Are you safe staying home alone as a woman?

Question: Have you ever lived alone? How do you feel safe? Do you feel safe? Has anyone ever broken in your home while you were in it? I’m gonna be left alone for a while, and I’m trying to find some way to feel safer.

My home had some break-ins as a child, but they were always when my whole family was on vacation. Virtually nobody wants to break into a home with somebody in it because if it comes to confrontation and they end up hurting you, their risk of jail and their time spent in jail goes through the roof.

You can make it seem like more people are in the house than there actually are by leaving music or a TV on in a room on the opposite end of the house/apartment. Keep your curtains drawn, especially at night, so nobody can see inside.

Keep things handy that help you feel safe, such as pepper spray. (You can make your own by putting cayenne in a spray bottle with rubbing alcohol.

Remember that 99.99999999% of people would never consider breaking into someone’s home. It’s a lot of loss and heartache and pain for them with very little to gain. The few people who would do that are very rare and will go for the easiest targets. A person alone in a locked house is not an easy target, actually. For all that person knows, you have a gun, or a boyfriend in your bedroom.

Fake your confidence. I grew up in a ghetto and how confident you look is everything. If you don’t look afraid, then people assume you have no reason to be afraid; i.e. you have a weapon and/or know martial arts and/or know people who will help you nearby. I’m not muscular, I don’t carry a weapon, and I don’t know martial arts. But just by looking really damn confident, I know how to walk around a ghetto on by own and be fine.

It also helps to know that most crimes are personal. Ex-boyfriends who are jealous. Crimes of passion. Date-rape. Shootings between gangs over drugs and territory and money. If you don’t have a creepy ex stalking you, and you’re not in a gang, and you’re not dealing drugs, then you’re fine.

I hope this all helps.

— Raederle

Someone who grew up where it’s rough.

Sinus & Ear Infections, Sore Throat & Swollen Glands, Fevers & Colds — Remedies & Relief

Sinus Infection? Neck Pain? Same Difference.

It’s a common mistake to think the following symptoms are unrelated:

• Sinus infection and/or stuffiness
• Headaches, migraines and/or light sensitivity
• Neck tension and/or trapezius tension
• Swollen glands under the jaw
• Ear infection or itchy ears
• Motion sickness or simulator sickness
• Chronic cough or bronchitis
• Sore throat

These symptoms – these systems – are interconnected and inter-related. It’s common knowledge that mucus running down the back of your throat can give you a sore throat. The same is true for an ear infection, but both of these can travel the other way. An infection that starts in your nose can travel to your ears, throat, and lungs. Your lymph tracts themselves become burdened, and your glands swell. Overflow from your lymph system can cause your muscles to be acutely sore, or, if you have chronic tension in these muscles, you may have a low-grade infection or toxicity level within your glands that is chronic.

Because motion sickness has everything to do with what’s going on in your ears, you’re also more susceptible to getting headaches or nausea when riding in a car, an airplane, or even while playing a first-person video game (which is called simulator sickness).

An infection in the sinuses or ears isn’t always the starting point however. If you have poor posture and live a sedentary lifestyle, then you can develop chronic knots in that area between your shoulder and neck (your trapezius muscles). These knots create metabolic waste that your lymphatic system has to address. Because your lymphatic system is only pumped by your physical activities, a sedentary lifestyle leads to lymphatic blockages in the groin, armpits, breasts, chest (just below the collar bones), and especially in your throat, ear, and jaw area. This can then lead to itchy ears, sore throat, and so on. This can (and frequently does) happen even without any nasty germs being involved.

It is also possible to have all the following start with a gum infection or tooth infection. If you’re suffering from dental problems, I’ve got some other detailed articles for you (linked below). However, I also recommend using the treatments on this page even if it is starting in your mouth. Why?

Whether it is metabolic waste, infection, or something else causing one or more of these systems to bother you, there is always leakage into the other systems. If you only address the one you’re feeling, you’re likely to move from having one problem to another. Ever heard someone say that they were just getting over an ear infection, but now they’ve got a sore throat? It’s because they addressed some of the issue, but not the spillover.

Imagine you spill milk all over the counter. If you mop up the counter and floor, it might look clean, but a few days later your kitchen will smell like spoiled milk. Small amounts of milk will have gotten into floor boards, cabinet doors, and sometimes even into drawers. The best approach is to act fast, and act thoroughly – before your body is akin to a kitchen reeking of spoiled milk.

The Sore Throat

The most common cause for a sore throat is a sinus infection. Mucus makes its way down the throat and causes irritation. The sinus infection often spreads into the ear canal, becoming an ear infection, or drips down into the lungs, causing acute bronchitis (inflammation of the bronchial tubes within the lungs).

Treating the sore throat symptom is often very helpful toward healing (so long as you’re not treating it with ice-cream, sweetened cough drops, and other sugary nonsense), but to really kick the infection to the curb, the entire respiratory system needs treatment.

Let’s start with sore-throat soothers that will also boost your immune system.

“What does it mean to boost my immune system?”

Since your immune system is nearly your entire body, “boosting” it means doing things that help without any negative side effects. Giving yourself minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants without refined sweeteners, mold, pesticides, etc, is how you boost your immune system. For example, rolled oats have some beneficial properties, but they also are dehydrating, have a low nutrient density per calorie, are low in antioxidants, and contain lectins that many people are sensitive to. I wouldn’t call oats immune-boosting.

Soothing The Sore Throat

Peeled, Seedless Cucumbers – Peel them entirely. While some people feel that peeling cucumbers is a waste of nutrition, as a nutritionist, I completely disagree. There isn’t enough valuable nutrient content in the peels to be worth the irritation they can cause in your throat and digestive system.

You can add sea salt or mustard to your cucumber slices to make them more appealing if they seem bland by themselves. Salt helps kill infection in the mouth and throat, and improves the flavor and experience of the cucumber. Cucumbers are one of the most effective aids for a sore throat, and science doesn’t exactly know why. One thing we do know is that cucumbers are better at hydrating your body than water alone because of their fantastic electrolyte balance.

Salt Water Gargle – Mix hot water with sea salt and swish together until the salt dissolves. Use a half teaspoon of sea salt in a half cup of water. Tip your head back and breathe out to gargle the salt water mixture at the opening to your throat. This kills infection, clears mucus, and carries away a lot of debris from your mouth and throat. Salt-water gargling should be done at least once a day with minor sore throats, and twice a day with more severe cases. This is also a useful hygienic tool to use every morning as part of dental hygiene and absolutely should always be done after oil-pulling. (Oil pulling is swishing your mouth with oil, which also helps remove bacteria from your mouth.)

You can also gargle with garlic tea (described under “Fighting Respiratory Infections”), clove tea, apple cider vinegar, diluted hydrogen peroxide, and/or ginger tea to help kill undesirable bacteria in the mouth and throat.

Hot Tea – Keep hot tea with you continually and sip it all day and all night when you have a sore throat. Helpful ingredients include licorice, slippery elm, marshmallow root, sage, echinacea, ginger root (ideally use fresh slices), chamomile, turmeric, elderberry, lemon peels, orange peels, cranberries, pomegranate (use the white inner fiber after eating or juicing the red arils), cloves, goldenseal, raspberry leaves (fresh or dry), honeysuckle flowers & leaves (fresh or dry), and cinnamon sticks¹.

¹I recommend cinnamon as sticks and not as powder so that you get the essence without the granules. The granules can be an irritant. Also, stay away from cinnamon if you have cankersores or are extremely prone to cankersores.

Slippery Elm & Marshmallow Root – Slippery elm is very mucus-like. Mucus, while unpleasant, is your body’s natural defense. Many remedies include lemon, which helps burn away the yucky mucus, but what many people don’t know is that you want to replace the mucus after you’ve burned away the old mucus. When slippery elm or marshmallow root is mixed with water, a mucus-like substance forms a slick gel that coats and soothes. To use, pour boiling water over powdered slippery elm and/or marshmallow root, stir, and drink. If you make your own home-made lozenges, slippery elm is a great ingredient to add. You can sometimes find these in the bulk section at health stores, or in the form of tea in the tea section.

Essential Oils – Place one or two drops of essential oil in your palm. Then touch your palms together gently so that there is some oil on each palm. (Do not rub your hands together.) Then “tent your hands” so that they are covering your nose. Inhale the vapors between your hands. When you exhale, you can leave your hands where they are, but I prefer to move my hands because often my exhale takes the vapors up toward my eyes, which is unpleasant and not useful. You can also tent your hands over someone else’s face during your exhale, which I particularly enjoy doing with my husband.

All quality essential oils (that smell appealing to you) will be enjoyable this way, but some are particularly helpful to the sore throat, such as ravensara, peppermint, lemon, eucalyptus radiata, cinnamon¹, melaleuca alternifolia (tea tree), and myrrh.

With food grade essential oils, you can take peppermint, lemon, eucalyptus radiata, and melaleuca alternifolia in a capsule daily for additional immune support.

More about essential oils under “Acute Bronchitis & Cough Remedies” below.

Vegetable Juice – Using a masticating juicer (such as the Omega) you can make your own leafy-green juices. While salads may be irritating and too much effort to chew when you’re sick, the leafy greens will powerfully aid your body in the form of juice. A masticating juicer squishes the greens, extracting the juice without cutting, which minimizes oxidation of nutrients. Then the pulp (fiber) is put into a separate bin. By leaving the fiber out, the juice comes into full contact with the cells in your mouth and throat. This full contact allows direct absorption of beneficial compounds, particularly through the gums.

While vegetable juice is always a great addition to any diet, it is particularly helpful to an irritated respiratory system. Particular vegetables (and fruits) I recommend include beets, leafy greens (dandelions, kale, spinach, escarole, cabbage, etc), ginger, lemon, cucumbers, wheatgrass, turmeric, celery and cranberries.

