u/OldDickhead

I've had a bit of success in befriending my protectors of late as it's easy for me to discern the vulnerability they are protecting and foster compassion for that.

I have a narcissistic part that is being triggered by gym progress and I find myself fighting it (which I know is keeping it rigid) because I see it as stingy and understand it as false self esteem. It's also not socially safe to be narcissistic as this tendancy is ugly to others in that it obscures the vulnerability that is essential for genuine connection while offering a false aggrandized self that people are put off by. I experience this false self as 1 Dimensional and brittle and am always trying to dislodge it to get back to flow.

The part manifests as a rigid sense of superiority and "specialness" that has outlived its usefulness and just feels tired and limiting now. Ill often view other people as more mature and grounded than me while inside it and feel that they are acutely disgusted by how egoic and limited I am.

I understand that this part is protecting a deep terror of loss of good things as it's triggered by progress but it feels like the rigid false self that it offers is what is making my real self feel unsafe, shameful and unacceptable by contrast. Because it "feels good" at times, I am always trying to suppress it because I don't want to get complacent and have a narcissistic identity. Understandings about how treatment resistant npd is is almost certainly feeding this adversion.

Narcissism is especially stigmatized and I view this tendancy as not only counterproductive, but morally disgusting which is making it impossible to relax into, which I know is the first step to working with it. I view this tendancy as egoic, stingy and self indulgant, rather than protective, even though I understand it as the latter intellectually.

Any advice or insight in working with narcissism is appreciated.

Turns out I'm just a series of addictions in a trench coat. When one runs its course, another comes in to take over.

I feel myself caught in the cycle. I know it's because I'm looking down on myself all day now. Some part of me is staring at myself and everything that is wrong with me. I can't make that awareness go away and I get smaller and smaller underneath it until I am annihilated. Then nothing matters except comfort.

There's no point in self-loathing. The version of me that holds the body goal doesn't understand what the goal is doing to me. It's not eating my feelings; there is no feeling to sit with when I am collapsing under the load of my own self loathing, and there is no one to do the sitting.

I want to give myself a break. I can't really hold goals at the moment without making them the rules of the universe.

I'm allowed to be a little bit fat. Im sober, going to the gym most days, sitting with my hopelessness, running instead of drinking or fvcking.

I don't know when it gets good but maybe breaking cycles just really sucks and maybe it isn't going to be like this forever.

I read that pigeons/doves have a better life with humans than without.

I found a fledgling in my pool, dried him off and bought him formula and fed him. Then I saw two doves in my yard and put him out, assuming they're his parents.

Would it be unthinkable to just go and get him and make him a pet? I've already named him Paul.

I won't do it if it's a shitty thing to do. I'm more concerned with quality of life metrics rather than the law as it's illegal in my area.

When I do self reiki, I often have this horrible pattern that emerges. It's so dense that I often see it as metal.

When it's active, my energy gets caught up in it. I suspect it was created during a spiritual crisis when I was doing spiritual work on vyvanse and trying to force away aspects of myself. When it's active, there is an almost unbearable sense of tension that doesn't respond to reiki.

Today it came up again and was contained in my heart chakra where it felt like an unmovable blockage.

Sorry if this is a bit strange or niche but is there language for something like this and how would I work on dealing with it.?

I'm wondering if this is a feature of anhedonia or just unique to me.

Anticipation of pleasure that never comes is one of the most destabilising phenomena in my life at the moment. I went camping this weekend and the whole time there was this sense of what I wanted to get out of it that was looming over the trip. I couldn't enjoy what the trip was because I couldn't shake the expectation of what I wanted it to be.

Anytime I experience flow or pleasure, it sneaks up on me behind in an unguarded moment. A part of me is trying to manufacture that flow by fixating on an expectation of pleasure.

I'm coming off Vyvanse and have quit drinking so my anhedonia thankfully has an obvious cause which helps me to accept it. I want to commit to expecting greyness and making peace with it because it removes so much of the angst that I believe feeds the anhedonia.

Can anyone relate to this?

There have been times where I've felt sincerely inspired and guided by the universe and that there is something higher than me

This will often involve astrological videos suddenly coming up on my tiktok that describe my issues to a T, coincidences and this feeling that fate has stumbled upon me, through no action of my own.

Then, there will be months at a time where everything is uninspired. I'm not able to connect to witchcraft, I'll go watch astrology videos but they don't resonate anymore, even in meditation, there is nothing to access that is inspired or connected to my life; it's all just shadow work in a disconnected vessel.

This makes me feel like fate is something that finds me and that I don't have much control over when. So I lose interest in reconnecting cause I have no idea how. Or when it comes, I am desperate for it and end up being unable to hold it for that reason.

I've recently quit my job, broken my lease and moved in with my mum to recover from burnout. I've sort of come to terms with seasons of winter/hermit mode cause I know that expecting them to be any different than they are causes even more suffering.

There is a part of me now that is pushing for reengagement with the world because I am profoundly understimulated and have no reason to do anything.

