Day 411: Sensitivity

18112014

The Princess and the pea

Lately I have been thinking about the concept of sensitivity. The existence of “sensitive people”, an entity of its own kind, has been spoken of as a fact whereas I have rather been questioning the whole existence of such a fundamental trait. To me the ones I have thought to be included in “sensitive people” have appeared to be products of their environments and not so much inherently of a quality that others have less of.

During the past couple of months I have appeared in stark contrast to my partner. I have been going through some intense points that have required active work for me to walk through, and consequently I have been very emotional and worn out both physically and mentally, crying a lot and reacting strongly to the issues at hand. All the while I have been flipping out he has been quite stable, stoic even, to the point where his unemotionality becomes an issue for him, although that's another matter. The point here is, I now have empiric data that under these conditions I feel a whole fucking lot even though I've thought of myself as a relatively stable person, and that brings new light to the question of sensitivity.

I haven't really wanted to think of sensitivity – the ability to feel emotions oneself and to empathize with those of others – as a special trait. I've really more thought of it as something that others have practiced to enhance and others have practiced to extinguish. I'm thinking I might have been wrong about this. Maybe there are in fact inherent differences to people feeling things and picking up on messages around them; maybe our brains are wired differently. Every now and then when I share something I have felt or experienced I get confused responses, and I have interpreted them to mean that these people have not allowed themselves to feel those things in their lives in order to be able to empathize with me. What if they simply have never experienced that kind of a feeling at all? What if there are people who, as opposed to my anxiety-painted existence, have lived their lives mostly emotionally blank?

This came back to me today when I read a quote that spoke of “sensitive people” in an explaining way, as if how they experience life would be news to the ones reading it. I found myself empathizing with how the sensitive people were described because I recognized myself from the text. Only in reading the text and looking at the response it got from others I realized the possibility that not everyone experiences life through guilt, shame and pain. Even though I have known people who do not agonize over life, I have simplified them into a category of “self-denialists” or “those who suppress their emotions”. Boy, what a generalization.

This also brings perspective to how I have treated myself and the conflict I have faced with others throughout my life. In school I was easy to pick on because I reacted strongly to the smallest of insults or even constructively meant criticism. I have for a while now thought that this is because I haven't learned the right coping mechanisms or social skills or that I have learned to search for messages in my social environment for validation – that I have lacked a learnable skill – and I have whipped myself with the disappointment and self-blame that have followed my attempts to acquire these skills. But what if I should be focusing on mercy instead? It might be that I am physically constructed in such a primary way that my emotional sensitivity cannot be fully unlearned or switched off. If this is the case, I might as well stop battling the windmills, accept who I am at this point of time and space and learn to cope with it.

For example, I have hated having to cry all the time. I've been trying to stop the tears and cover up that I'm feeling bad and hide myself and cry in secret, because I have been afraid that my constant emotionality would burden others and make them leave me. In other words, I have not accepted myself as the emotional being I have been recently, which has of course made handling the issues themselves more difficult because a part of them is kept barred within me. (As a side note: this fear of being abandoned for being emotional has only become apparent now that I've spent much more time with people than I previously have. It's been easier to cry before when I've mostly spent time by myself.) So instead of blocking it up I could admit to myself that it is typical and natural for me to express myself and converse with myself through crying; that despite other people's reactions to crying it's not actually a “big thing” to cry; that I may cry even though nobody's dead and I'm just having a difficult time growing. “I don't know about you guys, but this is how I experience things.”

