Low Serotonin Is The Key To The Law Of Attraction

[Andman]

For me the best outcome is with moderate-high Dopamine AND moderate-high Serotonin at the same time.
I tried Tyrosine alone and loved it - for 3-5 days, then things became strange: sleep, angry, ***hole - crash.
After all this Serotonin-Banging in the Ray Peat Sphere I was scrared to use Tryptophan or 5HTP.
Until 2 Month ago - I combined Tyrosine and Tryp in the famous 10:1 Ratio and feel very good/natural with this: Energy and Focus is up and I also feel nice/jovial and smart. Also sleep is ok.

tyrosine can easily raise adrenaline especially in the absence of sunlight on the eye, there was a thread about this some time ago

that being said, i agree with your conclusion that some degree of serotonin seems neccessary to remain functional or even thrive in a typical modern setting (office, traffic, public transport for example)

now i might be completely wrong thinking its due to low serotonin/high dopamine but whenever i overdo it with things like low tryptophan diet, metergoline, glycine, aspirin, coffee etc. i become very easily overwhelmed with life and everyday situations. feels like all the filters are off so to speak

 

[johnwester130]

tyrosine can easily raise adrenaline especially in the absence of sunlight on the eye, there was a thread about this some time ago

that being said, i agree with your conclusion that some degree of serotonin seems neccessary to remain functional or even thrive in a typical modern setting (office, traffic, public transport for example)

now i might be completely wrong thinking its due to low serotonin/high dopamine but whenever i overdo it with things like low tryptophan diet, metergoline, glycine, aspirin, coffee etc. i become very easily overwhelmed with life and everyday situations. feels like all the filters are off so to speak

that's interesting

do you think modern society is a tense, nervouse, rigid, routine high serotonin based society ?

lowering serotonin can make you feel out of place ?

 

[Andman]

that's interesting

do you think modern society is a tense, nervouse, rigid, routine high serotonin based society ?

lowering serotonin can make you feel out of place ?

yeah kinda
although i may be doing something wrong and actually spiking serotonin, hard to say for sure haha

 

[johnwester130]

Ray Peat's entire work is about moving towards happiness and finding meaning through life.

Playing video games all day and eating soybeans is the opposite of life. and moves you towards depression and problems.

Everyone is meant to happy and live in peace, the powers that be already have all the hidden secret technology and free energy technology etc, but they keep it from us and keep us in a state of confusion and paying taxes and funding useless wars etc.

 

[5ht Antagonist]

What are you talking about, LSD is a serotonin agonist not antagonist

 

[japanesedude]

I've found that When I use serotonin antagonists like Lisuride,Cypro and Diamant,I tend to get attracted to feminine woman.

 

[LUH 3417]

I’ve been experimenting with very high doses of cyproheptadine, 32mg a day and there is something very psychedelic about it in terms of synchronicity and awareness. Birds and butterflies keep flying very close to me in crowded urban environments.

 

[Inaut]

I’m becoming high dopamine and flirting with the opposite sex is so natural for me. It’s probably my favourite thing to do these days. Eye contact and smiles are genuinely felt and given, something I avoided in my younger days. I wish I had access to this forum when I was in my teens and depressed......

I notice more looks from ladies as well. This might be part of the law of attraction.

Following this thread

 

[LUH 3417]

I’m becoming high dopamine and flirting with the opposite sex is so natural for me. It’s probably my favourite thing to do these days. Eye contact and smiles are genuinely felt and given, something I avoided in my younger days. I wish I had access to this forum when I was in my teens and depressed......

I notice more looks from ladies as well. This might be part of the law of attraction.

Following this thread

What’s your method for high dopamine

 

[Jib]

So if I eat beets will I find love?

Please guys I'm desperate I haven't seen my ex gf in months and I will eat as many colored vegetables as I have to to feel a woman's hands on my body again please

Just kidding

...



Okay okay to be serious though: I felt awesome on low doses of magic mushrooms. I would love to experiment with microdosing. I think the best way would be to use a coffee grinder to make it into a powder, and fill gel capsules with the powder. The stems and caps can have radically different amounts of psylocibin...however you spell it. My brain is not working tonight.

But homogenizing it would probably be a good idea, and you could dose whatever you want on whatever basis. Around 1.5 grams got me feeling really good, definitely noticed a shift in my mentality, and everything seemed so much more interesting, but I didn't get any visual distortions or auditory hallucinations. They were a fairly weak batch from what I understand.

