Nope, not going to, haha, see the light, deserve ten times better. Making plans and working with someone here. Cleaning my room, throwing out shit, focusing on my career goals and whats to come.

Bout fucking time though seeing is believing.

Again, Skinny, keep the convo to here stop sending me privates you wingnut.

The last message I sent you was on the 23rd of May and it read:

Right, I get it, you probably wont reply, you probably wont reply because you think this is enabling my dependency? No, I am just curious as I do appreciate your advise. Do you think Im making progress, do you think I am continuing on the right path. Do you see a difference, do you think my therapy session tonight was good and some good steps forward?

It was personal and I wanted your personal insight on a therapy issue. The last thing I want is for this to go into a back and forth 'yeah and you also said', and 'you said', I get it Time to move on.

Shes literally five min down the road. I've been so busy redoing my room, photography, and so much I haven't even realized.

I am still afraid that you will post:
She came back to me begging etc
How can i fix this
How do i make her respect me
Etc etc

Posting this to show you how funny does that look
Do not fall back. Everyone will hate you here.

But really, maybe there is a way to fix this? Maybe by asking her to marry you?

Haha you're right; I did laugh. I assure you she wants nothing to do with me and is not the type of girl to do or say anything of the above. Vice versa, I would not go back to her.

the part in bold should not matter

Dude, you ask too many questions seeking validation. I know, I used to have this habit myself at a less extent and have now reduced it tremendously. Have you ever had thoughts of imaginary scenarios where you seek validation from people. For example imagine yourself:

- with your new hot girlfriend or female friend out at a social event walking into a group of acquaintances and you feel pumped up when they admire that hot piece of ass.
- or again with your hot girlfriend walking into a bar and coming across your ex and make them jealous.
- Performing your thing (e.g. dancing, playing music, doing sport) in the attention center of certain group of people that you would have wanted to make them like you?

If you find yourself constantly asking the opinions of many people for random small things related to you personally from:

- A text you just wrote to send to a new girl.
- New clothes / products that you are thinking to buy
- what they think about your relationship
- Some new project you are working on from people who are not really experts or related to the field

These are signs of seeking validation from others in a degree that is higher than normal.

P.S. Read your post about the recommendation from the therapist to buy Counterstrike video to feed your addictive personality and if you remember I have advised you the same in principle. In some ways as I told you before I recognized some similarities between you and (younger) me . You need to change your thoughts in order to change your behavior.

Hey Groovy, youre absolutely right. I do, and it's actually eye opening to how many things (almost all 100%) that you mentioned I do. I have basically imagined all those scenarios. Sometimes I imagine myself playing soccer so well and that one person watching and play the images in my head and act how I do it. Yes, I do seek validation that is way higher than normal. I am doing photography. Today I played soccer. I also saw her passing by in a car and it set me back a long while. I saw some of my friends out on snapchat and upload a story and she was there. I felt betrayed, like I was losing control of my situation and progress I had made.

What actions for you best helped you with your validation seeking?

I didn't take any "actions". I changed my thinking:

1) Everyone has an opinion. Only a handful of the people have opinions that matter. If it is required then you can ask those knowledgeable / wise/ friendly / helpful people and don't bother with others.

2) Just be. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what others think and it is not your business. Realise that the majority of people live in their own small bubble of reality and don't really care about what is happening outside of it, never mind to "need" their social approval.

3) This might be a bit philosophical but this is what I will start implementing from now. Remove the pressure that you NEED to be this and that; more successful, more social, more confident. Instead accept what you are right now, be in peace with your self and develop a form of awareness within your self by observing your thoughts and subsequently the behaviours triggered by your thoughts. When you look as an "external observer" you will be able to understand your self better and change what you don't like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj4Yfdg4Nfw

That video was bookmarked for me, it was class, I had to watch it twice to really understand it. It's true, because if you were like me, then you would have realized we actually are/were our worst enemy. Where things maybe could be going for us, we manage to fuck it up or make it a bit worse but why we think is doing right in the moment.