Days 408-409: The healing process is to learn from mistakes

This post is a continuation to:

Day 407 - Being ill




18082014

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think about the disease in a dramatic way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use dramatic words, tones and phrasing when describing the symptoms and/or consequences of the disease, such as saying the virus will remain in my body “for the rest of my life” or exaggerating the pain or discomfort I have been in and the length and magnitude of the symptoms.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of having the disease as a dramatic story, where I have been the victim of unfair adversity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by thinking and speaking of the disease in dramatic terms I assign myself a role / a position where I am “the victim” and thus justify not carrying responsibility for the disease.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive I am helpless to prevent disease and/or to direct my healing process when I am ill, not realizing that as everything in this reality is connected, nothing that occurs in my body is a coincidence.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that thinking about the disease in dramatic terms triggered a feeling of despair in me, one that continued into depression and anxiety, and that I created these feelings by separating myself from what is HERE and what can be done about it.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect the disease to pass in a few days as I assumed it to be a normal flu, not realizing that the long-term symptoms would have pointed to another direction had I examined them more carefully.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist looking at the long-term symptoms (prolonged muscle pains, fatigue, swollen face) as I have been afraid of having an uncommon illness.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to avoid looking at and evaluating my symptoms because I have been afraid of what I might find: an illness as the consequence of how I have lived my life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with frustration and fear when and as my expectations were not fulfilled as the disease continued longer than expected.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that other people will get tired of taking care of me and abandon me as I am no longer “useful” (entertaining, engaging, stimulating) to others but instead become “useless” (unfulfilling, boring, burdensome).

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that my partner will get tired of the relationship being “on hold” while I am physically incapacitated from any form of interaction and that he will leave me as a result.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get frustrated when the disease continued as I became afraid of being abandoned.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to heal as fast as possible to avoid abandonment.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing my friends because of prolonged sickness.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear “missing out on life” while I am sick, with this referring mainly to social events I have been unable to attend while sick, not realizing that I am not missing out on life in fact, as LIFE is here even when I am am sick – sickness is life, too – but that I am “missing out” on “fun”: experiences of joy, excitement, belonging and happiness.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the experiences of joy, excitement, belonging and happiness are dependent on specific social conditions and cannot be experienced while sick and alone.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to confuse the experiences of joy, excitement, belonging and happiness with stability, believing and perceiving that the positive emotional experiences can provide a stable focal point to my life, not realizing that the nature of experiences is inherently unstable and fickle, as no emotion/feeling can be made to last forever or to remain the same; Thus, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that reliable stability can only be found outside energetic and emotional experiences.

- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about “missing out” on positive experiences (and fear facing negative experiences) as I have believed them to be “the fuel” I would need to live on.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear to physical disability, as I have been afraid that I would be somehow disabled for the rest of my life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making mistakes that can't be amended, not realizing that in the end there are very few mistakes the consequences of which couldn't be directed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear making a mistake that will permanently disable my physical body in some way, not realizing that this fear is a sign of my mistrust towards myself – of the fact that I know I am not living as self-honestly as I could and that it can bite me in the ass some day.

--

But hang on. What if this is the greatest fallacy of all?

One of my clearest personality traits (or issues) is perfectionism: trying to do things as well and flawlessly as possible, because I see no point in aiming any lower. The whole low self-esteem thing with “I'm not good enough” popping up everywhere is tied to this survival mechanism, where I kind of try to compensate for myself with my actions – myself, which I perceive to be very small, insignificant and insufficient. Most of the people closest to me, and even those that are not that close, have picked up on this, although not many discuss it directly.

Because the people in my life have helped me become aware of this personality trait learned somewhere way early in my childhood, I have become more careful about walking this process. I fear that I am looking for “fault” in myself where there is none, because there IS an actual risk for me misrepresenting myself to myself, and often people respond to my attempts to develop myself by dismissing my attempts to carrry self-responsibility with “you don't have to be perfect”. I know this is probably in most cases a defense mechanism, but I'm still doubtful. What if I am doing myself harm by trying to be “perfect”?

But I am not aiming to be perfect. I am engaging in a process to become the best possible version of myself: considering the circumstances I have been born and raised in and the possibilities I have now as the outcome; the time I have left; the skills I have and the skills I am still able and willing to learn; the support I have available in my environment. I by no means expect myself to ever be “ready” or “done” with this process, I do not expect myself to learn everything there is, I do not expect myself succeed flawlessly in any of my attempts. What I do expect of myself, however, is patience, perseverance, consistency, self-management (I prefer this to “self-discipline”) and absolute self-honesty – at least eventually, as the cycles of self-deceit sometimes can't be unraveled right away. Can this be called perfectionism? I'd rather call it integrity or self-respect. Why would I disgrace myself by not showing myself respect?