I would love to try some again, but unfortunately the little buggers have disappeared off my radar. All my friends that have done them are convinced that if you need them, they'll find their way to you.

 

[Inaut]

What’s your method for high dopamine

limonene, magnesium, caffeine ,chocolate/cocoa, zinc in that order.

Working out seems to help me a lot too. Mood and physique

 

[LUH 3417]

So if I eat beets will I find love?

Please guys I'm desperate I haven't seen my ex gf in months and I will eat as many colored vegetables as I have to to feel a woman's hands on my body again please

Just kidding

...



Okay okay to be serious though: I felt awesome on low doses of magic mushrooms. I would love to experiment with microdosing. I think the best way would be to use a coffee grinder to make it into a powder, and fill gel capsules with the powder. The stems and caps can have radically different amounts of psylocibin...however you spell it. My brain is not working tonight.

But homogenizing it would probably be a good idea, and you could dose whatever you want on whatever basis. Around 1.5 grams got me feeling really good, definitely noticed a shift in my mentality, and everything seemed so much more interesting, but I didn't get any visual distortions or auditory hallucinations. They were a fairly weak batch from what I understand.

I would love to try some again, but unfortunately the little buggers have disappeared off my radar. All my friends that have done them are convinced that if you need them, they'll find their way to you.

I did just that for several months, grinding them and putting them into gelatin capsules. I had a lot of interesting experiences but my stomach would also get crampy.

 

[YourUniverse]

I live in well-populated city with a decent amount of light pollution, blurring the stars in the sky.

A week ago, I daydreamed about a camping trip where my friends and I layed out on the dock and observed the stars. I missed that and wished I could see the stars again soon.

Not 48 hours later, I was out with someone and saw the stars overhead. Couldn't help but think of the law of attraction.

My wish came true here, but Ive had many other wishes that have not. I brought this to my friend's attention, and she said "you have to feel something when you make the wish". I think she's right.

 

[Jib]

I'll vouch for working out too. Makes a huge difference for me.

I did just that for several months, grinding them and putting them into gelatin capsules. I had a lot of interesting experiences but my stomach would also get crampy.

Shrooms definitely made me nauseous, even though I love mushrooms in general and they tasted good to me. What was the mg amount you were doing per capsule? I was thinking 500mg would be interesting to try but I've heard of people doing even less. Just wish they were legalized here so we all could experiment.

Did you notice any positive results? Did they seem to lessen over time? I've wondered if tolerance is an issue, and whether to dose weekly, or every several days, etc. to help mitigate the tolerance issue.

Re: OP

The LOA is interesting stuff. My basic premise for analyzing life is realizing that life itself makes no sense at all. It makes no sense that anything exists in the first place, so when I hear crazy theories about things....why not? It's crazy that life exists at all, so no matter how crazy anything is, it isn't as crazy as life itself.

The talk starts at about 3:00 into the video:



That is an excellent video. You gotta separate the wheat from the chaff; apparently he's had a lot of controversial stuff in his career or whatever, but IMO it doesn't change the fact that that video is absolutely awesome. I feel like everything he's saying is spot on as far as LOA goes. Crystal clear and really puts everything into perspective.

I totally get the importance of addressing real issues as well. I was pretty severely abused as a child and have a lot of residual trauma as a result, and when I discovered Robert Smith's Faster EFT method on YouTube, I started using that, and made a lot of progress. It's just like working out though, it'll only get you results if you do it, and do it consistently. Us humans can have a tough time addressing our own issues because it's painful; we don't want to go there. And many of us have a LOT of bad memories. It can take a long time of repeatedly using techniques like Faster EFT to clear out all the bits and pieces; really, it's best as a daily practice.

And so stuff in our subconscious mind, e.g. painful memories, traumatic memories, can end up running our lives for us. I have "agoraphobia," I only put it in quotation marks because I do believe I could get over it if I truly wanted to, but I'm simply not ready to. The magic question is: how do you know? How do you know you're agoraphobic? Then you'll see that you have memories and beliefs that support this image you have of yourself. Painful memories that you may have long forgotten. I'm having one come up right now, and you guessed it -- I don't want to tap on it, because it's painful.

