Questions to ask for integration, with IFS therapist nov 1, 2024

• anxiety over not healing
• anxiety over wasting money
• anxiety over wasting time
• anxiety over how therapist views me and how safe it is.

• Chronic tension in jaws, neck, shoulders, diaphragm muscles, pelvic muscles, sphincter muscles.

• Sadness about feeling rejected by relatives, and sensing that I am being blamed for it as if I am the antisocial one when I am only establishing boundaries on how I want to be treated. When I think of this, I get a sensation in my chest/throat area like a sinking feeling.
• Desire to reach out to relatives and family but on the other hand knowing or feeling I was rejected. When someone shows you who they are and how they feel about you, believe them
• A part that values my siblings and know they're the only siblings I will have in this world, and I want to be able to get close to them. Yet due to how my siblings behave, I know this will be unlikely. Then I have another part that wants to ditch the family once our father dies, as painful as it is.

• Part that assumes people won't like me from the getgo, and I think this comes from how I was treated in childhood.
• Part that thinks that my recruiters do not like me and don't want me, though I am not sure if this is real. Sometimes it seems like they want me.
• Part that wants to get close to people but on the other hand hate my station in life and know I wont get social needs met from them

• The critical voice telling me I am not working hard enough, I could've done more, "I could've..." which is trying to protect me from failure and looking bad in front of others I respect. My therapist said the reoccuring dreams of people telling me to return to the military can be parts that are showing up. She's right.
• There is a photographer who owes me photos, and its been overdue. This is stressing me out more than I expected, feeling tension in my nape of neck and head, almost a headache, feeling flushed. I feel like she is ignoring me or not prioritizing me, like she doesn't take me seriously. I feel conned or ignored, and disrespected. Why does it bother me so much? I think it's because it's triggering a sense of feeling mistreated throughout my life, as if there must be something to me that makes me not taken seriously. When I think about this, I recall my sister recently going apeshit saying I must look stupid and gullible to other people because a front desk worker overcharged me (intentionally or not is beside the point). When there is a critical voice, whose voice is it? Family members.

• There is a procrastinating part that prevents me from working out. It's so simple to exercise, yet I end up not doing it. It's not like I hate exercising either. But a part of me just wants to stay inside and do nothing. Avoid. Is this dissociation?
• There is a part that doesn't let me draw
• There is a part that tells me "give yourself some grace" which I first heard from my registered dietitian

• Half-asleep after waking up, had closed eye visuals with the sleep paralysis and loud noises/hypnagogic hallucinations. I was going through dark rooms with doors or windows like dark pits, and going into these dark pits from room to room until I ended up in what seems to be the hallway of a hospital. My body and instinct wanted to wake up, afraid of what was "beyond the curtain" but I persisted knowing I am physically safe. Then in the hospital hallway, my body can't take it anymore and I woke up.
• Today I felt the desire to do all sorts of drugs. Shrooms, amanitas, cough syrup, anything to be under the influence. I didn't do any but took note of this urge.
• Craving fruits and sweets like sugar. This has happened whenever I take a lot of shrooms or do MDMA.
• I am thinking about my family and relatives again, what I should do about them. I considered leaving, and now strongly leaning towards walking away again. The way how my sister treats me, how my cousins seem to keep distance from me. Maybe I don't meet their expectations or I didn't do things that they expect me to do. I didn't go to one of our cousin's wedding because I got sick, for example. I never invited my cousins to my house after I moved in. Maybe they take these as a sign I am not interested, though when I reach out to them and want to hang out they never respond.
• Considering how I will get my inheritance. It's my dad's life work and sacrifice, and he would want us to have it. My portion is likely around $1.3 mil at the least. I am looking to hire an international estate planner.
• Thinking about how everyone in my family and relatives grew older, and the places we are in life. I saw my siblings this year after a decade, and they have grown older. It was melancholy to hang out with them, especially my brother. We were at a carnival on an island, and went to our birthplace hometown, and I realized it was sobering the whole time. I didn't have a sense of excitement, just sadness and sense of longing for something. My brother was childlike, just like my sister. I wondered what they will be like in another 10 years, then another, then another. Where will they be in life? Will we get along? Will I want to still be in their life? They're the only siblings I will ever have, yet it's too bad I don't think I will ever get along with them. They are not people who will uplift me.
• I may not have close friends, a loving family and relatives who accept me, but at least I can have money and a decent quality of life to compensate for it.
• I want to get married and I plan on taking things to the grave. I've been spending a lot of time writing about being entitled to privacy and secrets, and gender stuff. I should write a list of things I am taking to the grave.
• My plan is to marry into wealth by leveraging myself and to provide the best to my future children.