Also, I do not see the process as linear, where I'd have a single outcome to reach for. I do not see myself lying on my deathbed and thinking “this is who I became!”, lol, and waiting for judgement. What I refer to with the “best possible version” of myself may be different in different points of time and space – it is simply the potential that I would be able to live out, and this can and will vary as I change and my environment changes.

So, when writing the last self-forgiveness statement above, I wrote the words “I'm not living as self-honestly as I could” and I saw self-judgement.

--

27082014

I commit myself to show myself that most mistakes can be amended by redirecting oneself and managing the consequences of a mistake, just like an illness heals once the cause is addressed and dealt with and the symptoms alleviated.

Thus, I commit myself to live out the commitment above by following this self-corrective statement:

When and as I consider myself having made a mistake - by for example thinking about having made a mistake, blaming myself for having made a mistake or feeling bad for making a mistake – I stop, I breathe and I remind myself that a mistake is also a chance to learn and develop, and that a mistake is not a negative (nor a positive) thing. I take care to not believe my self-judgement, I look at the cause of my mistake and I forgive myself for it. I look at the consequences of my mistake and I ask what could be done to reduce their impact. I take action to make amends for the consequences of my mistake and to redirect myself in a way that will prevent the same mistake from happening again. I remind myself that a learning process is a series of mistakes and that mistakes are inevitable if one wants to learn.



The next time I get ill, I commit myself to focus primarily on resting and self-care to support myself with my immediate circumstances and secondarily on piecing together a picture of what events and actions led to the disease in order to support me in my long-term process.

The next time I get ill, I commit myself to face the illness as LIFE, not as something that separates me from life.

Day 402: Back stabbing

19052014

I listened to this speech by Bernard Poolman, and I started thinking if I have accepted and allowed myself to create and maintain relationships that are causing me harm through secret negative thoughts, attitudes and/or emotions. The idea of us “voodooing” each other, jinxing each other with negative backchat, got me to realize that some of my current physical ailments for example may be the result of unraveled baggage in my relationships towards other people, or more precisely, in others wishing me ill. Because I sense these attitudes, whether I allow myself to actually look at them or not, the anticipation and fear itself may be causing me physical tension and pain.

There are specific points in my family relations that I realized I've not handled with these people directly. I'll begin with these close family relations because they're most crucial in how I've been constructed, and thus the source of any other relationship issues I may have.

• father: shame / disagreement / revulsion / disapproval towards me because I have “turned my back on God” - rejection / lack of acceptance
• sister: envy (mutual), competition
• both brothers: dismissing and belittling them, their lives and achievements (for reasons I don't really know yet, I only just realized that I do this)

Concerning my mother I didn't really find anything. Out of my family I have probably had the most open and communicative relationship with my mother, and this may have made way for cleansing whatever tension there has been between us (because there has been some, if not plenty).

The physical ailments I am referring to here are mainly my shoulder/neck tension issues, which have become chronic during the past few years. I am not sure about the origin point of this specific issue, but from some memories I can gather that 2011, when I was made to realize there was an issue in the first place, I had already been stuck for a while, meaning some years probably. I have recently placed my focus on this specific issue and tried if regular exercise would help with it, but so far I've only seen it to alleviate the symptoms for a little while with the problem itself persisting. Occasionally the pain/tension has been “magically” lifted under completely random circumstances I have not found a pattern out of, but it has always returned. I have considered contacting physiotherapists and other kinds of medical assistance for perspective on this issue, but I haven't done so yet due to lack of time and funding.

When listening to Bernard's metaphor about “back stabbing” it kinda got to me, because my issue is specifically in the back – I can literally feel the stabs, lol – and now that I think of it, the word and concept of “back stabbing” is one that I have used a lot to describe my experiences with abandonment and rejection. Whoa, OK, so this might in fact have more to do with the bullying theme I talked about in my last post than with my family relations.