While it is fine to simply drink your juice normally, you can also take a concentrated shot² of wheatgrass, turmeric, and/or ginger juice and simply hold it in your mouth against your throat for several minutes to get direct action on your mouth and throat. This can relieve toothache pain and begin healing on gums, cavities, and any other damage in the area. It is important to note that any dental infections are a major strain on the body and are often connected to respiratory infections.

If you’re struggling with gum disease, cavities, tooth aches or bad breath, read my article on healing these conditions by clicking here.

²A concentrated shot of these juices means not diluted by cucumber, beets, carrots, apples, or any other juice that would weaken the impact. You could have other herbs included however, such as sage or rosemary, without “diluting” the juice. In general, when sick, I recommend staying away from adding apples to your juice, and possibly even away from carrots. If you need the juice to be more palatable, rely on lemons, cucumber, or celery. Possible flavor adjusters could also mean tomatoes, ginger, garlic, or even hot peppers.

Common Recommendations That May Hurt Instead of Help

I do not recommend honey unless you also have a severe cough. While honey is a whole food made by nature (particularly if you get it raw and local from an organic farm), it is still very, very sweet. Sweet things feed bacteria. Even if the honey itself is antibacterial, that changes as soon as your body begins to break it down – which starts in your mouth! Give your pancreas, liver and adrenal system a break and lay off the honey unless you have a severe, hacking cough and don’t have access to cough-soothing alternatives.

I also do not personally recommend baking soda as a remedy for sore throats or digestive discomfort. Baking soda will help stifle acid reflux in the moment, and will kill bacteria in the throat, but it will dramatically impact your stomach acid’s pH in an unnatural way that will stifle your digestion. There are plenty of ways to effectively kill bacteria in your throat contained in this article, and plenty of ways to healthily regain digestive function in other articles of mine, such as:

“My stomach hurts after everything I eat! What should I do?”

“Healing duodenal stomach ulcers and getting rid of helicobacter pylori.”

I strongly advise against any dairy products coming from the cow while you’re sick. Firstly, store-bought dairy products are usually pasteurized, destroying the beneficial parts of the milk and negatively impacting the pH of the milk. Secondly, store-bought dairy products are usually from animals that have been raised in an unhealthy environment often including a diet of GMO soy, pesticide-laden wheat, and GMO alfalfa.

That said, if you have access to raw goat milk, this can be highly beneficial, particularly if you’re fond of citrus or other mucus-stripping treatments while you’re sick. After you’ve used citrus or sea salt to strip your throat of mucus, then consume raw goat milk to add a layer of fresh, helpful mucus back. You can also use slippery elm or marshmallow herb to add helpful, soothing mucus.

Acute Bronchitis & Cough Remedies

While all of the sore-throat remedies will help with coughing and bronchitis to some extent, some specific herbs for dealing with lung irritation and infection include osha root, eucalyptus globulus, lungwort leaf, oregano leaf, lobelia flower, and chaparral.

Notice I said eucalyptus globulus for the lungs, and for the sinuses and sore throat, I recommended eucalyptus radiata. When selecting an essential oil or tea, pay attention to what kind of eucalyptus you’re getting.

Eucalyptol occurs in high concentrations in eucalyptus globulus and is responsible for the oil’s ability to decongest the lungs. Eucalyptus globulus is also very effective as an air purifier. It effectively removes odors and airborne bacteria.

Eucalyptus radiata also contains eucalyptol, but less of it. It is good for severe sinus infections because it can be inhaled even with sinuses so irritated that they’re bleeding. Eucalyptus globulus, in contrast, will burn painfully in irritated sinuses. If you’re experiencing gunk in the lungs and have very irritated sinuses, you can tent your hands over your mouth with eucalyptus globulus and inhale the vapors down your throat, skipping your sinuses and getting the vapors directly to your lungs.

For severely sensitive tissues, you can use eucalyptus dives. It is the most mild form of eucalyptus. As your tissues heal you can move up to radiata, and then later to globulus. “Dives” is also great for topical application on a yeast infection or other type of vaginal infection.

The strongest variant is eucalyptus polybractea. This is too strong to be taken in directly, but can be used in a diffuser to create a healing atmosphere for respiratory infections and irritations.

Ear Infection Remedies

Everything on this page will help at least a little with an ear infection. However, treating ears is most effective when you also include remedies that go straight to the source – the ear canal.

Ear Oiling

Warm olive oil (or another neutral oil safe for internal use) in a dropper bottle by placing the glass dropper bottle in a bowl of hot or boiling water. I like to boil water for my tea and then pour my tea at the same time as adding some boiling water to a pyrex bowl to warm my ear oil. Then, while my tea is steeping, I can use the ear oil.

If using boiling water, the oil in the dropper bottle should warm very quickly. Test it every minute by pulling it out and putting one drop in your palm. It should feel mildly warm. If it feels right in your palm, test it again on your ear but not yet in your ear. If it feels hot on your ear, let it cool down for a minute and test it again. If it feels cool, warm it some more. It should feel just mildly warm to your ear lobe.

When the oil is the right temperature, squeeze drops of oil into your ear canal. You’ll need to put your head down and to the side on a flat surface. I like to use a table or desk. Be sure to have a tissue or rag ready to turn over onto when you’re done. When your ear canal is full of oil (which will only take a few drops if your ears are plugged up), stay in the position for a one minute while moving your jaw and/or massaging the lymph nodes along your jaw and ear area. This will help the warm oil move through the canal and clean it out.

Before the oil has cooled, or after one minute, turn over onto your rag or tissue. It is important not to let the oil cool as it can congeal with your wax in a new formation that can be unpleasant. (If that ever happens, do quick rounds with fractionated/MCT oil under twenty seconds to thin out all the oil and wax in your ears.)

Be sure to do both ears even if only one ear is irritated. It is also wise to do both ears even if neither ear is irritated but you have a sore throat. This will help prevent a throat infection from spreading to your ears.

Hydrogen Peroxide

You can put one drop of hydrogen peroxide in each ear if you have a severe ear infection that needs strong antibacterial power, but only do this once and be sure to also use ear oiling (described above) in the same day.

Essential Oils

Any essential oils that you can put on your skin safely can also be put onto a cotton swab and used on the outermost part of your ear canal (where the swab reaches). Be careful though, as your ear canal may be more sensitive than the rest of your skin. First check your sensitivity by putting the essential oil on the back of your ears (and only do this if you’ve previously used this oil elsewhere on your body safely).

If you are sensitive then you can dilute the oil (such as tea tree) with a carrier oil (such as MCT oil) to make it more tolerable to your skin. If you’re very sensitive to an oil, don’t use it on your skin and definitely don’t put it in your ears.

In my case, I can’t use peppermint oil or cinnamon oil whatsoever on my skin, even diluted. But I can use tea tree oil straight on most of my body. Each person has different levels of sensitivities to oils, so be careful. A reaction can take minutes or hours to show up, so don’t make assumptions based on a thirty-second trial.

Fighting Respiratory Infections (including Ear Infections)

Humidifier & Diffuser – These tools are extremely helpful at relieving discomfort and speeding healing. Dry sinuses, throats, and lungs become more irritated, and more susceptible to allergens and bacteria. If you’re dry, you won’t heal as effectively. This is part of why your body tries to coat these membranes in so much mucus. By increasing humidity, you take strain off of your body’s damaged membranes. This can make it easier to make it through the night without coughing, or without your nose getting so runny or stuffy that it is hard to breathe.

Using a diffuser in addition to a humidifier makes it possible to add eucalyptus globulus or eucalyptus polybractea to the air in combination with any other desired beneficial oils (such as spruce and clove). This removes bacteria from the air, and eases breathing.

The effect is dramatic. You’ll notice when you leave your bedroom at night and enter the bathroom how itchy and unpleasant the “dry air” in the rest of the house is in comparison to your soft-air bedroom!

If you don’t own a humidifier, try looking at a thrift store. I’ve found all of my humidifiers second-hand for under $10 each (usually only $5). Or, for an immediate option: plug your tub drain, run the shower at the highest heat, and point a fan at the bathroom doorway. The fan will force the steam to billow out of the bathroom into the rest of the house. You can add essential oils to the tub for a diffuser effect.

Be sure that after you’re well again your home is thoroughly aired out and nothing is left overly moist to prevent mold. (Afterall, the last thing you need after recovering from a sinus-respiratory issue is mold!)

Face Steaming – To get even more moisture into your lungs and sinuses, face steaming is highly recommended. This procedure helps loosen stuffy sinuses, clear gunk from the lungs (i.e. heal bronchitis), and get lymph fluid in the glands around the jawline moving. This process is one of the most effective for creating clear, youthful looking skin, because your skin’s health is all about the clarity of your lymph fluid.

Pour boiling water from a tea kettle into a baking dish (like a pyrex bowl) atop a plate (or hot pad) on your dining room table or on the floor. Have tissues, handkerchiefs, or a sink nearby. Kneel or sit in front of the bowl with a towel. Lean over the bowl and drape the towel carefully around your face and the bowl. You want to seal the steam in, so be sure to close the towel under your chin.

For your lungs, breathe in through your mouth. Also, if the steam is too hot, breathe through your mouth to protect your sinuses until it cools a little. The steam will combine with gunk in your lungs and cause you to cough. Let yourself cough. Try to stay under the towel as you cough, but of course, if you feel at risk of burning yourself then come out.

For your sinuses, breathe in through your nose slowly, and exhale through your nose forcefully. You’ll feel your stomach contract when you’re exhaling quickly and harshly. Repeat this breathing pattern until the snot literally runs from your nose into the hot water continually. This is extremely cleansing and beneficial.

With severe respiratory infections this may mean spending the first minute or two coughing, and then spending the next six to ten minutes watching snot travel from your nose into the hot water.