It's exhausting and laborious to focus on painful memories long enough to pull the negative emotions out, and flip the script. But it can be done. I think this a key to LOA. Trying to do positive affirmations when you have a ton of unresolved trauma and emotional pain is like trying to build a mansion on a foundation of quicksand. You have to clear the bad memories out first and get yourself to a neutral emotional place. When you feel lonely/scared/devastated and are constantly re-living traumatic memories on a daily basis you will not be able to just tell yourself "I feel great!"

But working on these memories they can be changed and the current emotional state can genuinely change to a positive, where the affirmations even become unnecessary. You will just feel good. You will genuinely feel relaxed and at peace, and then you don't have to convince yourself that you're feeling good, because you'll just feel it.

Humans tend to preferentially focus on bad experiences too. Like when someone dies. You may have decades of good memories with them, and yet you focus only on the one bad memory to the exclusion of the rest. There may be so many times we had love and support yet we only think about the times we didn't have it. Etc. A big part of LOA, I'm convinced, is learning how to self-soothe, genuinely, and re-focus our minds. You have to focus on what you want, what makes you feel good, if you want to see that manifest in reality.

And here's the Zen catch: as soon as you really feel good, that's it. The "manifestation" thing is a bit of a misnomer. The real prize is the here-and-now, feeling good right now. When we get too attached to the manifestation, we lose the real treasure, which is our ability to feel good for no reason. When our feeling good is too tied to the manifestations, then it becomes fragile, and we can lose our high vibrational frequency, because it's now dependent not on what we're feeling within ourselves, but what we're seeing outside of ourselves, which changes all the time.

Ray's written plenty on learned helplessness too. Between all that NLP can offer, and proper, real medicine based on ramping up our energy production and efficiency, there is nothing but hope for even the worst of cases.

 

[LUH 3417]

I'll vouch for working out too. Makes a huge difference for me.



Shrooms definitely made me nauseous, even though I love mushrooms in general and they tasted good to me. What was the mg amount you were doing per capsule? I was thinking 500mg would be interesting to try but I've heard of people doing even less. Just wish they were legalized here so we all could experiment.

Did you notice any positive results? Did they seem to lessen over time? I've wondered if tolerance is an issue, and whether to dose weekly, or every several days, etc. to help mitigate the tolerance issue.

Re: OP

The LOA is interesting stuff. My basic premise for analyzing life is realizing that life itself makes no sense at all. It makes no sense that anything exists in the first place, so when I hear crazy theories about things....why not? It's crazy that life exists at all, so no matter how crazy anything is, it isn't as crazy as life itself.

The talk starts at about 3:00 into the video:



That is an excellent video. You gotta separate the wheat from the chaff; apparently he's had a lot of controversial stuff in his career or whatever, but IMO it doesn't change the fact that that video is absolutely awesome. I feel like everything he's saying is spot on as far as LOA goes. Crystal clear and really puts everything into perspective.

I totally get the importance of addressing real issues as well. I was pretty severely abused as a child and have a lot of residual trauma as a result, and when I discovered Robert Smith's Faster EFT method on YouTube, I started using that, and made a lot of progress. It's just like working out though, it'll only get you results if you do it, and do it consistently. Us humans can have a tough time addressing our own issues because it's painful; we don't want to go there. And many of us have a LOT of bad memories. It can take a long time of repeatedly using techniques like Faster EFT to clear out all the bits and pieces; really, it's best as a daily practice.

And so stuff in our subconscious mind, e.g. painful memories, traumatic memories, can end up running our lives for us. I have "agoraphobia," I only put it in quotation marks because I do believe I could get over it if I truly wanted to, but I'm simply not ready to. The magic question is: how do you know? How do you know you're agoraphobic? Then you'll see that you have memories and beliefs that support this image you have of yourself. Painful memories that you may have long forgotten. I'm having one come up right now, and you guessed it -- I don't want to tap on it, because it's painful.

It's exhausting and laborious to focus on painful memories long enough to pull the negative emotions out, and flip the script. But it can be done. I think this a key to LOA. Trying to do positive affirmations when you have a ton of unresolved trauma and emotional pain is like trying to build a mansion on a foundation of quicksand. You have to clear the bad memories out first and get yourself to a neutral emotional place. When you feel lonely/scared/devastated and are constantly re-living traumatic memories on a daily basis you will not be able to just tell yourself "I feel great!"

But working on these memories they can be changed and the current emotional state can genuinely change to a positive, where the affirmations even become unnecessary. You will just feel good. You will genuinely feel relaxed and at peace, and then you don't have to convince yourself that you're feeling good, because you'll just feel it.