• Woke up this morning with tightness in my sternum and pects
• Thinking of how I will likely spend the holidays alone
• Did barely anything today beside purchase voucher for an exam and call lawyers
• I am struggling to remember things since the MDMA session. I don't remember much about the session even though I will ocassionally remember tid bits of it and my therapist had to remind me. Then I didn't remember if I took my vitamins today.
• It's midnight and part of me is nervous about falling asleep, and I feel like there might be a repressed memory that pops up regarding my parents or regarding the CEV I had yesterday morning. Also, even before starting MDMA therapy, I got the feeling that my parents did something to me and that if I really knew, I would pack up and never talk to them again.

• Woke up this morning with tense muscles and some other unpleasantness I dont quite remember
• I often had a feeling that my siblings and my relatives would not be happy for me if I married well
• I had these thoughts before but they came up again: memories of how my father was complicit in others mistreating me and made excuses for them, instead of validating how I feel. He didn't even entertain that I might be right for standing up for myself. And how he assumes that I can't do better romantically or job-wise, and thinks people will have to settle for me and vice versa. I wonder if how he sees me is how he sees himself.
• When people show you how they don't prioritize your wellbeing and relationship with you through their words and actions, believe them. If they don't make time for you, believe them.
• I felt endangered around family back then, and the feelings are coming back stronger after this session. They were always there the past 3 years since I came back in touch with family and relatives, but it's even stronger now. I need to make a decision on what I will do with them.
• If I go missing, my military reserves unit is probably the only group of people who will realize I am missing and go searching for me. I will have to lie to my family and relatives that I am still in the military reserves even when I am not, just so they don't try shit with me.
• I am not going to "speak my truth" or tell my family members how I really feel, demand them to change and apologize (they won't), or provoke them in any way. My siblings are a vicious, vindictive bunch who are not above harassing/stalking, and have ammo they can use against me that I told them because I wanted to be close to them but turns out it was a bad idea. I wouldn't be surprised if my sister becomes like our mother and ends up being the one stalking and harassing me later, just like how she stalked my brother's baby momma and tried to provoke drama and bad blood with her. My siblings' words and behaviors show that they still think there is nothing wrong that was done to me and that I am the bad guy. My sister in particular is not someone who will apologize or can have a civil conversation with. I don't like how I feel around her, I do not feel safe. I feel anxious around her. She is condescending and tries to "put me in my place", and calls me "sensitive" if I express how I feel about her behavior and words so we can resolve it or she can clarify herself.
• I will need to keep a distance and keep them in the dark so they don't try to fight me and make my life harder. Just act clueless and busy.
• I have a weird feeling that there is no inheritance, or as not as big as dad makes it, and they're only talking about it in hopes I stick around. But once dad dies, it would be very easy for my family members to go through his shit, get my bank info, and pull all the money out, and they can also easily use my ID and cause fraud or take out a bunch of debt. Hence, I need a way to transfer the money my dad deposits into the account he made for me out into another account that I made and only I have control over.

• I have a term for how my sister treated me. It's called "love bombing". She was so insistent on having me in Korea and living near her, even with her. I wondered how she had no reservations on being so close to me so soon, didn't she worry that I might be crazy or harm her after not seeing her for over 10 years? It made no sense. And it felt like she was exaggerating how great the country is, how everything is so much better than USA, and even going so far as to lie about things and talk about things she doesn't know anything about to convince me to move to Korea. It was nice for her to show me around and take me to nice restaurants, but in the context of everything else and how she actually treats me, and the constant parroting and the assumption that I will uproot my whole life in the USA and move in with her, and especially wanted me to live with her so immediately after just meeting - that was unsettling. She was doing these not out of kindness and not expecting in return, but with a motive. And she got upset whenever I hinted I don't want to move here.
• A reason I want to return to the military is to regain my dignity. Then, I realized the reason I feel so uncomfortable around relatives and family is because I feel a lack of dignity around them. They take away my dignity.

