Thanks for the advice on supplements I don't like eating any of that food, though.

You see, I believe that my every awakening is triggered by either a noise or an emergency of the organism.

Moreover, there's often a connection between what happens in the dream and the real-life reason for waking up. When I'm being woken up by the need to go the bathroom, my dream ends by doing the same. When I dream about my fetishes and beat off within the dream, I predictably wake up with morning wood (perhaps because of stumbling physically upon my junk).

Dream Log

Thursday, December 10

I'm running a race against Usain Bolt. It's not an ordinary race, we're running in a big building with lots of narrow hallways, stairways, and double-doors. I think it's a hospital or a big office building. We never see anyone else.

We're running side by side. I'm running my ass off. Bolt is barely jogging, and generally not giving a ****, and he gains on me whenever we run flat out for a stretch. Every time we come to a set of double-doors, they're locked, and we have to crawl through little doggy doors, which is an advantage for me because I'm much smaller than Bolt.

There are no elevators in this building, but many floors. We run across a long hallway, then go up a flight of stairs. In the middle of every hallway is a table with some kind of challenge that each of us must complete before we can continue running. The first table has two Rubiks cubes that we must solve. The 2nd table has 2 boxes of Legos and we need to use the Legos to make exactly what's on the picture on the box.

I'm consistently falling behind Bolt while we're running, but I'm crushing him on the challenges, and I recover about 2 seconds every time on the doggy-doors. We're about even on the stairs, mainly because Bolt is at a leisurely jog, looking smug and confident.

The 3rd table has two sets of mixing bowls, whisks, egg whites, and sugar. We need to whip the egg whites/sugar into a stiff meringue. I crush him on this challenge, he looks like he's never used a whisk in his life. Punkass. I have a slight lead as we go up the stairs to the 4th floor. I think to myself "I got this. I just need to not panic when he keeps beating me while we're running. I'm smarter and better than him at basically everything except running. Stay calm. Stay focused. Be patient and persevere."

I'm in awe of your supernatural ability to have such insightful dreams!

Btw, I think that self-delusion in order to gain happiness is like playing reverse emotional Spin & Gos: when you do win, you win small, but when you lose (are 'betrayed' by a lover or have your hopes crushed by the reality), you lose big. Even over a 'large sample', your big downswings will have a bigger magnitude than big upswings, though the latter will be a bit more frequent, and you'll be less likely to be emotionally breakevenish than you'd expect. You might be 'not bankrolled' for such bipolarity.

@ OP.
Your mom was sexually inappropriate/abusive. And now you still live under one roof with her. How does it feel? Don't you want to gain distance to all that?

^ I've had the same question since encountering the blog.

2004 was my first full year playing poker. I made decent money, bought a car, and decided it would be an opportunity to move far away from my parents. I thought this would solve my problems. If my parents were far away, I wouldn't be depressed anymore, right? If my parents were far away, I wouldn't want to break things anymore, right? If my parents were far away, I wouldn't hate everyone in the world, right? If my parents were far away, I would be free, right?

I had an older friend I played golf with who told me this was a bad idea. He said I should save up my money for a few years and then buy a house. I told him he didn't understand, it's well worth it to make a -EV financial decision to get away from my parents. Everything will be fine if I can get away from my parents. I don't need money to be happy, I need to be independent.

When I told my parents I was moving away, my mom couldn't understand why. She took it as a personal insult that her 21 year old son wanted to leave her. She called up her brothers and sisters and told tales of woe about how her children are leaving her (my older brother had moved to Italy a couple years before this).

I moved to a city about 1200 miles away. I got a sweet 1-bedroom townhouse apartment. It had things I'd never had before. A garage! A balcony! A washer/dryer right there in a little room next to the kitchen! A microwave! My dad was a hippy lunatic when it came to microwaves. Mention the word microwave and he'll give you a 20 minute rant about how microwaves will give everyone insta-cancer and make you infertile and cause birth defects and if we have a microwave in our kitchen then the terrorists will have won.

I was all set. My new life of freedom and happiness. I went to a furniture store and bought a nice comfy chair. I brought my computer desk with me from home and setup my two Dell 2001FP monitors on it. I never bought any other furniture. I slept on an exercise mat on the floor in the living room, right next to the desk. The bedroom was nothing more than a place to keep a few boxes of books and a set of golf clubs. Why would I need anything else? I have everything I need to be happy.

I played poker, posted on 2+2, and reviewed hands in PokerTracker about 12 hours a day. My only weakness was hungry and sleepy. I doubled my income in my 2nd year of professional pokering. Sometimes I stayed in my apartment for weeks in row. I never once went on the balcony. I used the microwave as a cupboard to hold plates and bowls. The only time I ever talked to people was to say hello to the cashier at Whole Foods, or the UPS guy. Why would I need to interact with other people? My parents were 1200 miles away, so this must be what happiness is like.

About once a month my mother would call me and say things like "are you ok? Do you need me to come get you?"

