this shadow is quite common among INTP or ADHD type personalities, or those with high openness in Big 5. I relate to it as well. This desire to be unique and special. To lead an interesting life. Eventually you just need to accept that you (probably) aren't fundamentally very special, and that's OK.

Counter-intuitively, when you accept that it makes it easier to accomplish interesting things because it shifts your perspective from "I am special and unique so I deserve Thing" to "I would like Thing in my life, how do I work towards getting Thing".

'Stage Blue shadow' encapsulates this issue really well, because stage blue heavily penalises individual uniqueness while valuing work ethic, monotony, and doing what needs to be done even if it's boring to you.

Yes that makes a lot of sense too. Being entitled is a recipe for very low effectiveness. The more I actually host events and make stuff happen in the real world the more I audit how much energy, effort and money some ideas really take as opposed to the dream vision so it's helped me narrow my vision to only the things that matter most to me and not random fantasies. 

Yeah stage blue is not that bad but it embodied most of the system I was trying to rebel against my entire life and overcome so now I have to loop back and integrate it in a way that makes sense to me I feel like. 

8 hours ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Because I haven't found those real ass communities that serves my specific goals yet, but I'm slowly starting to discover them. Also I have never been trying to keep myself completely busy like I am trying to now. This is a place for lunatics and lost people, is the way I see it

I understand. You should engage more on the life purpose and business section, it's the one I feel is most grounded. 

The lost people can be guided towards where they need to go and the lunatics are some of my favorites. As a very logical person there are few things I enjoy more in life than pointing out the logical inconsistencies in what people say. It's an INTP super power. 

People that seem a bit insane are often times just lost in subjectivity.

If you can understand where they're coming from and say something extremely logical through first principles that's basically objective truth then sometimes you can snap them out of it quite fast. 

Edited Monday at 04:44 PM by LordFall

[something_else]

16 hours ago, LordFall said:

Yes that makes a lot of sense too. Being entitled is a recipe for very low effectiveness. The more I actually host events and make stuff happen in the real world the more I audit how much energy, effort and money some ideas really take as opposed to the dream vision so it's helped me narrow my vision to only the things that matter most to me and not random fantasies. 

Yeah stage blue is not that bad but it embodied most of the system I was trying to rebel against my entire life and overcome so now I have to loop back and integrate it in a way that makes sense to me I feel like. 

I relate to this as well, I've always struggled with execution. I figure out the plan and steps to accomplish what I want, and my brain seems to decide that's "enough" and that the actual execution doesn't matter beyond that.

And ADHD diagnosis and meds have helped a lot in this regard

[Natasha Tori Maru]

On 25/08/2026 at 2:23 AM, LordFall said:

@Natasha Tori Maru Thank you for your in depth reply, it does makes a lot of sense, I've read it a few times to really make sense of what you're saying. 

My takeaway is that I should sit down and write down my blocks because yeah I also can't really label them and just feel a mix of frustration and negative energy that leads me to avoiding work a lot of times or just working in short bursts to meet deadlines in a way that stops myself from reaching that excellence. 

Based on this and your other responses (caveat being, this is just speculation from my end as I cannot know your true inner experience, meaning and thoughts/feelings) - the biggest block that jumps out is you could be trying to understand your way out of having to feel.

The answer I provided was pretty overwhelmingly phenomenological / emotional (identify feeling, notice resistance, isolate narratives that suppress emotion). You didn't go there in your response - you pivoted to "what is the psychological mechanism? what frame explains my execution problem?". Explaining could actually BE the block. AI use might be part of the block too (more explaining). NB I used to semi-suffer from this block also - explaining/rationalising everything.

Control jumps out at me too. Less of "I dislike monotonous tasks" and more the entailed resentment of "I have to be subordinate to reality itself".

You also very astutely realise you need to integrate blue - but there is a subtle cognitive dissonance (or contradiction) as much of your reasoning is decidedly anti-blue (intp, most things bore me, motivation with monotonous tasks, arguing on a forum over DMing clients etc).

Honestly - I think your intelligence has become extremely effective at negotiating around an emotional constraint

What do I experience internally in the 30 seconds immediately before I avoid the task?

List the emotion, body sensation, thoughts, what the task says about you, what happens if you execute it poorly? - what about if you ace it? 

What resentment appears - what does sitting with this boring process mean about who I am?

What am I protecting myself from experiencing here?

This is almost like SITTING with the boredom and monotony, but actually going into it and analysing it. Which is part of the blue integration. I sound so funny to myself with all of this emotional, feeling and semantic shit. I used to resist this stuff. But it has unlocked insane authentic growth where I just engage in process with very little resistance. I would have laughed at you if you told me to do these things 2 years ago. 

[Jordan of the Shire]

42 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

 

What do I experience internally in the 30 seconds immediately before I avoid the task?