Here's the truth.

100 years from now everyone you know, including every single person on this forum will be dust.

Life is transient, the only 'constant' is change.

Your mind has been inculcated with a dogmatic, often dichotomous belief system you inherited as a child through proxy of your environment (your parents, peer group, culture, and society as a whole).

Your belief system is the lens, if you will, to which you see the world and colours all the raw stimuli your nervous system and senses receive.

The belief system can be very hard to alter, though it is certainly possible. Some choose psychotropic drugs to help numb themselves from the debilitating effects this belief system can plague on someone's life; others self-medicate to try circumvent it (e.g., using alcohol or cocaine as a 'social' lubricant).

Insight can be a powerful catalyst for change, but in and of itself won't ever lead to change. Insight is akin to a lighter spark in an otherwise pitch black room. You can't really use it to find your way out per se, but it can help you see where you are. Rather, change occurs through actions, the 'experiential'. It often happens through BEHAVING a certain way (faking till you BECOME it), rather than altering the belief in itself (which can work too, but I believe is a more difficult way of going about it).

On Enlightenment

There's a strong drive towards the commodification of Enlightenment. It's being sold through spiritual retreats, special rocks, scents etc.. This is just consumerism masquerading as spirituality, that which it isn't remotely close to.

The majority of people who proclaim to be enlightened are not (they just may be quite intelligent, if even that).

Enlightenment exists in this moment, it is the space between thought, the 'here-and-now'. As such you can be enlightened in one moment, but not so the next. Enlightenment is consciousness in its purest form, and true enlightenment requires unhinging from one's Ego, or experiencing its death, if you will.

You can help bring yourself to a more conscious state through some form of meditation, or looking in to what's happening inside of you in both mind and body.

Studies (mainly fMRI) seem to suggest that some form of meditation plays a big role in hemispheric integration, and can dramatically slow down autonomic nervous system responses.



All this said, there is no reality other than the one you've created for yourself (very matrix-like but no less true). We construct the worlds we live in in a very unconscious way. As Alan Watts states you are responsible for change, or you can simply remain status quo and live in the belief system your mind has constructed for you.

Identities are a man-made fiction too, and clinging to them can have deleterious effects. The "shoulds" "ought tos" and "musts" (basically any dogmatic thought) that you live by are a result of creating an identify out of Ego (or 'mind'). Identities aren't cohesive as I understand them. Who you are now will not be who you are 10 minutes from now or even 2 seconds from now. We cling to ego for identity as a means to provide comfort, or some sort of an illusion of a contiguous self. For most its a dreadfully scary (death-like) thought to imagine having no identity, yet our identities hold us back in a great many ways - this is the paradox.


Anyway that's my 2 cents in spite of saying I was done with this thread.

I read N2’s post when he initially posted it, and made sure my reply was up to par with his initial post. I wanted to fully understand it before I replied. With the thoughts of posting this in my journal, I realize it is best to reply to it here.

I think for once; I see where you are coming from with clear eyes. This doesn't mean that I am not at my best right now or doing any better, but I can see your post for what it is. After watching this youtube video over and over again, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emHAoQGoQic - It has become quite clear to me that we create the self through the environment we have grown up with around us and have been given to us by family and friends. The way our family is, the way we have been educated, and this is essentially who we become and at a certain stage in our life becomes almost impossible to change or edit. With the help of my therapist, you guys, and friends, I realize all the problems I have ranging from trust issues, codependence, addiction, and more, realizing it and fixing it are two completely different things. The thing, is realizing them and changing these faults and doing something about them is incredibly hard. You can look at my actions, and see this vicious (what I thought was healthy and an improving) cycle I am constantly in.