After you steam your face, blow your nose in your sink or into tissues or handkerchiefs until you’re dry. Now is a very powerful time to move on to a neti pot, salt water gargle, essential oil smelling, or hot tea. With your nasal passages more open and lungs more clear, you’ll find these other practices much more effective.

For added enjoyment and benefit, you can put lemon peels and/or orange peels in your steaming bowl. If you have a mint patch in your garden, this is also a lovely addition.

Hot Showers & Long Baths – Hot showers and baths have similar benefits to using a humidifier and steaming your face. The steam is soothing to your respiratory system, the heat helps your lymph system flow, and washing takes away bacteria.

For added benefit in the bath, blend together aloe spines, ginger root, herbs and water in your blender. Then pour into your bath water. The ginger will stimulate sweating, which will help you sweat out toxins slowing down your immune system.

For added benefit in the shower, use rosemary and/or eucalyptus radiata diluted in a little coconut oil and hot water on your scalp after washing your hair as a leave-in conditioner.

Neti Pot – It looks similar to a tea pot, but all you’re putting in it is warm salt water. A neti pot flushes out mucus from your nose, freeing up your nasal passages from irritants. The neti tradition comes from India and goes back hundreds – maybe even thousands – of years. While we usually only use neti pots when we’re sick here in the west, in some parts of the world it is considered part of normal daily hygiene – like brushing your teeth.

To use your neti pot:

1. Create a warm saline solution using very pure salt (not the lovely sea salt that I’m always recommending for food). You can use salt specifically designed for a neti pot which will come with a special scoop so that you know just how much to use. You can pour boiling water over the salt and let it cool, or use a device to warm the water to a limited degree (I use my milk frother which allows me to warm to specifically 110ºF).
2. Just like with ear oiling, it is important to get the temperature just right. Too hot will burn your nasal passages and too cold will give you a headache. Test the solution first on your finger. If it seems good there, test it on your cheek right beside your nose. If it seems good there, place the neti pot tip into one nostril and try a little tentatively there. It should feel comfortably warm.
3. Tilt your head over the sink. The angle is the toughest part of this whole process, but once you learn it, using a neti becomes easy. The trick is that your forehead should be higher than your chin, but only by a little. If your forehead is lower than your chin then the water will flow up too much and may cause a headache. If your chin is too low the water may flow to your throat; this isn’t too bad, but it is uncomfortable and may cause you to cough.
4. Flow your warm saline solution from one nostril to the other. You will need your mouth open. If you don’t breathe through your mouth the water won’t flow. When the pot is about half full, set it down, blow your nose, and repeat from the other nostril. Alternatively, use a full pot for each nostril.
5. Enjoy having the clearest nasal passages you’ve ever had.

The first time I used a neti was very uncomfortable, but after I finished I was amazed. I had never felt so clear in my life. It took me about seven uses before I felt entirely comfortable with the process. It’s awkward, but so was brushing your teeth when you first learned to do it.

Garlic Tea – In addition to the sore-throat soothers I mentioned above, garlic tea is very helpful for killing off unwanted bacteria. Peel cloves of garlic, slice them (and crush them if you wish), add them to a mug or teapot, and add hot water. Let it steep for a few minutes, then let cool to drinking temperature.

Antibacterial Foods – Antibacterial foods include garlic, onion, sage, ginger, turmeric, cloves, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, basil, cumin, yarrow, cat’s claw, cranberries, elderberries (always thoroughly cooked!), licorice, and lemon balm.

When you’re sick (or care-taking sick people), it’s important that everything you’re doing is contributing to getting better, and that includes your meals! So be sure your meals are rich in antibacterial and antiviral foods. Fortunately, these same foods are also rich in nutrients and antioxidants, so they’re doing double-duty on boosting your immune system.

While I don’t recommend cayenne for a sore throat specifically because it can cause more irritation and coughing, it is highly beneficial for fighting infections in general. Cayenne can be added to a soothing tea, or followed by slippery elm tea.

Cleansing Diet & Lifestyle – While you’re sick, it becomes especially important to eat a cleansing diet. This means nothing dehydrating (seeds, nuts, beans, most cooked foods, meat, dried fruits, bread, flour, pasta), no stimulants (black tea, coffee, cacao beans, chocolate), no alcohol, no smoke (pot, incense, barbecue grills, sage and candles included), no sweeteners³ (including agave, white stevia, cane/beet/coconut sugar, maltitol, aspartame, splenda, etc, etc, etc), no gluten, and no GMOs (conventional – corn, cotton, alfalfa, papaya, canola, soy, sugar beets, aspartame, American dairy products from cows, green zucchini, yellow straightneck, yellow crookneck squash, and arctic apples).

³With the possible exception of a local, raw, organic honey in small quantities as needed suppress a severe cough.

A day’s menu might look like this when you have a respiratory infection:

• 3 probiotics (morning, afternoon and evening)
• 3 tablespoons Inner Eco (morning, afternoon and evening)
• 1 grapefruit
• 2 oranges, peeled (peel zest may be used in tea)
• ½ cucumber, peeled, with sea salt
• 1 handful cranberries (fresh or thawed from frozen)
• 1 quart of vegetable juice (3 ribs celery, 1 tomato, 1 inch ginger, ½ cucumber, 1 lemon peeled and de-seeded, 1 beet, and 1 carrot)
• 1 pomegranates’ arils (white fiber used in tea)
• ½ gallon tea made from pomegranate fiber, orange zest, lemon zest, cranberries, juiced ginger pulp, chamomile and licorice
• 1 quart smoothie (For example: 1 banana fresh or frozen, ½ cup frozen blueberries, a few cranberries, 1 mango with or without its peel, a few dandelion leaves and flowers from the yard, one scoop probiotic vegetable powder blend, and enough home-made kefir or raw goat milk⁴, water, fresh maple sap⁵, or juice⁶ to blend)
• 1 cup home-made kefir with 1-2 tablespoons ginger juice, 1 teaspoon elderberry powder, 1 teaspoon milk-thistle powder and 1 teaspoon slippery elm stirred in
• 2 cups tomato juice with 1 pinch cayenne stirred in
• Additional vegetables as desired such as baked asparagus (lightly coated in avocado oil, sea salt, and black pepper), freeze-dried beets, and baby carrots. If you’re desperately craving calories, you can always add a flax oil to your veggies, or a tiny touch of tahini.

⁴Be cautious about using any animal products when you’re sick. Some raw goat milk from healthy, local goats can do your body good, but if you’re very sick it may be wisest to stay away from all dairy until you’re thoroughly better. If you make fresh kefir at home, however, this is a great immunity-booster with over two-hundred beneficial microbes working in concert to keep your body healthy!

⁵Fresh maple sap is something you can get from your own stand of maple trees if you have them. I often tap a few and then keep frozen maple sap available all year round. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s mildly sweet electrolyte water. It is very different from maple syrup which is created by boiling forty gallons of maple sap down into only one gallon of maple syrup.

⁶Some high-pressure processed (never heated) juice can make for a great smoothie base. Orange and watermelon are two of my favorites. You can also use coconut water, although its flavor clashes with many other flavors, so test your experiments in small batches.

My (Raederle’s) Background

Whatever you suffer the most from, you get good at coping with. You become a master in treating your own chronic conditions. I used to think that people who still struggled from a problem had nothing worthwhile to say about it. Afterall, if they knew so much, why weren’t they healed already? The answer to that question is complex and a topic for another article, but the short answer is that you don’t have to be 100% “over” something for good in order to know a great deal about it.

In fact, because people often forget the details once they are over something for good, someone in the process of recovery often has more useful information available to them at the tips of their firing neurons.

For this reason, I’ve written this article piecemeal over the years during times when I’ve been sick or helping one of my husbands while they were sick. At these times it has been immensely helpful to have my own list of remedies that I’ve learned and tried over the years available to me. (I actually use a lot of my website to reference my own past self’s wisdom!)

I’m a specialist in fevers, colds, sore throats, gum infections, and digestive disorders. I spent my childhood repeatedly sick with one thing after another, including mononucleosis on four separate occasions. You’re only supposed to get mono once, develop antibodies, and never get it again. Due to biting a glass thermometer as a toddler (and getting severe mercury exposure), among other unusual circumstances, I grew up without a functional immune system. I got everything that went around.

At sixteen I developed stomach ulcers (which were diagnosed as anxiety and thereby left untreated for years). I thought my acid reflux was “heart pain” because I knew nothing about biology or health. But that changed fast as my days were consumed with research.

By the time I was twenty I had tried several different elimination diets and changed the lives of many of my friends. One friend lost fifty pounds and attributed the difference entirely to my advice – and constant nagging.

Still, I would get sick at times, and I turned my new-found healing methods to use on each fever, cold, and sore throat.

My basic healing tools are as follows:

1. Keen attention to my body’s symptoms (and how they change over time and correlate to my actions)
2. Willingness to completely overhaul my lifestyle (diet, thoughts, recreational activities, sleep patterns, etc)
3. Research (reading books, listening to people’s stories, trying out people’s advice systematically, reading articles, etc)

Before I was sixteen, I was just a victim of illness. All I could do was drink the hot lemon-honey water my parents made in the microwave in a plastic cup, take the doctor’s pills, and lay around until I finally got better. It usually took me two weeks, but sometimes it took longer.

When I was sixteen I had such debilitating pain that I went to multiple doctors. I got a few opinions. None of the opinions impressed me. None of the doctor’s advice helped. And here, I’d been getting worse for months. Days would pass where I couldn’t open my mouth due to my jaw being locked in place. Weeks would pass where every single morning I woke to excruciating pain in my chest and stomach. I missed a lot of school. I missed a lot of life.

And that was a blessing. Because unlike most people who leave high school, get a job they hate, get fat, get sicker and sicker, and increasingly miserable, and then die . . . I took a different path. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re taking a different path too. And this path starts with developing the three tools I alluded to above – keen body awareness, willingness to change, and research.

