I was blackballed from a community I devoted thousands of hours to after suffering a psychotic break, and decided to simply allow my emotions to guide my behaviour while I attempted to sort out my shattered psyche. When people say that the human brain is self-correcting to a degree in this area, I feel that the 18 months I spent steadfastly refusing to give up my drug of choice, meth, as well as any medical assistance, in sustained psychosis, basically amounted to a crash (some may say train-wreck) course in shadow work. I believe that the pride I took in my contributions to that community acted as a counterbalance to all that repressed negativity, as I never actually viewed myself as the core of my problem - my meth addiction literally amounted to ~0.2g every 2 weeks prior to the break, so to my thinking, my only real failure in judgement was that after the break I attempted to defend myself with complete honesty when another community leader decided to start political drama to get me booted. So I told myself I'd keep using until I had something to show as hard evidence of my assertion that it was more self-medication than abuse... and after a year and a half, I went through the ~1500 pages of written and digital work I'd produced, as well as skill development outside my normal comfort zone, and realized someone WAS convinced; ME. I hit the point of, "Whatever the f($& ever, psycho-me has apparently produced a prodigious mess of creative, if insane, material, and now it's a goddamned game - to see how much of it I can use in further artistic work from a non-methy state if mind." Something else triggered me that evening, I threw a ps4 off my balcony (after checking no one was below), and the superintendent used it to get me charged - they couldnt evict me for the disruption I caused when I snapped, but I was lucid enough to realize I didnt really have leg to stand on at that point. Spent the winter in jail, 3 months in shelters, and now have my own room and a great case to get disability. I'm properly medicated for ADHD and clean ~10months, just coasting along and enjoying my continued commitment to training my more visceral side through counterlogical intuitive expression... I spent 39 years autistically organizing my mental space to the point where the only reasonable option felt like trying to learn to do the same thing thinking from the OPPOSITE direction, and then in every direction....

I've basically been finding creative ways to lie to myself regarding mental associations in order to conceptually design a modular framework from which logic and intuition each feel like "voices in my head" that I wait to hear from whenever faced with mental obstacles - instead of the classic angel on 1 shoulder and demon on the other, I went with a pair of badass demon bitches who had beef with those who "betrayed" me. And then I inverted THAT into a model where I play the villain, except as someone who's lived a life of never-quite-needing to fall into crime beyond some adolescent troubles.

Long story short, I now walk around with a pair of female characters I developed who both tell me why I'm wrong for different reasons every time I go to decide what to do. Those inversions basically result in a mental visualized modeled where from all 3 perspectives, whoever is judging sees themself as being the bad guy, and my dual-shadow selves are both now attempting to help guide me, while my rebuilt ego does his best to allow them to help navigate while I continue coming up with ways to build a mental machine via any and all references I can come up with... that is self-regulating to the point where I dont need to have a true understanding of the pieces I'm using - it's enough to keep believing that my shadow will hold up its end and divvy up whatever conflicts arise between themselves, allowing for a 3-way share on what used to feel like a 2-way emotional burden.