I discovered that amazon sold food in bulk and bought a ton of it: a dozen boxes of cereal, a 10 kilo bag of pasta, a ****-ton of almonds, canned tuna and herring, pasta sauces, granola bars, olive oil. I didn't even need to go outside for food anymore. I started wondering how long I could go without going outside. I think it was around day 40 when I realized maybe this was not an ideal way to live. The initial excitement of being in my own apartment 1200 miles away from my parents was wearing off and I was sinking back into depression.

2007 and early 2008 was spent playing poker as little as possible in order to make enough money to survive. I hated poker. I wanted to die. I didn't understand how this plan failed. Late 2008 and early 2009 was mostly spent crying and listening to Bjork, wondering what the hell my life was, is, and would be.

It slowly dawned on me that physical distance can't heal my mind. My mind will follow me wherever I go. I could've moved to China, it wouldn't have made any difference.

I packed up my stuff and moved back home.

What is your brother like and what is your relationship with him?

Your mind wouldn't go anywhere because moving out was the only active step that you made to get rid of the parents' influence, it seems... you've mentioned the 'Toxic Parents' book yourself, what other advice from it have you applied to your own situation?

Living with the parents exposes you to such a big dose of your main allergen that the healing will be going slower. It wouldn't be instant otherwise either, but at least it would be faster.

My bro is 2 years older than me. We didn't have a lot in common growing up. We both liked tennis but I hated playing with him because he had a rotten attitude and would scream and curse and throw his racket every time he hit a bad shot. The only thing we really bonded over was making fun of our dad. We both knew from very early on that our dad was a total spaz who had the anger management skills of a 3 year old, and a lot of eccentric habits that were easy targets for jokes and imitation.

What really set us apart was that he loved school and I hated it. He went to a good university and studied abroad in Paris for a year, where he met his wife. They moved to her hometown of Milan, and had 3 kids.

He hasn't been back to the US for about 5 years iirc, and I haven't spoken to him for about 2 years.

Does your brother deny the mommy/daddy issues? If so, is this the reason why you haven't maintained contact with him?

The Toxic Parents book helped me identify some of my mom's behavior as unhealthy, and encouraged me to talk about it with my therapist. It also introduced me (along with The Truth by Neil Strauss) to the idea of talking to your childhood self. Look at a picture or just imagine yourself at the time something bad happened and give your child self the love and attention you needed but didn't get from your parents. It sounds very touchy feely and lame but it works.

Of course the combination of living away from my parents and doing the work I'm doing on myself now would be the ideal way to heal myself. But the anxiety/social anxiety prevents me from working at the moment, and I don't want to play poker anymore.

I can exist in the same space as my parents. I don't talk to them unless I have to. I cook my own food and eat in my room. It's ok for now.

That's how I used to cohabitate, but my mother is way too talkative. Now I converse with her about twice a month, and it's always violent (which is actually rather my fault).

We've never talked about it. I know that my mom directed almost all of her sexually inapropriate stuff towards me. Earlier I talked about the one time in the car where my mom said I should try having sex sometime and my brother spoke up and told my mom she shouldn't be saying things like that to me. I don't know if he even remembers that, and other than that one time I don't know if he ever noticed my mom saying/doing anything weird to me.

There's a few reasons why we don't talk much anymore. They're not really worth talking about. It's not like we're hostile towards eachother or anything, I just don't feel like I have anything to say to him.

Dream Log

Sunday, December 13

I'm in the apartment I grew up in. Roger Federer is also there. We're both holding ping pong paddles and we're about to start a game. We don't have normal ping pong balls though. The balls are ping pong size, but they're blue and made of some kind of soft foam rubber. They make a nice thump sound when you hit a good shot.

Roger is wearing a blue polo, black shorts, and white socks. A questionable choice for a guy known for his sense of style. I'm wearing white socks but I can't see what else. Roger isn't wearing a headband like normal, his hair is flopping around and he keeps flicking it back in this really douchey way that annoys me.

The apartment has hardwood floors. The living room and dining room are next to eachother, almost like one big room. Each room has an ugly LL Bean braided oval rug covering almost entire floor.

The sides of the rugs are the sidelines of the court. There's no net, the center of the court is the edge of the living room rug that's closest to the dining room. I'm sitting in front of the dining room table, Roger is sitting in front of the coffee table in the living room. We're both sitting cross-legged.

We warmup for a few minutes, then Roger serves first. We're serving overhead like in normal tennis. I'm really nervous, my hands are shaking, I can barely hold the paddle steady.

Roger wins the first 12 points rather easily to go up 3-0. Since there's no net, an effective shot is to hit a really low slice that skids and it's tough to hit it back. Drop shots are also very effective because we can't move forward quickly from a cross-legged position. Roger clearly has more practice hitting the slice and he's crushing me with it.

At the changeover we both go to the kitchen and drink some gatorade. Roger makes a snarky comment about how there's no food in our house.

When we get back. Roger refuses to switch sides. Whatever, I'm too nervous to protest. I basically tank the rest of the set, losing 6-0. Bageled. I use the last 3 games just to practice my low slice shots and serves. We go to the kitchen again to drink more gatorade. I tell myself I have to be more aggro with my serve, attack his backhand, and unleash the low skidder that I'm getting more comfortable hitting.