When I was around 10 years old my school friends all turned their backs on me and refused to have anything to do with me. Because I did not understand why they did this, I later on dubbed their actions as “back stabbing”, doing something hurtful unexpected and unexplained. I then went through experiences that were almost identical when I was 12, 15, 18 and 20: a group of friends suddenly expressed their disapproval towards me, either directly or passive-aggressively, and I responded with whatever coping mechanisms I had available, from aggressive dismissal to submissive withdrawal. I remember that each of these times the rejection came unexpected, even though as time went on I learned to distrust people all the more and to expect the worst. For some reason I still never thought or believed that these people I called my friends would do something so cruel. Now that I think of this pattern and how obvious it is in hindsight, I appear to have been totally blind to the reality of those relationships: to who the others have actually been in relation to me, to how and why our relationships have been formed – to the fact that they were bound to fall apart because of how we lived them out.

It is this attention to relationship forming and the effort to see people (including myself) as they really are that I think have changed my relationships the most and actually broken the cycle I used to repeat every few years. At the moment I think I am building relationships based on more solid ground than ever, prioritizing communication, honesty and self-reflection. So why does my back still feel as if I am being stabbed? Am I afraid of it all starting over again?

I have begun the healing and forgiving process to let go of any bitterness or spite left from these past events, but partially because I have not managed to open lines of communication with some of the key people from the past I am not yet done with this. I fear (or know, or sense) that with specific people there are negative thoughts being harbored towards me, and because people never speak them, never express them, always keep them hidden from daylight, it is difficult for me to transcend what happened and “clear the air” all by myself. It's as if some of the old “stab wounds” are still infected and refuse to heal, and this might be a part of the cause of the persisting physical pain.

Especially with the tension my shoulders tend to stiffen as if they were becoming crystallized, if not constantly opened with exercise or massage – which is when they usually just flame with pain before stiffening again - and this crystallization seems to speak of old wounds being locked in and integrated into my being. I do not wish for this to happen, and I think that I still have a chance to sort myself out before I become a living manifestation of spite, resentment, bitterness, anticipation, distrust and fear.

So what I guess I could do is go through the unresolved relationships (as well as those that appear resolved) in specific detail, mapping out what exactly I fear with each one, how I experienced them, what I desired from them, what it is that is still weighing on me. How do I believe them to perceive me? How would I wish to be perceived? Who are/were they to me, and who am/was I to them? What were the relationships based on? Why did we attract each other? What secrets did we have from each other that tore us apart?

Cool, I'll continue with this mapping. It's cool to know what I'll be writing about next, makes the treshold of writing a bit easier to cross.

Day 401: Trust issues

15052014

I have been writing things down again lately, but I haven't yet been able to produce text comprehensive enough for publishing. This is why today I chose to record a video based on what I had processed in writing and application earlier.

Day 393: Building trust in relationships

12032014

http://www.thadguy.com

I've noticed that a person I've been getting to know lately has a tendency of turning serious when something controversial is being discussed, this possibly being a defense mechanism of sorts. Knowing a bit about this person's past I can make approximate guesses of why this is (possibly a fear of conflict / a tension in social situations when there's a risk of disagreement), but I realize that instead of guessing around and mulling it over in my mind it's more relevant for me to practically support this person to see and possibly outgrow this tendency – a process through which I might also learn to better understand this person and the human mind in general.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear to X turning serious in conversation, as I have misinterpreted his seriousness to mean that he disapproves of me when in fact I have nothing to do with him reacting to his own mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interpret X's reactions to be “my fault” - that I am the cause of another's reactions – thus following the mind pattern of self-blame and self-belittlement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though I can reflect myself from how others react in my presence or under my influence, their reactions are still accepted and allowed by themselves and not by me under any circumstances.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that people themselves are “gatekeepers” of sorts to their own behavior.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that carrying self-responsibility also means to not carry responsibility that is not mine, as I would be denying another a chance to learn and grow.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what would best support the other person is not me reacting with possibly the exact same emotions he is experiencing (insecurity, fear of rejection, uncertainty, tension), but me creating a safe environment for discussing anything at all by remaining stable regardless of the topic.