June 2016

As I write this, I’m twenty-seven, and I’m sick again. I don’t normally get sick anymore, but extreme circumstances bring it on. In this case, I spent two weeks pushing my body to its limits hauling rocks to build a stone planter in my garden, then went on a four-day trip that involved poor quality sleep and a lot of walking around in full sun at 90ºF. During the fourth day trip, I thought I’d have a splurge meal or two, and ate some food I know doesn’t agree with my body. (In this case, stir-fried vegetables with vegetable oil and quinoa.)

All of that, and I was still fine. But Greg got sick a day after returning from the trip. We were both frantically trying to catch up on one thing or another after the four-day trip, and neither of us was stopping to rest. After five days of taking care of him – preparing the neti pot, salt water gargles, probiotics, face-steaming water, lymphatic massage, etc – I got sick. I honestly hadn’t expected it. I’ve built up my immune system to be so robust that I was confidently sharing space with my sick husband for five days and expecting that I would not get sick.

I even went so far as to do a highly exerting yoga session. I gardened, did yoga, took care of him, and thought nothing of it.

But on day six I woke feverish. My nose was running, my throat was sore, and my fatigue was unimaginably high. My muscles felt absolutely battered. It was a cross between the worst muscle soreness I’d ever felt from being sick with the worst muscle soreness I’d ever felt from exercise. I could barely lift my tea cup.

Clearly my subconscious wanted me to know that was time to stop doing. So I stopped. I started listening to my body again. I started reading and stopped gardening. I started taking care of myself more, and others less. I stopped staying up late and started napping. I stopped eating dehydrating foods and started drinking more water.

I made use of my time being feverish. This is a time when the mind’s barriers are lowered and insights flow readily. It’s a great time for writing.

March 2021

I began writing this article five years ago. I’m thirty-two now.

I was thinking that my salvia tasted a little off the last few days. This morning I began the day with hot tea, tongue scraping, extra-thorough flossing with tea tree, water-flossing, and a facial lymph massage with organic almond oil. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it – just a little lymph blockage needing some clearing.

A couple hours later I discovered that Greg was still in bed with a fever and a swollen lip (which is a very mysterious symptom). I also recalled that Lytenian has been in more pain than usual the past few days and was coughly mysteriously yesterday. With all of this in mind, I flew into action.

I made a gently warmed (105ºF) juice of turmeric, black pepper, ginger, elderberry, raspberry, blood orange, and camu camu (1 tsp camu camu for each of us).

I pulled out an array of supplements including:

• Double our usual vitamin D intake (in MCT oil and in capsules),
• Bilberry extract along with other antioxidants (gel tablets),
• Magnesium, calcium, B₁₂ and other minerals (tablets),
• Spirulina and chlorella (tablets),
• Silver (fluid),
• Fermented cod liver oil and butter oil (gel),
• Herbal remedies aimed at fighting invaders and boosting the immune system (capsule, hot tea, and fluid extracts in water – around 45 different herbs in total).

We’re using tea tree essential oil for placing on the throat and chest glands, and breathing eucalyptus essential oil.

For breakfast I’m having a blend of strawberry, kiwi, kale, apple, orange, and raspberry fortified with more minerals. Lytenian had a cara-cara orange.

I wish I had some Inner Eco (fermented coconut water) to add to this, but I don’t have any at the moment. This is great for oral bacterial issues and I always swish and gargle with it before swallowing.

At lunch time I passed around the iodine; at breakfast I didn’t want to add that to our already confused stomachs.

We, of course, don’t know if we have COVID-19, and it’s a possibility, so I canceled my plans to have a visitor today and am now prioritizing time in bed reading. (We didn’t have covid.)

After breakfast I had a long soak in a mineral bath with four cups of epsom salt, a huge tea ball full of bladderwrack, and a bag of shungite. I soaked and scrubbed thoroughly.

I don’t actually feel sick, but it never hurts to give my immune system some extra loving care, particularly when a loved one under the same roof definitely is sick.

Transformation

Those people who’ve been under my care when sick know how seriously I take even the most minor illness. They also know the effectiveness of my care.

I’ve gone from being a person who spent three or more months out of the year being sick, to being a person who rarely gets sick even for a day.

It is my sincere hope that I can pass some of what I’ve learned on to you.

Shopping

Below is a list of things I mentioned in this article that you may want to buy to boost your body’s ability to successfully swing back into wellness.

Food shopping list (buy organic!):

• Beets
• Leafy greens (dandelions, kale, spinach, escarole, cabbage, etc)
• Ginger root, fresh
• Lemon
• Cucumbers, seedless
• Wheatgrass
• Turmeric root, fresh
• Celery
• Cranberries (fresh or frozen, be sure they’re unsweetened!)
• Inner Eco (fermented coconut water)
• Aloe plant (not exactly found in the produce section of the grocery store, but these plants are great medicine to have live in your window sill!)

Herbs shopping list (buy organic!):

• Ginger root, fresh
• Garlic head, fresh
• Apple cider vinegar
• Herbal tea blends including slippery elm, marshmallow root, sage, echinacea, ginger, chamomile, turmeric, elderberry, lemon peel, orange peel, cranberry, pomegranate, cloves, goldenseal, raspberry leaves, and honeysuckle.

Additional herbs for lung conditions and coughing:

• Osha root
• Eucalyptus globulus
• Lungwort leaf
• Oregano leaf
• Lobelia flower
• Chaparral

Essential Oils shopping list:

• Ravensara
• Peppermint
• Lemon
• Eucalyptus radiata
• Eucalyptus globulous
• Cinnamon
• Melaleuca alternifolia (tea tree)
• Myrrh
• Rosemary

The Ritual

I’ve given you a lot of remedies on this page, but how should you implement them? The answer is: back-to-back. The more sick you are, the more you should prioritize doing only things which help your body, which means that you should be doing one of the things on this page or sleeping at all times. What if you’re not that sick though? What if you were merely exposed to a sick person or are taking care of a sick relative and you just have a little sinus congestion? Or what if your energy is so low that you can only get out of bed for an hour a day? Then what?

Then it is time for The Ritual. That’s what I’ve taken to calling it. It’s not a spiritual practice – but it feels like one since most spirituality harkens to purification of the body, mind, and emotions anyhow and that is exactly what this does for you. This is simply a series of the rest of the things described on this page, but in order. You can do all of this back-to-back in roughly an hour.

1. Start water heating to boil.
2. Put a spoonful of coconut oil in your mouth and begin oral oil pulling.
3. Fetch a towel, a bowl for face-steaming, a glass dropper bottle with oil for your ears, your neti pot, neti salt, sea salt to gargle with, oil for body-oiling, essential oils, herbal teas, probiotics, and supplements.
4. Prepare everything while the water finishes boiling: put herbs in your tea pot, put the right amount of neti salt in your neti pot, put sea salt in a mug for gargling, put out your bowl for face-steaming on a hot pad and add anything to the bowl you’d like to inhale while face steaming. Be sure to only use mild things in your face-steaming bowl as essential oils in hot vapors can sting your skin intensely. I like to use rose buds best.
5. Spit out your coconut oil either in the yard or into a tissue (not in your sink).
6. When the water is boiling pour it into your tea pot or mug and cover to steep. Fill your neti pot (on a hot pad) and leave it to cool. Fill your salt-water gargling mug about one-third of the way and cover. Lastly, fill your face-steaming bowl and immediately seat yourself in front of it with your towel to capture the steam. Face-steam for about ten minutes, breathing through your mouth for the first two minutes and doing breathing exercises for the last two minutes.
7. Come out from under the towel, blow your nose.
8. Put your dropper bottle with your ear oil into the hot steaming water to warm up.
9. Pour a little hot tea into a small tea cup to rapidly cool enough to drink.
10. Test your salt water for gargling and use it if it is ready. (If it isn’t ready, sip tea and breathe essential oils under tented hands until it is. Also, you can blow on the salt water to cool it faster.)
11. Sip your tea.
12. Test the temperature of your neti water. If it is ready, neti at the sink thoroughly. (If your neti isn’t immediately ready, breathe essential oils under tented hands and sip tea until it is.)
13. Oil each ear for one minute or less. You can do each ear twice if you wish. Put the oil bottle back into the face-steaming water between each use to keep it warm.
14. Massage your face, ears, throat, and chest with olive oil or another body oil, using strokes that move from your cheeks to your ears and from your ears down your throat. Add lung-opening essential oils to the oil on your chest (but not your face). You may use chamomile or rose essential oil on your face if desired.
15. Continue drinking hot tea throughout and pour yourself more tea if you run out.
16. Take your supplements and probiotics.
17. Finish with a hot shower or epsom salt bath for even better results.

And there you have it. May you feel better far faster than you expected you would or could!