Roger has still refused to switch sides, as clearly his side is a little easier to move around behind the baseline because the living room table is much smaller.

I serve to start the 2nd set. First point I hit a good serve and Roger hits the return crosscourt, I smoke a forehand crosscourt that CLEARLY catches the edge of the rug, but Roger calls it out. Ok **** this guy, I'm pissed off now. I start to relax. I can't let this douche beat me in my own house. I crush 3 aces in a row to go up 40-15. Then we play a longish rally and I hit a good low skidding slice that he can't get to. I'm on the board.

Next game I break Roger with some great drop shots that he never saw coming. 2-0. I hold serve the next game easily to go up 3-0. I've completely turned the match around and I feel great.

Then my mom comes home. She gets mad at me and Roger, she says I have homework to do and she's gonna take Roger home. Un-****ing-believable. As Roger is leaving he has a douchey smirk on his face, he knows I was in a groove and I had the 2nd set in the bag.

I have no experience with social anxiety, so pls don't be mad if i say dumb things. Have you tried to conquer it by putting yourself either in a position, when you clearly do someone a favor, something like freelancing. I mean by that the role distribution would be so that others accept you plain by definiton. Or the opposite. By putting yourself into situations, where you HAVE to ask others for a favor or negotiate something. I mean now it is somehow uncomfortable, somehow not so cool for you to live with your parents, but you aren't dying from that. And if they would throw you out on the street tomorrow, then you would have no other choice than to deal with things, which require a lot of communication.

I do struggle sometimes with small talk, but the things, where I have a clear goal, like to get some info in my job, or to present a project or so, are a lot easier.

Are you really afraid of what others are gonna think about you? Can you elaborate on this? What exactly makes you afraid?

At least online you make an impression of being reasonable articulate and communicative.

I'm always afraid I'll say/do something stupid. When I feel like I said/did something stupid, it bothers me for a long time, sometimes years.

I understand what you're saying about feeling like I have to talk ot people. That's why I want to get a job, because if I make the commitment to get a job, I'll feel like I have to go to work every day and be around people and talk to people. But at the moment I don't HAVE to get a job, I still have some money from poker and my previous job, so it might take some time for that sense of necessity to take effect.

Too much serious bizness ITT.

Maybe you can start going to the gym, that way you can combine going outside with lifting and maybe even talk to someone on a good day

Two problems with going to a gym:

1. I have exercise induced anxiety. Doing anything more strenous than walking increases my anxiety and sometimes I can't even sleep if I did 50 pushups during the day because I can't get my heart rate down. The first panic attack I ever had was while I was lifting weights at home. This is another reason why I'm afraid to get a job, since my line of work is physical and involves lifting heavy stuff sometimes.

2. Gyms are strange and make me really uncomfortable. The H&F forum is full of stories of incidents of people being super weird in gyms. I think it's because of the anxiety created by the environment of a gym. It makes people self concsious and insecure which manifests itself as constantly nitpicking other people's lifting form or behavior in the gym. I had a membership to a 24hr gym for a year in 2008 and I always went at like 1am to avoid the weirdness.

127.8 lbs today. I was 118 at the start of this year. I was about 135 two years ago before the panic attacks started.

I was exaggerating a bit in my previous post. I've been doing some lifting with DBs and as long as I don't do too much and take some xanax then I can sleep ok. I just got this pull up bar and put it over my closet door and I've been doing 2-3 pullups and chinups and hanging leg raises a few times a day for the last few days.

It's been getting better as I've increased the Lexapro dosage. I'm on 20mg right now, and my psychiatrist says we'll probably go up to 40mg eventually.

Maybe then I'll start one of those bro logs in H&F in which I get hyooj and post noodz.

Have you tried yoga?
I mean if you just want to put some muscles on, then yoga is not really good idea. I have done for some years. I mean not so much meditative part, but more acrobatic. And it is a good work-out. I was always sore after it and in places, where I didn't even knew, that there are muscles. And another advantage was that it was BIG time calming. A session was normally 1,5 to two hours. And if I really pushed myself, really concentrated, really tried to hold this or that position for another breath stroke, my ruminating stopped, I was less stressed and anxious afterwards.

I've never done yoga. I've always thought of yoga as something to make people feel like they're getting exercise when they're really not. Since I can't do real exercise now anyway, maybe I should try it.

Watched Mcqueen And I for like the 5th time last night. McQueen was such a badass.



My fav collection of his was winter 09/10:

Last week I told my therapist there was stuff I wanted to talk about regarding my mom but I couldn't say it yet. I've told her about the one time in the car when she said some weird thing and my brother spoke up on my behalf (refer to post #13 ITT). But I've been trying to work up the balls to say the other things. She said if I wanted to I could write it down and either have her read it or read it out loud or something. I still don't know what would be easiest for me. Saying this type of thing to someone's face is a lot different than posting it on an internet forum. Next appointment is monday.

I've started reading a book called What To Do When You're New by Keith Rollag. So far it seems good. He breaks down new social situations into 5 distinct skill sets:

1. introducing yourself
2. remembering names
3. asking questions
4. developing new relationships
5. performing new skills in front of others

Will post a longer review when I've finished it.