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Jack’s Emotional Processing Tool

Byjack

Here are the four steps:

  1. Acceptance, understanding, love
    • Vent, express all frustration and feeling with no filter
    • Notice all sensations in body
    • Hold yourself
  2. Self love
    • Self massage
    • Therapeutic dance
    • Humming
  3. Grounding
    • Immerse yourself in the present moment
    • Reframe situation in more real, grounded, present terms
  4. Creativity
    • Happy, loving memory
    • Reframe situation as positive using creativity

You will feel pain come up after step 1, if so go back to step 1.

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Workpost 54: Fears

Byjack

I’m starting work on the new branding project but I’m feeling some fears:

  1. Fear of failure
  2. Fear of being misunderstood and not heard
  3. Fear of being seen as bad, lazy, unproductive, dumb

I feel trapped. Shoulders, fear in center of chest. I don’t know what to do to be seen as productive.

I feel overwhelmed. I feel out of control. Nerves vibing in my chest. Clenched stomach. I don’t know what will work.

I feel like a failure. Pain in my chest. I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’m imagining failing. I feel worthless. Head, chest, cold, numb tingling.

Grounding

I may not satisfy other people’s ideas of productivity, but I can satisfy what I see as productive. I can focus on my personal growth and the growth of my companies.

I don’t know what will work but I know what I can try.

I’m adventuring into new territory – that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing.

This gives me the opportunity to process the I’m unworthy wound.

Reframe

This is my opportunity to help other people grow in what they understand as productivity.

Embrace people knowing what you are working on, practice being proud of your process (like emotional processing). -> Big trigger from dad being skeptical of my process and feeling like I need to justify

Big failure literally always leads to big growth and learning. Let’s chase failure. I shouldn’t feel guilty as failure is all on me.

Ok, that makes me realize a lot of this comes from my dad constantly being skeptical, not trusting me, and dismissing my process. I feel always I need to justify myself.

It leads to a very strong I am trapped wound. Shoulders compressed and pain in chest.

Also some I am misunderstood, I am a failure, I am not trusted.

I wonder if that’s how he was treated? I wonder if he has those wounds too.

To grow from it, it occurs to me that he needed an explanation, a justification, and was skeptical because of his own internalized judgement – not because there was something wrong with me.

His comparison of me with other people was all due to his own shame.

Demanding an explanation is from own lack of trust in himself, he can’t understand my trust in myself.

Additional processing:

I did some more processing later in the day. I felt super tired but I kept feeling pressure to work. I feel fear that if I don’t get a certain amount of work done, that I will be rejected.

My dad would say that I didn’t plan the day out well enough, I was not efficient enough, or that I need to work harder.

I felt that fear in my chest as a I am not good enough wound.

In reframing I came to the conclusion that even though my dad had no boundaries around the amount of energy he could put into work, doesn’t mean I cannot.

I choose to put boundaries around my work, and to stop working or move on when I feel I’ve given as much as I can give within the course of the day.

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Emotional Processing Techniques

Byjack

I wanted to write down these methods of emotional processing for a while since they are super helpful for me.

Method 1: Somatic

  1. Take a breath
  2. Clench the top of your body and breathe
  3. Unclench and breath
  4. Clench bottom of your body and breathe
  5. Unclench and breathe
  6. Clench whole body and breath
  7. Unclench and breathe
  8. Go into your body and feel the sensations and validate the feelings
  9. Let the sensations spread out like ripples
  10. When the ripples subside, bring in a memory that feels in connection with the world

Method 2: Thought based

  1. Write down and validate what you believe
  2. Somatically process (go into your body)
  3. Write down and validate core wounds
  4. Come up with a more balanced and realistic take on your initial belief
  5. Look for a positive way to think about it to balance things out
  6. Find a way to remind yourself of the positive way
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Workpost 42: Loneliness

Byjack

I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.

Major ideas that might help me from this post:

  1. Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
  2. Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.

This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.

Main takeaways:

  1. A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
  2. A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.

For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.

I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:

  1. Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
  2. Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
  3. Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself

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Workpost 29: Health

Byjack

Today I woke up feeling really tired. I felt undermotivated to do the things that I want to do: take walks, write in my journal. I think I’ve also been finding it hard to retain purpose for some reason, or motivation or energy to power that purpose.

I realized this morning that a big reason as to why is simply health. I felt too much discomfort in my stomach in my head, too tired.

Today’s goals are simple:

  1. Clean up my apartment to a level that I could invite people over and feel good about it
  2. Focus on my health and wellness, drink lots of water and take naps, eat good food
  3. Move around a lot, I have a lot of todo list items, and I can take them different places

I’m really excited for the last one, to get outside my apartment a little more. I have more money now to do these sorts of things, so I would like to explore austin a little more, go to the library, parks, coffee shops and just have a good time while I’m working through all the different to-do list items. I have some truly excellent protocols for figuring out how to work on the move and I want to use them.

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Workspace 22: Relax

Byjack

I had a slower start to the day. I started the day on my phone, waking up a bit early because my new retainer is bothering me when I sleep.

I watched some Valorant, talked to my girlfriend, and now I have a flight in about 3 hours. I want to leave in about 2 hours. I still have to take out the trash, eat up some more food and load the dishwasher.