It goes like this; to go to sleep I take a pill prescribed to me by my therapist, to feel 'better', I take an anti-depressant every morning prescribed by my therapist. I find myself now feeling quite numb, almost as if I am fighting a constant headache in my brain and asking questions – should I stop the pills, but that would make things worse because I know how much damage stopping anti-depressants can become. I also ask myself, when I do come off the pills, will I be able to sleep without the sleeping pills, have I now become reliable on them? In a sense, I guess these are the psychotropic drugs I have chosen to help numb and aid in my addiction therapy and problems - which I am now all questioning. You see, you talk of 'enlightment' as a 'realization' or an 'epiphany', and let me assure you, I can admit that the invaluable advice you guys have given me has been re-read and re-read but who I am/was/trying to change would read it, take it in and then my belief system or normal self would kick in and do what it does or what I believed was best for me and ignore it resulting in you all probably thinking who the fuck is this troll.

For those of you who doubt me, believe I am a lost cause and helpless, sometimes I feel the same way and currently feel this way right now. In this very moment, I felt like the last week I had made 10 steps forward and now I find myself taking 15 backwards. I have done all of the things listed and suggested by you and my therapist and researched, I haven't contacted her, I ignored her last message, I got a new hobby which I can admit I am becoming quite good at taking photography to a new level and already getting featured on a page with 20,000 views daily. I meditate through an app daily called headspace and have stopped jacking off and take cold showers each morning. I brought my Nintendo 64 down from the attic, installed it in my room and am currently playing Super Mario 64 all over again to form a new type of addiction. Then I have moments, where I am left alone, I do all those things, and as Alan Watts says, I wonder, I think, and I go down this path, and I wonder what she is up to, and I want to get away from my thoughts. I go to the cinema to distract myself, I do all these other things, but it doesn’t feel real, it feels fake because I am doing it to do it to stop myself from thinking about what my mind has become obsessed about.

I drove down my main road two days ago, and I saw her running from a distance, I saw her for the first time in two months, I ended up doing a circle in my car for some stupid reason to make sure it was her as I know she did not see me both times and it was her. I took a turn after the second time seeing her and just cried down a random street in my car. I now see mutual friends (not from her college who I all unfollowed but here in my city/country) uploading pictures, snapchats with her, and I feel defeated, all over again realizing she is here and living life and no one knows my ‘war story’ or ‘who she is’ – not that it matters, but I haven’t let that go yet. I also realized a girl who was a friend, a few months ago that I confided in and spoke to about her revealing more information then I wish about my relationship, her and I recently stopped talking and my ex and her are posting pics together every day almost that appear on my Facebook and my ex commenting on them that I realize she told her everything I had told her. Obviously I then became more upset, realizing yet another person has just confirmed all the thoughts she thinks of me being a stalker, psycho, and so forth, making me feel worse than I did 2 weeks ago defeating all the progress I had made. What do I do, of course I then have to delete this 'old friend' off all social media, another person associated to her which I have to cut out of my life, and there will be another one. I went out last night, to see some of her friends nearby, and I could not keep my mind calm so I realized it was best to leave. I feel stripped to nothing, I feel like I cannot leave the boundaries of my home, and if I do, it is with my family and camera. When I came home, I log on the computer, and research things, write in my little journal, sometimes I pray sometimes I cry. Things were a looking a bit more positive, I was a bit more happy, but now I feel even more defeated, light headed, and secluded than ever before.

Get off of social media.. What do you need it for?

You're going to have to cut ALL things connected to her. At least for now until the attachment is severed completely.

That means MUTUAL friends, that also means all social media, that extends to driving to areas where there's a strong likelihood of running into her.

Pretty funny you just wrote that since I just two minutes ago deleted my instagram app off my phone, my Facebook app and Facebook messenger app. The only one I have left is snapchat where I don't really have any mutual friends with her anymore. Driving around is almost impossible to not maybe see her, if I go on the main road which I always have to she is two minutes to the right and the center is two minutes to the left.

Why is this so hard for me, why do I constantly have a headache. I went out last night and I couldn't even fake a smile as you put it. I ended up deleting Facebook because i saw her comment on another mutual friend "you sooo pretty" on a girls picture she always use to trash talk to me. It's like now she is back she is trying hard to meet up with people. I don't know.

All I know today was another all time low.