Letting go of the past, binaural/subliminal mp3 tracks

I've been getting a lot out of binaural beat recordings and actually also these binaural+subliminal message mp3 tracks from amazon.

I don't know exactly what's behind the subliminal message tracks (barely audible statements?), but I do sometimes have some new insights or feel totally novel ways after listening to these.

I picked out some that relate to what I know I need to work on, common issues for people with early trauma and reactive attachment disorder:
Letting Go of the Past
Positive Expectations
Anger Management
Start Loving Yourself
Relationships Insecurity and Jealousy

I find that sometimes I am the most resistant to the tracks that I probably most need, like "Letting Go of the Past." It's probably because these are very deep strategies I have and even if I know they are not great, I can be scared to give them up.

Listening to the one "Letting Go of the Past," I had some really novel reactions, thinking in ways I don't know if I have thought before.

My main thought is:
Wow, I didn't get what I wanted as a kid, and my chance is over. I'm never going to get what I wanted as a kid, since I'm not a kid anymore. That's sad that I had that deprivation back then, but also I can give up the pointless effort of trying to fix it.

I don't need to have a condition where "things are not ok until I fix this wrongness and deprivation that happened to me." (Lots of people including me are into that, where they feel like if they just get this next thing or get this extra accomplishment or fix something else in their lives, then maybe finally everything will be ok. It's like a mouse treadmill.)

It's more like, true, I had wrongness and deprivation in the past, and that's ok. I don't have to do any additional activities in my life now because of what happened then. I don't need to get justice, fix it, erase it, prove it wrong, etc. I don't need to wreck the present by trying to change something that can't be changed: the past.

It's also kind of a loss of hope, losing the hope that one day my childhood would be ok. One day I'd assemble all the parts and have a loving Dad, a boyfriend, everything as I wanted it, so that I'd finally feel satisfied. I'm not going to get that. Where many people have happy fulfilling childhood experiences, I am always going to have some holes. I have the particular childhood experiences and memories I have, and they are mine. I'm only going to be able to guess at what it's like to have a different kind of childhood experience, just as others are only able to guess at what it was like for me.

I think it can be hard to let go of the past when you had traumatic situations, because it feels like justice has not been served yet. You're like, wait, we can't go onto the next stage, Mom/Dad -- you haven't paid for, much less acknowledged, what you did at this stage! It's like you don't want your parents to get off relatively free for their crimes simply by escaping into the next time chunk. It can be maddening because when you finally get your finger on what it was they did, they're already several time chunks past it and the statute of limitations has sort of passed. You're left with a vague sense of duty to the early you who knew that something was wrong and this can be very gripping.

But all there is is the present and it does no good to live the present in the service of the past. The past you doesn't exist anymore so she's not going to know if she gets justice or not. Trying to fix the past is like having a bad dream and then spending your life trying to get justice for what happened in the dream.

The past is basically a dream at this point. Everyone will see it differently. It's ok if you feel indignant about it. Chances are there was lots to feel indignant about. But beyond pointing out clear, objective things that happened (confrontation, works better when what your parents did was clear), there's not a lot you can do. Instead, I guess the thing to do is to watch out for yourself better now. Learn the lessons of the past. Instead of trying to fix the past, try to fix the present, and maybe the past won't bother you so much?

I don't know. These are all new thoughts for me (written while listening to the track).

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I also had this feeling of hurtling into my present self, of myself being stretched between now and somewhere far away, and having it recoil and jump into the present, like a Slinky that had been stretched out and then released to come back to where it was.

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Asking for as much as you'd like

A lot of my physical tension goes away when I realize that now, it's ok to feel. I realize that much of the diaphragm and abdominal tension I used to have was unnecessary and was related to being afraid to feel.

This reminds me a lot of anorexia treatment, where I was relieved to learn "It's ok to eat." It felt like a utopia being in treatment. It had been hard giving myself permission to eat more than the bare minimum I required (perhaps an analogy for how my dad seemed to want me to take only the minimum amount of time/energy/money from him), but now, every few hours, I had official permission from doctors to eat what felt like a fully ample amount of calories, and it was (to me) delicious food-- actual "real," prepared, normal foods like bagels and cream cheese, etc.

Far from being an unpleasant time for me, it was exciting and relieving and gave me so much optimism about this future where now I knew I could take based on what felt right to me, rather than the bare minimum so as not to upset others.

I think that's the key issue: that difference between feeling like it's ok to take the amount that feels right to you - so that you are listening to your own urges about how much you need - versus feeling so concerned about others (whether you are concerned about them getting by, or them getting mad at you) that you restrict yourself to the minimum you can get by with.

It's the difference between eating at a restaurant buffet with a family, where you can take as much as you like, versus eating at a family gathering where, when you are taking from any of the dishes that might not be ample enough to go around (e.g., a green bean dish), you are thinking about whether there will be enough for other people.

The lesson of the trauma process seems to be, it's ok now to ask for more and feel more emotionally than it used to be, both with your own body and with other people. It's ok to let your body guide you as to how much it wants to feel and ask for, rather than oppressing the body for the sake of not upsetting the apple cart.

I've sort of lost many of my inhibitions about asking for things. It's actually really helping me to protect myself better and to express what I'd like directly rather than being dissatisfied and getting upset about other things.

However it's causing some relationship imbalance because I'm being very free about asking but my boyfriend still doesn't feel free, based on his life situation, and then he gets upset with me for taking more than he takes.

Yesterday he said, "Wait, you think we should just ask for whatever we want, take as much as we want?" which seemed unbelievable.

Lots of people get upset and worried about the idea of asking for as much as you want ... but honestly, asking doesn't hurt anyone. It just provides more information about what you'd like, and helps everyone to work together to see if it's possible to meet everyone's needs. If you don't say what you'd like, other people don't know.

If you ask in kind ways and give people an option to say no, it's not really that bad.

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