REFLECTIONS
(1) Fear of Vulnerability
Something I learned about myself.
→ Person I am starting to feel closer to
→ Body/Mind triggers anxiety, anger, aggression, dysfunctional emotional responses
→ Subconscious walls come up, and I act in ways to push that person away, because I have a profound defence mechanism against opening up, feeling vulnerable, and find it insanely hard to “feel” in a healthy manner
How I learned this: Pattern Recognition – The Aspie super power
-The first relationship with a woman in my life, that evolved in a meaningful sense, was with S, a lovely woman from Texas who I met in Mexico. I went for a energy healing session with her, we hit it off, and she invited he to go for a walk with her on the beach. Turns out, this was just an outlier case of product/market fitment. She likes tall, confident, spiritual and charismatic men, and to her, I was just a 10/10. So, this was “on” very fast and she was trying to move it into the waters of a relationship. Which I just flowed with because it was a fascinating, fascinating human experience for me. I’ve never gone this far. Mostly it’s fuck and ghost for me. Or sometimes, fuck, and then just stay very casual, see each other a bit, just mostly to meet up and fuck the shit out of each other.
-I began to notice very odd things about myself. The closer she got to me, via physical touch, initiating contact, and her opening up and bringing out lots and lots about me, that I never knew, the more anxious I got, and in turn, the more I began to get progressively angrier at a deep subconscious level.
-To deal with these feelings, which were just coming up without me knowing WTF was going on, I was just getting progressively angrier and to channel this anger, I focused on various flaws she had, and pushed her away. She was not giving me what I want, and my needs were not met around her. She has only been in open relationships and I didn’t like her distant, detached way of relating to me. It didn’t make me feel good and was not what I need as a human. I need to be heard, seen, and appreciated for me to open up, trust, and have any form of positive relationship.
-I ended things with her, but it was just a silly situation anyway, that didn’t have any real legs. The W, however, was that it blew my people problems wide open and showed me things I never would have known.
That one woman taught me more than, oh wait, it’s coming….another MAC SLAP...more than 10,000 approaches, 200+ dates, and 12 years of self improvement!
She taught me, by exposing my issues to myself. I’ve got a lot going on upstairs, and this, relates to:
-Defence mechanisms against vulnerability
-I struggle to connect with others in a healthy manner, it makes me feel unsafe, vulnerable, and I cope by having more distant, superficial relationships
However…...getting closer to my tribe, my core network, they were also not letting me off the hook. They became closer to me over the years and this made me just confront my issues and have to deal with them.
Why do I do this?
Father wound: My dad’s main emotion was anger, rage, destruction, and he was a basketcase. As an innocent child, I tried to relate, to understand, and this just never worked, and at times my attempts to do so, involved me being picked up and slammed against a wall, for no apparent reason, and I did not understand it. I just cried, closed off more, and kept withdrawing when this would occur.
As I got older, and began to hate him (early teens), his abusive way of engaging with me, and my attempts to actually try to speak to him, were always thwarted with even more vile abuse.
After a while, I built subconscious walls, and just emotionally shut down, and didn’t want to feel anything any-more.
Trust issues start to come. I would have some “safe” people, and the others, I would be careful around. Most human relationships, did eventually end in dysfunction and bad things happening. That happens when you live defensive, aren’t properly communicating, and aren’t fully present, grounded, and just don’t relate well.
Others feel your base emotions of fear, and they respond by having walls/barriers against you, at a subtle subconscious level.
And your own self-awareness and relational ability being shut down, means you can’t give them what they need. People with fear of vulnerability, struggle to give other humans what they need:
-Listening, being present – this can provoke anxiety, so you don’t do it. Your core fears of, what if they don’t like me, what if they thin I’m weird, what if they find out I’m a bad person (irrational fear) are operating at a base level and stop you being YOU, authentic, and truly being who you are, to speak to and connect with the truth in themselves
Fear of being vulnerable came from childhood abuse, and now as a man who has worked on himself for 10 years, I am strong enough and developed enough, to take ownership of this-process-will-strip-you-down-and-force-you-to
Gratitude For S, My Mexico Romance, and the amazing times I had in Mexico!
Fortunately, she was WAY emotionally healthier than me, and detected I wasn’t fully emotionally healthy. She moved on, happily, but texted me to say happy bday, a bare minimum. That is a sign of self-respect, and being a more whole integrated person. I admire that. But I do not align with, or want her. There was a lot I didn’t like/want, and part of me felt shame I attracted an amateur pornstar/cam girl into my life.
Also, what was sick during this time, was I was feeling happy and had some of the best times of my life.
I enjoyed hanging out with
@loki &
@arcade_fireee on the beaches of Mexico and just enjoying our time.
This, was SO GOOD. I can’t wait to do it again and again in my life as I thrive, win more, and succeed a lot more.
That shit is why I wanted to become successful, have location independence, and be a winner.
Surrounding yourself with other guys who are breaking the mould, seeing through the matrix, abandoning mainstream narratives and living a life of passion and drive, is sick.
