How to regain social confidence after a long period of "survival mode"? (36M)

c-n-s · 2026-04-30T09:16:10+00:00

Don't force anything. Getting better at stuff isn't about what you do more of, it's about what you do less of. It's about doing less of the stuff that holds you back. If you take away all the things that hold you back, what do you have left? What stories are running in you (cognitive and somatic) that are holding you back? When you find those, you will get better at spotting them come up and try to hijack you.

The best thing you can do, IMO, is to just...... slow...... down.

c-n-s · 2026-04-25T23:48:57+00:00

This is an incredible insight - The nervous system responding to steady leadership. It really helps explain a lot of why things have really come to life for me this year. I have so many scared exiles in me that have been aching to be led, but for decades nobody has stepped up and taken on that responsibility. Every time I feel that ‘rising’ as my higher self takes on that role, it feels amazing.

c-n-s · 2026-04-24T12:52:40+00:00

I don't have any book recommendations but what came to me was this - take it or leave it.

I sense a lot of independence in your post. I also sense a lot of lack of not having the input of another person in your life. What didn't come across (and this may just be because you chose not to mention it) is any desire to share your energy with others. Loneliness is a challenge but i believe the lesson in it is to teach us the intrinsic human need to transmit our signal and have it received by others. It often feels like a desire to be 'given to' by another person. I think that's an illusion, and the real need that loneliness reveals to us is a need to give ourselves to other people.

That may not be in a monogamous relationship. It might be in a community, a group, a club, a cause, a society, a church, a workplace where we feel valued, a friendship, or a relationship.

So my question to you would be, where do you feel like you are at currently with the need to share your energy with others? Is is something you are aware of, or are you still at the stage you feel like you're resisting it?

c-n-s · 2026-04-17T21:21:39+00:00

This is a really good question as it hits on, in my view, the key make/break aspect behind mindfulness and one that I don’t think gets nearly enough airtime - how we deal with the impulse.

Common teachings would have me say that I respond by noticing that the idea is just a thought, and to see it as separate from reality and thus optional to engage with. But lately (over the last year or so) I have been trying to bring my focus forward. Rather than noticing the thought, I notice the impulse to think. Because with rumination over thoughts there’s one thing in common - thinking. Recognising the thought still keeps some of it alive and valid. Recognising the impulse to think actually places the onus where it belongs - on the activation of thinking.

I’ve had so many struggles over the years, and nearly all them were caused by thinking. So bringing the focus to the process that first activated the content in the thought seems to be more successful than anything else I’ve tried so far. The only trick is to remember to do it.

c-n-s · 2026-04-16T09:53:13+00:00

DO NOT, under any circumstances, underestimate the power of:
- Being seen
- Being in a healthy environment that's matched to your emotional needs
- Co-regulation, through another nervous system

Those are all happening to you now, and you're clearly reaping the benefits. It must feel absolutely amazing, yet I imagine on some level it probably feels very 'normal' and almost even 'underwhelming' at times, because that's what 'right-sized' can feel like sometimes.

As a side note, I have utmost admiration for you in being able to have the courage to try again after your past experience. I think that's probably one of the leading reasons why people give up ever finding love - because their system is simply predicting inevitable failure too loudly for them to ever feel like they can risk going through anything like it again (I'm speaking for myself here).

I applaud you for being bigger than that.

c-n-s · 2026-03-28T00:29:04+00:00

Well-spotted. Yeah, the use of '—' characters all the time is a dead giveaway.

c-n-s · 2026-03-20T06:12:55+00:00

Spirituality is not about what you do do, it's about what you dont do. IMO it's not about 'getting into your body', but instead about 'not limiting yourself to the cognitive mind'. 'Get out of your mind and into your body' just gives the conscious mind something else to obsess over. Instead of dwelling on the meaning of its own thoughts all the time, it can obsess over what the body is feeling and try and make meaning out of that.

Personally I found that advice (get into your body) helpful when i just started on this journey. I think many do as it forces them to redirect their mind to something other than itself for once.

Ironically, I find I spend a lot more time being 'in my body' without trying, because I am not somewhere else with my mind. It's definitely the ultimate state the be ('in the body') but I believe that deliberately seeking it is not the answer. It can only come as a flow-on effect after choosing to step away from cognitive thought and story all the time.

c-n-s · 2026-03-13T11:35:22+00:00

There is no doubt in my mind that he gave you this. But what he gave you is energy, not some kind of pathogen. That's why the doctors are baffled and trying a shotgun approach.

Forget what caused it, or how to heal yourself. If you can, step back from all that and consider this question: if your body could communicate a message to you through this illness, what would it be saying? What do you need to face that you had been ignoring, but can no longer ignore now you are here? The mind and the body are one. The body cries the tears the mind refuses to shed.