List the emotion, body sensation, thoughts, what the task says about you, what happens if you execute it poorly? - what about if you ace it? 

What resentment appears - what does sitting with this boring process mean about who I am?

What am I protecting myself from experiencing here?

 

I like this

@Natasha Tori Maru I find your introspection balanced with everyday life. The things you have to do expand beyond taking care of yourself of a small group of people. You're working with many moving parts that can change and you're not totally in control of everything. Great training for sorting through the internal contractions. 

@LordFall brother, I know this may seem unconventional, but, to release anything and make space for a new pattern, there is no need to intellectualize, or even feel the emotion. Both, without proper release mechanisms can spin out and become self perpetuating, draining energy, and not gaining the outcome. Natasha has a good process for feeling through emotions, understanding them to release, you have a good process for breaking things down intellectually. I feel I am weak in both those areas, and I am going to be working on them. 

How I tend to approach things is through the body. Rather than through emotion or logic, I try to open the body physically with different asanas, I then rest the mind in the lower dan tian and release, this pulses energy through to my feet, hands, head, everywhere pretty much, and overtime it purges pathogenic information. As this clears up, the awareness and the thoughts become distinguishable as seperate and then the practice moves to releasing the awareness itself. I don't have to go into stories, emotions, or logically break things down, and I can still release, transcend, and include.

I can still use Natasha's prompt for analyzing the experience, but my approach for analyzing the experience will be using the awareness to see space within the emotion, story, thought, etc. The prompts help me unravel what might be subconscious. Then I can use this particular skill set to deal with the underlying binding.

Once you apply a label, and start to guess where things come from, then you move further from release. This is the insight of the training - that at the center of it is a tangibly felt somatic contraction which can take place on any of the layers of our being. When you see the contraction and soften awareness towards it, then the mind see's space. This space has a contageous affect on the mind, and what happens is release. The release creates pleasure, and by abiding in this pleasure, you release the negative, and reinforce the positive. This is called a cycle of release.

Edited 48 minutes ago by Jordan of the Shire

[Jordan of the Shire]

On 8/24/2026 at 1:18 AM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

My largest blocks were 1) approval seeking with men (blocking love + feeling as if I needed to earn love) 2) resistance to "wanting" (I was stuck in "should" and had to allow myself to really want something) 3) judging others (blocked an emotion, I cannot feel the emotion behind the judgement if I am busy moralizing) 4) False belief: wanting money was greed 5) False belief: I only excelled because I was a good looking woman and not due to excellence or aptitude. Everyone will have different blocks for sure - and they are often (but not always) linked to our shadows.

This is stuff I'm working through too, in my own way. Cool to hear that you have, and/or are in the process of sorting them out. 

Quote

Two - I had to connect with the outcome. I wasn't connecting with the product of my endeavours in previous careers. I had to feel and connect with what I was producing.

Connecting to outcome through relationship with people was huge for me. I had to feel the result.

The description of your completed projects, and the way you can connect with who they help, though they are not personally connected, or may never know your role, I admire this, and can relate with that feeling of losing steam when not seeing a higher purpose or mission or outcome. Glad you're able to find that.

Edited 31 minutes ago by Jordan of the Shire

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Jordan of the Shire I really enjoyed your addition here - your focus adds the somatic/embodied approach that was missing.

I think after reviewing all the advice here there appear to be multiple legitimate entry points into psychological change.

Cognitive understanding, emotional processing, somatic regulation, and attention de-identification can each affect a conditioned pattern (whether inherent to our unique biological self and predisposition, or a conditioned response from experience/story).

The biggest distinction is between really contacting and allowing an experience to be processed/integrated, versus using one modality to avoid another (which is very often what happens when we aren't quite using the right method for us!)

 

Edited 19 minutes ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Natasha Tori Maru]

37 minutes ago, Jordan of the Shire said:

This is stuff I'm working through too, in my own way. Cool to hear that you have, and/or are in the process of sorting them out. 

 

Thanks  

I have a long way to go. The process is slow. Things that often feel resolved come up again continually! I expect it now. I relish being triggered or activated - there is something unknown within me to discover when this happens. If I can be put in a state of "wonder" I am very, very excited. Wonder is so curious to me, and important. Wonder is a combination of awe and curiosity in my eyes. Awe being touching on, or perceiving, something greater than me.

If I can trigger wonder I have really entered a positive and engaged state of "not-knowing", which is so delightful. Linking this back to being triggered - when I feel activated in a way I wasn't prepared for, I know I can quickly access that wonder state. And there I can really probe with genuine inquiry and not be so limited by a pre-existing frame or explanation. 

It feels like reverting to a child-like provisional state. 

Edited 7 minutes ago by Natasha Tori Maru