u/More-Let9073

I'm not going to get into the groggy details but for the past 6 months I have been having difficult mental health struggles, I grew off the experience for a couple months and only did the odd expand meditation, the other day I was in the middle of an anxiety episode and decided to do free flow 12 to relax instead of letting myself spiral.

While I was there I made myself open to anybody who wanted to communicate, I heard a noise which I couldnt tell if it was a laugh or cry and I could sense something, it moved from my right hand side to my feet back to my right side and eventually it felt like it had surrounded me, I was scared and tried to push it away and after the second reminder sound it went away.

It was scary but afterward I felt so free and clear minded, before it was like there were thoughts attacking my mind and I couldnt think without being interrupted but after it was silence. Since then its not like I've been totally fixed but the clear headedness hasnt gone away yet

I'm fairly sure that I have a decent level of focus 12 but I just need somebody to clarify how exactly it feels

when I reach focus 12 there isn't anything extremely different but I feel hyper aware, kind of like when you're falling asleep and hear a loud noise and your body instinctively scans its surroundings, except it lasts far longer. Usually in focus 10 I'm very relaxed and oblivious to my surroundings but after the focus 12 countdown I become very aware almost to the level of perception and particularly I become aware of the door, the window and my phone. This perception doesn't really leave the confines of my room though.

Is this the regular state of focus 12 or just focus 10 with extra steps?

Okay so my birthday was yesterday, my friend told me to collect a present from her and it literally nailed me to a T. She got my favourite album on vinyl but there’s no official pressing so she had to spend time and money making a custom one.

Her birthday is 5 weeks from now so I need to start brainstorming. I thought about a ninja creami because she’s obsessed with ice cream but it’s like double the price range where she wouldn’t kill me.

She really prides herself on how good she is at art and surfing but she doesn’t do either very much anymore, she used to have a heap of hobbies which would make it easy but rough times and she doesn’t really do any of them anymore

Any ideas would be really helpful, I want the present to come from myself but I just need a nudge in the right direction

Okay so my birthday was yesterday, my friend told me to collect a present from her and it literally nailed me to a T. She got my favourite album on vinyl but there’s no official pressing so she had to spend time and money making a custom one.

Her birthday is 5 weeks from now so I need to start brainstorming. I thought about a ninja creami because she’s obsessed with ice cream but it’s like double the price range where she wouldn’t kill me.

She really prides herself on how good she is at art and surfing but she doesn’t do either very much anymore, she used to have a heap of hobbies which would make it easy but rough times and she doesn’t really do any of them anymore

Any ideas would be really helpful, I want the present to come from myself but I just need a nudge in the right direction

This is definitely going to sound like a tale but just trust me

Earlier on I was having a bit of an anxiety episode and decided to meditate to calm myself down, now after doing free flow 12 the calm and clarity I now have feels so so so good, before I could deduce the situation and I knew that I was catastrophizing but it almost felt like those thoughts were attacking me and drowning out any reasonable deduction. Now after the exercise my mind feels so clear and calm and I realised it was literally nothing, I can actually stop for a second close my eyes and think about nothing.

Anyways, during the exercise when he played the beacon guidepost first I realised I didn't have any real intention except to calm myself down, so I ran through some of the questions from the 5 questions exercise. for the first few I got nothing, then I asked my own "will I find love soon" after this I could feel a weird sense of heaviness and I heard a sound which sounded like a human but I couldn't tell if it was male or female and I couldn't tell if it was a laugh or crying. That freaked me out a bit so I went back to the question "What was I before this current life" after this I could just feel a presence, I felt nothing physically but I knew that there was something there, at a time it was at my feet, then my right side, then my feet again and soon it felt like it was almost wrapped around me loosely. The closest thing I can compare it to is that weird tingly sensation you get when somebody gets up close to your face.

I never really was good at using my REBAL but at this moment I tried my very best to get it up, this lingering presence stayed there until the next beacon guidepost, after that I relaxed and finished the exercise without anything further.

Very weird experience but I am grateful for it since I have such clarity and calmness after. Anybody have any idea what this was?

Title basically, someone roughly banged on my door and came into my room when I was 25 minutes into the exercise
Will I still get my desired results or will I have to do it again?

