Over the last couple years, I've been exploring this. I can't provide any answers, but I've found all the usual recommendations useful. CBT, Watts, Stoicism, yoga, mindfulness.
Of those, the last -- mindfulness -- has been the most crucial.
I cannot usually control my reaction to stimulus, but the hardest part for me (and in others, now that I observe them) is the identification of the event trigger.
Once you identify what causes things to happen[0], it's much much much easier to adjust the behavior. The event notifier pattern has been most useful for me.
[0] after all, it's kind of ridiculous that a bad incident in traffic will affect my interaction with a colleague.
Mindfulness, despite the recent buzzword-iness of it, has been an amazing tool for me. When I'm feeling any number of negative emotions (anger, anxiety, stress, etc.), or when my OCD flares up, it helps so much to simply pause, turn and face the emotion, address it, and say to myself "I am feeling this way because..." and calling out the trigger. It almost takes the teeth out of the negative feeling, making it pass a lot sooner.
Sounds a little hippy-dippy, sure, but for me it falls into the "it just works" bucket.
Sounds like CBT! Other things I've found that help is more sleep, and less caffeine. It's not talked about much, but I'm convinced caffeine exacerbates the kind of negative emotions and anxiety that affect us perfectionists. I don't quite have the willpower to give it up, though.
After very regularly drinking 1-3 cups of coffee per day for about 8 years, I stopped for the six weeks of this years fasting period. After a few days of headache and tiredness things normalized. I expected a big difference (whatsoever) but was underwhelmed. There might have been a positive effect of not drinking coffee, but I didn't notice anything significant.
I can not give up good coffee as long as I have access to good roasters and an espresso machine.
However, I will freely concede that caffeine does indeed seem to heighten feelings of anxiety. On days when something unpleasant is on my mind, it makes it worse.
On the other hand, it helps me start the day by doing something for myself - making good coffee. I enjoy the process and at the moment, making bad days worse is a price I gladly pay for it.
No, MDMA will give you exactly the opposite effect. It will encourage and cement connections to culture/s and social bonds. It just effects your serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine levels. What magic mushrooms (and other psychedelics like LSD) do is increase the communication between distant parts of the brain that don't normally communicate. That will lead you away from consensus reality, not deeper into it.
Not necessarily. MDMA could potentially enable you loose any feeling of self-concern -- no fear, insecurity and self-consciousness; that feeling of being 5 year old on the Christmas morning.
This might be especially beneficial for someone who is communicating predominantly w/ machines since a kid, and who might have trouble empathizing or relating w/ people.
In this short video Sam Harris describes it very eloquently.
Perhaps easier than the mushrooms, various "chemical supply companies" will sell it to you for "research" and not ask many question. There's a list of such companies on the "RCSources" subreddit wiki.
It's definitely a good idea to get any chemicals tested before consuming them. I doubt they'd intentionally send you the wrong chemical, but I guess shipping mixups could happen. Energy control runs an excellent testing service https://energycontrol-international.org/drug-testing-service...
> truth will erode this false fabricated narrative.
ooh boy, that's a deep rabbit hole. I'm an atheist now, but I was raised in a deeply religious household (fundamentalist christian, family and entire social circle took the bible very seriously).
My experience is that everyone thinks they have the "truth", even though each sect's truth is mutually exclusive from all others (even though they all read from the same book). In addition I found that Jesus' teachings (mostly harmless, mostly obvious) didn't do much to "erode this false fabricated narrative", but rather layered over an additional set of narratives.
I never experienced any deeper insights than this despite a couple of decades worth of heavy indoctrination attempts.
I'm sure you mean well though, so I appreciate your comment.
Well, lets say, you dont minimize it, you standardize it.
Also christianity like all others martyrer religions (shia, judaism) has its benefits, as the usual mad inventor crowd in for some serious suffering before salvation, is part of the cultural accepted background.
Right, this is like how prayer works. Not by the intervention of a deity but by forcing you to think through what you want and why you want it, thereby helping to create the mental preconditions for going about getting it. "God helps those who help themselves" in other words.
sounds interesting. Do you know of any suggested reading on the topic?