Humans tend to preferentially focus on bad experiences too. Like when someone dies. You may have decades of good memories with them, and yet you focus only on the one bad memory to the exclusion of the rest. There may be so many times we had love and support yet we only think about the times we didn't have it. Etc. A big part of LOA, I'm convinced, is learning how to self-soothe, genuinely, and re-focus our minds. You have to focus on what you want, what makes you feel good, if you want to see that manifest in reality.

And here's the Zen catch: as soon as you really feel good, that's it. The "manifestation" thing is a bit of a misnomer. The real prize is the here-and-now, feeling good right now. When we get too attached to the manifestation, we lose the real treasure, which is our ability to feel good for no reason. When our feeling good is too tied to the manifestations, then it becomes fragile, and we can lose our high vibrational frequency, because it's now dependent not on what we're feeling within ourselves, but what we're seeing outside of ourselves, which changes all the time.

Ray's written plenty on learned helplessness too. Between all that NLP can offer, and proper, real medicine based on ramping up our energy production and efficiency, there is nothing but hope for even the worst of cases.

I have no idea about the dosing. I ground up what I had in a coffee grinder and filled a gelatin cap. I would take one once every 3-4 days.

The most amazing experiences include what I consider becoming embodied. I could feel feelings in my chest, I could feel my feet, I became aware of how my body responded to people, situations and substances. I found the courage to speak honestly, although I did not have tact and so this cost me a bit. I felt like I was morally obliged to be honest all the time. But the moral obligation was to me. Or else the fear and cowardice would start to reside in my body as symptoms of illness.

It was difficult for me to go to work and socialize while microdosing, probably because my work and social life needed a lot of work and I was purposefully protecting myself while in a vulnerable state. One day at work my boss screamed at me and it felt like a dart flew across the room straight into my chest (I had microdosed that day). I could not attend to my daily life with this level of sensitivity and not fear having a mental breakdown so I stopped. I think about resuming the experiment when I’ve completed some of the practical work of improving my daily living situation. I feel like it made me more me, while also putting me in touch with something universal. I also had a series of experiences that felt like a sort of eternal return, but I don’t believe we are destined to repeat our histories. I think when we are unaware we often grasp for the familiar, and like Nathan Hatch says in his book, mushrooms helped me realize illness really is a response to a body lying to itself about its reality (idk if he ever mentions mushrooms but that is his definition of illness which I fully agree with).

 

[LUH 3417]

I'll vouch for working out too. Makes a huge difference for me.



Shrooms definitely made me nauseous, even though I love mushrooms in general and they tasted good to me. What was the mg amount you were doing per capsule? I was thinking 500mg would be interesting to try but I've heard of people doing even less. Just wish they were legalized here so we all could experiment.

Did you notice any positive results? Did they seem to lessen over time? I've wondered if tolerance is an issue, and whether to dose weekly, or every several days, etc. to help mitigate the tolerance issue.

Re: OP

The LOA is interesting stuff. My basic premise for analyzing life is realizing that life itself makes no sense at all. It makes no sense that anything exists in the first place, so when I hear crazy theories about things....why not? It's crazy that life exists at all, so no matter how crazy anything is, it isn't as crazy as life itself.

The talk starts at about 3:00 into the video:



That is an excellent video. You gotta separate the wheat from the chaff; apparently he's had a lot of controversial stuff in his career or whatever, but IMO it doesn't change the fact that that video is absolutely awesome. I feel like everything he's saying is spot on as far as LOA goes. Crystal clear and really puts everything into perspective.

I totally get the importance of addressing real issues as well. I was pretty severely abused as a child and have a lot of residual trauma as a result, and when I discovered Robert Smith's Faster EFT method on YouTube, I started using that, and made a lot of progress. It's just like working out though, it'll only get you results if you do it, and do it consistently. Us humans can have a tough time addressing our own issues because it's painful; we don't want to go there. And many of us have a LOT of bad memories. It can take a long time of repeatedly using techniques like Faster EFT to clear out all the bits and pieces; really, it's best as a daily practice.

And so stuff in our subconscious mind, e.g. painful memories, traumatic memories, can end up running our lives for us. I have "agoraphobia," I only put it in quotation marks because I do believe I could get over it if I truly wanted to, but I'm simply not ready to. The magic question is: how do you know? How do you know you're agoraphobic? Then you'll see that you have memories and beliefs that support this image you have of yourself. Painful memories that you may have long forgotten. I'm having one come up right now, and you guessed it -- I don't want to tap on it, because it's painful.