Being around others who are striving to go high in life, and you living the life of a winner, which is beautiful sights, beautiful experiences, great people, great times together, lots of women, progressively making more and more money…..this is just goals. The life of a winner, is the only one that is worth having IMO. I want it. I need it. I give myself this life as a gift. Because I deserve it, I worked for it, I deserve the experiences and good that I’ve earned through the sweat I put in.
All of this life, beats being a fat project manager who goes to the office, goes home, and doesn’t have much going, eight days a week.
Yeah I have inner game issues.
………..But what about the person who is gonna exist in 6-12 more months of me working on this shit?
Beast. Mode.
You’ll see……...
Times like that, just laying on those beaches, coaching my clients on my phone, I realised I legit went zero to hero…………….Fucking AWESOME.
PEOPLE, matter to me. Being good with people, matters to me. I need to work on my communications, and continue to build the life I want. Out there. With people. Thriving. Happy. Surrounded by community, connection, and not only pushing myself to fucking new levels of human performance and achievement, but genuinely living my values and subconsciously infecting all those around me with the same desire to soar.
I have good people, and the sort I want. For instance, Paw will occasionally text and invite me to go stay with him for as long as I want. That, is beautiful. That is the real win here. The people. That makes me feel really good about myself and gives me a reason to keep going hard as fucking shit.
Vulnerability Issues: Presently Contributing Factors.
-Avoidance of deeper social connection: my structured work habits, are in part, a coping mechanism for my defence mechanisms against feeling.
-Lack of forgiveness: I have never forgiven my dad for his abuse of me and our family. I don’t like him, and don’t want to verbally forgive him, he doesn’t deserve that. But I am ready to forgive myself. I am ready to accept I deserved better. This is where I am at right now. I need time to work on this. I realise I hold deeper anger that isn’t healthy. I will work more and heal more. I will be OK.
-Communication, Expression: As a shut down person, I have developed a style of being that isn’t communicating how I feel. This I need to think about. I am at max capacity in term of mental bandwidth. This is too much atm. I need space and I will revisit this when less overwhelmed.
Self-Love, Self-Respect
Yesterday, I had hours of insight and reflection on this theme.
Who was the one who was stepping up to the plate to fight for a better life for me during the dark era of my 20s?
Me!
Because I love myself and all of this work, is for myself. I now recognise this. I am a bad ass human who many people find interesting and I do add value to other people’s lives by me being here.
Old posts:
I saved this one, and it was one of the most liked posts on the forums. I want to go back to this version of myself, when I was a regular user, and other guys were engaged with me and were my comrades.
Listen to me, I've come straight from fucking hell, so you know I have been there. You know I have been as low as human being can go and have looked satan dead in his eyes of burning coal. You and no one else on planet earth can question what I have endured, and you fucking know it. Listen to w...
docs.google.com
Despite being shut down as a human being, there was STILL a voice that spoke, even though it was a whisper, though I was so destroyed, there was STILL something, deep, deep, deep inside the core of my soul that said….No, do not give up, I believe in you and I believe you CAN come back, and succeed. And what a tale it will be.
That subconscious version of myself, was a straight up gangster.
This motherfucker had a life of constant rejection, constant negative feedback, had endless shit, endless darkness, had endless failure and brutality
Was laying in bed in his 20s a housebound agorophohic, with chronic fatigue syndrome, depression. Severe anxiety, brain fog, severe C-PTSD, and was completely destroyed.
And yet this fucker was still in there, pushing through a constant stream of blackpill thoughts, and was saying:
“I am going NOWHERE. Beat me down all you want. Hit me with everything you’ve got. I am going to get up, even if it’s in the final minute of the final round, and I am going to knock your ass dead, and win this entire fault. Nothing is going to stop me. I do not care”
That is genuine warrior spirit and I can say, hand on heart as a human being, I have that. I have that part of me. And it is the part of my that saved my life from ruination.
Yes lots of men and women have this.
But I want to praise myself for coming back like this.
That, was the part of me, that is immaterial, timeless, and my actual Self. And over 10 years of going to war on myself, that is the part I have nurtured, fostered, and is now coming to the surface, and coming back into the building, to push the demons that still live here out, and let them know, I am back in the nerve centre, back in control, and they are not welcome here any-more – leave. It’s full steam ahead, it’s full whack, it’s get on my program or be successful, or get the FUCK out of here and do not come back. End of story.
I need to go back to Self-Improver MAC, probably for a year man. I need to FOCUS on myself. I have a solid leadership team here who I trust, who will handle the community. I will do the work to build my audience, and build the mechanism to bring people in – CMU, is an aligned & adjacent project, which if I start to grow robustly, will bring eyeballs and ears here, and empower us to do more as a community. When andy’s YouTube was at 2k, it was just a funnel to here, we were getting sign up and activity out the ass. I have to make CMU that mechanism. If there is more energy here, there is more justification and reason for us to do more here, in terms of empowering others to create, build, and DO…..I have a lot of ideas, but this shit is gonna take me years to realise my vision. And I’ll do it.
