Suggestibility - Controlling through medication/supplements etc

[OmegaPhil]

I am interested in people with experience shutting down suggestibility. I am quite familiar with this on pot, but unfortunately its invaded my normal life and is abused by various things that are overshadowing me (as though its a triggerable mental mode) - I haven't done pot for weeks now so its unlikely I'm still affected from the last time.

Does anyone have good things to eat/drink/do that can shut down this overly receptive mode?

Thanks for your help.

 

[bismillah]

The most effective way I've found is not to add anything, but to take things away. Put limits on your consumption of media. Less YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, whatehaveyou. All those things train you to take the world at face value. Spend that time reflecting, or working, or doing creative hobbies.

It is easy to medicate yourself into passivity... I don't think it's possible to medicate yourself out of it.

 

[roninsina]

I have to agree with bismillah. You have to reserve enough conscious processing power to practice mindfulness. Most people in modern cultures have so much input that it’s not possible to apply much in the way of critical thinking. There is a tremendous selection of works on mindfulness, and picking up a few techniques could get you a lot closer to where you want to be.

 

[Voidmatrix]

To add to what's already been stated, limit external stimuli, opting for more activities that allow you to stimulate your mind from within: write, create art, exercise and meditate.

Also, analyze your own thinking. Pull up a list of heuristics/cognitive biases, ask yourself why you think what you think and why you think the way you do. Acknowledge influences from outside your own mind.

Do you think it may have been suggestibility that brought you to thinking that you could manage this with external things like various supplements and drugs?

I think some degree of suggestibility will always be present, but it can certainly be managed and directed/guided in ways that are more beneficial and appealing to and for you.

One love

 

[OmegaPhil]

Disclaimer: If you don't believe in disincarnate entities, psychic attack, telepathy (non-verbal communication mostly used by spiritual entities), then it is best to ignore this thread.

Thanks for your answers. I have already used mindfulness for some years but it couldn't stand up against thought insertion through psychic attack (where in that case literally focusing on the aberrant thoughts actually brings the attacking entities closer to your awareness). This annoyed me greatly as mindfulness was supposed to be a 'ground truth' to bringing me in spiritual resonance with my reality.

The suggestibility is a mode and fast-acting, hence the interest in solving it from some direction that doesn't involve simply thinking differently. Some psychic attacks get bad enough that this mode seems to be turned on - I think something nasty and believe it fully, only to realise a little later 'oh shit that was literally believed for me' or something similar - i.e. I'm able later to reach a level of awareness where I notice the 'forced belief' associated with the thought (and therefore immediately realise its a compromise). This kind of thing should be restricted to pot sessions and the day after, yet its apparently still accessible by nasty stuff well outside of any entheogens or supposed special activities I do myself.

 

[Icyseeker]

A big thing for me is carving out time where you can just be by yourself doing whatever. I love my alone time and it is one of the things that can keep you grounded in yourself. Meditation and removing yourself from external stimuli can be a way to ramp up this feeling but may lead to a more hermetic lifestyle.

Another thing that can help is keeping a notepad and writing in the notepad what you are feeling when the suggestibility vibe appears. This is a way of externalizing the feeling and then evaluating it.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Disclaimer: If you don't believe in disincarnate entities, psychic attack, telepathy (non-verbal communication mostly used by spiritual entities), then it is best to ignore this thread.

Thanks for your answers. I have already used mindfulness for some years but it couldn't stand up against thought insertion through psychic attack (where in that case literally focusing on the aberrant thoughts actually brings the attacking entities closer to your awareness). This annoyed me greatly as mindfulness was supposed to be a 'ground truth' to bringing me in spiritual resonance with my reality.

The suggestibility is a mode and fast-acting, hence the interest in solving it from some direction that doesn't involve simply thinking differently. Some psychic attacks get bad enough that this mode seems to be turned on - I think something nasty and believe it fully, only to realise a little later 'oh shit that was literally believed for me' or something similar - i.e. I'm able later to reach a level of awareness where I notice the 'forced belief' associated with the thought (and therefore immediately realise its a compromise). This kind of thing should be restricted to pot sessions and the day after, yet its apparently still accessible by nasty stuff well outside of any entheogens or supposed special activities I do myself.

