Emotional Rollercoaster: Getting Back To My Prime

[Choks]

I've been in this journey towards self-actualization for almost 2 years now. I reached rock bottom in 2014, waking up with suicidal thoughts every morning. I felt i was going insane, and that i was in a hole so deep that it was almost impossible to get out of. I thought my life was over because i've had extreme anxiety since i was 16 years old, I am 25 now. Since 16 I've suffered from depression, social anxiety, fear, and just anxiety in general. All day living in this dense mental fog, imagining myself for the rest of my life in a mental hospital, afraid of the future. Spent all my college years smoking pot since 2010. Even though i enjoyed it for the first couple of years, my social anxiety began getting worse, I was feeling alienated, and never left my house to go out partying and meet new people. Just wanted to smoke pot and chill all day in my comfort zone. 

After doing some digging in my past and reading some books, i realized my father had mentally abused me since I was a kid. I had everything i wanted, went to the best schools, and my dad showed me love by buying whatever I desired, but deep inside I was living in a world of shit. I grew up all my life with my dad telling me I wasn't going to amount to anything, constantly humiliating me because I wasn't the version he wanted me to be. I was too fat for him, never woke up early, got bad grades, and no matter how much i tried, i was never enough. He destroyed my self esteem with humiliating comments and judgements about my physical appearance. 

Amazingly, my strong willpower and discipline helped me get out of my depression. Graduated from college, got fit losing 50 pounds, and had my morning ritual meditating every day, reading, journaling, and exercising. A new earth by Eckhart Tolle changed my life. I was positive 24/7, everything went my way, my good emotions and positivism made reality into a self fulfilled prophecy. As soon as something didn't go right, i smiled and said: Everything will be ok, and later the situation drastically changed for my convenience. It was like magic. I was going out, got a girlfriend, had so much fun meeting new people, women were texting me wanting to meet me. I felt I was in my prime. unfortunately, my ex girlfriend of 7 years was calling me she wanted me back, and i did. That was the worst mistake I ever did. 

I stopped meditating that often, went back to my comfort zone, started smoking pot again because i thought I had everything handled, stopped exercising regularly, and my mental weeds were slowly growing back. In 6 months i was the same anxious, paranoid person with my social anxiety at its peak and on top of all this, my girlfriend left me. I was devastated, but always knew I was coming back. With social anxiety and a lot of emotional labor, i got a job as a manager in a corporation, i was scared as fuck but confronted all my fears and i'm really proud of myself for that. I've been trying to get to my  prime for a year now, and it's REALLY hard  getting back to it again once you lost it.

I'm feeling good right now, pretty positive, working in my new job for 5 months now, but I feel so much anxiety even though i'm back to my healthy habits: eating healthy, meditating, exercising, reading etc. I feel tension in my shoulders, have terrible nightmares, and have mental fog. Even though i'm in a generally good state of mind and positive, my anxiety doesn't go away. I've been reading about chakras and thinking on going to a healer for some energy work or reiki and would like to hear experiences of people that have done something like this. What am i doing wrong that I can't be the person I used to be? should i do something different? I started going hard on my personal development a month ago so i guess I need to be very patient. 

Edited July 25, 2016 by Choks

[rambitherhino]

i relate to this a lot not gonna lie. My dad spoiled me as well and loved me, but at the same time he puts me down and makes me feel worthless a lot. But honestly youre fine, experiance is going to constantly change and that shouldnt effect you. even your emotions are going to be all over the place at times and that also shouldnt effect, radical open mindedness and awareness for moments like these is the best. I at one point in my life before i mediditated thought i was the shit, i got hella girls and got a girlfriend and got laid for the first time in my life. this was a couple years ago and i wasnt at all like this in my life. I was in my prime and felt good about everything i did and experianced. then i got hella depressed, was a little suicidal not too much and literally everything i did i thought was either pointless or bad. My selfesteem was low and anxiety high, and depression high. I realized that it happened for a reason, i was living a lie and i all fell on top of me. This lie was my constant search for conditional happieness. So i started this self actualization thing, and its been about almost a year and i am feeling more and more aware after every month, but this whole medidtating thing got me feeling anxious and my monkey mind is yet to be quieted. i have this thought in the back of my head of my "prime" and when i really dig into it i too felt anxiety at that time, i just dealt with it better and i remember having great focus and awareness at all times so i never really felt these negative emotions or even the positive ones. life was about me and my notion of reality it was more about reality. 

so my advice to is (and im sorry about the life story, i just wanted to show a bit of correlation) go back to your old habits and give yourself lost of TIME. I know your parents were probably perfectionist and were never satisfied and constantly made you feel like you were doing enough, but dont be hard on yourself, negative moments and experiances should be apprieciated with open arms. you know yourself the best. you know when youre lieing to yourself and when youre being honest with yourself, so go about your life from here on aware, of thoughts and feelings . Self actulization isnt something you use to your benefit, its a lifestyle, you are a machine and whatever you want coming out of the machine you have to put in. Your mind is a bitch, but its not you. your mind is telling you that feeling you are getting in stomach is anxiety, but its just an inner feeling. Do you boo boo, youre intangible, there is no defualt you, and thats the beauty of it. i know i said a lot like i know a lot but thankfully i dont and im not perfect and im working on this with you! i should really be sorcing leo for this but i dont think he cares lol

 