• I commit myself to build myself into a stable support for others by walking through any reactions that occur in me within interaction and transcending them through self-forgiveness and self-correction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to X becoming serious within discussion because I have been afraid that he will choose to not like me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to be liked by X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear not being liked by X.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that human relations do not have to be based on likes and dislikes – whims and moods – but on an agreement of mutual support, which creates a foundation for building solid trust.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my fear of not being liked / desire to be liked comes from the fact that I base my relationships on moods and momentary preferences instead of building them on a common goal to support each other however we best can.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my distrust towards people (fear of being abandoned/rejected) comes from the fact that I have become used to relationships being based on moods, whims and preferences and thus anticipate the moment when I assumedly will be ditched again as I fall out of another's favour.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I am in fact living within a thought and behavioral pattern where, once a core relationship (one that fulfills some primary need) fails its purpose in some way, I immediately start looking for a replacement relationship (to fulfill the need) – thus always looking for salvation from outside of me without ever addressing the need itself.

• While observing myself for a few days I have noticed thoughts where I justify replacing one person with another with a selection of excuses (some valid, some not) – and then reversing it again when the second person has not fulfilled my desires. While thinking these thoughts I seem to justify having exclusive relationships, and I do it through some form of spite, as if I was blaming another for my discomfort/lack/need. Here, again, I ignore the source of the problem itself: the need that makes me restless.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that in order to build my relationships into safe and stable places for people (myself included) to face and direct themselves in, I need to focus on (self-)forgiveness and mercy - living out an example of letting go of self-diminishment, self-rejection and self-hate.

I commit myself to investigate if and how I manifest self-hate, self-rejection and self-diminishment when I interact with other people, and I commit myself to write about these points in order to better support others as well.

I commit myself to investigate and write about the pattern to replace core relationships with others as soon as they appear to “fail” or “malfunction”.

I commit myself to investigate my primary reason for desiring close relationships by returning to the EQAFE interviews on relationships and sex.

Day 370: SF on Sex & the fear of failure

21122013

This post is a continuation to:

Day 369: Sex & the fear of failure

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “good sex” (success) and “bad sex” (failure) as ideas of what sex is / can be, not realizing that these ideas are not actually real.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “good sex” as such where all participants are satisfied according to their expectations about sex.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the expectations I have / others have about sex, or the fact that we expect anything out of sex at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “bad sex” as such where not all participants are satisfied according to their expectations about sex.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the phenomenon of having expectations about sex in the form of ideals, fantasies, images, plans and assumptions, thus believing the disappointment when sex is unsatisfactory/bad/failed and the satisfaction when sex is good/successful.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when/as I have felt like the sex I've had has been successful I have in fact created the experience myself through my expectations and that no such thing as “doing sex right” exists in the physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when/as I have felt that the sex I've had has been a failure I have in fact created the experience myself through my expectations and that no such thing as “doing sex wrong” exists in the physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that there are no right or wrong ways of having sex in the physical reality – unless one has a practical goal that needs to take the physical reality into consideration (such as reproducing, lol, then you don't really have that many options).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create an ideal of what sex “should be” like through the images I have been exposed to willingly and unwillingly through the media of the culture I have lived in (TV shows, movies, photography, fashion, magazines, literature, visual arts, music), not realizing that none of the images I believe to be sex is not in fact sex but an idea about sex – a conceptual painting of a dimension of the physical reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that when and as sex is what I have labeled as bad/unsatisfactory/failed, the consequence of this will be that my partner will be disappointed, blame me for their disappointment, judge me to be a failure and decide to invest their time on someone “better” than me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create the fear of this trigger-reaction pattern based on the images I have been exposed to by the media, not realizing that this, too, is an idea about how people behave and what they expect of each other and not the actual reality of human behavior itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I can affect human behavior through my application within the moment of interaction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my partner leaving me because I have learned, believed and perceived that it would be a bad thing to be alone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question my belief that being alone is a bad thing, thus not realizing that both being single and being in a relationship have their own benefits and limitations – the conditions are simply different with differing opportunities available.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that when sex is what I have labeled as good/satisfactory/successful my partner will be content, project their positive feelings on me and believe me to be the source of their satisfaction, believe me to be a worthwhile person and decide to continue to invest their time on me because I'm “better” than others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by always anticipating my partner's response to the “quality” of sex I keep the relationship a target of a constant gamble where the platform of the relationship is not stable at all as it has not been built on a mutual agreement but is instead based on competition.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create my relationships into a place of uncertainty and instability as I have believed and perceived that the relationship depends on my “success” in sex, thus building my tension, anxiety, fear, stress and pressure about sex and thus causing myself to very often “fail” in sex as I have been doing it through tension and fear for others instead of doing it relaxed and open for myself.