I did a bit of a workout and I found out a couple of things that help with regaining energy, and gathering chi:

  1. Butt-clenched breathing: sounds a bit weird but it works. Lie down, clench the sphincter muscle (what you use to hold in poop) breath in. Then relax and breathe out. Repeat.
  2. Tummy circles: put the left hand over your stomach, then your right hand over that. Make circles over your stomach in the clockwise direction. Do it lightly. Then put your hands in the same area in your back and repeat.
  3. Extremity exercises: this can be any exercise that works your extremities. For example, doing a dead hang and focusing on clenching really hard with your hands but leaving everything else relaxed, or doing heel raises with the tips of your toes super engaged with everything else relaxed.
  4. Meditation: lie down close your eyes and walk down a staircase while counting to 10. Imagine the smell of wet stone, always puts me in a meditative state really quick for some reason.

Anyway goals for today. Just relax! I want to get all the chores sorted out and just spend the rest of my time relaxing.

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Workpost 11: Mentalities for Happiness

Byjack

Today I woke up feeling pretty awful from going to bed at 4AM last night.

I was feeling super overwhelmed with many many things in my life.

Today, I chose to wake up slowly, get to work slowly, and here are some of the mentalities that helped me:

  1. Cleaning is incredibly healing. Any time of cleaning, cleaning your workspace, your body, your clothes, it all is very therapeutic.
  2. What can I do for future Jack. This is the Matthew McConnehey’s idea of leaving breadcrumbs. Instead of the common idea of letting your future self deal with a problem (let future Jack deal with the dishes, let future Jack deal with talking to this person) think about what you can do now to make your future self happier. This can look like everything from cleaning, to setting up a super nice workspace, cooking yourself a really good meal.
  3. Focus on challenge and growth. I think oftentimes I get overwhelmed because I think about how hard things are. What helps me is thinking about everything in terms of challenge and growth. How can I challenge myself? What can I do to grow?
  4. Live in the hierarchy of being true to oneself. I was talking to a friend the other day about hierarchies and choosing the right one (don’t compete in a hierarchy you don’t believe in such as money). I want to compete and live in a hierarchy of being honest and true to myself.

I still feel a quite a bit of stress of the difficult conversations I’m anticipating, and the difficult tasks I have in front of me.

Unwelcome World

I feel sometimes

I am living in a world

Where every step is heavy

But the gravity only pulls on my heart

And the future feels unknown

Scary and not comfy

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Workpost 5: Panic Attack

Byjack

I was just on the border of a panic attack when I went to go exercise.

My Head Hurts

Eyes are swimming in a pain in the back of my head

Heart beating like its a race

And no matter how fast it beats

It isn’t fast enough

To catch up

With the work I want to do

After hanging for a little bit, I decided something. I need to go back to basics. As the level of work, my ambition, my organization go up…so have my stress levels. It is beginning hard to relax, hard to feel in the moment. It feels like I’m in an endless race with no chance to catch my breath.

So here are the basics:

  1. The planning I’m doing in these blog posts give me a huge edge in terms of direction and thought process in a huge number of goals at the same time. However, I now need to do the opposite. The basic I have in mind is this – focus on one thing at a time. Make a todo list. Create prioritization. Make it emotionally make sense (choose what emotionally feels important to focus on first, not logically). Clear all distractions and focus on one thing.
  2. Use the taoist approach to achieve fulfillment. Work until you feel empty.
  3. Use the coaching mindset…let the world come to you, have patience.

I also realized I did not work on the product research goal.

So here it is:

Goal: Create free products in 1 month | UNIT ONE: Complete research | Part 1 Transcribe and think, what is the million dollar problem or breakthrough?

  • One interview per day
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Bedtime Challenge 4: The Marathon

Byjack

I just came up with a sort of solution for the issue of continuing a healthy sleep cycle while ending the challenge.

It is sparked by something my dad said to me. He told me that life is a marathon not a short race. You have to think of things in the longterm in order to stay healthy.

I was thinking about this because I have a technique I use when I need to do something that takes time and patience. For example, if I feel antsy while working at the gym, I ask myself, “when will this be over?” and I start looking at the clock and feeling impatient.

I address with a technique that I call the Forever method. It’s called the forever method because I answer that question with “imagine it will go on forever”. And not in a bad way. In a way that is comforting. This is your new life…and I can let go of figuring out how to rush onto the next thing. I can just focus on the present moment, and focus on doing the movements in a way that I CAN do it forever. That means with good form, without pushing myself too hard.

I realized I can think about life the same way:

  • Bedtime that I can sustain forever
  • Working hours that I can sustain forever
  • Eating in a way that I can sustain forever

This makes a lot of sense for maintaining boundaries. Often we tell ourselves, oh, I will just bear this insult for today, I will just work a little harder today. But in those situations, we are violating our own boundaries. Which means we will build up resentment. It is NOT something you can sustain forever.

So as I close out this challenge, I plan to live in a way that will enable me to live forever.

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Bedtime Challenge 3: The End

Byjack

I realized something. It is the end of my bedtime challenge! I have only three days in which I actually violated the boundaries of the challenge:

  1. First time was for work, when troubleshooting an issue took me until 11:30 PM, I went to bed at 12
  2. Second time was for my girlfriend, helping her with a school project until 12
  3. The third time was when the challenge officially ended already, on the 17th (challenge ended on the 12th) when I was feeling too overwhelmed to pack for my trip back to my parent’s house for the holidays.

Although the challenge is over, the work continues.

It is even more critical now because I have a lot of issues with keeping control of my life while at my parent’s house and the bedtime routine isn’t as nice as I would like to have it. I will keep this challenge going for a few more days to solidify some of the more important aspects of the challenge such as the morning routine, and nighttime routine, and fulfilling some of the things I need from the nighttime (alone time, creativity, productivity, fun, and space).

Instead, I am feeling pretty much that my space and time are particularly intruded on in recent times and I need to find ways to meet those needs.

Overall, I am extremely proud of myself and look forward to all the health benefits this will afford me.