I've been struggling with fatigue for many years. Doctors have done blood work many times but found no clear answers and were generally dismissive and unhelpful. Had iron and vitamin D deficiencies at one point, but those have been corrected with supplementation (confirmed with blood work) and my daytime sleepiness remains. Got diagnosed with mild sleep apnea and use a CPAP now for about a year, still super sleepy during the daytime 😭

After discovering IE I began to hope that eating more might help me have more energy. I was not an overt dieter, more of a "careful eater" type, but I was definitely moderately restricting for many years. I know nobody can predict what will happen for me, but did anyone find that eating more helped you with fatigue?

I worked with a dietician at the beginning of this year to make sure I had no major nutrient deficiencies. Then I read the IE book about a month ago and am working my way through Anti Diet currently. I ate pretty intuitively growing up until my 20s. Since encountering a podcast episode with Evelyn Tribole about 2 months ago, I have not been restricting at all and am committed to giving up on weight loss. I do still struggle getting enough to eat from time to time due to a busy schedule and mental health struggles.

I have been questioning lately whether the weekly dosing I'm on is right for me. I spoke with my provider about this once, but I'm not sure they understood what I was saying, so I'm trying to get my thoughts a bit more clear. Would appreciate help and input with that.

I previously (for depression) was on a monthly dosing schedule where I fully dissociated almost every session. Not always a "k-hole" per se, and I don't get visuals from ketamine so I wouldn't call it a "trip," but there'd be at least a few minutes of losing comprehension of where I was, who I was, and what was happening. Immediately after coming back to awareness of myself, I would have a feeling of profound relief and "reset," like something had been cleared, as well as a dramatic lift in mood.

After each of these sessions I had long-lasting relief from depression and after about a year I stopped treatment, depression has never returned. In the few sessions where I did not fully dissociate, I didn't have that same sense of a "reset" and I didn't experience as much of a lift in depressive symptoms in the weeks following.

I returned to ketamine treatment after a few years because I heard it could be used for anxiety and CPTSD. My new provider has me on a weekly dosing schedule. It's been about 2 years of that and I feel I'm reaching a plateau of helpfulness. Tolerance has built, and I'm not really dissociating from my dose anymore, and I'm also not feeling a "reset" or a lift in mood in the days following treatment.

I have mixed feelings about the weekly schedule. On the one hand, having a break from stress once a week has helped me cope with life and process trauma, but on the other hand, I wonder if going back to dosing less frequently and maybe at a higher dose would be more beneficial. Definitely will talk to my provider about this, but I'm trying to organize my thoughts better first.

TLDR, Do you also feel that in session you sometimes have a sensation of "reset," and does that correspond to increased symptom relief in the days following treatment? I'm especially interested in other anxiety and CPTSD patients' experiences.

What do you do when grief for the childhood that was arises in meditations?

I frequently have overwhelming grief come up in response to feeling safety, attunement and love from the IPFs. I have to assume I'm not the only one this happens for.

I'm never quite sure if it's better to lean into fully feeling that grief, with the IPFs' support, or to "turn down the volume" on the grief/ask the grieving part to "take a step back" (in Internal Family Systems terms) so I can focus on feeling the safety and connection. I've tried both ways and it wasn't immediately clear which was more effective.

On the one hand, being held through grief seems beneficial, but on the other hand, I view what I'm doing in sessions partly as "practicing feeling secure" until it becomes more natural.

Or is there some other way you work with this that I haven't thought of? I got about 2/3 through the Dan Brown audiobook before my library loan expired, but I don't recall it talking about this in the IPF chapter.

This is not advice. I am not a professional. This is simply me sharing my experience. Approach psychedelics with caution and preferably with professional guidance. What I did is uncharted territory that has not been studied.

1. Some backstory:

My diagnoses are CPTSD and anxiety, with disorganized attachment. I am 35 years old and female, also diagnosed with autism level 1. I have some history with psychedelic substances and felt comfortable with them before I ever tried using them for therapy. I successfully cured my depression in 2018-2019 after about 1 year of monthly ketamine therapy. At the end of 2023 I saw some reports of ketamine treating anxiety and CPTSD, and decided to give it another try for these, on a weekly schedule. During this entire time I have continued to see the same therapist weekly, doing some IFS work and general talk therapy.

2. My experience with ketamine therapy:

To treat my depression, I simply took the meds and listened to music and it went away on its own. This protocol was not successful for anxiety. I would feel calm during the sessions, but anxiety and shame were back by the next day. I began looking for more active ways to engage neuroplasticity in my recovery, and found guided meditations in general. These felt very soothing and I saw an increase in how long the post-session calmness lasted.

