perjantai 5. huhtikuuta 2013

Days 195-196: Communication pattern from father - suppressing impulses & habitualized planning


04-05042013



This post is a continuation to:

Father

This point has been coming up more and more lately and so I will deal with it first. I have a tendency (as do many others) to prepare for situations I am unsure of by planning them out in my mind. I may for example map out possible outcomes and their probabilities, think of different ways to say things and how different words/phrases/tones affect how my message is heard, calculate best possible ways to begin a conversation, practice “lines” in my mind (or out loud even) – and I have done this to such an extent that I have become really resistant to act on my initial impulse to do something. When I get an impulse to do something – for example bring up a topic of discussion or hug another – I immediately doubt my impulse by thinking “is that a good idea?” and freeze myself. Then I assess the situation through all kinds of assumptions: who I believe the other person to be, how I assume them to perceive me, what I guess their reactions might be, what I perceive to be “proper” in the context of the situation – and my automated responses and reactions to the other, which are also guesses as well as planning ahead, because when I perceive myself to probably act a certain way and believe it I am likely to act just so unless I stop being on auto-pilot.

There are environments where my resistance is lowered or non-existent. Theatre is such a safe place for me as it encourages self-expression in a closed circle of trusted people, and I am glad to have had a supportive environment like that when I grew up because the rest of my social environment was not as supportive or at least not as safe as it was. With certain people and places related to theatre I am really comfortable, “at home”, and allow myself to express myself without all the filters that are activated in “less safe” environments.

So as I can deduct from my experience, the reason for my resistance to act on my initial impulse is because I react with fear to the situation at hand. This may be because a) my stance within the situation is already fearful (i.e. I am in the presence of someone whom I perceive to be “scary”), and/or b) I react with fear to a trigger within the situation and become fearful within the moment (a person says something which I associate with a negative memory and access the past fear), and/or c) I react to my impulse with fear (I get an impulse to dance and judge myself because I perceive dancing to be a “waste of time”).

An example of this is a situation with a friend with whom I discuss about very serious and difficult matters which I/we make even more difficult by not directly addressing our relationship and the underlying friction that has been there for a long time already. There are things I am bothered by but which I stop myself from bringing up because I fear its possible consequences. This also spreads out on all impulses regarding this person: I freeze to assess all topics of discussion, not just the actual issue, because I fear that talking to this person at all might lead to a discussion on the actual issue. Here I have to deal with the fear itself, but also with the communication pattern of planning everything – I cannot wait and postpone the discussion by thinking “I have to be ready for it” - I've just got to do it. No more preparation. Today I actually managed to stop myself from acting upon this point: I had an impulse to bring up a topic of conversation, I froze, I doubted, “is this such a good idea” - but then I realized what I was doing and stopped the pattern. I breathed for a while, realized that I was accessing the same old pattern, let it go, returned to being empty and silent – and two seconds later the impulse came again and this time I seized it immediately and acted upon it. It was cool to see this can be done.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to doubt myself and my inner movements and thus plan out words, phrases, tones, gestures and motions with which I perceive and believe the situation to be most likely to work out according to my wishes (avoiding what I fear).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to handle unplanned situations.