If I may, for my own clarity and to better assist you, what sort of external devices are you considering? I mean, I have yet to come across a substance that states, "effective at limiting suggestibility." It's kind of like looking for a pill that assists in only thinking "correct thoughts," or something of that nature.

Even a master of mindfulness will have moments where they may not be mindful in their own minds. Kind of part of the package of the human condition. No one controls all of their thoughts. There's too much cognitive flow and heuristic programming to do so. We can just do the best we can.

That being said, have you considered letting some of these thoughts just be? I find allowing them to exist without trying to use my will to alter their trajectory is one of the quickest ways to have them move on. The more we invest ourselves in them, the more they crop up, and the more power they have.

One love

 

[compulsimple]

Read about psychology I think that you may have some misconceptions. I'll recommend a few books here. Long story short you don't have the free will that you think that you have. You are irrational and compelled by the world around you. So we are all as it would be, because that's just being human

If you read or listen to audiobooks take a few of these titles and attend to them if you are interested, love you and wish you the best in life

-When the sun bursts: the enigma of schizophrenia by Christopher Bollas

(Many schizophrenics experience their condition as one of radical incarceration, mind-altering medications, isolation, and dehumanization. At a time when the treatment of choice is anti-psychotic medication, world-renowned psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas asserts that schizophrenics can be helped by much more humane treatments, and that they have a chance to survive and even reverse the process if they have someone to talk to them regularly and for a sustained period, soon after their first breakdown.

In this sensitive and evocative narrative, he draws on his personal experiences working with schizophrenics since the 1960’s. He offers his interpretation of how schizophrenia develops, typically in the teens, as an adaptation in the difficult transition to adulthood.

With tenderness, Bollas depicts schizophrenia as an understandable way of responding to our precariousness in a highly unpredictable world. He celebrates the courage of the children he has worked with and reminds us that the wisdom inherent in human beings–to turn to conversation with others when in distress–is the fundamental foundation of any cure for human conflict.

-Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction. by Maia Szalavits

(More people than ever before see themselves as addicted to, or recovering from, addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs, prescription meds, sex, gambling, porn, or the internet. But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment.

Challenging both the idea of the addict’s “broken brain” and the notion of a simple “addictive personality,” Unbroken Brain offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention and policy. Like autistic traits, addictive behaviors fall on a spectrum — and they can be a normal response to an extreme situation. By illustrating what addiction is, and is not, the book illustrates how timing, history, family, peers, culture and chemicals come together to create both illness and recovery- and why there is no “addictive personality” or single treatment that works for all.

Combining Maia Szalavitz’s personal story with a distillation of more than 25 years of science and research, Unbroken Brain provides a paradigm-shifting approach to thinking about addiction.)


-The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness by Emily Anthe

A fascinating, thought-provoking journey into our built environment

Modern humans are an indoor species. We spend 90 percent of our time inside, shuttling between homes and offices, schools and stores, restaurants and gyms. And yet, in many ways, the indoor world remains unexplored territory. For all the time we spend inside buildings, we rarely stop to consider: How do these spaces affect our mental and physical well-being? Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Our productivity, performance, and relationships?

In this wide-ranging, character-driven book, science journalist Emily Anthes takes us on an adventure into the buildings in which we spend our days, exploring the profound, and sometimes unexpected, ways that they shape our lives. Drawing on cutting-edge research, she probes the pain-killing power of a well-placed window and examines how the right office layout can expand our social networks. She investigates how room temperature regulates our cognitive performance, how the microbes hiding in our homes influence our immune systems, and how cafeteria design affects what–and how much–we eat.

Along the way, Anthes takes readers into an operating room designed to minimize medical errors, a school designed to boost students’ physical fitness, and a prison designed to support inmates’ psychological needs. And she previews the homes of the future, from the high-tech houses that could monitor our health to the 3D-printed structures that might allow us to live on the Moon.

The Great Indoors provides a fresh perspective on our most familiar surroundings and a new understanding of the power of architecture and design. It’s an argument for thoughtful interventions into the built environment and a story about how to build a better world–one room at a time.

-Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety

Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about forty million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy.

LeDoux’s groundbreaking premise is that we’ve been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way. These are not innate states waiting to be unleashed from the brain, but experiences that we assemble cognitively. Treatment of these problems must address both their conscious manifestations and underlying non-conscious processes. While knowledge about how the brain works will help us discover new drugs, LeDoux argues that the greatest breakthroughs may come from using brain research to help reshape psychotherapy.