• Woke up stressed and worried. My eyes hurt for the past week, maybe too much screen time. A lot of worries about the future are coming back this past week. I am sitting with the thoughts of what to do with my family of origin, and how anxious they make me feel. I know the right answer, according to my gut, is to walk away again.

• Struggling to study. Hard to focus, but at least I am doing something. I've been making plans and bought an exam voucher after the MDMA trip.
• I think about how I didnt do art for a while, and I am reminded again that maybe it was for a reason. Maybe it isn't my time yet, and I am meant to focus on other things. Also who knows how I would've turned out sitting hunched over drawings for a decade, without any fitness background. What if I jumped into art professionally like anyone would have expected me to? I would've had health issues. I probably would be broke and not have been able to work on the things I really want anyway. Now that I am older and look back, I realize that money makes a big difference and I am glad I chose a path that was more lucrative for me than just art alone. A few days ago I just hit a net worth over $500k, and today my net worth is about $530k.
• I am reminded again, "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from." Who knows what worse horrors fate has saved us from. When something is lost or missed out on, understand that it’s for your higher good.
• With my resources, I am prioritizing getting married.

• The past weekend was the last time I will return to the military base. I am almost out of the military service. I feel a sense of loss, which hit me more than I thought it would, and I feel vulnerable - especially when it comes to my family. I also have a sense of being tired of the uniform, and tired of being around a lot of the kind of people who join the military. Some can be incredibly trashy, and have a crab bucket mentality. They can be obnoxious and rude. If this is how I feel about them, how can I lead them without harming or alienating them?
• I kept thinking the past few days about how I felt rejected and unwanted by my relatives and family members. And a sense of danger I feel with my immediate family, like they want to manipulate me. I need to stay away from my family members, or they will drag me down with them. They bring the worst out of me. My sister's marriage might be a hot mess.
• I need to stay away from my family. They will not uplift me. They will only drag me down. There is nothing to gain by being around them, I take the whole inheritance thing with a grain of salt. The best way is to make my own way.

• Having the urge to find and preserve photos of me when I was in my early's 20. My ex took polaroids and DSLR photos of me when young, and put it on his Instagram, and I had some on my old facebook that got hacked and I no longer have access to it. I wish I saved all of those pictures. I didn't think much of them then but now I look back at them. Polaroid photos of me in our shared house, and hanging out at the beach. Photos of me at an art gallery.
• I also left childhood photos back at an old grandma's house in California. Wish I can retrieve them but I don't talk to her anymore.
• Our past is important and it's necessary to hold memories of when we were young.

• Today I am thinking about what a beautiful life here I live in this city, in my current rental, for the past 3 years. How good my lifestyle is. I want to continue. I don't want to move near my father and immediately family, and it's giving me red flags thinking about how my family behaved while I was there anyway.
• I want to spend more time with my dad before he passes and get inheritance I can bring back to the US, but I don't want to live there. It feels dangerous being around my family and my dad. I keep remembering after my MDMA session how my father never stood up for me and validated my grief with how I was treated by others. He also piled onto harming my self image, saying I need a slew of plastic surgery unlike my siblings, and how I will need to settle for an "ugly short partner who may not make much money". I would never bring any marital prospects near him if this is how he views me and talks to me.
• Seeing how my family is and how they will tear my self image down, and the type of partners my family says the old country wants, I think I will have a better chance of finding a good partner outside my ethnic group, and will have more options in America. Plus, this city has more wealthy people than my the capital of the old country.

• Again, I am thinking of my family and getting a sense they're trying to manipulate me and future-fake, dangling promises like a carrot thinking it will make me do what they want. I've been struggling to sleep lately. I am reminded again that I may need to not count on them at all and walk away if I want to thrive.
• I also don't understand why my dad can't send money to the US if he's so insistent on me having inheritance. He's been sending money to our family for years, raising a family of wife and three kids. He paid for my brother and sister's college tuitions (barely any scholarships) for years, and suddenly sending me money is impossible because "the countries won't allow it"?
• My dad has $4-5 million dollar in assets. I realized that this really isn't much in the big picture, and he could've done better. This is not the man to take life advice from.

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