perjantai 7. joulukuuta 2012

Days 74-75: I'm hurt! Pity me!


04-05122012

Today I was on my way home from work. I had to cross a big road, which I do every day, but this time I was coming from a different direction than usual and started to optimize in my mind about how I should cross the road to be as effective and fast as possible. I have a tendency to do this with traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. So this time I was checking the crossroads I was at and saw a green light and thought that that would be the fastest way to cross to road – but I quickly calculated I'd have to run to make it across the wide road from where I was standing and thus started to run. I was perhaps one step across the road when I slipped (it's winter here) and fell on the ground, hurting my other leg.

So I gathered myself up off the road, checked myself and noticed I had hurt my left knee, foot and hip. Some people came to me to be of assistance. After a while I noticed I could walk and set off to get myself home – and this is where all the thoughts started to pour in.

I went into all kinds of over-dramatizing. I got so frightened of hurting myself that I thought about possible scenarios, what-if's, solutions and troubles I might face – all speculation, all guesswork, all imagination – and all the while I did not breathe at all. I noticed this and realized that if I return myself to breath my walking will be easier despite the pain, and that all of that noise in my mind just made everything seem more difficult, more painful and bigger than it actually was – I didn't break any bones and it appears I might be alright with just painkillers and rest. So all this over-dramatizing is just plunging into self-pity - “Woe, look at my pain, it is so great! Poor me! Helpless me! Cruel world! Oh!”

As I've now been thinking about this I've realized that physical pain and injury are to me a sort of a final refuge – that if I am actually physically in pain I cannot be denied sympathy. So physical pain is to me sort of in a “holy” position because it cannot be questioned - “I'm in pain! How dare you question my Great Suffering!” - even though it is quite common for people to make pain seem bigger in their minds than what it actually is, and questioning would thus be quite relevant. I remember that as a child (and even now) I enjoyed being sick not just because I didn't have to go to school and was allowed to watch cartoons all day, but also because everyone showed me sympathy, treated me gently and brought me whatever I needed. So being sick was a state where I could request for anything and could expect sympathy from others.

I also realized that the first and most important thing I can do to help my body heal is to allow myself to breathe, so going into the mind while in pain is not ok because then I stop breathing, and so going into the mind is actually physically harming myself by preventing myself from healing. As I'm now sitting here with a painful leg, I notice that once I return to breath and move my focus to the leg the pain kind of seems to magnify for a moment – which is probably why it's so much easier to just not focus on the physical and distract one's focus onto something else. The thing is, the more I focus on breathing the more relaxed my body grows and the more oxygen it inhales as I breathe more deeply when relaxed, and thus just allowing the pain to be there and accepting it as a part of what's here actually assists me in the healing process.



-- Falling --

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want/need/desire to cross a road as effectively as possible because I fear wasting time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear getting stuck at traffic lights and having to wait around for a time I perceive to be “extra waiting”, as in my imagination I could already be on the other side of the road if I had taken another route – not realizing that while I've created an image of my surroundings within my imagination, I haven't take into consideration what's actually here as my surroundings and conditions in the physical, as I have been within my mind during the imagining and from within the mind it is not possible to see what is actually here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hope/expect I will cross a road fast and effectively and to then get disappointed when I don't cross a road fast and effectively for whatever reason.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive traffic lights to be a “nuisance” by blaming the traffic lights for “making me wait” and “holding me back”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive waiting at traffic lights to be “annoying” and “a waste of time” as I have lived as impatience due to my fear of wasting time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when living as impatience, to not realize the purpose and function of traffic lights, which is to keep people safe, myself included.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame the traffic lights for my frustration as I have believed them to be the cause of my frustration, not realizing I am causing it all by myself by creating expectations about the functioning of the traffic lights, these expectations not taking into consideration the actual mechanism and purpose of the traffic lights, and by reacting when these expectations are not fulfilled.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect the traffic lights to not keep me waiting for too long, not realizing that I create myself the experience of a “long wait” by expecting the light to turn green at every second and being disappointed at every second they don't turn green.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the intervals according to which the traffic lights turn from green to red and back are always the same and optimized for each crossroads, and that the experience of a “long wait” is completely reliant on how I position myself towards the actual time I have to wait around – what kind of a relationship I create towards the amount of seconds I need to stand and wait.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I arrive at a crossing when the light turns red, to immediately look for another faster way to cross the road so that I wouldn't have to wait for the light to turn green.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when and as I look for another way to cross the road I am escaping the experience of “waiting for a light to turn green” which I have defined as uncomfortable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define waiting for a traffic light to turn green so I could cross the road to be uncomfortable as it makes me face my fear of wasting time (fear of failure).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that within these situations where I get frustrated at traffic I could simply breathe, slow down and realize I am actually not in a hurry, as the only situation where hurry would be valid is one where life is in danger.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when and as I go into the mind to plan my route in an effective way, I do not consider my surroundings as they actually are but only as an image in my mind and end up manifesting the consequences of this ignorance.