-Trick mirror: reflections on self delusion by jia tolentino
Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.

Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet.

- this is about how neuroscience and marketing affects our shopping behaviors.

You know, people are very suggestible enough as it is. We don't have much free will to begin with.

You may also have mental health to consider. Feeling like you are being attacked by an entity may be a way that you explain the sensation of a panic attack and there isn't anything wrong with having anxiety

I would recommend talking to a therapist. You may find medications; I'm trying moclobemide which is in the same catagory of RIMA antidepressant as harmine and harmaline such as found in Banisteriopsis caapi and Syrian rue and I'm considering this because I want to treat bipolar depression without cognitive impairment and sexual dysfunction; and of course I like to take ayahuasca and moclobemide is the only pharmaceutical that can interact safely with other RIMA's.

Always talk to your nurse practioner, psychiatrist, counselor, or therapist. Talk therapy helps too. Wish you so much luck and support, whoever you are

 

[compulsimple]

I would like to add one more thing. Be aware of the profit incentive behind the supplement industry.

Supplements are completely unregulated. Be skeptical

Many companies sell a variety of supplements. Many guru's aren't in your best interest. Just because someone is likable or shares a belief doesn't mean that they have your best interest in mind.

There are spiritual circles in Los Angeles California where they are trying to use Kambo frog venom for treating just about anything and in some instances the Kambo could be extremely deadly for people that might have a heart condition and these guru's decide that they know best and its okay to charge these people to provide Kambo rituals at random without professionally understanding a lick of biochemistry or having any knowledge over medical science; at all... because they don't actually provide care.

Never for a second do these people take a minute for their stomach to churn at the thought that one of the human beings under their "care" could die.

I forget who but there was a motivational speaker who killed someone in a sweat lodge and was convicted of manslaughter because he coerced them into staying in the sweat lodge for longer than was physically safe. I get extremely upset about it that the scumbag started profiting off vulnerable people again and rebranded his image and failed to experience actual remorse for misguiding followers.... Yeah. Not a very enlightened mind if you are asking me because you would have taken consequence into consideration

It actually makes me upset thinking about how spirituality is being used as a carrot & stick incentive to profit off people who might have problems that can't be solved through shilajeet, protein powders, and Kambo. Be subversive

supplements are unregulated by the FDA, they can legally sell you sugar pills or a poor quality product. It makes me think about Ivermectin and various covid-19 remedies that promise people empty promises from the snake-oil selling scumbags that really don't have a shred of moral dignity and are just making money off vulnerable people and people with mental illness that deserve actual treatment and care

I would be willing to share information from a book called "Cults inside out: how people get in and can get out" if you want. There are a lot of misconceptions about spirituality and people looking to basically swindle you out of your hard earned money and virtues

 

[Spiralout]

How are you doing OmegaPhil?

I think the advice people have given about limiting your "inputs" (T.V., "social media" , obnoxious music, uncaring/childish people etc.) is good advice. In the same vein, finding some time to sit by yourself is also good.

I do not think there is a specific supplement or medication that I, or anyone else here, can recommend. That does not mean that there is not a drug/compound that might help you, but, as you probably know, trying to find "the right drug" for "the right person" when attempting to treat psychological or spiritual maladies is very hit and miss. To try to decide what you might want to take (if anything) would require a minimum of seeing you in person.

Do you have a good medical doctor? Do you have insurance? How long have these problems been going on for and when did they begin getting worse ?

 

[Tomtegubbe]

Shifting your focus to physical things is usually good idea if you feel your thoughts are messed up. Doing some exercise, cooking, observing nature, sometimes just stretching or focusing on everyday things like brushing teeth can help with grounding. Taking break from all mind-altering substances, including alcohol is of course heartily recommended.

 

[roninsina]

^^^^^^^^^^
THIS


I have experienced the phenomena you describe Omegaphil, and an order of magnitude worse, over the course of several years. The main thing that helped me was what Tomtegubbe is suggesting. And mindfulness was very useful in those circumstances as a means of staying in my present and ignoring discarnate voices and the other bizarre phenomena. In my circumstances, I was doing a lot of self exploration at a time when I wasn’t prepared to deal with the things that were surfacing, and it triggered the phenomena. I found being really stable and grounded put me in a position to handle just about anything, and to be able to choose if and when I wanted to deal with additional challenges.

