It is a basic rule about the subconscious. Everything is everything else. So cutting a carrot is cutting your finger, is cutting someone else’s limb off, is carving a wooden statue, and eating is engulfing, is drowning, is suffocation, is snakes and lizards. The chains go on and on. They aren’t formless though. They are all linked by their “sensation”. A rock usually isn’t a cloud, unless you have an unusual experience in your subconscious about rocks and clouds. Biting a gingerbread cookie’s head off is cannibalism, is a sexual encounter with someone, is having an argument with your boss.

These chains making a weird sense? Now imagine if this was your waking consciousness. When my wife tells me about a dream she had, she might as well be telling me about a day she had at work.

I have a conscious mind too, it’s just merged. Want to do a word association? What do you want to understand about your behaviour better?

Eating too much. Ok. I will say a word and you just say the first word in your mind. Ready?

Food –> Mood
Feeling –> I’m not getting anything on that one. Yes, you are. It’s just not a word.
Numb –> I keep thinking of rhyming ones. Dumb
That works. Shame –> No words again. Ok, hit another point.
Mom –> A sinking feeling.

You may be censoring when you think there are no words? Also possible. We censor so automatically. Yes, you don’t do it on purpose.

Book –> Nook
Hide –> Bride
Love –> Dove
Lie –> Ply
Seduce –> Traduce
Value –> Trait
Weight –> Hate
Date –> Play
Stupid –> People
Smart –> Dart
Knife –> Life
Pepper –> Salt and
Age –> Page
Safe –> Place
Home –> Heart
Fart –> Wind
Talk –> Balk
Shout –> Loud
Rage –> Cage

Ok, I have a complete picture. You have a drive to eat more than you want because of fundamental senses of rejection. You were the subject of harsh words and punishment that were not followed by reconciliation, so you want to eat when you get angry as a defiance of your Mom. Like stealing and eating a cookie from the cookie jar where you can be seen.

Because you feel your Moms love as a lie, you see romantic and even platonic love as a lie. So you seek to prove your intelligence and when you get overlooked chronically, you get angry and eat again. This makes you angry at yourself and depressed, and touchy about receiving physical affection which you may force yourself to do from time to time anyway. But it makes the person you are interacting with uncomfortable and they, at least subconsciously, wonder if you are mad at them. So keeps a wall up in general, and you have accepted a base level of depression and find habit change really hard. This sound like nonsense? I might have read something wrong so I can be in error. Specifics are difficult to discern with this method, because the subconscious generalizes everything.

It’s pretty close. My Mother is really negative, hates everything. Everything that isn’t her basically, mainly people: minorities, fat people, democrats, etc. Your Mother over eat also? No, she’s a size 0. Oh, then it’s a huge rebellion. Food screams love. She screams hate. You feel to not be your Mom you have to reverse her attitudes. All of them.

To the subconscious, everything is everything. So super skinny is hate to you. It’s all in your head. I don’t even have to use word association really. Peoples heads are like a nature park to me. Word association just gives me some extra signals, makes navigation just a bit easier.

How do I reconcile this? I don’t want to be unhealthy. You can’t remove experience from the subconscious. That’s impossible. But you can add to it, elaborate on the associations. Sometimes this is social role modeling, keeping pleasant company that demonstrates the trait you want for yourself, but role modeling is not the only option.

Find nice skinny people? Yes. Also, you can use negative reinforcement and find mean fat people. They exist also. Elaboration by aversion there. The very best, of course, is finding something that satisfies the actual desire better than food. Nothing works better than that. Your Mom is likely narrow minded. Avoid parts of what is familiar for you, because it’s familiar because of her. Withdraw from the parental familiar and other things often lose their context. To state it more simply, it is often better to go with the devil you do not know.

Like diet, eat anything from childhood? Cheese, potatoes. Eat those separately. Anything else? Eat anything you were not supposed to as a child? Sugar, candy. Still eat sugar, but more selectively, like fruit. Eat more of it. You cannot tell your subconscious “no”, but you can tell it “this instead”.

What are your pet peeves? Intolerance, inefficient driving, people slowing me down. Those are you versus your Mom. Part of you is like your Mom, the other part is fighting the first. You need to break up the fight.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Optimist. Ok, learn to do something slow. Do tai chi, go slow dancing with your boyfriend, listen to music with a really slow pace, and abuse something at the same time as you listen to slow music. Get very violent with a pillow.

How is your self-talk? Annoying. Do that on purpose. Annoy yourself more to exhaustion, but do let yourself have breaks. I bet you are sick of the chronic counter arguments to your Mom, even when you aren’t talking to her and maybe haven’t seen her in a while. Agree with her. Don’t do like she says do, but when you find yourself having the argument with Mom in your head, find a real reason to agree with her. No, you aren’t going to agree with her to her. I will give an example. It might be a bit upsetting.

Call me stupid. Stupid. Ok. Yes. I really am stupid aren’t I? I talk like I know so much, but I’m just full of hot air and bore people into leaving the classes. My topics are stupid and I am just an intellectual poser who is trying to get people to like him because he’s too much of a loser to do something on his own. I am so stupid that I don’t really understand anyone and people just humour me to make the “special” guy feel good about himself. But they are all going to get sick of it and then they will finally call me stupid to my face. Even laugh at all my “wisdom” because I’m really full of cow dung and nothing I say about life is even remotely true. They are right to call me stupid and are smart and even kind for telling me so, but I’m too stupid to learn anything and will just cry like an infant and then go kill myself. This making sense?

Stop him now. He can go on. Yes, I talk too much and nobody finds anything I say interesting. They just humour me because they don’t want to see the man boy get all upset. It’s ugly and they have much more serious problems of their own.

So I should talk like that to myself. Go really over the top? Yes, you should, and get really emotional about it. Really stick up for the argument.

That is all a start. Some of that might not suit you well, but if not there are other methods. The mind is not your master. It’s like a one eyed pavlovian dog that’s been fixed and a double amputee. It lives to do whatever it thinks it can get away with. It’s you who can decide what that is.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~