— Raederle

Human Behavior Polarities Stem From The Same Core Beliefs

Polarities – Opposites An introduction Opposites stem from the same core – it isn’t just that they’re on the same scale, but that the opposites themselves are closer to one another than the center. In fact, it will help if you visualize the scale as a circle rather than a line. Just bend that line in your imagination until the opposites touch one another. Got that? Excellent. But now, remember that these opposites appear extremely different. This article is here to illustrate why the appearance is deceptive and what is actually going on. It is the core sameness within opposites that follows the “law of attraction” most strongly – like things attract like things. It seems like opposites attract because two “opposite ends” of the same polarity will attract. There are several reasons for this maya (illusion), which I will now explain in some detail. The part of you that is expressed consciously will have a counterpart that is subconscious. The more extreme the behavior, the more deeply buried the subconscious counterpart behavior. When you meet someone whose conscious behaviors mirror your subconscious behaviors, you feel reunited with yourself. Often the connection is obscured because the people you’re attracted to mirror your repressed aspects in exalted ways. You may have repressed any aspect of yourself that is vain or self-interested because society deems that wrong, but then find yourself attracted to highly confident people who seem to genuinely love themselves. This often turns sour when you find out that they’re really more like a covert narcissist than they are like a genuinely self-loving person. If this keeps happening to you, then the answer is to uncover your own repressed self-interest. The first reason why it appears that opposites attract is this: you will feel completed by people who reflect your repressed aspects. You will also be attracted to people who fit your concept of love. Your concept of love was developed in childhood by your primary caregivers, and surroundings. Children will tend to run to the opposite polarity of their parents in order to escape their parents’ pitfalls. If the parents are interrogating, the child will become aloof. If the parents are aloof, the child will become interrogating. If the parents are aggressive, the child will become withdrawn. These are generalizations which won’t always apply, but the more extreme the scenario, the more likely the child is to polarize in the opposite direction from their parents. This is why traits like “good driving” and “being organized” seem to skip a generation; the grandparents seem to have more similarities with their grandchildren than the parents do with their children because the grandparents polarized their children one direction, and when those children had children, they polarized back in the direction of the grandparents. Mitigating factors such as having parents who are already highly polarized from each other can help create a more balanced child if the child has the conscious resources to be introspective and question their own beliefs throughout their teen years.

Table of Contents Navigate with this menu Attitudes ⚝ Relationship to Material Possessions in regards to Ownership ⚝ Hoarder Minimalist Steward ❃ Relationship to Material Possessions in regards to Cleanliness ❃ Neat-Freak Slob ✤ Relationship to Planning ✤ Copious Planner Always Spontaneous ✥ Relationship to Food ✥ Over-Eater Under-Eater Health-Obsessed ❂ Relationship to Social Assertion ❂ Aggressive Passive ✮ Relationship to Self-Image ✮ Narcissist Self-Sacrificer ✫ Relationship to Sexual Activity ✫ Sexually Insatiable Sexually Disinterested ✧ Relationship to Expectations ✧ Always the Optimist Always the Pessimist ✬ Relationship to Accomplishments ✬ Lazy Workaholic ♫ Relationship to Auditory Input, especially music ♫ Music Craver Silence Craver ★ Relationship to External Display ★ Extremely Shy & Modest Exhibitionist ✼ Relationship to Self-Security ✼ Fiercely Independent Codependent ♦ Relationship to Shame ♦ Prefers to Hide Prefers to be Famous and Influential About Sections Polarity Variations Infancy Trauma Outward Changes come as a result of Inward Changes Libido Mismatch in Couples Not All Workaholics “Work” Polarity Flipping Coping Strategies All Attempt to Create Integration Key Takeaways Further Reading Writing This Article

The second reason why it appears that opposites attract is because you will be attracted to people who remind you of your parents (in subconscious ways), and you are going to be polarized in the opposite direction as your parents in many ways.

People are also attracted to things that seem new, novel and different. But people are not attracted to things that seem genuinely dangerous (unless they are experiencing intense vibhava-taṇhā). The level of danger that we perceive in a situation is something we evaluate with our intuition; it is done subconsciously, and therefore we may be consciously saying “this is a dangerous thing to do” but subconsciously feeling that the risks are entirely justified and of no concern. This is why it seems like some people are dare-devils. These so-called daring people have a different threshold for what feels dangerous in the evaluation of their subconscious.

Novel attractions include things like flavors. We may want to try all the flavors of a given brand of kombucha or juice. We try one thing by a brand and establish that we like it. This provides a sense of safety that we like things of that nature. With this safety, we go on to try every flavor. The flavor is a novelty on the surface, but the core (type of commodity or brand) is familiar and safe. If we already know we like most fermented things, there isn’t much risk in trying more fermented foods.

Novel attractions include romance. You may feel like you’re trying out a new type of relationship. For example, let’s say all your exes were brunettes who preferred to move into your place, drive your car, and held low positions in their work or preferred to not work in the conventional money-earning sense. You’ll feel like you’re doing something new by dating a woman who is a blond business woman who has her own apartment and car.

The relationship seems novel, but similarities may include: she is still a woman, it is still a monogamous relationship, she strongly believes that money doesn’t grow on trees, she believes in acting first and asking forgiveness later, she believes she needs someone to complete her, etc. The novelty will be obvious because its difference stands out to you. The similarities may be taken for granted to the point that it doesn’t even occur to you that someone could be any other way. Maybe everyone in your life is fairly rash, so the idea of finding someone who is rational, logical and slow-to-act doesn’t occur to you. Whatever your baseline assumptions about humanity and relationships are will seem to be everywhere, and so it won’t come to your conscious attention that there is a possibility for change in those areas.

The third reason why it appears that opposites attract is because we want to stay safe and also experience novelty; we’re attracted to things that are highly different from us on the surface, but the same as us (and therefore safe) at a deeper level.

All three of these reasons are branches of the same core reason why it appears that opposites attract even though the reality is that like-attracts-like. At a very deep level we’re all seeking to see ourselves clearly. In order to see ourselves we must see every manifestation of what our core aspects look like. The more polarized we are, the more we must see the same core pain polarized in the opposite direction to get perspective on who we really are. We will be faced with this polarity over and over again until we start to see ourselves truly, and begin shifting through this insight.

To review briefly: People who seem to be “opposites” will be attracted to one another because (1) they will feel completed by people who reflect their repressed aspects, (2) they will be attracted to people who remind them of their parents – their original concept of love, (3) they’re attracted to things that are highly different from themselves on the surface, but the same as them (and therefore safe) at a deeper level, and (4) at everyone’s innermost being is the desire to see oneself, which will be best accomplished by coming to know someone who is a deep, inverse match.

What follows is an overview of some polarities. In order to really get the most from exploring these polarities, you will need to read between the lines and letters a bit. Why? Because consciousness patterns attach themselves to different words in different people. The same pattern in two different people may be described in vastly different words. Our language doesn’t have a widely-accepted vocabulary for our complex inner worlds, and so we individually gravitate to words that resonate for us. Our individual resonance with given words for given experiences is created by our own association patterns.

This need for an agreed-upon vocabulary is why you’ll find links on this page to my Consciousness Alchemy Glossary definitions.

Also, remember that the polarities are actually circles, not lines. It is possible for people to go beyond their polarity into the wildly fanatical place that is squished between both “extremes.” This is why some narcissists seem to flip between narcissism and codependency, or why some people go through phases of extreme nymphomania followed by total disinterest. These individuals are a clue, showing us a glimpse of the circular nature of these “spectrums.”

Polarities Let’s now examine some common polarities.

⚝ Relationship to Material Possessions in regards to Ownership ⚝

Hoarder Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• I must acquire many things – particularly nice things, valuable things, things that represent me, and things that others hold in esteem.
• I must save things that might be good for later. This saves me the time and energy of acquiring new things in the future.
• I’m more prepared for disaster than other people.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• My things are an extension of me.
• By having more things that represent me, I am exalted and glorified.
• I am superior to other people who don’t have as many things as I do and/or I am superior to others who are not as prepared for disaster or shortage as I am.
• I am protecting myself by having so many things; I distract other people with my gadgets and/or glam and it prevents them from poking at my vulnerable, hidden self.
• I don’t deserve to have nice things, so I’ll make up for it by having lots of things and/or I don’t deserve a nice life, so I’ll make up for it with having lots of nice things.
• I can’t get/don’t deserve to have things, but if I hold onto them when I come across them, then I know I will have them, and therefore will deserve them.
• I can’t supply energy to acquire things, but I can manage to hold onto them.
• I resonate with trash, because I am trash, so by holding on to trash I am showing myself love.

Core Belief:

• There isn't enough of me, so I must acquire more things in order to make up for it.

Minimalist Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I must not acquire anything excess; being a minimalist is better for the planet and helps keep corporate powers in check.
• I must not hold onto anything I don’t need – particularly anything that will slow me down.
• Things are expendable, replaceable, and not as important as my day-to-day experience of life.
• Excess belongings are for inferior people who can’t compute how much they can really take care of.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I don’t deserve to have a lot of things and/or if I had a lot of things I wouldn’t appreciate them or properly care for them.
• I can’t supply energy to manage things, but I can supply energy to acquire them when needed.
• Attachment to belongings is a pitfall that I’ve witnessed hurt others; I’m afraid of that and thus avoid material attachments.

Core Belief:

• There isn’t enough of me, so I must not obscure what little of me there is with too much stuff.

The Mirror Between The Minimalist and The Hoarder

“There isn’t enough of me.”

Being Centered

There are many people who do not fall into either polarity, but rather, have a more balanced perspective that leans one way or another. These people do not suffer as much from the core belief of “there isn’t enough of me” but may still feel that to some extent. Only people who are in the exact center are free from this core belief. To be in the center is not to renounce all attachment and deny yourself from beliefs, but rather, to be able to walk both extremes in their appropriate contexts. To be centered is to embrace both polarities and be owned by neither. The center is a place where you can act from pure presence and intuition without being swayed by ingrained belief.

Those who are not minimalists or hoarders, but are also not centered, come in many varieties. Here is one example:

Steward Leaning toward Minimalist polarity

Conscious Attitudes:

• I have enough to be comfortable, but not too much.
• I am leading a balanced life that is better for the planet than most, without going to extremes.
• Things are nice to have, but too many things makes it harder to appreciate and take care of what is most important.
• My life is most elegant, enhanced and beautiful with a small amount of quality things.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I must steward all the things I own, and if I own too much, it will weigh me down.
• If I can’t take care of all of my things, I feel ashamed, so I must not own too much even if I want many things.
• Possessions are obligations, and I don’t want too many of those.

Core Belief:

• Too many things will drown out who I am, but without some things I will not be able to shine either.

