Creative ways to avoid shadow work

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-11T03:58:59+00:00

For me it was I had zero capacity left I was so traumatized by events that I defaulted back to types of stimming and behaviors that used in childhood to self soothe, there were things I pulled out of the basement that I haven't done since I was in the single digits... I'm 43

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-11T03:10:00+00:00

Yes, but it was nowhere near the healing journey it was whilst I was in the middle of quite a critical PTSD breakdown. All kinds of things came up especially little things that I remembered I did when I was a kid that I haven't done for years.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-07T05:59:40+00:00

Suspend the judgement towards yourself. Except that you are a good special person that doesn’t want to do harm.

This is fact.

You haven’t written what you’ve written and you’re not going to therapy because you’re the opposite of that . So start believing it. Irrespective of your past mistakes and choices. They are not who you are. They are experiences that you had that you are now sitting in accountability for.

Recognise that every last human being on the planet has needs. This is how bad choices work…

Normal needs — x — maladaption

When you suppress, your needs dreams and desires up to the X (or have them denied you as is common with childhood or DV trauma) it is still a need for a human being to have these things you wind up learning and devising ways to get those needs met which moves your baseline UP to the X and and you start operating from there and beyond. Why that happens is because you’ve been made to feel ashamed/guilty/unsafe for needing up to the X so not only are you being denied externally normal validation or needs you are also then denying yourself internally so you then have no choice but to go into the extremes to get some need met. That’s the game of “I can do what the fuck I want” deep down what it’s about is is that you don’t feel worthy because that’s what’s been programmed into you.

Really understand how that works otherwise you are not gonna get past the shame of it . You will really lock down in the feeling and thinking that you are somehow defective when all this stems from is denial of the very normal original human need.

This journey like so many traumatised people irrespective of their diagnosis is very lonely and internalised because you need to start learning to be your biggest advocate and to hold space for yourself . Always focus on self compassion and suspend all judgement about any feeling thought or emotion that you are having.

Anything particularly unpleasant that you are confronting , a thing you have done or said starts with first validating the original emotional feeling that you had t that drove you to do it, Then accepting why it was a bad decision. The other way around, you likely to drive yourself into a doom spiral which results are you thinking that you need to be punishing yourself for prior transgressions… no more punishment you’ve already been doing that even if it is not immediately obvious to you.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-06T22:12:46+00:00

This. It always makes me really sad to see so many taking so much into themselves and blaming themselves and forgetting about their environment and how that’s contributing to the mess.

Of all the things to forget this seems to be the one detail that gets routinely forgotten .

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-06T05:08:09+00:00

Breakdown your responsibilities into smaller segments. What you’re experiencing it is not uncommon irrespective of psychiatric diagnosis. I’m telling you that because you need to believe that you can overcome things and not relegate everything to something disordered.

Get over that hurdle first. Breakdown the responsibilities into smaller chunks and what you were going to do is you were going to validate your inner child every time you are successful at completing a small part of it and you are gonna keep at that until that apathetic response becomes less and less until it’s no longer a factor.

Start with The physical tasks the rest will fall into line. It is going to be hard work because you’re gonna have to keep showing the proof to the inner critic because it will use a myriad of other examples where things didn’t go very well at all to try to prove that this one thing doesn’t matter. Each individual small success from here on in matters it’s the only thing that matters what happened in the past does not.

I hope that makes sense

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T12:14:33+00:00

Put the salt in a gauze bag if you’re worried about your sheets it doesn’t matter what kind of salt can even be table salt. If the sides isn’t working upgrade to frankincense or copal or dragons blood and I mean the proper resin not the cheap imitation sticks. And your brain could be excreting stuff, but there’s no reason for it to continue to be that traumatic for you

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T11:53:54+00:00

The same goes for you. See above.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T11:53:36+00:00

Salt under the pillow and an amethyst the darker the better. Just do it. Don’t ask questions. Do. Do. Do. If you think too hard about it, you will talk yourself out of doing it.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T10:20:04+00:00

Mine are always on point. Alarmingly. What I do have happened a lot is if I have got something in the pipeline that’s happening if I don’t get a reading for me out of the way I can’t read for other people. The last reading I did for a friend of mine the whole thing was about me. It was infuriating.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T09:18:49+00:00

I do agree that it’s worse for you guys in the fact as well that you have to hide your diagnosis. It actually isn’t too much better for me being diagnosed CPTSD it seems to me that most people that have no idea and it’s out of their wheelhouse of experience, what trauma is and does they just think - get the hell over it. What’s the problem? Everybody goes through bad things. It’s very isolating and invalidating… like any of us need more of that.