How should I get myself readjusted? I got about half way through wave 4 when I started getting a lot of click outs and stuff and for a couple of months all I really did was a couple of expand app meditations

Any advice?

This post is a cry for help. I’m the most in need I’ve ever been why won’t god do anything if he loved me he’d give me any sign at all

I was introduced to porn fairly young, I didnt start masturbating until a normal age but I can remember getting erections as young as 7 like all the time. I've been fighting this since about 16 when I'd do it about 3 times plus a day, I'm 18 in a week and still often do it twice. At the worst parts I used to go onto discord and find older men who wanted to see explicit photos and I'd send them what they wanted, its been a couple months since I've done that but I'm afraid I'm falling back into that cycle of every experience having to be unique and more extreme than the last. I'm bored of it, it sickens me and yet I still do it, I masturbate to things which I can't believe I do.

People say "fight the urge" but when I get one I lose all desire to get better and in that moment all I want to do is masturbate but when I dont have those urges it makes me hate myself more than anything else, I lost so much over this because I'd rather jerk off than study and it ruins my confidence

How do I recover when recovery is only a thought until I get an urge, I've been fighting this for so long even while I was religious and had a reason for it and I couldnt win then so I think its totally impossible now

This sounds rambly but honestly I'm only writing this to occupy myself

I've started to get a habit of cutting myself, not too deep and not too often but for no real reason? I struggle mentally but my friend who used to struggle a lot with self harm said that it was mainly a way to stop overwhelming emotions/panic attacks and that it made her feel better, but I don't ever feel better for doing it and it just becomes an inconvenience to hide.

But every time I think about it its weirdly appealing? and I almost try to make a reason for me to do it even though its not a nice thing to me, but for some reason I really want to. I think its an attention thing but it isn't because I desperately try to hide it. What is up with me?

This will probably be long winded but I want to try and keep it brief. Last year I was a fairly devoted catholic, I had returned after being a cradle catholic for the longest time in about February last year, by October it had started to fade and in December I had been convinced to denounce it. I quit for 2 reasons 1st that I had just slowly lost faith and 2nd that I am a bisexual man and I grew the courage to come out to a friend and my mother.

Since this I have been plagued with mental health problems and I have come to certain realisations about the fragility of my mental state and belief system, I don't want to go too deep into this but this year I have had the tendency to be shoved to extreme religious/social beliefs over slight things, my sense of self worth flip flops from extreme egotism to absolute hatred hour to hour, I've displayed obsessive attachment to certain individuals (luckily which doesn't have an affect on personal relationships), my abandonment anxiety has become stronger and at times I've developed a tendency to self harm.

TL:DR I have some serious mental issues

I may or may not have had an episode considering the strangeness of my religious beliefs at the time but being for the most part snapped out of it now I feel a draw back to the church. However its also made me realise that this probably isn't a pattern which has just started and that my time being devoted was probably just the other side of this coin. I feel if I do try to return I'll have 6 months of religious obsession and then fall back to what I was from January-May.

Honestly, I don't know what I'm asking with this post I just need clarity on what you believe would be best for me and how to approach this

I'll try make things quick, We met about 6 months ago, the first night we met we kissed and stayed in touch, a couple weeks later we kissed again on new years, a few days later she asked me what was happening and friendzoned me. I need to mention that a couple days before this she sniffed out that I'm bisexual and I admitted it, she was the first person to find out and because of this along with the fact that I just really liked her company we stayed in touch, she went to France to live with her grandparents for 2 months and we kept in contact.

Since she came back a lot has happened and we've become very close friends, basically everyone in our time thinks we are dating but the topic never came up again and she has helped me with other girls before. I thought I'd move on and things would be great we'd just be friends and that's the end of it.

I'm absolutely head over heels for her, I thought feelings would fade but getting closer to her just made them even stronger. When I say we are best friends I mean we talk all day, meet up just to go on walks, call almost nightly and we lean on each other emotionally, we know basically everything about each other.

There's a thought in the back of my mind that she might also have feelings, but I really cant tell if I'm A. more than a friend, B. just a friend or worst C. the gay best friend.

How can I test the waters without totally ruining everything we've built?

So I’ve gradually been losing consistent with the tapes, I’ve gotten to wave 4 and for a while was doing 1 a day but now it’s more like 1 every so often. How do I rekindle my interest?