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Polarity Variations

You may notice that you resonate with some portion of the conscious and subconscious attitudes presented, but not all of them. This may mean that you’re not at either extreme “end” – that you’re not completely polarized – or it may mean that the structure of your polarity is simply different than what I’ve presented in these examples.

A hoarder, for example, may not always care about acquiring things that others hold in esteem. They may feel that they are expressing more of themselves by exclusively acquiring things that represent them, and that anything that others deem valuable actually counts against it. After all, if you feel like you’re lacking in your own original you, the last thing you want is to be a follower, right? But another hoarder may be extremely preoccupied with things that are of value to others because it makes them feel like they are more of themselves to be held in high esteem by others.

Not all highly polarized people will resonate with all of the given examples.

You may feel that you are highly polarized in one of these areas (such as feeling that you are a minimalist), but you are quite consciously aware of some of the attitudes I’ve listed as subconscious. Again, these examples are common trends, not absolute truths. But there is more to it than that. The line between conscious and subconscious is not a line at all, but a fuzzy area where things become more and more clear as they enter your conscious awareness.

As your consciousness begins to dawn, the light is fuzzy at first, just giving you some intellectual glimpses into your subconscious realities. As your consciousness rises like the sun over the horizon, these intellectual glimpses begin to resolve into feelings. When your consciousness brightens it becomes analogous to morning, where there are long-shadows, but now you can see your subconscious beliefs in one area clearly. You feel these beliefs and you can point them out intellectually and articulate them.

But it isn’t until your consciousness comes into the brightness of full noon that all of the shadows are wiped away. This full, conscious clarity (called grokking) is rarely ever achieved in any area of our lives, so even if you have an intellectual grasp of some of your subconscious motives, you do not yet have the full-resolution picture.

The examples I’ve chosen for subconscious attitudes are those that are more commonly buried. They may be fully buried so that you are entirely in the dark about them, or partially so that you have a bare intellectualized grasp that it is there – even though you can’t quite feel it to be true.

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❃ Relationship to Material Possessions in regards to Cleanliness ❃

Neat-Freak Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• Cleanliness is next to godliness.
• I’m efficient because I’m organized.
• I’m desirable because my space and person is clean.
• I am ready for visitors or other surprise events at all times because my space is tidy.
• I find it restorative to my emotional well-being to create order in my space.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I’m a better member of society because I contribute more as an efficient, clean, organized person.
• I find it hard to concentrate if there is any disorder in my view, so I find it needful to tidy up in order to maintain my efficiency.
• I feel overwhelmed, as if I have a massive to-do list, when I see clutter, so I have to clean in order to maintain emotional stability.
• I am at risk of missing out on the experiences I cherish most, and so I must keep everything hyper-neat and hyper-organized in order to be ready to receive these experiences.

Core Beliefs:

• Mother will accept me if I’m clean and orderly.

Slob Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I can find all of my things just fine without being hyper-organized.
• The neatness of physical objects is an illusion anyway – everything is always returning to its natural state of chaos.
• I would rather be enjoying myself and living my life to the fullest than wasting my time cleaning.
• Life is meant to be experienced in its full richness, not spent fussing with orderliness and cleanliness.
• I don’t have the energy to clean and keep up with everything, so why bother?

Subconscious Attitudes:

• It is more important to pay attention to how things feel and sound; it is trivial how things look.
• Caring about how things appear is shallowness.
• I am at risk of missing out on the experiences I cherish most, and so I must not be wasting my time on trivial activities such as cleaning, lest I miss the opportunity.

Core Beliefs:

• Mother will accept me and show me her acceptance by cleaning up after me.

The Mirror Between The Neat-Freak and The Slob

Subconscious Mirror: “I am at risk of missing out on the experiences I cherish most.”

Core Mirror: “I need to be this way for mother’s acceptance.”

Infancy Trauma – Endlessly Seeking Mother’s Love

When our own mother didn’t hold us, carry us everywhere, and tend to us adequately in our first nine months of life, we are left with a sense of wrongness that persists throughout our lives. Eventually this wrongness is internalized as something being wrong with us specifically, rather than something just being wrong in general. This transforms into a persistent need to be or act in a certain way which we believe will bring our mother’s love to us.

Every polarity on this page is the result of childhood traumas, usually going back to infancy. These traumas include emotional neglect, physical neglect, humiliation, and denial of your right to autonomy. To learn more about this, read my article, Developmental Trauma.

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✤ Relationship to Planning ✤

Copious Planner Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• Planning makes it easier to coordinate with others.
• I never know what I’ll be in the mood for later, so it is best if I make contingency plans.
• Being prepared means being safe and planning is part of preparing – better safe than sorry.
• Reliability and punctuality are incredibly important virtues.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Without a plan I won’t be safe and I will feel lost and vulnerable.
• If I don’t come up with a good plan, others may create a plan that will be disadvantageous for me.
• If I don’t make good plans then nothing good will happen.
• Good people are prepared people.
• I don’t want to miss out on precious experiences, so I must plan to have these experiences and stick to the plan.

Core Belief:

• I am not safe without a plan.

Always Spontaneous Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I must keep a free schedule in case something good comes up.
• I never know what I’ll be in the mood for later, so it is better if I don’t make commitments.
• It is better to have freedom than it is to be reliable.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Commitments scare me and confine me and make me feel caged and/or claustrophobic.
• If I tried making a plan, it’d just fall through and disappoint me anyway.
• My greatest value is in my flexibility, adaptability, and contagious energy – I’ll lose all that if I have a plan.
• I don’t want to miss out on precious experiences, so I must ensure that I’m not held down by plans which will prevent me from observing and taking the opportunities.

Core Belief:

• I am not safe without spontaneity.

The Mirror Between The Copious-Planner and The Always-Spontaneous

Conscious Mirror: “I never know what I’ll be in the mood for later.”

Subconscious Mirror: “I don’t want to miss out on precious experiences.”

Core Mirror: “I am not safe.”

Notice how similar some of the attitudes are on the planning/spontaneity spectrum and the order/disorder spectrum. This is why it is common to meet organized, neat planners and chaotic, spontaneous slobs. However, it is possible to contain many of the traits from the planner polarization as well as many traits from the slob polarization, and vice versa.

For example, my relationship with planning, for example, is as follows: “I believe in making plans so that I can rest in their safety right up until the moment that something better comes along so that I can ditch them.”

Despite the ambiguity in my relationship with planning, I always land firmly as a “J” in Myers-Briggs personality type tests. If you’re interested in learning about personality types and how they relate to protector personalities, read my article, Are All INFJ People Also Highly Sensitive People (HSP)?

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✥ Relationship to Food ✥

It is important to note when reading the polarizations in regards to food that both the over-eater and the under-eater can manifest as people who look completely normal and healthy. They may manifest as fat people and sickly-thin people, but they also may not depending on exactly what methods they use and where they are in life.

Over-Eater Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• Food is one of life’s greatest pleasures, so indulge!
• Cooking and/or buying food is a great pleasure, and feeding others brings me joy.
• Everybody loves food.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Other people are overwhelming, so drowning them out with chewing makes them more tolerable.
• People won’t like the real me, so I might as well settle for food communion.
• Being fat is a barrier that protects me from false connection with other people who would only want to use me anyway.

Core Belief:

• I am powerless to obtain connection with others, so I’ll create control in my life through cooking, pleasing flavors, and the communion of eating.

Under-Eater Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• What I eat is one thing I can and do control.
• I’m healthier than people who overindulge.
• Discipline is a virtue.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• If I’m not attractive, nobody will care about me.
• If I let myself be gluttonous, I will have no control of my life.
• If I don’t look after my looks, I’m abandoning myself and my values.

Core Belief:

• I am powerless to obtain connection with others, so I’ll create control in my life through limiting my food intake, keeping myself thin, and manipulating others with my good looks.

The Mirror Between The Over-Eater and The Under-Eater

“I am powerless to obtain connection with others, so I’ll create control in my life through my eating habits.”

Health Obsessed Leaning toward Under-Eater polarity

Conscious Attitudes:

• I take excellent care of my body.
• Good, appropriate food is medicine.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• If I’m not healthy, nobody will want me.
• If I don’t take care of myself, nobody else will.
• I’m the only person I know will stick around my whole life, so I’d best take care of my body.

Core Belief:

• Genuine connection with others is difficult to obtain, so I will keep myself super healthy and attractive to garner respect and adoration from others.

Outward Changes come as a result of Inward Changes

Often someone who grew up as an over-eater will turn to the attitudes of a health-obsessed person when they learn to take good care of themselves as a new way of handling their situation in life. The apparent outward shift is always a result of a shift in the core belief. That means that if you felt entirely powerless toward your connection with others and then moved to feeling like connection was merely challenging to obtain – but not impossible – your relationship to food (and many other things) can now change.

It is also possible to “fake it until you make it” – meaning that you can use some sort of trick to get yourself to shift habits, and then, as a result, find that your beliefs have changed. However, when doing this method of inner work, it is important to ensure that your shifts indicate self-love. If you are not showing yourself that you love yourself, you will find that your core beliefs become even more stubborn and resistant to positive change. (For example, forcing yourself to work out until you hurt every day may not communicate to your inner selves that you love yourself, whereas doing a one-day water fast a week may communicate to your inner self that you do love yourself, depending on what feels good to you.)

Interestingly, this example – the “health obsessed” person – still mirrors the “health relaxed” person who leans toward “overeating.” While the health-obsessed person feels, “Genuine connection with others is difficult to obtain, so I will keep myself super healthy and attractive to garner respect and adoration from others,” the health-relaxed person feels, “Genuine connection with others is difficult to obtain, so I’ll ensure my likeability by eating socially and amiably.”