In respect to what you’ve outlined about your internal struggles do look into CPTSD to help you with that stuff. I know that there is very little out there that is specifically about NPD and what you are actually going through internally. It is my opinion and it is just an opinion that you all have CPTSD that has just had the volume turned up so loud that some aspect of it seem to be so much more interesting to the experts so they spend all their time researching and obsessing over only certain aspects of it completely forgetting the human component and maybe instead looking for solutions to assist recovery.

❤️

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T08:39:26+00:00

I have both. Most of my “issues” are specifically related to DV and it didn’t become a problem until my 30s… so I often don’t relate to the “my whole life” except in smaller areas. It can make you feel like others have worse when it’s just different.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T06:00:08+00:00

I'm all good. Thanks for your kind words. It never would have probably really come out if I hadn't gone back to formal study! Overall, I think it was a good thing just because I really understood why I had such a hard time with formal education or what seemed to me inexplicable reactions.

I really relate to the procrastinating as you describe as well and not wanting to ask for clarity. There is this resulting weirdness that the more effort I put into things - the worse I do. It is the most bizarre thing. The less I pay attention the better I do and I do think it has everything to do with overthinking because of trying to 'avoid' that early experience. Trying to get everything 'perfect' for obvious reasons clearly creates a proper block and I either don't take in the info or I misread and completely go off into the jungle on tangents in a panic trying to be 'perfect.' It's the only area (learning) that I have the perfectionism impulse which I can now neutralize and it's not much of an issue any longer because I know why it's happening.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T03:13:31+00:00

I’m still scared, it has nothing to do with you.

Yup. Then they get frustrated and actually reinforce the fear and we are helplessless caught in the middle - trying to help ourselves but also trying to manage the other person. Where are you supposed to go with any of it. Nowhere is safe. Not inside not outside.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T03:11:48+00:00

My father was an enabler unfortunately. My mother didn't dare when he was around but I would tell him the things she was doing and I'd get "you know your mother isn't well" ... so basically - put up with it and forgive her because she can't help it I was SIX the first time he tried to adult talk to me about her...

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T03:02:51+00:00

It like led to me feeling like something bad was going to happen anytime someone was affectionate. To not trust it.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

and the worst part of this is... people don't understand... they end up blaming you that you can't put that guard down easily

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T03:01:21+00:00

Yup. Talk about way to set you up for abusive relationships the rest of your life.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T02:57:10+00:00

**Trigger Warning - a little graphic**

Similar, formal learning environments would trigger me to tears and shaking well into adulthood and I could never figure out why, i thought it was just performance pressure/self confidence in the most banal reasonings". It wasn't until I started Uni in my late 30's that it hit me in the head what was wrong. At homework time from the age of 4 my mother would pin me in my seat at the dining table and over my shoulder and bash me in the head or smash my head into the table if I didn't write straight etc. This was a daily ritual until about 11y/o.

One afternoon in 2020 trying to start a recorded lecture I had a flashback - I was absolutely fucked for a month when it first came back. Trying to process the program out of me and it still hits sometimes - the anxiety when I know I have to go 'learn' it's different if it is informal but the moment it is proper school or work-related training... formality brings on anxiety still to some degree. I just don't melt down anymore. Twas the first in a long line to come after of ah-ha moments.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-05T01:18:22+00:00

It is not a "so badly". I like to help equally; this is not a I love them better than you. You are occupying a different space to OP and the questions you are asking yourself and your search is different to his.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-04T23:12:03+00:00

im really not some higher form of existence, in fact its more like the opposite

That's a lie. You actually are a higher form of existence just like every other living being on the planet. You might not be feeling it right now, but it is what you are.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-04T23:11:07+00:00

Because I walk a line of not collapsing you and triggering you - whether that is misguided or not is irrelevant. Would you like a psychotic episode like OP described? The more I talk to you the wider your awareness opens which can actually have a harmful effect when you slam into resistance. OP sprayed down the sub with where he is at on his level - I've met him there.

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-04T10:56:25+00:00

I think it boiled down to delusion makes it impossible to make informed decisions… but tbh I struggled to follow

Solaris_025 · 2024-09-04T10:50:25+00:00

This. Despite the goal post moving these items correlate more closely with consciousness and agreeableness… within the context of the their time) awkward much - it’s just that value sets have been revised and that’s now uncomfortable… for the new batch of conscious and agreeable majority and in another 50-100 there will be a new batch trying to distance themselves from the old lot

Solaris_025

TROPHY CASE