It's exhausting and laborious to focus on painful memories long enough to pull the negative emotions out, and flip the script. But it can be done. I think this a key to LOA. Trying to do positive affirmations when you have a ton of unresolved trauma and emotional pain is like trying to build a mansion on a foundation of quicksand. You have to clear the bad memories out first and get yourself to a neutral emotional place. When you feel lonely/scared/devastated and are constantly re-living traumatic memories on a daily basis you will not be able to just tell yourself "I feel great!"

But working on these memories they can be changed and the current emotional state can genuinely change to a positive, where the affirmations even become unnecessary. You will just feel good. You will genuinely feel relaxed and at peace, and then you don't have to convince yourself that you're feeling good, because you'll just feel it.

Humans tend to preferentially focus on bad experiences too. Like when someone dies. You may have decades of good memories with them, and yet you focus only on the one bad memory to the exclusion of the rest. There may be so many times we had love and support yet we only think about the times we didn't have it. Etc. A big part of LOA, I'm convinced, is learning how to self-soothe, genuinely, and re-focus our minds. You have to focus on what you want, what makes you feel good, if you want to see that manifest in reality.

And here's the Zen catch: as soon as you really feel good, that's it. The "manifestation" thing is a bit of a misnomer. The real prize is the here-and-now, feeling good right now. When we get too attached to the manifestation, we lose the real treasure, which is our ability to feel good for no reason. When our feeling good is too tied to the manifestations, then it becomes fragile, and we can lose our high vibrational frequency, because it's now dependent not on what we're feeling within ourselves, but what we're seeing outside of ourselves, which changes all the time.

Ray's written plenty on learned helplessness too. Between all that NLP can offer, and proper, real medicine based on ramping up our energy production and efficiency, there is nothing but hope for even the worst of cases.

What is amazing to me right now though, is the clarity that high dose cyproheptadine has been granting me, and how much my present experience parallels how I saw the world while microdosing. Clearly serotonin is a filter on objectivity, protecting the organism from harsh truths maybe, but always at the price of health and reality.

 

[Jib]

What is amazing to me right now though, is the clarity that high dose cyproheptadine has been granting me, and how much my present experience parallels how I saw the world while microdosing. Clearly serotonin is a filter on objectivity, protecting the organism from harsh truths maybe, but always at the price of health and reality.

Never tried it. I take doxylamine to help me sleep but I'm imagining this antihistamine you're taking has a different effect? Doxylamine makes me very very drowsy until I take it consistently enough to build a tolerance to it.

I agree with the idea that illness is a response to the body lying to itself. In the Bentinho videos he mentions something about feeling bad: it's a result of believing something that is not true. A belief that is out of alignment with how your higher self sees you/reality. Interesting and healthy perspective to take.

I talk about circumcision a lot and to me this is a good example of something physically real that I have had to accept. For years it caused me an immense amount of distress and even though I wouldn't say anything, the lack of sensation I was feeling just made me feel sick, especially when I was with my ex and I felt like I had been robbed at birth of my full potential to experience intimacy. Reading about Meissner's Corpuscles, and light touch sensitivity, anatomy, etc., and then getting massively triggered reading any "studies" about circumcision, which NEVER mention the style of circumcision: high/low, tight/loose, and whether the frenulum was left intact or destroyed. It's genital mutilation and the amount of damage varies.

In my case the circumcision was "high and tight" with my frenulum completely removed/destroyed. Studies comparing non-circ to circumcised sensitivity make no mention of how severe the participants' circumcisions were, and of course if there's a lot of skin left and the frenulum is still intact, the difference in sensitivity will be nowhere near as much. But that makes it into a "study" and now people believe that circumcision causes no changes in sensitivity, which is absolutely ridiculous as it removes a very large amount of nerve-dense tissue and also removes the protective cover for the glans that is supposed to keep it from keratinizing. Common sense, people....amazing what brainwashing can do.

Anyway, I bring up circumcision because it is real physical damage that both happened in the past and will be with the victim for the rest of their lives. It's also very painful to face the reality of it, and of all my friends I've tried to talk to about it, they didn't want to hear it or think about it and even went so far as to deny that it could affect sensitivity or pleasure at all and that it made "no sense."