[Note: with “inner movements” or “initial impulse” I now mean that movement within myself which tells me to move without a thought as words or images, such as “hmm, I wonder if eating ice cream would be a good idea, yes, I think I'll have an ice cream” or having an image of ice cream come up in my mind which then evokes desire. What I'm talking about is that “inspiration” that is pure movement with no consciousness involved, such as when I remember something I wanted to ask a friend (memory is a physical function in the brain) or hear music and “feel like dancing” (want to move according to the rhythm).]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stop myself from acting upon my initial impulse by “pulling back” both physically and mentally when/as I react to the situation with fear, refusing to stand within and as the impulse and to acknowledge the impulse as myself, as my self-expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the source of the impulses I “receive” to move myself to act is in fact myself, the very self I am beyond my consciousness – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I doubt, reject and and suppress these impulses I actually erode my very self and push myself further from myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see these impulses as “less than” / “not worthy” as I have refused to embrace them, here building a foundation of self-doubt, self-belittlement and self-judgement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that who I am as these impulses is “not enough” to “succeed” in the situation at hand because I have perceived myself to “always fail” when I follow these impulses – not realizing that this fear is based on childhood experiences where I was bullied and judged by other children for my unrestrained self-expression, which I see is not a valid experience to base any fears on because children are just as messed up as their parents are and their tendency to bully is thus not “human nature” but a sign of a major malfunction in society.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take my experiences of being bullied personally as I have not seen, realized and understood that the behavior of the other children was not (only) a manifestation of who I was then but (also) a manifestation of who they were and what our world was/is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame myself for my experiences of being bullied as I have believed the accusations and judgements of the other children that my self-expression was “wrong”, carrying this misconception within me until the present moment where my first reaction is still to look for flaws in myself when another reacts (or to prevent reactions by “fixing my flaws” before an interaction and “playing it safe”), not realizing that the reactions of others are their reactions which they are responsible for, not me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to habitualize myself to plan things in my mind constantly “just in case” even when there is no immediate fear present.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to habitualize myself to act upon the survival mechanisms I learned as a child in the hostile environment of school where a bunch of messed up kids are put together with no proper adult support – not realizing that I am no longer in school, that life is not school and that I am no longer the same undeveloped being I was as a child but a fully grown adult who no longer just needs to survive but can actually affect how one's life is lived.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify planning and preparing for interaction within my mind by believing that this is the only way to receive acceptance, not realizing that when and as I act based on plans and follow a ready route I do not actually live within the moment by being open to all possibilities present, maintaining my ability to change my direction within a single breath if I so decide.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive social interaction to be a mine field which I need to find a safe route in to survive, not realizing that social interaction is not negative nor is it positive – it's simply the physical reality and Life with physical beings coming across each other in limited space – and that this negative value has in fact been set by me and is not actually real.



As I now see, realize and understand that the reactions of other human beings are not in fact caused by me even though I may serve as a trigger to another – I commit myself to stop myself when and as I react to another's reaction with fear. This also applies to imagined reactions where I see a “worst-case scenario” of another's negative reaction. When and as I stop myself from acting upon my initial impulse by thinking “what if [something happens]” - this thought not necessarily appearing as words or images but as a physical movement of “pulling back” and shrinking – I stop, I breathe and I realize that this worst-case scenario has not in fact happened and may not happen at all, and that even if it would happen it would be more about the other person than myself (if my starting point is clear). I realize I am afraid because of childhood experiences which are no longer here and that I am acting upon habits and survival mechanisms that served their purpose in school but are now dysfunctional. I then stabilize myself in breath, ground myself into my body as a whole and breathe the energy out – and if the energy doesn't fade with breathing, I return to investigating the point. I then return to what I was doing, re-assess the initial impulse and act upon it if necessary/possible.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to adopt the survival mechanism of planning ahead and thus appearing certain by watching my father.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust other people to accept my self-expression when it is unplanned and thus create a need to plan and prepare for interaction with others so that I would be accepted / not rejected.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that planned/preconceived expression is not really honest self-expression at all, unless there is a practical reason for the planning instead of fear being the motivator.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that if I do not succeed within interaction with other people I will not be accepted and will instead be rejected and bullied.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make myself helpless in front of rejection and bullying as I have taken them personally as I have not had a solid foundation of self-trust and self-worth.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to appear certain through this survival mechanism of planning as an attempt to mend my insecurity which I realized to be one reason why I was so easily bullied.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I do not need to appear certain for an interaction to be successful.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what is required for an interaction to be genuine and honest (my new definition of “successful”) is that I am who I am without any additional personalities/characters and that who I am is not always certain or at least not my definition of “certain”.



When and as I notice myself planning and/or preparing for something, I stop, I breathe and I assess within and as self-honesty whether the planning holds any practical value or not. If it does, I continue with the planning as much as is necessary and possibly stop doing other things while I plan, and when I am done I move on to other activities. If the planning does not hold any practical value but is there only to soothe my fears, I stop the planning and realize I am planning just to avoid what I fear. I then investigate the fear point that I am trying to escape, forgive myself, release the energy and move on.

I commit myself to flag moments when I fake certainty to cover up my insecurity so that I may investigate these situations further.

I commit myself to challenge myself to drop the certainty act and allow myself to be uncertain when and as I notice myself faking certainty – and I commit myself to investigate whatever these situations reveal.

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