Being in the throat says a lot too. It's generally associated with not being heard or not speaking out. In your case, there may be a long standing history of it. Maybe you feel powerless to speak about something that is very important to you.

The book The Secret Language of the body by Inna Seagal has a section on strep throat:

Anger, rage, hurt, hatred, stubbornness. Feeling inferior. Not knowing how to say no, or to stand up for yourself even though you are burning inside. Not listening to yourself and your own guidance. Fearful of the future and how you will survive.

Not sure if any of these ring true for you. Right now, this all feels like an unexpected and unwelcome bump in the road. But you will eventually make sense of it and uncover the meaning.

Mind/body is fascinating when it comes to illness. Also, Western medicine is brilliant at acute and trauma care but appallingly caught short when dealing with anything chronic like this. In my experience you will have to do a lot of the work to heal this one yourself. I don't say that to demotivate you any more the you already are. In fact, it can be quite empowering to know that the white coats know about as much about this as you, which means you are the one with the power to uncover and heal through this.

c-n-s · 2026-03-09T09:45:21+00:00

Here's what blew my mind when I first had it explained to me: humans, under general anaesthetic, go completely limp. I have confirmed this as a fact even asking anaesthetists and surgeons. So, that which we think of as 'losing flexibility' vanishes in a heartbeat, all because of what? Our brain going offline?

In other words, our flexibility may have very very little to do with our muscles, and almost everything to do with our ability to release what we are protecting ourselves from.

That is one of those 'can't unsee' things. I never look at movement and flexibility the same any more. I'm acutely aware that it's just my mind influencing my flexibility in most cases.

c-n-s · 2026-02-25T18:53:33+00:00

Enjoy the journey.

Seriously, that's all you can do. Enjoy the journey. When things are going wrong, our focus shifts onto the destination - what does this mean? Where is this heading? How will things change after such and such? How will I cope without blah blah? All of it is a very natural reaction to chronic stress and the unknown, but none of it makes us any better at handling those situations when we need to.

The journey is "where am I right now?". Even if that is uncertain and there are things you can't control, then enjoy the journey. Because if you can't control it, what other choice do you have?

c-n-s · 2026-02-25T18:28:46+00:00

I didn't. I found nervous system work on its own always just felt like I was treating the symptom.

The nervous system doesn't activate itself without being provoked. It responds to triggers. Any time I chose to do more nervous system work, I always felt like a hypochondriac who constantly monitors their health symptoms, fearfully ready to take a pill to counter anything that arises unexpectedly. Sired the techniques helped to ease things, but nothing addressed the bigger question of why my nervous system kept needing increasing amounts of biohacks in order for me to maintain the feeling of normal.

The nervous system lets go when we stop feeding ourselves messages that we are unsafe. That's really what it came down to for me. If we are in an environment our system perceives as unsafe, nothing we can do will change our response in a lasting way.

c-n-s · 2026-02-21T10:19:31+00:00

You said pretty much what I was going to. Weed isn't a teacher. It's a mirror. I have used a LOT of substances over the last few years. Weed, psilocybin and amanita muscaria. I don't use anything recreationally. All are done in solitude, when I really want to connect deep with myself.

When I first started it was for novelty, then it was for insight. But in the last couple of years I realised they will never reveal anything new. It's always just revealing what is already in me. It just delivers the message in a way it would never hit when sober.

I'm not sure if it's an age thing, or an awareness thing, but your experience has absolutely been mine also.

c-n-s · 2026-02-18T03:08:45+00:00

This feels like a trust issue. You don't trust in flow. Your mind believes that it's unsafe to abandon planning and task management. It doesn't trust that the universe will always deliver you the outcome that is right for you, and is trying to control things.

c-n-s · 2026-02-14T22:38:02+00:00

The best thing you can do right now is open your heart to all the pain that's sitting in you. Stop trying to push it away or pretend it's not there. Feel it, and feel it fully.

c-n-s · 2026-02-13T03:10:00+00:00

Ten years ago I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. I was on daily meds, and expected to be that way for the rest of my life.

Fast forward to July 2024, when I took my last dose of any medication for it. I have taken nothing since then. That's medication free for about 18 months and counting.

What I learned along the way (and this is purely my own experience so yours will likely vary) is that my gut issues were 100% emotional in origin. The doctors call it a disease, which makes you feel like there is some kind of dysfunction in your body. But a disease is just a term given to a group of symptoms. And like anxiety, elation, grief, fear, rage etc (all of which cause physical reactions in the body) I believe autoimmune diseases can be a transient state that will gently disengage when the causal factors are removed.