3. Finding IPF:

I continued reading widely on trauma and psychology, both in the literature and on Reddit. The latter is where I stumbled across mention of IPF and decided to give the recordings a try during some of my ketamine sessions.

4. First few IPF meditations:

Immediately in the very first session I was able to feel the love of two supportive presences, so it was easy to be motivated to keep going. By the second session, I felt a deep sense of compassion from the imagined parents and the trauma memories I worked on in that session had lost a great deal of emotional charge. I could see the events more clearly and my memories of them were more coherent. That has continued to be true for other trauma memories I have worked on in other sessions.

5. Using celebrities:

My imagined parents have the faces and a bit of the personalities of famous musicians/artists who I admire (but don't know personally). I know the book says it's better to fully invent the parents, but these imagined parents immediately felt trustworthy to me and like they had the qualities I needed.

6. My experience combining ketamine with IPF meditations:

I have been doing recorded IPF meditations for about 7 months now. Once per week combined with my ketamine sessions, and sometimes in between sessions as well. I also draw on the imagery to support emotional regulation in moments of upset.

In the ketamine sessions, I find it is remarkably easy to pull up memories and associations that would not come to me while sober. The images and sensations can be very vivid, and I feel an enhanced sense of openness that I think assists me in meditating. The downside of the ketamine sessions compared to sober sessions is that ketamine experiences can be hard to remember or precisely describe. Based on my layman's understanding, perhaps they were being encoded in my implicit memory more than my explicit memory.

I felt my self-esteem increasing, and anxiety decreasing. Boundaries became a little easier to set, and while shame still popped up a lot in every day life, it was easier to soothe.

7. LSD and IPF meditations:

2 months ago, 5 months into my solo IPF journey I decided to try combining the recordings with a traditional psychedelic trip. Meditating while on LSD offered many of the benefits of the ketamine meditations, with the added bonus that the content of the experience was easy to remember clearly. I felt the presence of my IPFs more strongly than I ever had before, and felt that I was undergoing transformational change.

I worked through some of my deepest fears that day, together with the active support of the IPFs: mortality, loss, pain and suffering, rejection, and abandonment. Despite the heavy topics, there was a lightness, ease and playfulness to how I felt while talking with the IPFs. They promised me we would always be together and that I would never have to be alone again, and that this was the new reality forever now. In one particularly moving moment, I held the gaze of my ideal mother and felt such love and compassion in the way she looked at me, full of understanding of everything I've been through and acceptance of all that I am, that it still brings me to tears just remembering it.

In the aftermath of that trip, I have continued to feel deeply connected to my IPFs and really feel they are here for me. They are a figment of myself, of course, but I feel their love as though it is from a benevolent other. I have found the IPF concept a more effective way to access self-compassion than the Self of IFS.

8. Results:

- My self-esteem continues to grow and grow.

- Shame is becoming much less troublesome.

- Trauma memories are becoming less charged--once I process them, they actually feel resolved, whereas previously I felt I would go in circles processing the same trauma again and again, feeling catharsis but very little decrease in charge.

- Increased self-acceptance and reduced internalized biphobia. (Sidenote, I chose for my IPFs to both be bisexual themselves and this helped).

- Increased creative self-expression.

- I have less resentment and anger toward my actual parents and am able to balance compassion for them as humans with clear understanding of how they have harmed me.

- I have been surprising myself by spontaneously setting boundaries and speaking up for myself when I previously would have kept silent to accommodate others. Including with my boss, my partner and my mother.

- I was shocked to find that at a recent work event, which normally has me severely panicking for days before, I never felt more than mild anxiety. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it just...never did. The fact that I am not having to push and strive for these changes in behavior is what has most impressed me. In the moment, they've been almost effortless.

- Edit to add because I forgot, my blood pressure went down!

9. Final thoughts:

I still have healing left to do, and I continue my weekly practice. However, I have to say my experiences have already greatly exceeded my expectations. After so many years of suffering and working hard on getting better, I feel so grateful to have finally found something that really works. I'm reading the book now to understand how working with a facilitator is supposed to be and whether there's anything I should tweak about my practice, but I'm planning to continue as I have been until I stop seeing results.

One thing I really appreciate about this approach is that unlike a lot of trauma treatment, it actually feels good. Focusing on experiencing positive affect instead of negative memories is a breath of fresh air. I wanted to share my experience because I have not heard from anyone else who has done something similar. I am not a medical professional and you should please exercise caution and get professional advice before trying this yourself. However for me, this has been BY FAR the best thing I have ever done for myself. I would love to hear from anyone else who has tried something similar.

I happened to find these while looking at silk pillowcases.

https://www.lilysilk.com/us/product/sensa-duo-pillowcase-1.html

​

They are cheaper than most silk pillowcases and that's definitely an indicator of quality. But I don't need super high quality, I was fine with my polyester satin pillowcases previously.