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❂ Relationship to Social Assertion ❂

Aggressive Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• I am strong, right, and capable. I’m confident.
• Other people will speak up if they want to be heard.
• The only way to get through to someone is with force or intensity.
• Getting what I want is impossible without my aggression.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I feel weak and vulnerable, so I have to protect myself with a strong exterior.
• Better to be the striker than to be the struck.

Core Beliefs:

• If other people saw my true self they would reject me.
• People judge harshly, so I will strike them before they get a chance to strike me.

Passive Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I’m shy and other people make me nervous.
• I prefer to avoid situations that may give me panic attacks.
• Modesty and humility are virtues.
• I’m a good listener.
• Getting what I want is impossible without my receptive, passive behavior.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• What I have to offer isn’t good enough, so it’s best if I’m quiet.
• Nobody actually listens to me when I speak.
• I have a better chance of getting what I want through quiet desperation.

Core Beliefs:

• If other people saw my true self they would reject me.
• People judge harshly, so I won’t show them anything about who I am for them to judge.

The Mirror Between The Aggressive and The Passive

Conscious Mirror: “Getting what I want is impossible without manipulating people with my behavior.”

Core Mirror: “If other people saw my true self they would reject me. People judge harshly.”

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✮ Relationship to Self-Image ✮

Narcissist Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• I’m brilliant, beautiful and highly valuable.
• Everyone in my life is honored by my presence in their life.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I can cut other people off whenever I choose because I’m more valuable than they are.
• It is important that I maintain my cool in all situations so that nobody ever sees any flaws or weaknesses in me.
• It is crucial that I don’t integrate my internal selves or acknowledge that any part of me besides my ego exists, lest have to face all the pain I’ve hidden away.
• There is only room for one person to get their needs met in a relationship, and it’s going to be me.
• If anyone saw how truly vulnerable I am, they’d leave.

Core Beliefs:

• If anyone focused on the core of my being they would see nothingness, so I must cover this self even from my own awareness and invent a self that is immaculate.
• I can’t meet anyone else’s needs and still get my own needs met, so I won’t let anyone trick me into sacrificing myself for them.

Read: Are you too selfish?

Self-Sacrificer Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I’m a giving, loving, kind, compassionate person.
• Everyone who knows me benefits from my giving personality.
• My sacrifices make me a good person.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I give more than anyone else, so don’t I deserve more than anyone else?
• I’m better than other people because I sacrifice more than other people.
• There is only room for one person to get their needs met in a relationship, and while I’ll make it look like it is someone else through misdirection and so-called sacrifice, ultimately, it’s going to be me.
• If anyone saw how truly vulnerable I am, they’d leave.

Core Belief:

• If anyone focused on the core of my being they would see nothingness, so I must redeem my nothingness by martyring myself for higher causes so as to be lifted up in the eyes of others.
• I can’t meet anyone else’s needs and still get my own needs met, so I have to offer as many sacrifices as possible in order to get people to sacrifice for me in return.

The Mirror Between The Narcissist and The Self-Sacrificer

Subconscious mirror: “If anyone saw how truly vulnerable I am, they’d leave.”

Core mirror: “If anyone focused on the core of my being they would see nothingness.”

Core mirror: “I can’t meet anyone else’s needs and still get my own needs met.”

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✫ Relationship to Sexual Activity ✫

Sexually Insatiable Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• Sex is a great way to relax and feel good.
• Sex is a healthy, beneficial aspect of any thriving, intimate relationship.
• I like having sex often, especially with an attractive, passionate partner.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I feel rejected as a human when someone turns me down sexually.
• My value is tied to my sexual performance.
• Life feels empty outside of sexual excitement and orgasm.

Core Belief:

• Nobody really loves me, but maybe through sex someone eventually will.

Sexually Disinterested Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• Sex is a less-refined, less-evolved pass-time.
• Sex is for making babies, not a recreational sport.
• I don’t need sex to have a good life.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Sex isn’t pleasurable because nobody cares about me enough to make it pleasurable.
• Sex isn’t safe because nobody loves me enough to treat me right emotionally and physically.
• I can’t trust anyone to be sexually intimate with me.

Core Belief:

• Nobody really loves me, so sex is always a loveless, empty experience.

The Mirror Between The Sexually Disinterested and the Sexually Insatiable

“Nobody really loves me.”

Libido Mismatch in Couples

The sexual mirrors often end up in a very unhappy relationship together. At first they’re passionately drawn together, feeling that maybe they’ve finally found someone who can love them.

Often they have really good sex at first, but the one who is inclined toward disinterest in sex resumes their aversion the moment they are disillusioned about the depth of love and understanding in their relationship. They stop wanting any sex at all, leaving the partner who is sexually insatiable feeling more unloved than ever.

As the sexually insatiable tries to get more sex from their disinterested partner, the problem gets worse and worse; the disinterested partner feels unseen and dismissed by these continued, unwanted advances. The insatiable partner feels increasingly rejected and unloved as their advances are turned aside.

Some therapists recommend that the disinterested partner simply recognize that the insatiable partner needs sex to feel loved, and should simply allow it to happen and watch their relationship improve as a result. I have personally given this advice in the past.

Some recommend an open relationship where the sexually insatiable can seek to meet their sexual needs elsewhere without bothering their disinterested partner. This can be a huge relief for the disinterested partner.

Neither of these approaches addresses the root issue in the relationship: not feeling genuinely loved by one’s partner. It is important whatever approach is taken respects the boundaries and needs of both parties fully. This may be challenging at first, as both parties must commit to finding a way for the other party’s needs to be met completely. This may involve a great deal of soul-searching.

Sometimes the disinterested partner would be interested if only the insatiable partner would be willing to initiate sex in a different way. Sometimes the disinterested partner would be okay with an open relationship, but only if certain steps are met to prevent them from feeling jealous or resentful. In all situations where a couple finds their libido levels to be mismatched, many long conversations must ensue where a full understanding of one another is the uppermost goal.

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✧ Relationship to Expectations ✧

Always the Optimist Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• There is always a silver-lining.
• We make our own luck.
• God and/or the universe is on our side.
• People appreciate my upbeat attitude.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Focusing on negative things makes them real, so I’ll just ignore them.
• I can’t prevent disappointing things from happening, so I’ll pretend they don’t happen.
• If I were not such a positive person, nobody would like me.

Core Belief:

• Falling from hopeful to disappointed is terribly painful; I must avoid it at all costs. I will always see the silver-lining so as to avoid this fall.

Always the Pessimist Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• No matter who you are, shit happens.
• Life is full of disappointments.
• People appreciate how down-to-earth and realistic I am.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I used to be hopeful, but I got hurt. I won’t make that mistake again.
• Hopeful people are just naive, innocent, ignorant people.
• By expecting the worst I’m protecting myself.

Core Belief:

• Falling from hopeful to disappointed is terribly painful; I must avoid it at all costs. I will avoid ever becoming hopeful so as to not experience this fall.

The Mirror Between The Pessimist and The Optimist

“Falling from hopeful to disappointed is terribly painful; I must avoid it at all costs.”

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✬ Relationship to Accomplishments ✬

Lazy Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• Why struggle when I don’t have to?
• If I don’t do it, others will. If others don’t do it, then it wasn’t important.
• The world is full of busy-bees; it can afford some people who know how to relax.
• Relaxation is good for my health. Less stress, less fuss.
• I prefer simplicity and/or I’m a humble person.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• If I try hard, I’ll just fail, and then I’ll feel humiliated. I’d rather just not try.
• I can’t succeed where it counts, so why succeed at lesser things?
• Nothing I do will be good enough for my partner/parent and/or peers, so why get my hopes up for nothing?
• Being entirely unaccountable makes it so that nobody gets their hopes up about me, and they’re surprised and pleased when I do chip in.
• Because I’m so unreliable I don’t have to worry that people only like me because of what I accomplish.

Core Belief:

• I’ll never lead a genuinely meaningful life, but that truth is too painful to face, so instead I’ll stamp out my meaningful dreams, interests, and motivations.

Workaholic Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• Hard work is virtue.
• The more I accomplish, the better I feel about myself.
• Every little success is worthwhile.
• Having goals and to-do lists is something I have in common with the world’s most successful people.
• Being driven and passionate makes me attractive to my partner or potential partners.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Because I work so hard, nobody can ask me to do anything extra in good conscience.
• Everyone knows I work harder than they do, so it makes them feel more like granting favors when I ask them.
• People love me more because of how much I work.
• It is better for people to have to chase me down between my work shifts than for me to be lonely, bored, and chasing others down.
• Working so hard makes me a superior person and/or a good citizen.
• Working hard makes me safe from getting fired or rejected.

Core Belief:

• I’ll never lead a genuinely meaningful life, but that truth is too painful to face, so instead I’ll fill up my life with accomplishments which hide my greatest failure.

The Mirror Between The Workaholic and The Lazy Person

“I'll never lead a genuinely meaningful life, but that truth is too painful to face.”

Not All Workaholics “Work”

Workaholism relates to doing things. The workaholics of society are sometimes stay-at-home parents who fuss over their children, their housework and their hobbies. Workaholism relates to a continual need to accomplish something at all moments. These people tend to fold laundry while watching television or knit while talking with friends or always cram six errands into any given trip out the door. Increased efficiency implies increased accomplishments, and therefore efficiency is worshiped by workaholics. This type of person was termed a “busybacson” in The Tao of Pooh.

A workaround with workaholics is to show them how inefficient it is to lead a life they don’t feel. What are they living for if they never deeply experience the life they’re leading? Usually they’re too busy rushing around to smell the roses, feel the magic of the water running down their skin in the shower, or to kick back and watch a meteor shower. Workaholics are often in for a sharp wake-up call when they deeply connect with an experience – any experience – and realize how little they’ve been feeling everything.

