Time, Progress, Despair / Recovering from Stress

[peatlegal]

Hoping some of you who have been at this for a long time can share your internal and spiritual progress and what your timelines looked like.

In my case, while my diet and lifestyle before were Peat-adjacent--shared a lot of the same concerns about light, truth, industrial food, etc.--it's only been about a month and a half of serious commitment. By this I mean, re-introducing lots and lots of carbs (juice, fruit, ice cream, candy, honey), milk, making sure I get my protein and gelatin, and using diet and supplementation to focus on shifting away from serotonin and toward dopamine.

This was the profound realization for me right off the bat. In December, I abruptly cut out all the things I thought were helping my chronic insomnia and anxiety (melatonin, 5-HTP, prescription sleep aids and antidepressents, copious amounts of weed) and stopped compulsively restricting sugar consumption (plus progesterone and, now, a little cyproheptadine). Immediately, I was able to sleep deeply and felt a sense of profound calm and exhaustion. Based on all my reading of/listening to RP, and reflection on my history and internal state, I feel convinced that I have been hypothyroid, high serotonin, and fueled solely by stress hormones for a very long time. My energy is still low, as are my temps, and so I probably now need to figure out my thyroid.

My brain works better now too--thoughts are clearer, keener. This is great in the sense that I am more productive and creative with work and have more hope for the future. At the same time, I'm coming out of a zombie state. Years of anhedonic living driven by stress demons. My reaction to stress (perhaps a bit like IkeIkeforever noted in a recent thread--maybe why I'm thinking about all this) is to retreat, and so I've retreated for ages.

Now I have to dig myself back out. The physical, spiritual, social are all of a piece. But when you wake back up, and your brain comes back online (along with emotions), that can also make pain more acute, make the things that are missing more acute.

How do you handle the slow progress when, recognizing that everything is an interconnected whole, that means everything needs to be reevaluated? I feel like following Peat's precepts has brought parts of my being back to life, and in my best moments I'm deliriously thankful for that. But how does the reanimated creature deal with waking up in a cramped, malfunctioning, husk?

Or, like, (more prosaically) what are some good pro-metabolic substances that promote calm, confidence, and fortitude for the long journey ahead?

[LetTheRedeemed]

@peatlegal I want people to chime in with more but the most important I can think of if you’re hitting things right dietary, is getting locked into community. Find an old church and go to potlucks and Wednesday nights or something. Get plugged in with people who will be vulnerable with you and also uplifting, in exchange for your vulnerability, too. Cross pollinate love with anyone in your sphere — go deep where it will be reciprocated.

Politely distance and limit yourself from people who don’t offer this — swiftly.

[Corngold]

@peatlegal said in Time, Progress, Despair / Recovering from Stress:

Years of anhedonic living driven by stress demons. My reaction to stress is to retreat, and so I've retreated for ages.

I could be wrong, but it seems most people retreat when stressed. I'm sure tolerance and source of stress vary for people, but eventually everyone reaches their "threshold" and shuts down in one way or another for some period of time.

I retreat when stressed. Your post rings true for my experience as well. "Stress demons," demons in general, have had too much power over me for a long time. I wish I had more helpful things to say, but past a certain point, medicine and substances can't really help.

I'm now mentioning Dr. Sarno, who studied the mind/body connection and back/muscle pain, and thought many pains stemmed from repressed rage. I mention this because physical pain can keep someone from overcoming stresses (true for me). His belief was that rage can't be eliminated, but its expression can be managed. In this view, rage targets certain body parts, depriving them of oxygen. Well, I wonder if rage or x factor is targeting certain brain parts and depriving them of oxygen / stressing them.
I don't really know, but I think that the body "shutting down" from stress is also the body shutting down because the mind is in turmoil. The mind directs the body, but often the body leads the mind... so I think it's always both and if we can understand the interaction better, then we're going in a better direction than the anhedonic / automatic route.

I somewhat agree with Sarno, but I think he is wading completely into the dark with the unconscious causation: it could just as well be fear or some unidentified biological response causing our bodily pain, and not simply "rage" (that is non-falsifiable, too, afaik, so it's really more of a therapeutic framework anyways, but can be helpful).

I think to avoid contradictions we can not say "x y and z are good substances." If you see good results from food etc. then that is good. But considering how many things you were taking maybe try to disconnect from that habit of intake and addiction. I think antidepressants and weed both cause serotonin syndrome and that probably takes time to get back to good health.

I was reading deeply into SSRI / depression things the last few years and discovered these drugs can have lasting effects, if not long recovery times. Weed alone I think is terrible for mental clarity, memory, planning, anger, libido, emotions, etc. But at the same time, the fact is that unmanaged stress and anger drive marijuana use in the first place. It seems like the anticipation of the high is the culmination of the stress one wants to unload. So instead of someone punching a wall or a lifting a barbell, they're hitting themselves in the head and lungs with weed.

Find good outlets and things that keep you going. Don't waste energy on people who don't make time for you. I think these two things are what relieve stress but also paradoxically the two things causing so much stress.