Breaking Negative Thought Patterns

4nt43us · 2017-03-01T03:09:39+00:00

You need to read the side bar - focus on self improvement rather than game theory first it seems you have a lot of personal issues to go through first.

Your situation is quite simple in fact... you rely too much on your families validation and opinion and let them define you as a man. This then makes you feel upset because deep down you see it differently but at the same time don't want to disappoint your family. Wake up.

The only person that can define you is yourself. Who gives a fuck what your family think, it is your life not theirs. You can respect them and their opinion, but the moment you start letting them define you and define how to live your life, you are fucked and will be sad all the time. Start thinking for yourself, start reading books on masculinity, start reading books on religion and politics. Start making your own opinions on topics and deciding for yourself what it means to be a man and how to live your life.

If you want to destroy your beta conditioning and corrupt thought pattern you are going to start having to read books. There is an essential booklist on TRP you should read them all, especially one called "When I say no I feel guilty". Start reading, start getting knowledge and information from other places than your family and popular media. If you don't program your mind, others will program it for you.

dawnlander · 2017-03-01T04:31:09+00:00

First, with negative thought-emotion loops, do not underestimate the truth of this expression, "What you Resist, Persists". I'm going to come back to this in a moment with a way to apply it in a meditation exercise.

I assume you are relatively new (less than 6 months?) to TRP. First, be patient with yourself: frustration at lack of progress is only successful at generating stress hormones. If you feel frustration or anger, let it be a sign you need to do deep breathwork, meaningful exercise, or taking the space to allow that cognitive knot to untie itself in meditation/mindfulness practice. Sometimes this is a form of "eustress" and our instincts are telling us we need to be working harder, smarter or changing our behavior patterns.

Neuroplasticity is real but takes time. Imagine your nervous system (your brain and body patterns) is like a tree that you spent XX years growing (in the case of mediocre upbringing, under suboptimum conditions...perhaps brittle structure or rooted in deficient soil).

Now imagine that old nervous system tree has to die and a new seedling tree has to grow to replace it. If you've ever watched a tree die, they rarely die suddenly...more often it takes many-years of succumbing to old age, disease, or being shaded out by larger competitors. Along the way the corpse of the tree becomes food, fuel and shelter for a whole microcosm of other species to fruit and multiply. In ecology, death is the substrate for new life.

You mentioned Zen. Mindfulness-Awareness practice and meditation were huge for me and are increasingly scientifically validated for remediating all sorts of dysfunctional brain-states like depression, anxiety and ADHD.

Here is the ONE exercise I would like you to do when you read this. It comes from a 'non-duality' teacher that describes the practice as "true meditation": Meditation that just allows whatever arises without attempting to remove, change or label it (akin to "watching the clouds in the sky pass by, ever-changing, without needing to cling or obsess over any particular cloud").

I'm going to modify it slightly to actually bring the BS with your mom/sister and the "shame complex" you have around your sexuality (many of us men have suffered this same wound along the way -- being told our masculine sexuality is bad or should be repressed). To use the symbol of "yin & yang", much of the active work of TRP (diet, exercise, game and life building) is like the outward "yang" practice; meditation and awareness to allow the old buried junk to come out of hiding in our blindspots, to untangle false and dysfunctional feedback-loops and allow the body-brain to recover and rewire is the more subtle "yin" side.

...Lay down and focus on your breathing (google "box breathing" for a good pattern to start with) and "provoke" this shit your dealing with about your mom/sister + sexual shame by just saying something about it or or a key phrase like "sexual shame" or whatever to provoke the thought; Then, the "true meditation" part is to just see what happens in the mind and body as a reaction, like the ripples from the dropped pebble; Feel if there is tension, feelings of anger or emotion, feelings of pleasure that might have been abruptly stifled...Likely these things will change and flow from one to the other as you allow them to do their thing.

...Keep your breathing deep and open and notice any constriction around your diaphragm or voice box....facial tensions or tense areas of the body that might be lingering from the desire to defend yourself...Focus your "intention" on just allowing the thought-emotion-feeling stream to morph and manifest however. What you may come to notice is that many of these surface level emotions can get a lot more powerful, if you feel the need to clench certain muscle groups, do it. You may envision alternative scenarios related to the initial interactions with your mom/sister (did they catch you watching porn, for example?): Like standing up and defending yourself or cursing them out. Just allow those thoughts without obsessing over them, just keep going back to the experience of the breath and the body whenever you feel too "caught up" in a thought. Basically you're trying to give space in your meditation for the internal conflicts to first appear and then just be seen for what they are. The Catharsis happens in that space of allowing and attention.