Edited July 28, 2016 by rambitherhino

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

@Choks Your improvements are quite inspiring. Go with that. I read a while back that our minds are similar to computers in that if you ask it a silly question, you'll get a silly answer. ie: "What Am I Doing Wrong?" "Uhhh, You should stop screwing up" lol. The point is that if you phrase your question in such a way that it puts yourself down, then your answer lies embedded in your negative psychology. This might have something to do with the way your father raised you. His negative put downs, in a way, gave you the habit of negative self-talk. To me, it sounds like you are still projecting your father's voice onto yourself. I would work on becoming aware of every time you put yourself down. At first you won't be able to catch all of them, but as you get better at identifying negative self talk, you'll begin to reprogram your mind by restructuring the way that you think. Kind of like the computer analogy I explained earlier. If you talk down to yourself, ask yourself why you're talking down to yourself. This will improve your self-esteem after you see firsthand that most of these problems, you're creating for yourself. Just my opinion anyway. Good luck fellow Actualized brother.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Res Ipsa Loquitur
Commas...literally every where.

[J. M. Wigglesworth]

On 7/25/2016 at 11:39 PM, Choks said:

I'm feeling good right now, pretty positive, working in my new job for 5 months now, but I feel so much anxiety even though i'm back to my healthy habits: eating healthy, meditating, exercising, reading etc. 

I glad you're back on your groove. Eventually, your persistent efforts toward self-actualization will burn the annoyances away but I can offer some short-term fixes.

On 7/25/2016 at 11:39 PM, Choks said:

tension in my shoulders

This one is easy. When you feel tension, lift up your shoulder's as much as you can and then drop them. Repeat ten times. Give yourself a shoulder self-massage from time to time and focus on the kneading quality in the massage, as if you are reforming the muscles into a new fresh part of you.

On 7/25/2016 at 11:39 PM, Choks said:

have terrible nightmares,

Not so sure about curing nightmares but better quality of sleep is well within reach. There are two pressure points near your ankle bones which help with sleep if you press and hold for about 30 seconds. A minute of inversion(standing upside down) is known to improve sleep. Make sure you sleep in a perfectly dark room, don't eat three hours before bed and don't look at bright screens two hours before bed.

 

 As for supplements, I've heard very good things about refined He Shou Wu two hours before bed.

 

On 7/25/2016 at 11:39 PM, Choks said:

have mental fog

Make a conscious effort to be fully awake throughout your day. To me, it feels like a subtle surge of energy and awareness between my eyes and at the base of the back of my skull. Perhaps your mind is cluttered with various random bullshit, one way to clear this is via an intense experience. Go out and run screaming through a field shirtless. Mindblowing sex. Uproarious good times with your friends(tone down the alcohol and drugs of course). I take turmeric and apple cider vinegar in water and I find this always gives me a mental boost and the same for coconut oil. You can even take it a step further and try taking nootropics(smart drugs) or shen tonics(reishi for example).

You've made your comeback. . Build your foundation nice and strong again, no need to be in too much of a hurry. Do it right. Be well 

[Elton]

@Choks my story is very similar to yours. Except I didn't go back to my x 

Turning inward. 

[Choks]

@J. M. Wigglesworth Thank you! this helps a lot. My shoulders feel so much better after i did the exercise. Thanks to everybody, and really hope that if anyone is feeling like i did, there really is a way out of it. Even though it looks almost impossible. Leo has helped me a lot! and maybe if I let go of the expectation of trying to be at my prime, I can just accept where I'm at and get there faster. Or maybe dropping the mentality that I have to get somewhere. But it will take time, easier said than done. I'm really happy and grateful with where I'm at, but I'll never forget those couple of months. Waking up with a smile, absorbing every sound, smell, colors, waking up with the feeling i was ready to crush it, so much energy behind my words and actions, so assertive, making people laugh, nothing scared me and if a situation went wrong or awkward, I focused on my breathing and didn't give a fuck of the outcome. I just wasn't taking, i was giving. I was self-amused and that attracted everyone around me. It took me hard work, but it's possible. And surely I'll do it again, although this time for the long run.  

[Kserkkj]

I feel you man, having the exact same issues with social anxiety, depression, and scarring past and childhood. Honestly, I think the problem lies in your motivation. Ask yourself why you're doing the things you're doing? What do you really want in life? You're living life to avoid fear and pain, rather than seeking the best life. Check out Leo's video on Happiness, "You're not happy because you really don't want to be", and "10 things you don't know you want". Also, seek to expand your consciousness, which in my opinion is the core of personal development. The problems that you're experiencing are apparently ultimately caused by lack of awareness, because you've overlooked some of your most fundamental assumptions about life which is the source of your problems. You're never gonna get anywhere with a low awareness, make that your lifelong goal.

[Sen]

I had the same issues after a break up about 1.5 years ago. My commitment at that time was to do meditation and try to watch what was happening inside me for as long as possible no matter how bad it felt. My method was similar with Leo's do nothing technique. The question I used was who is aware of I fell good, I fell anxious, I fell this and that? After about 3 month of doing this every day for as long as possible a shift happened and in one morning I found myself as awareness and not identified with my pain. After that event even though the experience was still very bad and got lost in my thoughts very often something in the background always knew that I'm not the experience. With time now after 1.5 years the awareness grew stronger and stronger and my levels of inner happiness are growing steadily without to much effort. From my observations trying to understand the past has no value as the mind can give an infinite perspectives on it and can keep you busy a life time. Stay as awareness for as long as you can and the understanding will come naturally.

Edited August 5, 2016 by Sen