I commit myself to focus on communicating directly and self-honestly about sex with the people whom I have sex with, as I have seen, realized and understood that when and as I communicate about the things I fear their control over me dissolves, thus enabling practical correction.

I commit myself to explore sex through physical movement and the senses instead of the ideas I have about sex.

I commit myself to map out and walk through the ideas I have about sex – the conceptual reality of layered shit that I have piled on top of the simplicity of the physical reality.

Day 347: Gender equality in relationships

04112013

Which one's at the top? Does it even fucking matter?

I have recently come to face some conflict in my current relationship scheme. Basically the conflict is with me and another individual on the terms and principles of a relationship: how and why can a relationship be built here between me and this other – or whether it's better for both not to try and build one. This point became impossible to dodge when the relationship got more intimate, because I did not see it wise to participate in sex with another possessed by lust. Despite me knowing that I am doing “the right thing” by actively directing the situation, addressing what's going on and thus consequently also refusing to “go with the flow” (be on autopilot), I am faced with a fear of loss and abandonment as I challenge the relationship and direct the situation to an area of uncertainty. I am now here to walk through the fears that surfaced within me to assist and support myself to further direct the situation according to what is the best for all involved instead of being directed by my fear of ending up alone.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear ending this relationship because I would then have to start over with someone else and go through all the trouble of building the foundation for a relationship.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe that building the foundation of a relationship is “burdensome”, “difficult”, “stressful” and “tiresome”, not realizing that I am creating this experience by resisting all the things included in beginning a relationship (opening oneself up in self-honesty and being exposed as who I am; communicating about every aspect of the relationship).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist communicating about every aspect of a relationship openly in self-honesty because I have never learned to (I was never taught how to) do that and have to now push through the silent, non-communicative behavioral patterns I have learned instead.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent talking about every aspect of a relationship with another person because I am uncomfortable with most of the vocabulary involved as every word is Really Fucking Loaded with all kinds of emotions, feelings, images, memories, fears and expectations, which makes discharging the words by using them over and over again and thus releasing the energetic charge something that requires a lot of effort and stepping outside of my comfort zone frequently.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I don't need to re-learn and claim all of my vocabulary in one go, but that it is in fact enough that I consistently do a little and push the edges of my comfort zone a little further – and that this process of learning how to communicate is nothing to fear as I am able to support and assist myself through the small steps that I am taking.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent going through the process of “explaining myself” to another person – going through the process of familiarizing another with what my life is and has been like – not realizing that this process can be taken as an opportunity to look at self and re-assess the “big picture” of my life, and that not all of me has to be explained and specifically shown to the other, because a lot of the relevant stuff comes across without me even trying – in other words, the other is capable of picking up information just by observing me over time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent beginning new relationships “over and over again” because of the “trouble” I need to go through when getting familiar with a whole new person, and to thus fear the end of a relationship because it means my efforts have been “in vain” and that I am going to have to go through the same “trouble” again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I am wasting my time getting to know new people and not managing to create anything sustainable with them - I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear “ending up alone” (not having a partner and being too old to have children of my own) by wasting my time with the wrong people – not realizing that it is not necessarily the people that are “wrong for me” but my method of selecting the people I attempt to build relationships with and the way I conduct myself within these attempts.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame others for being “wrong for me” and “wasting my time”, not realizing that it is ME who is wasting my time by not evaluating the situation according to self-honesty and directing it accordingly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get attached to the people I am in a relationship with and not want to end the relationship even though it seems the most reasonable choice, because I fear being alone again and not having all the support and comfort a relationship offers.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to dramatize the situation by reacting with fear and despair to the practical choice of ending the relationship, thinking “oh no, then I'd be all alone again, sitting here in my flat all alone with no one to share my life with, woe the loneliness and grimness of my life” - not realizing that this is the case only if I choose to seclude myself again and not seek for social company elsewhere.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make ending a relationship appear bigger than it actually is by telling a story of my life where I am like a character in a book whose life I have no directive control over – not realizing that my life is NOT a story and that I DO have directive control over my life, which means that no life event is actually “big” on any other level than the practical level – within which in this case, there being no children, common activities or property involved, there would be very little practical changes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I would have to again go through the process of learning to be intimate with another (physically and mentally), going through the tension, release and relaxation, not realizing that this process is in fact becoming easier each time I do it with a new person, taking me closer to the goal of being able to be comfortably intimate with any living being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that trying out a new relationship that ends up not working out is a “waste of time”, not realizing that every time this happens I learn how to be more self-honest, straightforward and efficient about this process and learn valuable things about who I am at the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust that eventually I will be able to “scout” people efficiently enough to find someone who would be compatible with me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame myself for “screwing up” every time a relationship doesn't work out, not realizing that I am learning through trial and error as within any learning process.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that a woman is worth nothing without the ability for sex and reproduction.