At that point things like "cognitive behavioral therapy" or approaches that give a description to the thought-pattern and logically make it false, become more effective. Practicing new thought patterns and affirmative/creative/constructive viewpoints can take root much more effectively.

All the while you will be continuing to eat a cleaner and more robust diet, shredding your muscles in an intelligent and disciplined way, and surrounding your mind with strong, positive people, powerful ideas, and allowing your new selfish & self-optimizing instincts drive you in the direction you want to go.

And if its worth anything: search "codependency", "No more mr. nice guy, robert glover" and see if you may have codependent tendencies where you care about what your family/others think/feel before you think about your own state/needs.

trippinallday · 2017-03-01T07:06:05+00:00

Optimism and psychedelics are what worked for me. If you have somewhere safe to trip and a friend who can make sure you don't do anything stupid I'd highly recommend it.

Your trip probably won't be enjoyable but you'll likely face the cause of your anxiety and work through it in your altered state of mind. In moderation with a goal in mind drugs like acid and mushrooms can be tremendously therapeutic.

DadOnDabs · 2017-03-01T04:17:44+00:00

Obviously read the sidebar, start lifting, and work on yourself. I do have something that will help break your fear though. Go get rejected by as many women as possible. The first 50 you talk to will probably reject you. It's cool because there's 3.5 billion more to talk to. Seriously go out and try saying whatever comes to mind and force yourself to talk to females. Nothing is stopping you besides yourself.

Auvergnat · 2017-03-01T09:34:22+00:00

Approach anxiety is an ancient, deep-seated masculine emotion. Even if you had no "shaming history", you would have approach anxiety anyway. We all do.

Actually not all of us. The men who got successful with girls early in life don't have it. And this should hint you as the only thing that'll kill that anxiety for you: getting really really successful with girls.

Until then, you'll have to do with it, using one of the few techniques developed by PUA to "trick" your brain just long enough to approach anyway: approach in under 3 seconds, approach with the deliberate intention to get rejected, elderly opening, etc.

topapito · 2017-03-01T09:51:22+00:00

I'd like to cut in just to clear something up. And this may be my own opinion, but I'll take the risk anyways. MGTOW, is not about swearing off women. It is about avoiding entanglements with women that may lead to LTR's and gasp! marriage. It is about placing your interests ahead of the line and not believing in unicorns, or ever suffering oneitis.

Too many people think MGTOW is about hiding in a bathroom with a fully charged smart phone and jerking it until you drop. And that could not be further from the truth.

As far as approach anxiety, as /u/Auvergnat says, and he really breaks it down very simply. Approach, approach, approach. It's a numbers game really. Think of roulette, the more you play, the more chances you have to hit. It is when you approach without interest that you find you will get the most yesses.

empatheticapathetic · 2017-03-01T13:52:56+00:00

I don't have a lot to say but this is totally me due to various upbringing reasons. Sister and mother interference as well. They actually destroy my brother pretty regularly. They still do it to me now as I have become more aware of the games and it makes me realise it's a horribly inappropriate SHIT TEST. In my opinion it's not something mothers and sisters should do to their own fucking family but guess what, AWALT. They just can't help themselves. They want to see if your alphaness will prevail and tell them to go fuck themselves or you'll conform to their bullshit. It's not out of malice, it's just nature to want a beta around if they need one.

None of that matters anymore anyway. The most important thing for me that changed a lot and helped me grow is simply just moving away and cutting contact with toxic people. And slowly getting better as a person. You're lucky to have TRP to help you see things clearly and help you have confidence in your own opinion.

Just take things at a good pace and stop getting upset at yourself for not having reached a certain standard by a certain point. It means nothing except to you. Get your expectations realistic and just do productive things. Approach one girl a week, see how it goes. If it goes bad you'll be so fucking surprised at low little you give a shit but damn it's just that extra bit of courage you need to just force yourself to do it.

I have a lot of shame and stuff that I'm working through. As I said already the best thing that's helped me is just calming down and not caring either way. It's helping me fall back to base and I can build up healthy ideas about myself and sexual indulgence.

PM me if you need to vent or anything.

/u/SkorchZang 's advice has helped me out in the past. Maybe he can give you a comment.

Title	Breaking Negative Thought Patterns
Author	RPNovice89
Upvotes	11
Comments	12
Date	March 1, 2017 2:33 AM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/5wsh07/breaking_negative_thought_patterns/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/breaking-negative-thought-patterns.83443 https://theredarchive.com/post/83443

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