I was kinda shit-answering but good answer!

However I am afraid neurodivergence actually makes a difference as we re-experience our pains constantly.

I was about 12 or 13 when I read them too on some obscure shady forum and I was like "This is crazy conspiracy theorist shit." Little did I know, those crazy conspiracy nuts were on to something

Like 'If I meditate hard enough with LSD and have a goat lick my ***hole I can achieve godhood and it won't matter that my ex cheated on me' kinda thing.

But only if you pinky promise not to sell state secrets I'm going to tell you?

Sharks analogy again. Not all of them will bite, but you don't know which one will.

I've tried it dozens of times and it hasn't done shit for me. I'm gonna keep trying weekly though.

I was in my mid 20s at the time lol, so it may be that I was young. But I was also actively practicing CBT at the time and trying to fix my mind.

I've never had a trip that was unproductively bad, but I've also never had a trip that was easy and all fun (n is in the single digits though). All of them fit somewhere in the "challenging" category where a portion of it was very unpleasant, but ultimately constructive.

My worst was before I started the CBT and was with my now ex around the beginning of the end of the relationship. It was mostly trying to show me that we'd grown incompatible. The lessons of the rest were either similar "hey you're deliberately ignoring something with someone in your life who you happen to be tripping with", or "here's some bullshit you've been on and it's time to confront it and actually change."

Those trips aren't easy, and they aren't necessarily relaxing. They're more comparable to an emotional marathon or some other physical challenge made emotional. And I think part of what's vital is I go in accepting that I can change and part of my goal is change. The suck is necessary to achieve the goal. A big part of how they worked was actually forcing me to face shit. The only way out was through, and by the end a self destructive behavior or thought pattern was firmly something I didn't want to participate in anymore.

So yeah I guess learning meditation techniques and how to hamper panic attacks and channel the energy they come with into useful and constructive energy is probably the crux of it though. My cbt was largely focused on that and breaking the destructive habits I learned from cptsd.

Oh also sex on the come up was always nice.