Lazy people are the same way, but often harder to reason with because they’ve often shut down a lot of their thinking capacity, depending on the form of their laziness. If their kill-time is a strategic video game, they may be awake at a logical level at least. Yet both the lazy person and the workaholic will be so “checked out” experientially that getting them to actually grok that they’re missing out on feeling life is akin to teaching fish how to fly. Yet unlike fish flying, we’re actually meant to feel.

Note: Laziness is never an inherent trait. Humans are social animals who naturally want to contribute to society in meaningful and productive ways. When a person is averse to constructive work, they have suffered trauma in their infancy – the period of their life where they were meant to be passive in life. The “lazy” person is trying to get their missed experience of being an unconditionally accepted, passive baby – and they’re failing to get that missed experience. If the lazy person succeeds in having their missed experience, they will spontaneously begin to evolve to the next natural state of emotional development and they will stop being “lazy.”

Polarity Flipping

When someone is at an extreme end of a polarity spectrum you’ll sometimes find that they flip back and forth from one extreme to the other. This means that the person is highly identified with the core belief that is at the root of the polarity, and not highly identified with the specific strategy of coping with that belief.

For example, if you have someone who doesn’t strongly identify with being a successful person or with a lazy person, but does strongly feel that they can’t lead a meaningful life, you’ll find they they flip between spurts of frantically accomplishing one thing after another and spurts of lolling about, disinterested in virtually everything.

As another example (which I alluded to in the introduction), someone who strongly feels that nobody loves them, but isn’t identified with being sexually voracious or asexual will flip back and forth between being constant, driving arousal, and disinterested boredom with sex.

This flipping between polarities is an attempt at finding relief from the core belief. Maybe she’ll love me if we have more sex, he thinks for a while. But then when that fails he thinks: She really still doesn’t love me, so why would I want to have sex with her anyway? Why bother?

The flipping between one polarity and another is actually not a flip, but a side-step only a short distance along the circle. When someone moves from neat-freak to slob, they’re not moving through a centered, healthy relationship with physical possessions on the way.

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♫ Relationship to Auditory Input, especially music ♫

Music Craver Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• I love music and/or I love watching television and/or I love conversations and/or I love parties.
• Concerts give me energy and make me feel alive.
• Music playing in the background helps me concentrate.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Music playing in the background is soothing because it fills the emptiness that I would otherwise be perceiving.
• Certain songs and/or shows are particularly comforting because they resonate and let me know I’m not alone.
• When I hear certain sounds they remind me of what I’m really like and help me tune into myself; it feels gratifying.

Core Belief:

• My inner voice is too quiet. I must find music and words that resonate with me so that I am amplified through their expression.

Silence Craver Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I love quiet time to myself and/or I prefer small, quiet gatherings and/or I prefer books to television.
• Concerts are too loud – they ruin your hearing.
• Background music is distracting; quiet helps me focus on my work and my play.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Music controls my feelings and thoughts in a way that makes me feel invaded and violated.
• Television poisons my opinions and thoughts, leaving me pillaged of myself.
• When I can’t hear myself because I’ve been so drowned out by noise I feel lonely, disconnected and lost.
• So many songs and/or shows make me feel increasingly isolated because I can’t relate to them.

Core Belief:

• My inner voice is too quiet. I must avoid auditory stimulation most of the time in order to maintain my ability to hear my inner voice.

The Mirror Between The Music Craver and The Silence Craver

“My inner voice is too quiet.”

Coping Strategies All Attempt to Create Integration

No coping strategy polarity is superior to the other. The person who prefers quiet is not necessarily more evolved or less evolved than the person who prefers music. The asexual is not necessarily superior or inferior to the nymphomaniac.

Every coping strategy is a sophisticated choice on the part of our unconscious minds to bring us closer to our own personal truth.

The submissive in a Dominant/submissive scene is trying to meet their own need for passivity through this ritual; they are working toward resolving their infancy trauma. And some people do succeed even when they don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish. One day you may realize that a certain kink doesn’t appeal to you anymore, or that you no longer feel burdened when you have to clean up after yourself – and these shifts mean that you have, indeed, resolved some of your childhood trauma.

Denial of our chosen coping strategies generally creates an increase of inner tangles. If you try to use sheer will-power to deny yourself your habit of over-eating, you’re unlikely to succeed. If you do succeed, you may find that some other aspect of your life suddenly goes awry instead, as your powerlessness to get connection from others magnifies in a new way.

I was able to get around my desire to overeat and its negative health impacts by discovering raw foodism and raw food potlucks. I found a cuisine I could safely overeat without destroying my body and I found a community I could share my chosen cuisine with.

For a time, raw foodism helped soothe my sense of powerlessness to get connection, but once I moved away from the place where my raw food friends lived, I found that my powerlessness to get connection blew up again, becoming a painful entity in my consciousness. This specter of mine has haunted me most of my life, and has inspired my many revisions and additions over the years to my article, Why is it so hard to make friends?

As my social circles and social skills continue to expand and improve, my relationship with food continues to expand and improve. For some, these two concepts will not be as linked as they are for me, and for these people they are unlikely to have struggles with overeating or undereating. This doesn’t mean a powerlessness to get connection doesn’t lurk anywhere within someone however. You can manifest your powerlessness to get connection in any number of addictions including alcoholism, heroin, or porn.

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★ Relationship to External Display ★

Extremely Shy & Modest Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• I’m afraid of having to speak in a crowd or being on a stage.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• Don’t look at me, don’t read into that thing I just said – don’t believe this fake front I’m giving you; it hurts when you look at my shell and mistake it for me.

Core Belief:

• I desperately want you to see my most authentic inner self, but if you look at my external display you’ll be distracted from that.

Exhibitionist Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I like when people watch me dance or perform; I enjoy being on stage.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• To be desired sexually is a gateway to being seen and known.

Core Belief:

• I desperately want you to see my most authentic inner self, and the only hope I have of that is if I entice you to me with external displays.

The Mirror Between The Extremely Shy/Modest and The Exhibitionist

“I desperately want you to see my most authentic inner self.”

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✼ Relationship to Self-Security ✼

Fiercely Independent Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• I can do anything want.
• I don’t need anybody in order for me to be happy.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• If other people make the choices, they’ll choose things that hurt me.

Core Belief:

• I’m incredibly fragile. If you touch me, I will shatter. I must protect myself in a shield of confidence and bravado.

Codependent Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• I’m happier when I’m in a relationship.
• It’s easier when someone else makes decisions.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• If I make choices for myself, I’ll have to blame myself for making the wrong choices.
• By martyring myself I am seen as good and then other people will meet my needs.

Core Belief:

• I’m incredibly fragile. If you leave me, I will shatter. I must bind myself to you and ensure you will not leave.

The Mirror Between The Fiercely Independent and The Codependent

“I'm incredibly fragile.”

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♦ Relationship to Shame ♦

Prefers to Hide Polarity #1

Conscious Attitudes:

• Keeping close to home prevents me from overextending myself.
• Opening up to someone and being vulnerable is best kept within the confines of only the deepest, safest relationship.
• The wider my circle, the more risk of being betrayed by someone.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• If you see what I am ashamed of, you’ll despise me.
• If I show you my shame, it’ll make my shame more real and powerful.
• If I reveal myself, you’ll shame me for who I am.

Core Belief:

• I have a painful history and I’m ashamed of what it has made me, but by keeping my history, shame and inner world under the rug I can live a redeemed, healthful, kind, and humble life.

Prefers to be Famous and Influential Polarity #2

Conscious Attitudes:

• With ample influence, I can help others avoid the pains I’ve been through.
• With a high-profile position, I can role model an inspiring lifestyle.

Subconscious Attitudes:

• I prove my innocence by showing others who I am.
• I become more beautiful, more perfect, as more people believe in the best in me.
• By revealing myself to many, many people, and yet retaining fame, I validate myself.

Core Belief:

• I have a painful history and I’m ashamed of what it has made me, but through validation of the multitudes I can compensate.

The Mirror Between The One Who Hides and The One Who Seeks Fame and Influence

“I have a painful history and I’m ashamed of what it has made me.”

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Key Takeaways The grand conclusion!

There are, of course, many more polarities than the ones I’ve listed above. However, from the above I believe you can observe several trends. Here are some key takeaways:

• We all have conscious beliefs about ourselves that seem rational, simple, or straightforward. However, these conscious beliefs are never the whole story; often, they are merely rationalizations that cover up our hidden fears and motives.
• Our deepest fears and desires are much more like other people than we usually consciously recognize. Understanding our foundational same-ness, it is easier to find love and compassion for others – even when they seem like total opposites from ourselves.

Further Reading

If you’ve enjoyed this article, then subscribe below to hear from me on occasion. Also, for your further reading, here are few of my favorite articles:

• My Journey & My Books
• What does it mean to be an INFJ and an HSP?
• Six Critial Things You Don’t Know About Plants
• Why I Almost Left My Husband

Writing This Article From meditation to presentation

I began writing the concepts for this article after an epiphany in 2017. I realized that narcissists and codependents come from the same, or very similar, traumas, but then simply used different mechanisms to cope.

After some deep introspection, which in this case looked like deep, trance meditations, I discovered the same core in the areas where I was polarized or others I knew were polarized. One could say that I visited the akashic records and brought back the clearest translations I could, given my own filters.

I spent around four hours in meditation for this article, spending roughly fifteen minutes on each polarity I wrote about. Then, over the course of months and years, I finally got around to fleshing the article out with further information, insights and conclusions. Lastly, I spent around six hours writing the HTML.

Yes, I write all the HTML for all of my articles manually. Generated HTML is too likely to give me weird spacing, font type changes, and so on. This particular article, including its HTML is sixty-five pages long. This kind of work is a massive undertaking – from meditation to presentation. I hope it serves you well!

If you’d like to support my work, please check out my recipe books, meal plans, advice books, coloring books, and board games. I have created a lot over the years and I would really love to share it with you. You can also find unique creations and introspections of mine on patreon.

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