But for me, it's been healthy to go through the pain and depression and grief, slowly and painfully, to come out on the other side: acceptance. I found my sexuality came more to life after integrating this acceptance. Where there used to be extreme depression and frustration I feel a lot more relaxed and free now.

It turns out that an even bigger issue for me is the denial, much like the child abuse I went through. The invalidation and ignoring of reality and refusal to call a spade a spade is perhaps even more damaging than the initial abuse itself. That's the irony. By sticking our heads in the sand we deny ourselves and others the ability to move through the grieving process and come to the final place of acceptance.

By denying and sticking our heads in the sand, we make ourselves sick, and we stay sick. People just want so much to deny reality, and so make it impossible to come to terms with it. You have to fully embrace the pain and trauma in order to move past it. Accept that it happened. You have to acknowledge that it's real in order to do that.

I am a tremendous advocate for facing difficult realities head on. It is so important. It's those deepest darkest places in our psyche with the worst memories and worst fears -- that's where we have to go if we want to truly heal. Otherwise they will continue to run our lives for us from the shadows.

There's so much on "not being a victim" today that it damages people further. You NEED to acknowledge when you were victimized, and realize you WERE a victim, of whatever happened to you, whether one major memory or a bunch. And then you can move on. There's so much paranoia about facing demons that now we have a whole school of thought thinking that if someone was molested as a child, it was their fault.

I believe in LOA, but not the faction that believes things like being sexually/physically/emotionally abused as a child is the child's fault. Noooooo way. Having been there myself I will say with authority that the only way to truly start to heal from such abuse is to acknowledge that it happened, and was NOT your fault, and you were victimized/taken advantage of by someone more powerful than you that you couldn't do anything about. Then the transformation into self-acceptance can begin, and you can take responsibility for your life and emotions without taking responsibility for abuse you faced in the past as a result of other people's maliciousness.

 

[Jib]

@pinacolada

I found the same with mushrooms. I became hyper aware of my feelings and sensations, both mental and physical. I can see how that could make work and socializing tough. I found I wanted to just sit back and observe people more than engaging with them because the intensity of my feelings and thoughts were amplified quite a lot and engaging with people felt too stimulating.

 

[LUH 3417]

Never tried it. I take doxylamine to help me sleep but I'm imagining this antihistamine you're taking has a different effect? Doxylamine makes me very very drowsy until I take it consistently enough to build a tolerance to it.

I agree with the idea that illness is a response to the body lying to itself. In the Bentinho videos he mentions something about feeling bad: it's a result of believing something that is not true. A belief that is out of alignment with how your higher self sees you/reality. Interesting and healthy perspective to take.

I talk about circumcision a lot and to me this is a good example of something physically real that I have had to accept. For years it caused me an immense amount of distress and even though I wouldn't say anything, the lack of sensation I was feeling just made me feel sick, especially when I was with my ex and I felt like I had been robbed at birth of my full potential to experience intimacy. Reading about Meissner's Corpuscles, and light touch sensitivity, anatomy, etc., and then getting massively triggered reading any "studies" about circumcision, which NEVER mention the style of circumcision: high/low, tight/loose, and whether the frenulum was left intact or destroyed. It's genital mutilation and the amount of damage varies.

In my case the circumcision was "high and tight" with my frenulum completely removed/destroyed. Studies comparing non-circ to circumcised sensitivity make no mention of how severe the participants' circumcisions were, and of course if there's a lot of skin left and the frenulum is still intact, the difference in sensitivity will be nowhere near as much. But that makes it into a "study" and now people believe that circumcision causes no changes in sensitivity, which is absolutely ridiculous as it removes a very large amount of nerve-dense tissue and also removes the protective cover for the glans that is supposed to keep it from keratinizing. Common sense, people....amazing what brainwashing can do.

Anyway, I bring up circumcision because it is real physical damage that both happened in the past and will be with the victim for the rest of their lives. It's also very painful to face the reality of it, and of all my friends I've tried to talk to about it, they didn't want to hear it or think about it and even went so far as to deny that it could affect sensitivity or pleasure at all and that it made "no sense."

But for me, it's been healthy to go through the pain and depression and grief, slowly and painfully, to come out on the other side: acceptance. I found my sexuality came more to life after integrating this acceptance. Where there used to be extreme depression and frustration I feel a lot more relaxed and free now.