Usually, in life, when I am determined and don’t quit, I achieve my goals. I won’t quit until I know I have built the best self-improvement community on the internet. I need y’all to keep posting. I am not
No more admin MAC. That was just weird. Not for 2025. I wanna restructure the leadership dynamics, there is a former mod I need to get back on board, which is just a conversation that needed to take place is all (nothing else, we've always been solid) which I am pretty confident I can do if I commit to doing the work on that relationship, which I will, and we should be good with Bman, Crisis and Manga running the show.
I don’t have the mental bandwidth. Read my posts. Look how complex my journey has become since focusing on inner game. Man it is killing me. So much. So, so, so much shit man……..But I will make it. No doubt.
My Needs: To Be Heard, To Be Seen
Why?
Was not seen or heard as a kid.
Never had anyone ask me what I want, what I like, what my preferences were. I never developed this. No interest was given to me as a human.
I had childhood neglect and it affected me deeply.
I didn’t develop a healthy relationship to myself, and didn’t develop self-awareness.
To heal this, I want the real men, the true me, warts and all, to be seen, heard and for those who OK with it, to accept me.
I want to feel this acceptance and belonging. I felt it living with TimmyTurner, for the first time I felt it deeply. I then felt it living with Paw. I felt it on my recent NYC trip, and saw how many people in that city who are in Game & Self-Improvement respected me. So many of the guys wanted to come out and wing with me. So many wanted to hang out. I had a packed schedule, every single day, of people wanted to hang out and see me. When I was leaving the city, we had a good bye dinner, and lots of great people came to celebrate me.
I of course didn’t ask for this and felt super uncomfortable, but it felt good to know, people do like me, lots value me and just appreciate that I am here in this world. I felt it. I felt it from them. This was healing.
Shame, Relational Repair
As I start working on my developmental plan for 2025. I need to do the work on repairing many relationships in my life:
-@Thebastard
-TimmyTurner
-David, a close personal friendship
I carry huge levels of shame that when I was deep in C-PTSD, I couldn’t answer texts and couldn’t deal with emotions and people.
The fear of vulnerability was too strong with these guys.
There are other relationships which are in a level of dysfunction now, but these people ARE important to me, and I will do the work to rebuild and have a proper connection to them again.
Final Thoughts: Fears of Perception
I do this journaling work here, to heal myself, and to work through my issues.
I occasionally do get negative feedback, and some is quite unhelpful. Some have told me I have a big ego and I am talking about myself in arrogant or grandiose terms. I accept the feedback, but I also accept, I do this, for me. For healing. For growth. And I suspect, sometimes, these guys are just insecure about themselves. Secure people, do not tend to want to tear others down, they tend to want to build others up.
A few guys in Andy’s coaching group, used to say this about me, years ago….I was an up and comer then....
They say, you keep writing on the forums, as if you’re a big shot. Calm down. You’re nothing much man. You’re not successful in my eyes, so just work, and stop writing.
……...And guess what?
Without sounding spiteful. Their lives HAVEN’T MOVED. Yup. Living in the same place, looking the same, living the same. Why? Still in their Ego stage.
To rebuild yourself, you have to break yourself down man.
You don’t see 1% of the work I’ve done on myself and how many times I was torn down to the bone and had to build myself back up. Think what you want. I will
always find ways to win. People slapped me hard for years dude and it helped me get better. You only see the forum. You don’t see my life and how much I had to change and take on. It hurts to think about. This project of building one man from the wreckage I was took about 10-15 other people, consistently.
Which is why I try so hard to give back to y’all.
There was a small sense of pride I felt, reflecting on that I have kept improving. I know I worked myself hard to become better, and I recall being told by some people I needed to stop the yapping, but these people were too immature to understand any of this – people who had childhood neglect, need to heal by expressing themselves and affirmatively rebuilding themselves into who they want to be. People who had abusive childhoods, need to regain their trust in themselves and personal sense of sufficiency and autonomy
I know there is no better person in this world, to take care of my Inner Child, than the man I am now. I am a solid ass human, and I made myself this way.
You can laugh at me and find it amusing that I have all these issues. I don't think 95% of people do, but I have had the odd message that I just dealt with professionally. But the thing about me, is that I will actually fix them. You’ll see. And I might be a guy who is absolutely kicking your ass in life in the next 5-10 years. Already I’ve seen great changes:
-Built 2 businesses
-Fully location independent income
-Travelled the world
-Fucked tonnes of girls, had lots of wild animal sex
-Emotionally healed myself lots
-Lost real weight, gained real muscle
-Healed myself biologically
-Gained enough life experiences for 10 life times
I ain’t gonna slow down either man
This shit is just starting
I truly have a long way to go. I am ambitious and am 5% of where I want to be in my life. 5%. I am now not leading y’all as a community. That isn’t on me. Stop seeing me that way, it makes me uncomfortable and I don’t want it. See Bman, Manga, and the other mods that way. There is one I need to bring back, which was always my intention, and to do that I just need to have a conversation, something I’ve healed enough to have now.
Writing this, has helped me process my thoughts. I need this. And I can’t sort things out in my head effectively without it at this stage. I need to work on my fear of expression and sharing, it’s not healthy, and I want to set the precedent that I am a man in self-improvement and nothing else. This, makes me feel WAY better about doing the work on myself here, which I do actually need.
Thanks,
-MAC DADDY
