Hi everyone, I’m new to this forum. I’ve been following actualized.org for 2-3years now and love Leo’s content. I’m suffering from some sort of “social anxiety” for many years, probably as long as I can think. Social settings and people tend to make me uneasy, nervous and anxious. I’m a HSP and quite empathic. There seems to be trauma/wounds inside of me that makes it very hard to trust people in general. I started to live pretty isolated early on, maybe at the age of 12-13. Now I’m in my early thirties and so this has been a pretty long-standing pattern of mine. I started to get sick of this maybe 5 years ago and started things like psychotherapy (which did not seem to move much, if anything). Almost 4 years ago I started to tap into psychedelics and then had my first strong experience, which kind of destroyed my materialistic worldview in one night and set me off on my spiritual path. At first I had pretty high hopes in psychedelics, hearing people say things like “one trip was like 10 years of psychotherapy”. I still believe they are an amazing tool, but I’m left with integration work that has been challenging so far. After quite a few trips now they did change my view of the world and society a lot though, and I believe I’m way wiser and aware than just a few years ago. The last two years I intensified my efforts of trying to heal myself. And I think also through increased awareness of how I’m leading my life, my suffering/depression about my situation has been intensified during this time as well. I just don’t want to live like that anymore. I see no point of an existence without good community and deep connections with other human beings. I’m so sick of being alone. My psychosomatic symptoms do increase as well, seems like the body/mind just can’t deal with these things very well anymore as I get older. Some of the things I did in the past two years include: Daily meditation habit Ayahuasca retreats and solo psychedelic journeys Kambo sessions Traveling Becoming more social, joining some theater group, going to meetups 10 day Vipassana retreat Going to the gym with coaching (stopped that right now cause my body started to hurt too much) Cuddle therapy sessions Working with Sedona Method (on a break now as well, but I do believe it does work)   Overall I do think that I’m improving and that things get better, but up to this point I’m still having a hard time building/maintaining connections with people. There is something in me that is terrified getting close and being abandoned by someone. There is also a lot of shame around that, like probably some part of me thinking it doesn’t deserve to be loved. Due to these things I also never had a real girlfriend before, and I can be quite neurotic interacting with girls these days. This year I had for the first time, for a few months, some sort of relationship with a girl (seeing her 1-2x a week) and think it overall did help me. It also brought up those fears and demons a lot. I could enjoy the time we spent together, but afterward would often get these ideas why she is bad, evil, dangerous and often wanting to end it. We talked very openly about these things which was helpful. Right now we stopped seeing each other without a clear end to it. It was difficult having sex, and I’m not sure if it’s because we’re not that compatible or me being afraid of the intimacy, well I’m definitely afraid of the intimacy .. I could notice me building some walls there. Now I just started working again 40hours a week, and while this job is not too bad, it just drives me insane being trapped in this cycle of working a lot and going home to be alone most of the days. Some days I feel like I’m on the brink of losing it. This also gets mixed in with my increasing awareness of the dreamlike/illusionary nature of reality. Like part of me (I guess thats Ego) started to resent the dream and doesn’t wanna play this stupid game anymore. It’s kind of a mindfuck, I’m the one who’s dreaming up my own suffering. While I start to be more aware of that, and being able to let go more of this I sense, I’m certainly still trapped in Ego identification a lot. A few days ago I had an MDMA session with a woman working in the therapeutic field, combined with talking, bodywork and touch. It was not bad, I’m just kind of afraid that it did not reach very deep and I often had feelings of apathy during the session. Will see how the following weeks go. I had also some feelings of distrust coming up towards her, which is likely linked to the apathy as well. I could imagine this working better with a more compatible therapist and deeper trust. From working with the Sedona Method I developed a better sense of holding on and letting go. It seems like these days I’m much more willing to let go of my old story and let new things into my life. It’s still a struggle though and demons/Ego-lashback can be quite terrifying and disorienting as I move out of my comfort zone – not sure if I can simply let go of that wounded animal inside of me. I recently find myself drawn visiting/living in an intentional community which is focused on healing and spiritual growth. Seems like there are some good things out there.   My question for this community: What are your thoughts on this and any advice for my healing-journey? Thank you.