It turns out that an even bigger issue for me is the denial, much like the child abuse I went through. The invalidation and ignoring of reality and refusal to call a spade a spade is perhaps even more damaging than the initial abuse itself. That's the irony. By sticking our heads in the sand we deny ourselves and others the ability to move through the grieving process and come to the final place of acceptance.

By denying and sticking our heads in the sand, we make ourselves sick, and we stay sick. People just want so much to deny reality, and so make it impossible to come to terms with it. You have to fully embrace the pain and trauma in order to move past it. Accept that it happened. You have to acknowledge that it's real in order to do that.

I am a tremendous advocate for facing difficult realities head on. It is so important. It's those deepest darkest places in our psyche with the worst memories and worst fears -- that's where we have to go if we want to truly heal. Otherwise they will continue to run our lives for us from the shadows.

There's so much on "not being a victim" today that it damages people further. You NEED to acknowledge when you were victimized, and realize you WERE a victim, of whatever happened to you, whether one major memory or a bunch. And then you can move on. There's so much paranoia about facing demons that now we have a whole school of thought thinking that if someone was molested as a child, it was their fault.

I believe in LOA, but not the faction that believes things like being sexually/physically/emotionally abused as a child is the child's fault. Noooooo way. Having been there myself I will say with authority that the only way to truly start to heal from such abuse is to acknowledge that it happened, and was NOT your fault, and you were victimized/taken advantage of by someone more powerful than you that you couldn't do anything about. Then the transformation into self-acceptance can begin, and you can take responsibility for your life and emotions without taking responsibility for abuse you faced in the past as a result of other people's maliciousness.

I have a similar experience that I consider bodily mutilation and that has really bothered me. I had 4 teeth pulled when I was 13. My teeth were not very crowded but I guess the orthodontist made more money pulling out teeth than he would have just widening my palate. Anyway when I was microdosing I could not stop thinking about this and how it was a way of dehumanizing or desexualizing me (I know that’s very Freudian but I had a very wide smile as a kid and still do somewhat although I think I would probably be way more attractive with my caninine teeth). This has caused a lot of health issues including mouth breathing and weakening of my jaw line and overall lowering my quality of life and vitality. I don’t really know what to do about it, it still depresses me. I had a lot of problems after this incident, mostly related to my mental health. It probably stunted my brain development. I don’t have anything to say about circumcision other than that I am completely against it.

 

[Jib]

I have a similar experience that I consider bodily mutilation and that has really bothered me. I had 4 teeth pulled when I was 13. My teeth were not very crowded but I guess the orthodontist made more money pulling out teeth than he would have just widening my palate. Anyway when I was microdosing I could not stop thinking about this and how it was a way of dehumanizing or desexualizing me (I know that’s very Freudian but I had a very wide smile as a kid and still do somewhat although I think I would probably be way more attractive with my caninine teeth). This has caused a lot of health issues included mouth breathing and weakening of my jaw line and overall lowering my quality of life and vitality. I don’t really know what to do about it, it still depresses me. I had a lot of problems after this incident, mostly related to my mental health. It probably stunted my brain development. I don’t have anything to say about circumcision other than that I am completely against it.

I have something for you in bold at the end, if you're interested and don't want to read all this skip to that. It's the same process I would use on myself and I am going to be doing it after I write it up for you. It helps me as much as it has helped other people I've done it with, and I hope it can be of some use to you. If not then that's okay to, not everyone wants to try it.

I've obsessed for years about 4 teeth I had extracted, my wisdom teeth. I have before and after pictures several years apart: before removal and after removal, and I am 100% convinced I looked much more masculine prior to my wisdom tooth removal. I can get the desexualizing thing completely. I think being seen as a man/woman is very important for our identities and any assaults against our manhood/womanhood are taken very seriously and can take a real toll on the psyche. I'm really sorry you had those teeth extracted and I can empathize with the pain it's caused you.

I read a lot about Dr. Mew's work, and devices like the Homeoblock. It all gets very expensive, and as far as what you can do at home, the only thing I'm aware of is tongue posture (suck your tongue into the back of your mouth, then let it rest on the roof of your mouth, tip of the tongue slightly behind the front teeth) -- with enough work it should re-enable nasal breathing with the mouth closed, and over time can remodel facial structure.

I don't trust any doctors really. There are people who practice "orthotropics," and in your case, if you have the money and the time to do the research and find a genuine person who wants to help, it may be worth looking into. There are orthotropic devices similar to orthodontics but aimed at expanding the palate, widening the airways, promoting nasal breathing with a closed mouth, etc.

