Hi Vineeto,
It’s great to hear from you. I know I tend to disappear sometimes, mainly because I want to make sure I’m making progress and not kidding myself diary entries etc. Thanks for the welcome back.
The messages and words in recent days on here have been amazing. I’m not sure if it was always like that and I just wasn’t “open” to it, but there seems to be a marvellous energy happening. People seem to be having fresh insights, and it’s great to read of @claudiu’s exciting trip to see Geoffrey.
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Vineeto: You seemed to have used your time very successful, after a lot of trial and error, to finally succeed in finding “a game plan” which “doesn’t involve dissociation/ escape/ despair/ self-castigation/ further anxiety.”
Regarding this - indeed it’s incredible the degree to which one can get lost. For me, I have always been such a diehard actualist - but this seems to be a part of my identity itself rather than something sincere…the irony of being an intense/obsessed actualist who most of the time was feeling driven and stressed rather than good.
Indeed I am still somewhat between how I used to be, and a new change that I feel is coming. It’s remarkable to experience this change towards feeling good more often happen. My health is also improving generally.
That being said, this intense Felix does come back. Today was an example of that (my post about fear) where I was sitting on my hands, and intending to feel good - but my lived experience was actually a huge amount of anxiety and fear. And what you say about “splitting” oneself is very apt, because at that point I’m becoming anxious that I’m feeling anxious - as well as the notions I mentioned of fears that I’ll never make it, that I’m not cut out for actualism, or that I’m wired “wrong”.
So this driven/controlled way of getting actualism to work, just clearly doesn’t work. It’s very self defeating because one feels one is trying one’s absolute hardest, and is only getting psychoemotionally punished in a way. Right now I’m feeling good and this anxiety is very hard to imagine - I can say feeling good is easy haha. But I know at the time it was not the case at all, it was distressing and I was up against a wall. I think throughout my time practising actualism I have had a fair whack of that sort of thing.
I am really keen to apply the approach you suggested of not objecting to these feelings when they come up. The feelings feel so wrong, to the point of making me feel physically ill/unhealthy, but I think it’s also because I am pushing them away from the moment I feel it (usually from the moment I wake up into it) and think “this feels wrong/bad”. It creates that kind of animal stampede effect, of trying to flee one’s own body. In the past to escape the stress I would pursue distraction/escapism which is where my addiction issues were happening.
There are a couple of other layers too. When I’m feeling bad or anxious, I start to worry that I’m a complete failure, that I’ve messed up my entire life, that I’ve been flailing with actualism for years, etc etc etc.
It makes me double down harder. I refuse to distract myself. I don’t express or repress. I sit in a room with nothing but looking at the feeling. It’s the “controlled” way again which does not work. Even if I say I’m going to feel good no matter what happens, it doesn’t get me there.
It’s a bit like those mindfulness people who get themselves all out of sorts mentally…though I wouldn’t say I’m dissociating…but still it feels very depressive and dysfunctional/unsafe.
So instead I let it go/give up, I go do something else, and in the course of a few hours and by interacting with others etc I get myself back to feeling good, in a natural/unforced way.
I find socialising is the best way for me to get back to feeling good - there is safety and confidence, compared to that very alone/anxious state I sometimes end up in.
Then when I’m feeling good like now, I treat myself much less harshly, I feel like it’s all going to work out probably, and that I’m all good. (I also feel good about myself).
I can laugh about it now haha but it’s a genuine habit this type of catastrophising.
Tonight by contrast it’s amazing how good I feel. It’s easy, I’m enjoying, and I feel flooded with good intention and optimism.
Can I ask you:
- Why is it that sitting and saying “I’m going to feel good” doesn’t work? Is it a question of misaligned intent?
Once feeling good I can perpetuate it easily (by appreciating), but when feeling bad no amount of intent seems to get it to move.
Is it because one is escaping what one is, by seeing oneself as having feelings rather than being those feelings?
- Regarding “being one’s feelings” - is it more important to try to be one’s feelings (rather than have them) at all times, regardless of what those feelings are? Or should you still have feeling good be the main focus?
What I’m getting at is - I have an intent to feel good come what may. I would very much like to do that. But I don’t trust that that intent is the right kind of intent, because I’ve already experienced a million times over that I’ve actually driven in the opposite direction to feeling good whilst ostensibly wanting so much to feel good.
I’m confused about intent and control - how to wilfully/skilfully go in the right direction while also not at all controlling what that is.
Or do you think that these questions constitute “map building”/strategy (ie non naïveté) and that just more affinity with feeling good ongoing will answer all these questions?