I don't want to just logic my way through this, I want to engage with whatever force opens the future up in way that is for my highest good and maintain that relationship across time.

My sense is that trust is relational; it's not enough to just hold trust in some undefined, seemingly chaotic universe that seems to respond well to trust but abandons me completely when I am unable to maintain it. If I go offline, what force would maintain a relationship with me and help me get back online; this would to be an act of grace or divine intervention; and I've never really had the sense of any being that acts that way in my life.

I don't really believe in deities but I've been talking to Arch Angel Michael and asking him to support me with self reiki and it does seem to be more successful when he does. I'm also trying to push through the block that praying while disconnected is futile and offensive to whatever being I am praying too. I don't know if this is just shame speaking or if it is based on an understanding that prayer is relational and there really isn't much utility to trying to connect when I am literally unable to.

I used to be a Christian and I may have some internalized ideas about sin, disconnection and any degree of ego being sinful, my own fault and unworthy of bringing before God. This includes doubt because it is so clear just how much doubt severs the connection, but then I am left l trying to trying to mend a disconnection by myself that can only really be healed in connection.

I don't mean to end on a negative note but I also feel deeply cynical about the idea that willful beings exist that assert influence over us and would support a westerners self actualisation project while little kids are getting shot in the head and people are dying from incurable neurodegenerative diseases. I understand this cynicism would actively get it the way of the relationship of trust needed, but I think it is also a fair objection and probably something that needs to be brought into this relationship, rather than excluded from it.

Any advice is deeply appreciated, thank you.

I've got this fundamental sense that I am always doing the wrong thing. I think it goes into the background sometimes but when it really activates, it bleeds into every part and the way they treat each other and I'm finding it really hard to define what it is exactly.

When I started shame work, I had this sense of myself as disgusting that would overwhelm me sometimes and not be there at all other times, so it was contained. "Disgusting shame" was easily mappable as an exile with a consistent manager (self loathing attack) and consistent firefighters.

The sense that I am bad or fundamentally wrong has been present in some of the most traumatic moments of my life, but has been far less chronic than the typical I'm disgusting shame (which is what I assume is the classic toxic shame of CPTSD). I can't remember experiencing it outside of crisis moments but it might've always been there as a subtle sense of incompetence. I've been experiencing it chronically and globally for months now.

This shame feels more top down than disgusting shame and like it isn't as toxic but maybe even a healthy sense one gets when they're doing the wrong thing. Only every aspect of me feels it about every other aspect of me when it is active.

It is really difficult to identify the "bad shame" exile. I was able to embody the feeling of being "bad" for the first time today. Prior to that, I was sure it was just a general millaise caused by a tendancy towards self criticism and trying to fix myself. Then, I see it as a general "no" to everything that happens when I am distressed, and here I am understanding it as a healthy response to doing the wrong thing. But I must always be doing the wrong thing. I often am. But I don't know what else to do.

When it goes into crisis, my protectors will activate violently to address the unnadressable sense of wrongness and then it will get all over them and they will think they are bad and attack each other for being bad until I'm pulled into a dissociative state. And then I am bad for being ill.

It is profoundly lonely. I don't feel known or knowable. I can never be truly honest with anyone because there is always some part of me in revolt against what I am saying.

When I explore it down to the bottom, the sense is that I need someone who isn't bad to fix it for me. But when bad is active, everyone is just as bad and defective and so there is no one in the world who can help me.

I'm just wondering if it's an exile or if there is a way to localize it. It just feels like the laws of the universe at the moment and I don't know how to unblend.

I've had quite a few experiences of being in a flow-like, vulnerable state and a protector coming in to banish whatever vulnerable aspect of myself is conscious.

When this happens, I am often blended with the part being banished so I feel like I am being killed and it is deeply distressing. Then once the banishment is complete, I am profoundly empty and can't connect to the outside world anymore.

Somatically, I will typically have the sensation of something around my sacral that is inaccessible and I just know I'm in there and so is my aliveness.

I've witnessed other emotions being banished (such as suppression of sadness out of embarrassment for crying) and have felt the general flattening of energy and aliveness that comes with suppression, but there isn't a sense of not being intact anymore.

I know Jung discusses consciousness funneling down to the subconscious during depressive episodes. I'm wondering if there are any IFS understandings about awareness being caught in the subconscious or if anyone has any insights on this.

I was doing internal family systems work while taking Vyvanse a few months ago.

With the Vyvanse came a clarity of awareness and a lessening of anhedonia. As I adjusted to the dose, I lost both and my inner landscape is now an anhedonic undifferentiated soup again.

Thought I'd outline the mechanisms of the regression on here.

It is not just emotion that is lost with anhedonia, it is life force energy/libido/awareness. When I had access to emotion, I had access to myself.

I would be inside embodiable emotional experiences and then during more stressful times, my mind/ego would come in and place a ceiling over that experience or limit it's openess in some way.

