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Wellness Wednesday for November 15, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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My initial thought was to try IFS techniques to get a deeper understanding of your inner critics/exiles so that you can help repurpose them. However, I see you have already tried IFS.

Since you are not satisfied with the results of your sober techniques, I would gently point you toward considering psilocybin in a low to medium dose. It may open your mind to new ways of approaching your relationship to yourself. It can make new ways of thinking about yourself feel salient and "real" causing you to feel like you can actually change them when sober. After a single experience you may gain a deeper appreciation and insight into the sober practices that you have already tried. Specifically, you may feel more in touch with different "parts" of yourself and this will lead to increased success with IFS.

People sometimes say psilocybin (or other psychedelics) feel like years of therapy after a single dose.

In the lesswrong link they talk about MDMA and that seems like it could work too.