​

The interesting thing about these is the inclusion of a cotton reverse side. Obviously it's a cost saving measure for the company but they actually make a lot of sense for my bedroom setup!

​

I'm the only one in my bed who needs silk to prevent hair tangles, and my partner hates the feeling. But it bothers me to have a single unmatched pillow.

​

These will let me have my matching look when I make the bed in the morning, and my partner can just flip it over at night.

I realized a few years ago that I had literally never seen a bi flag on a house. I live in a liberal area of a conservative state and I've seen plenty of rainbow and trans flags, even one lesbian flag in my neighborhood, but never bi. So I decided to be the change and put one on my house the first time I lived somewhere I could install a flagpole. Everyone in my house is bi, so it represents us all. It makes me so happy seeing it and imagining that a bi person or especially child may see it and feel seen or accepted. Anyone else?

I am very proud of my flag but I wasn't sure people in my neighborhood would recognize it. But today my neighbor told me happy pride and that she has a bi daughter so she recognized it right away. I got a little emotional 🥲

I find that seeing experiences I relate to on some level helps me grieve. Midnight Mass (show) was excellent for this. So even though I tagged it "fun" I'm not looking for light entertainment necessarily. I want to be moved emotionally. Any suggestions?

Edit I should have mentioned games, I'm open to those too if they exist.

I was and am very disturbed by Mary and the conception of Jesus.

I was very small when I was taught this. But at that time I already knew the story of Adam and Eve, and Eve being punished with painful childbirth, which I found disturbing.

I remember putting those pieces together, along with Mary's age, and realizing she was going suffer the torment of painful childbirth, as a child herself. Even at the time, I found it hard to believe that she agreed to that willingly. As a child, I strongly identified with her in that story and was terrified that I could end up in the same situation. I was horrified by the idea of giving birth but did not believe that the God being described to me would accept my "no."

When I got a bit older and started having periods, they were extremely, 10/10, thought-I-was-dying level painful. 20 years later I found out I had endometriosis and adenomyosis, two medical conditions that can cause terrible pain. But before I left the church, I believed this was punishment from God, like Eve's punishment. My period started at 11, so I was still a child.

I think unconsciously, I internalized the belief that everyone around me thought it was good and right for me to be tormented and suffer as a child. I knew Mary was supposed to be my example. So the world to me seemed like a very frightening and sadistic place where my pain was a good thing, and my womb existed for someone else's benefit, while causing me terrible pain. It created a lot of cognitive dissonance, the way goodness, love and torture were implicitly linked. And I believed all the adults around me were not only in support of child torture, but believed it to be aspirational/holy. That really messed with me.

IDK, just some thoughts I wanted to get out. I left all churches behind and became an atheist when I was 19 (after a couple years of Episcopalianism) and I'm 35 now so it's been a long time, but I'm realizing lately how much this stuff still affects me. Most people around me irl didn't go through religion in the same way and can't relate, or they are ex-Evangelical since I'm in the American South.

I just want to share (I'm a bit more than 1 year post-hysterectomy) that I DID have endometriosis and adenomyosis that was NOT visible when I got a bilateral salpingectomy. Sharing in case it helps anyone who, like me, was sterilized by a doctor who promised to check for endo and didn't see anything. It made it harder for me to decide whether to get a hysterectomy or not. But in the end I'm so glad I did because I feel so much better.

My symptoms were primarily extreme pain during periods, heavy periods, and clots.

When my uterus was removed, my doctor was able to see the adeno and some scarring she thought was evidence of endo. I had the same surgeon both times. No complications with recovery and very very pleased to be symptom-free for almost a year now!

Even though I went through things in childhood and adulthood that on paper were worse, the incidents that I have struggled the most with triggers around were attempted SA/near misses, not completed assaults.

TW attempted SA story, not graphic

>! On one instance age 10 I went with my mom and my sister to my mom's friend's house. I was left alone playing video games with the friend's older teenage son and he started touching my upper leg in a way that made me instantly uncomfortable. Then my sister came upstairs into the room and told us cookies were ready. I ran downstairs and away from him, and nothing else happened. On paper this sounds like basically nothing. I didn't ever see that guy again and don't even know who he is. But I think it has really affected me. I still can't stand to have my thighs touched. !<

I've always been confused why this impacted me so much. Anyone else been through something like this or can relate?

Soon will be getting a California king size bed. I never paid much attention to pillow size before and always used US standard size pillows, but I noticed there are king and queen size pillows as well. If you have a cal king, what size pillows are you using with it? I wonder if king size pillows would be too large since cal king is narrower than king? Curious what other people chose.