 

[OmegaPhil]

If I may, for my own clarity and to better assist you, what sort of external devices are you considering? I mean, I have yet to come across a substance that states, "effective at limiting suggestibility." It's kind of like looking for a pill that assists in only thinking "correct thoughts," or something of that nature.

Even a master of mindfulness will have moments where they may not be mindful in their own minds. Kind of part of the package of the human condition. No one controls all of their thoughts. There's too much cognitive flow and heuristic programming to do so. We can just do the best we can.

That being said, have you considered letting some of these thoughts just be? I find allowing them to exist without trying to use my will to alter their trajectory is one of the quickest ways to have them move on. The more we invest ourselves in them, the more they crop up, and the more power they have.

One love

That there aren't particular substances that can work against suggestibility is all I need to know really. If there was such a thing I'd assume people here would know about it.

The thoughts are dangerous - they make me believe falsehoods and indicate something more serious - deep belief in something also shapes experienced reality.

compulsimple: I'm aware of psychology. This event is so far rare and is not directly related to my mental health, and I don't yet consider myself just an automaton. I'm not interested in reading a lot of literature, I have already done that in recent years - thanks for all the links anyway. I have lived in a spiritual reality since 2016 at least and in reality longer than this but I didn't know what the feelings were since I didn't believe in such stuff. I'm not interested in medicating myself in the psychiatric sense.

Spiralout: This isn't a general situation but specific spiritual attacks. I'm not interested in seeing a GP, I did a little psychological testing a year or so ago but they seemed aimed at basic subconscious communication and mood management. I've had issues of attacks for ~3 years now but the thread was about a very specific thing - suggestibility manipulation - rather than the other more normal stuff.

Tomtegubbe and roninsina: I'm aware of grounding. Ignoring thoughts does not prevent implicitly believing them.

 

[Voidmatrix]

Gotcha.

I practice skepticism, so withhold absolute judgement on most things aside from being aware that I exist (paradoxically derived from the attempt at denying such). This could be something that can help you too, so that you can be a little more detached from beliefs that you select and more flexible in adopting new beliefs.

This is an ongoing thread I am presently working on. Maybe it can help you find a little more cognitive control and peace of mind.

One love

 

[OmegaPhil]

I'm done being a skeptic - had a really good spiritual instructor for years (before that I was an atheist computer guy with a Biochemistry degree), spirit lights and knocks in my room, all sorts of weird and mostly nasty spiritual experiences since, plenty of communication, and of course lots of synchronicities around certain things.

I don't want to debate spiritual stuff here, just the suggestibility thing since I experienced that originally with pot.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I'm done being a skeptic - had a really good spiritual instructor for years (before that I was an atheist computer guy with a Biochemistry degree), spirit lights and knocks in my room, all sorts of weird and mostly nasty spiritual experiences since, plenty of communication, and of course lots of synchronicities around certain things.

I don't want to debate spiritual stuff here, just the suggestibility thing since I experienced that originally with pot.

I understand and respect that. I will say though, to address your preconceived notions, that this probably isn't skepticism as you've probably come across it in the past, but more in a philosophic vein, specifically epistemology. It also in no way precludes spirituality and later I will actually make some parallels between my philosophy and certain spiritual and esoteric stances.

And as benign as many seem to percieved cannabis as, I find it unsurprising that that brought you to your current point.

You have support and people willing to help

One love

 

[roninsina]

I’m aware of grounding. Ignoring thoughts does not prevent implicitly believing them.

I didn’t suggest you believe or disbelieve anything in particular. You don’t have to stop believing in the sun, in order to avoid standing in it after you start getting a little pink. I don’t doubt your experiences, after all, I did clearly state that I was quite familiar with the things you describe, as I spent the mid and late 90’s enduring an extreme example of this.

As is somewhat implied in Voidmatrix’s post; that the phenomena are “real” is less relevant than there being multiple valid ways of interpreting them. No need to battle a sea monster out in the depths if you can draw it into the desert and effortlessly eviscerate it. Sometimes one belief system is more advantageous, including taking an empirical position.

Just a little rope-a-dope goes a long way.

 

[Tomtegubbe]

Just hope you OmegaPhil the best. Must be tough what you are going through.