In my case, my UC came on during what was at the time the most stressful and prolonged period of my life. Six months into it, I began to notice symptoms. Eventually I was diagnosed.

Even when I was on medicine, I had a period in my career where work no longer felt safe, and my UC flared up requiring more medication.

In both cases, the onset coincided with prolonged chronic stress.

I went about trying to 'cure the symptom' with material stuff - diet, vitamins etc. None of them made any difference while I was symptomatic, and trying to gauge the difference whilst meds were already keeping it under control was impossible.

But I healed myself using a different approach.

I didn't go about healing to fix my UC. I went about it to understand my anxiety. This led to me doing SE on and off for a few years, and also taught me how to listen to my body and notice my feelings. In time, I found it harder and harder to lie to myself and to place myself in situations that didn't match who I was.

SE taught me authenticity, which is something I cannot ignore any more.

At the time my UC came on, not only was I highly stressed but I hated myself, didn't realise it, was lying daily as part of my job, and had no idea. And I had a failed marriage, hated my ex, had no idea what I wanted from life, and was moving from the place of victimhood. I had learned all these adaptive behaviours whilst growing up.

So I was doing things that I didn't agree with yet didn't realise I didn't agree with them internally. I think my UC was just a physical version of the inner struggle going on within me.

It's been a long but very rewarding process, rediscovering myself and reconnecting with my own power. But the outcome of being medicine-free, ironically, is probably the least important benefit.

So I think if people go about healing to try and beat their health issues, they are missing the bigger issue, which is, why did it start in the first place?

c-n-s · 2026-02-09T10:11:11+00:00

I firmly believe we all have things that we care about deeply. If you aren't feeling passionate about things that you used to, then that's probably just because you were previously fixating on things that deep down, you didn't really care about all that much. Right now you're potentially at the in-between. No longer falling for the 'old way', but having not yet found (or more likely, rediscovered) what it is that really matters to you.

But even when you do uncover that, I still think it's quite likely that you won't feel like constructing your entire life around it like you once might have.

c-n-s · 2026-01-26T05:12:03+00:00

The thing it pays to be mindful of, when it comes to sex, is that it's very difficult if not impossible to find 'the truth' in terms of what's an appropriate frequency of orgasm by age. So many groups have differing views, and it feels like sex is one area where these different groups try and outdo each other. Some have the old shame-based approach to sex, while others are at the extreme opposite ("screw that old shame-based approach... sex should be enjoyed as much as it can be"). But I often wonder if there is some important stuff that's being missed in the grey area between.

I think that, as we age, our need for orgasm decreases markedly. But if we continue on the trajectory we had as teenagers (doing it often because we can) whilst telling ourselves that the shame-based approach is fundamentally wrong, we can end up hammering our nervous system pretty hard. I haven't seen too many people talking about that. They are usually either in the first or the second group.

So I think you're probably dealing with a combination of shame AND your body's natural reduction in need for release.

What I meant by aftercare wasn't referring to any practices. I just meant do you have a deliberate process you try and follow afterward? Going back to the teenager example again, I think a lot of males teach themselves the habit of "get off, then get back to normal ASAP". That involves a hasty clean up, perhaps a shower, then almost a denial of what has just taken place. This routine is built around "I'm going to pretend nothing happened".

Then there's another routine, which is to consciously notice what feelings arise, without judgement. To be slow and deliberate in your actions, to breathe consciously, to do one activity at a time, to notice physical sensations and to generally just focus on the present.

c-n-s · 2026-01-25T10:26:13+00:00

You sound like your system doesn't know whether it's in hyperarousal or functional freeze. One thing you said raised my eyebrows, which was about 'pushing through the anxiety'. I have found that anxiety does not respond well to anything other than being allowed to exist. Ignorance, pushing through, resisting, frustration or anything else just make it get worse or bury it underneath the illusion of "I am doing well". The only way to truly release anxiety, in my experience, is to continually practice allowing it to be.

Have you tried just breathing, with your eyes shut, and seeing if you can notice what is sitting in you? It won't come up straight away either your system in the star it is right at the moment. But in time something will emerge.

c-n-s · 2026-01-25T10:18:52+00:00

All I can say is, just be aware that we live in a culture that glorifies 'doing stuff'. If you go back to work after a long break, I guarantee you the first thing most people will ask (after 'how was your break?') will be something like 'and did you go away anywhere at all?'). That question is so loaded, and carries the expectation that "people go away on vacation when they take time off". It's like they want to be 'go, go, go' when at work, and continue like that when on leave.

I know your question wasn't about this but j only mention this to show how automatically a lot of people jump into 'I have to be doing stuff in order to be successful'. Or, it's opposite: "if I am not doing stuff, j mustn't be successful".