Energetically, it's like going from being outside and having access to the sky to then suddenly being in a room with a low ceiling. There is no ability to expand beyond the cage of the mind or believe anything other than what that "part" or aspect of your psyche believes.

Over time, as the medication stabilised and anhedonia increased, my awareness changed considerably. In IFS understandings, consciousness identifies with various parts which are understood as either emotions or the egoic patterns or behaviours used to control emotion.

My regression into anhedonia involved identifying more and more with the parts of myself that suppress emotion than with the emotional experience

First I am the child outside under the sky

Then I am the child in a cage, distressed by the cage

Then I am the cage and the child inside it is understood as dangerous

Then I am the cage and I don't really understand what is inside me

Then there is nothing inside me and the cage metaphor stops being meaningful as there is no longer emotional experience in my inner landscape to compare the ego to.

Sometimes, I have the sense that emotional experience is locked away somewhere and there has been times where it's like some aspect of my conscious awareness is locked away with it. When I felt this way, I understood myself as profoundly depressed. Jung discusses this as libido/life force energy going into the subconscious. Awareness is no longer channelling out into the external world and pursuit, it is funelling down into the subconscious, thus we lose will and interest in the external world. Awareness that was once focused becomes diffused and it's hard to concentrate.

Now, I am not aware of any emotional experience at all and I understand myself as anhedonic. All or most of the angst of the banished child has left the psyche. Especially when I am really in my intellect, depleted from drinking, doom scrolling or other behaviours I engage in to distract from the emptiness.

I plan to do a dopamine detox, start working part time again and see if exercise might help expell the excess energy that is currently going into thinking excessively and feeding the identification with my mind.

On top of this, I want to set aside more time to "regress into the regression" and work to sit with the void where emotion used to be with the expectation that if emotion returns, it is going to be things like anguish, grief and abandonment; the things a child that was locked in a cage and buried would feel.

Expecting the emotional experience to be positive sets up a placelessness within the psyche; not only is there an adversion and lack of identification with the cage which is believed to be withholding pleasant emotion, there is an adversion to the child herself who must be experienced in her current, horrified form. Expectation that she should be pleasant is more disavowal of the reality of emotional experience and causes further fragmentation.

Anyway, just wanted to sort through my own ideas and offer an outline of the mechanisms of anhedonia in case it is helpful or complementary to the biochemical view taken by many on here.

I have a whimsical, expansive seeking part that has been very core to my experience and has also resulted in a lot of immoderate behaviour.

I have life responsibilities which she is deeply adverse to and I'm in a position in life where I am attempting to fix irresponsible tendencies and be a more well rounded person. There is no joy in it. I am consistently resentful towards any amount of structure.

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So, she is increasingly rigid in what she expects when she comes to surface. Historically, I've dranken excessively, had frivolous sex, taken drugs. I've felt completely at one with myself when these pursuits are successful.

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But it's been diminishing returns as I've come to understand the consequences. My psyche just tenses against her and now that I'm trying to be more responsible, my life goals are completely at odds with her existence.

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I want to spend more time with her and allow her some freedom to have novel experiences. I just don't really know how to do this without letting her take the wheel. She is desperate when she comes out of exile. All my joy goes down with her when she is gone so I am desperate too.

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It's like she is my fundamental "yes" to life with a nervous system and responsibilities which feel like enforced "nos".

I want to spend more time in "maybe" land.

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Any advice on how to bring her in in a more moderate way. I think she likes manifesting, feeling beautiful and connecting with interesting people. However, social anxiety, self doubt and socioeconomic disadvantage severely hamper her freedom which is why it's probably been so substance enhanced.

I'm about to build a shed and there is a small gap behind and to the side of it.

There is a weed that is growing in the area that grew a small tree in a short period of time that I had to remove.

Aside from pulling out all the roots, how can I setup the area so it and grass doesn't grow?

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I've had some successes with meditation and finding my centre even in the midst of quite uncomfortable emotions.

The pressure of the outside world makes maintaining this centre feel impossible.

Once I am out in the world, flow feels inaccessible because the world triggers strong threat responses and strong nervous system reactions.

I have traumas I am working on processing and have regressed in my ability to cope with the world because of burnout.

I understand this is something that will take time but I'm wondering if anyone has any insight on finding peace while activated or at least working towards it.

I have long term dissociative challenges.

While meditating, energy was coming up but it's like it was coated in cling film or something, not quite accessible to me

Ive been feeling that a bit lately, like a part of my psyche is withholding emotion.

I do IFS work so I asked the part that was keeping it at bay to tell me more about itself, then I went into an expansive dissociative cloudy state.

I'm okay with this, I understand that it is just a protective mechanism from my psyche.

I lingered in the dissociative state for a time before ending the session.

I plan to do some more grounding meditations but I would like to know if there is a way to work with or embody the dissociation. It seems fruitless to sit in it as it wasn't changing and the longer I spent in it, the less connected I was to my breath and other sensations in the body.

Is this a "the only way out is through" kind of thing or should I be more cautious?