Day 397: Compiling secret spite

01042014

A couple of days ago I faced harsh and direct judgement to which I reacted to quite strongly. I took the message personally and felt really bothered by it with an awful feeling in my gut. The message I received pointed out a mistake I had made, but it did so with a tone that I responded to with a negative reaction, and so I missed out on receiving the valid feedback and only focused on the element of judgement.

Now, a couple days later, the situation came to a culmination point. Because of my reaction of taking the judgmental tone of another personally, I had made decisions to act upon my self-judgement and in a way punished myself for being judged – not for the mistake itself, but for the fact that somebody wasn't pleased with me! So in a way I was trying to redeem for my mistakes, but not the ones I had actually made. I perceived my fault to have been the fact that I was so “bad” that another had judged me, and again ignored what I could have originally done better.

So these actions of mine were noticed and responded to with common sense, which is when I realized I had been wrong all along. I was acting just like my father has in similar situations: compiling secret spite under actions of self-punishment. And with the same people, even! I realized that in this situation I was the spitting image of my father, with every tone, posture, gesture and word, and having seen the consequences of my father's actions on himself I will not accept and allow myself to follow in these footsteps.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to X's tone of voice and choice of words as I have learned to fear aggression as a child.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that aggression directed towards me is valid and always my fault.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to submit to aggression without questioning the validity of the aggression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore the message under the aggression as my focus has been on the way the message has been delivered.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see past my fear reaction to aggression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to aggression by shrinking and withdrawing instead of standing up and breathing myself open.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe when facing aggression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear X as an authority.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear receiving feedback from X – be it delivered with any tone, aggression or not – as I have known her feedback to be (mostly) valid and direct and thus feared facing conflict within myself, forgetting that conflict is an opportunity to change and develop myself for the better.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to measure my worth according to how much/little feedback I receive from X, wanting to be “ready” so that she would have nothing to criticize.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my relationship to X has been created on a basis of imbalanced power relations – when I was a child and she was my mentor – and that for this relationship to work now that we're both adults equal in power I need to change my stance towards her from fearful to fearless.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that these complications in my relationship to X are not surprising at all, as we have started off in an unequal relationship, and that now that I can see the cause of the complications the dynamics of this relationship can in fact be changed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to refuse to see the feedback behind X's aggressive message as I have not wanted to admit to having done something “wrong” (not as well as possible).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny myself the opportunity to learn from the feedback by not looking at what was said and instead secretly blaming X for being “inconsiderate”, “irrational” and “hysteric”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and appear as if I was redeeming for my mistakes by acting upon self-punishment, not realizing that I was doing this just to appear submissive while I was secretly compiling spite towards X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I “shouldn't” be making mistakes now that I am no longer a child within my relationship to X, not realizing that people of all ages make mistakes as mistakes are an inevitable part of learning.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to refuse to see and embrace the mistakes I make around X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes around X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that my father reacts and responds to X in the exact same way as I do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by mirroring my relationship with X to my fathers relationship with X I can easily see what mistakes I have made.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live as the spitting image of my father, not realizing that as I do so I also repeat the same mistakes he has made and end up suffering the same consequences.

I commit myself to focus on moving from fearfulness to fearlessness in practical application within my relationship to X.

I commit myself to accept and allow myself to make mistakes around X and to receive feedback for them.

I commit myself to support and assist myself with breathing when and as I react to aggression with fear.