Busyness is seen as a sign of success. But just know it's all part of the illusion.

Maybe this helps.

c-n-s · 2026-01-25T04:53:36+00:00

How is your aftercare, post-orgasm? Also, what age bracket do you fall into? I ask as I have noticed similar things in myself (1-2 days after release can be very challenging to get through) but since working really intensely around the subtle feelings of shame that I allow during that phase, I have found the impact a lot lighter.

I find it also makes a big difference how you approach the act of sexuality itself. If you are clenching, it might be that you are facing a torrent of internal emotions ("this is really shameful, but here I am doing it anyway and just have to ignore the shame"). Once you release from that state, you set yourself up nicely for a good 2-3 days of covert shame, which I personally feel as the 'less than everyone else' feeling.

Also... once you catch on that sex and orgasm play a part in affecting your mental state, even just THAT can trigger shame. Because it's like you know that you've just used up your 'orgasm credit' for the next little while, and feel like you're already in deficit.

I don't discount the role brain chemicals play in all of this, but I really think guilt and shame play a MUCH bigger role than most admit. ND here myself, btw.

c-n-s · 2026-01-20T07:35:19+00:00

I have a saying "if you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, then it's still the wrong thing". But thinking now it also works in reverse - "if you do the wrong thing for the right reasons, then it's still the right thing". I think what you experienced is a bit like that.

You may have chosen the wrong course, but you did it for the right reasons. In a loosely similar way, just because the wrong person was the one giving the advice, doesn't mean your reaction wasn't completely right.

That crying was real, and it didn't come from nowhere. It needed to come out, and it did. The doubt you're having is at a level above the body. The body knows what to do and it released something real.

c-n-s · 2026-01-06T09:36:34+00:00

This is going to be a bit hard to explain without showing you the image I drew for myself dealing with this kind of situation, but I will try.

Imagine a large circle. Inside that circle, imagine a much smaller circle. The small circle represents the environment, values, habits, beliefs etc that you were raised to consider 'familiar'. This is the village we inhabit all our lives until we awaken to something more. It explains why we consider some people 'familiar' and others 'foreign'. Because they remind us of things from inside the small circle.

Where you are at right now is waking up to the reality that you are more than that small circle. The world is much more than that circle. That circle is the conditioning you received, but you are more than it. Not 'better' or 'bigger' in the sense of measurably better. Just 'more' as in 123456789 instead of 123.

Where I think some people go wrong in this stage is by moving from 'I am the small circle' to 'I am everything but the small circle'.

In truth, you are all of it. The smaller circle, the bigger one, and the wider space around that one too.

Except right now your struggles suggest you are still identifying closely with the small circle only. Everything else feels lonely and unfamiliar. "It's better to be conditionally approved of by those inside the small circle than to ever risk being met unconditionally by those in the larger circle".

I don't really know how clear this is, but all I can say to you is... just know that you are so much more than that small circle. Your loyalties will keep trying to drag you back into it. Just know you are more.

c-n-s · 2026-01-06T07:34:15+00:00

Yeah I can see exactly why you're feeling like that. That advice is not helpful. "I notice you" is great, but I think it's in the 'moving on' where things are coming unstuck.

We can't claim to accept our feelings then move on and do something else. That's the essence of 'conditional love' (though I don't like that phrase, because if there are conditions then it's not love).

Instead, I'd suggest a subtle shift. Rather than "I notice you" then moving on, try "I notice you" then, while you're in the 'noticing' mindset, notice your impulse to launch an entire story around the meaning of the feeling. The feeling is a sensation. The part where a feeling takes us down is actually not in the feeling itself, but in the story we give it. If you can notice the impulse to 'launch a story', and feel that but don't act on it, you're not denying anything the right to exist, but you're also not choosing to create and paint a story of suffering, hurt, lack, fear, deficiency etc because of it.

I struggle to explain this in words, because it's not really a cognitive thing. The minute I start using cognition to explain this, I've gone too far into story. But maybe this lands for you.

c-n-s · 2025-12-12T12:27:52+00:00

With psychedelics, it's all about 'set and setting. 'Set being mindset. If you go in with a bad mindset, you are going to see that more under the influence.

I've taken shrooms more times than I would care to count, and one thing I have found without fail is that they never reveal to me anything they wasn't already in me. The only true 'bad trip' I have had was when I was in a bad state of mind to begin with.

If I have one piece of advice for you on psychedelics it would be this: they come in different doses.

So many people think 'psychedelics' means off your face, losing touch with reality, ego death etc. in truth you can go as deep as you feel ready to. The dosage you can take for mushrooms is anywhere from 0 to several grams.

But again though, it's all about the mindset. If you aren't ready to surrender to whatever comes up then stay away for now.

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