For me, I feel like the wisdom tooth extractions, which I did not need, ruined my face, and I get extremely depressed and upset about it if I think too much on it. But as I was saying earlier, the acceptance thing is huge. I did have the good experience of having a girlfriend and we completely loved and accepted each other and were very aroused by each other.

It's funny how while the damage is "real," it can feel much less significant if you really get it lodged in your head that someone finds you extremely attractive/arousing, and you feel really feminine/masculine.

I've gone back and forth on having work done and I don't think I'll ever do it. It's too expensive for me, and even with free things like foreskin "restoration," I just gave up after a while. I did do it enough to get the benefit of having enough slack skin so erections are not uncomfortable anymore, which was huge for me, but I stopped there. They make other things you can use over time to help de-keratinize the glans and make it more sensitive, but I don't want to go the rest of my life effectively wearing a condom every day. I've just accepted that I was circumcised and I have what I have.

My last relationship felt so validating, it really helped me with these body image issues. My ex also had severe body dysmorphic disorder, and while I thought she was absolutely beautiful, and I loved having sex with her and found her really hot, no matter how much I told her this she would always fall back to thinking she was ugly, unattractive, and occasionally that would affect the sex we would have, with her feeling uncomfortable and not being able to let go and enjoy anything because she thought her facial expressions were ugly, or she looked stupid, etc.

Validation can go a very long way. And trust me, I get it: I've lost a lot of sleep over my facial changes post-tooth extraction, as well as having been circumcised. The depression over them has come and gone so many times.

But despite my face having changed and my circumcision, when I've experienced really great sex in the context of being in a relationship with someone I love, everything felt so much better.

We all crave validation, but for me, it only really helped when I was in a relationship with my last (and only) girlfriend. My body image issues aren't as bad as hers but a lot of times I'd be very hard on myself for how I looked. Having reassurance and love/acceptance made every bit of difference in the world.

So for you: if you imagine your teeth having been extracted, and the pain you feel over it, how do you know it's there? Where do you feel it in your body? How intense is it, on a scale of 1 to 10? Notice this. Feel the pain and recognize how you feel it. A tightness in your chest maybe, a sinking feeling in your stomach, your heart, wherever. Notice any images that come into your mind. Sounds. Something someone said, something you're saying to yourself. Sit back and see what comes to your mind.

Got it? Okay. Now I want you to answer this question: what happens when you're holding a bunch of helium balloons and let them go? That's right: they float away. I want you to tap between your eyes now and repeat after me as you tap:

It's safe for me to let it go. All this pain, all this sadness, whatever it means, wherever it comes from, it's okay to let it go. I've been holding onto this for a very long time. I'm really familiar with it, like it's an old friend. And a part of me might even be scared to let it go. But I'm okay. I'm still me. I'm here right now, and it's okay to let it go.

Tap the side of the head: I'm okay as I let it go. Let it go. It's safe to let it go.

Tap below the eye: Let it go. Let it go.

Tap the collar bone: I'm okay as I let it go. It's safe for me to just let it all go.

Now grab your wrist, take a deep breath, and say "Peace."

Just close your eyes and relax. Now go back and think about what was bothering you: how much is it affecting you, on a scale of 1 to 10? Is it more than before? Less? How do you know? What are you feeling in your body, what are you seeing in your mind? Notice it, and repeat the tapping process.


Once you've done this for a while and the emotional intensity is lowered, I want you to imagine a time you felt completely loved and accepted, beautiful, feminine, sexy, alive -- anything you imagine to feel good, any self-image memory that makes you feel good about yourself.

Does it feel good? Or do you notice something coming in and making the good memory feel bad? If you notice something coming in and making you feel bad, repeat the process: how do you know? What is it you're feeling, and seeing in your mind? Do the tapping process all over again on these things, all the bits and pieces, Keep repeating until you the emotional intensity is lowered, and then think about a really positive experience you've had that made you feel good about yourself. Eventually you will be able to think back on these good memories, or even fantasies, and simply relax in them and enjoy them. As you think about these things that make you feel good, and before you open your eyes, grab your wrist, take a deep breath, blow it out, and say "Peace."



There are many videos on this, but that's one of the simplest and one of my favorites.

You have my empathy and sympathy. I sincerely hope you feel better. I will be working on myself as well to do my best to feel better. Thanks for sharing your experience, and please know you're not alone in this.