-- Dramatizing --

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I fell to the ground, to react with fear of death by thinking “I'm laying on a road – a car might run over me” and then act according to the fear by moving myself out of the road, instead of moving myself out of the road out of necessity by considering what needs to be done.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I noticed my leg was hurting, to react with fear of being disabled by thinking “what if something is broken”, not realizing that I was then creating images within my imagination where something in my leg was broken and where by body was unable to do the things a healthy body would be able to do, not realizing the fact that these images appear are a sign that I fear being disabled and that it is a fear I need to investigate, and instead validating the fear by believing my thoughts to be myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to secretly wish someone would notice what had happened to me and give me attention and, when that secret wish was fulfilled, to feel satisfied because I had received “special attention” which I believed I “deserved” - instead of supporting myself instead of wishing another would give me support, and focusing on myself to investigate whether I need actual physical help or not and then ask for the help if needed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I started to walk back home and noticed I limped a little, to interpret those couple of steps of testing my leg and limping as a sign of “weakness” that allowed me to be pitiful and small, and that as a consequence of that thought and self-definition I accepted and allowed myself to continue limping because I gave authority to the pain I now magnified in my mind as “more than” me as I saw myself “inferior” to the pain – all the while not realizing that I was actually able to walk normally and that walking normally actually assisted my leg in recovering whereas limping only slowed the recovery down.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to continue walking as the limping character because I thought I might then get more sympathy from others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think that I might have to go to a hospital and then feel helpless because I might not be able to walk there and don't have access to a car - “what if I need to go to a hospital? I don't have a car and I don't know anyone who does” - there participating in my thoughts and imagination and creating backchat that then led into more imagined scenarios - “what if the nurse on the phone will not understand that I cannot walk and will treat me with disdain? What if I will be stuck here? What if no one will help me? A friend of mine has a car – but what if she doesn't have time to take me, will she reject me if I ask for help” - all of this further accumulating my helplessness and self-definition of smallness which justify my self-pity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the while I participated in the mind as described above, I did not breathe and I was not here, and therefore I was not standing as my directive principle but accepted and allowed my mind to direct me and distance me from my physical being which was the actual one suffering.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to distract myself from the actual physical injury - which I could take into consideration in every breath and thus assist the injury to heal - by “transferring” the pain of the injury into the mind, believing my thoughts of panic and despair to be the source of pain and that the thoughts need to be satisfied for my pain to go away, when in fact they're unnecessary mind-realities that have nothing to do with this physical reality and the actual physical injury.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to pity myself as I have believed my self-definition of smallness and helplessness because it gave me an excuse to not carry responsibility of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that self-pity is ultimately reveling in passiveness, as one fully accepts and glorifies one's state of being and expects others to support and validate it by giving attention.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive physical pain and injury to be “bigger than” me as I have perceived myself to be “powerless” to do anything about physical pain.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to glorify the “higher” position I have assigned for pain and injury by mistaking the consequences of pain/injury (sympathy) to be a result of the position I have placed it in (more than me).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive physical pain as something I cannot escape and then panic within my mind as I have not wanted to face the pain, not realizing that even though escaping my physical body and the physical pain it experiences is not possible, it is possible to assist the body to recover from the pain by facing the pain and accepting it as a part of what's here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that when I am experiencing physical pain others should treat me with respect because I am “not like” them, them being healthy – here separating myself from others by believing that “sick people” “deserve” to be treated well whereas “healthy people” ought to be treated normally – not realizing that as I demand others to treat me well when I am sick or in pain, I expect them to compromise themselves for my comfort.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust people to express themselves as supportiveness when I am sick / in pain.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to handle the physical pain / sickness I am experiencing and instead demand for others to support me as I haven't trusted them (myself) to support me without demands.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “supportiveness” to be non-confrontational.



I commit myself, when and as I experience physical pain for whatever reason, to stop, breathe and realize the primary support I can give to my body to heal from the pain is to breathe and relax.

I commit myself to slow myself down through breathing when moving within traffic in order to take my surroundings into consideration.

I commit myself, when and as I notice myself going through traffic in a hurry, to stop, breathe and ask myself whether I'm actually in a hurry or not.

I commit myself to investigate my fear of being disabled.

I commit myself, when and as I experience an injury, sickness and/or physical pain, to return myself to breath in order to listen to my body as it will tell me what needs to be done.

I commit myself to realize that even though one experiencing an injury, sickness and/or physical pain is at a weakened position concerning the state of the physical, one is still one and equal to all, not “more” or “less” - the needs of the sick are simply different from the needs of those who are healthy.

I commit myself to carry responsibility of myself even if I am experiencing an injury, sickness and/or physical pain.

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