• This is a point that came up when I refused to have sex and faced the (suppressed) disappointment and frustration of another. I knew it to be inevitable considering the energy possession the other was in, but despite this knowledge I was not prepared to face another exerting their experience on me. I took the reaction personally as I have done in all of my previous relationships when there have been situations where my participation in sex was in some way “not good enough”. There is this very clear image in my mind of a man turning his back to me in disappointment, this gesture telling me that I'm worth nothing and a disappointment to another, and it triggers a huge experience of self-hate and despair in me. This image has probably been ingrained in me through popular culture (TV, movies, music, video games, porn, literature) as well as through all of my experiences with men where the subtle hint of disappointment has been present when sex has somehow not been what it was expected to be. The history of mankind carries this positioning of men and women with it, and it is still very much visible even in us extremely civilized and educated scandinavian(/western/european) men and women.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to support the belief that women are worth nothing without sex by judging myself to be “not worthy” when a man appears disappointed when concerning sex with me.

• I am talking heteronormatively here even though I am open to intimacy with both sexes because this issue is linked specifically to men and masculinity; the point might be there with a masculine/dominant woman, but I wouldn't know that as I haven't come across such a situation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to search for a confirmation that in this situation I would not be judged for not fulfilling the role of the sex puppet that I believe and perceive is expected of me, getting anxious, agitated, and nervous as that confirmation that would tell me that “I'm OK” is nowhere to be found.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make my stability and sense of self-worth dependent on external validation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get frustrated when the other will not discuss the situation with me despite my attempts to do so.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that another has been in the relationship only for sex based on the “signs” I have picked up from his behavior, thus making myself feel like shit as I believe my self-judgement, not realizing that because of the gap in communication I do not actually know any of this because no such things have been directly expressed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself based on guesswork.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself at all.

• At this point I had to pause my writing. I'd been struggling altogether just to breathe myself back to stability and pull myself through all the self-judgement, and when at this point I gave myself the kind of attention and care (words and gestures) that I would have wanted from men instead of being the target of disappointment, I broke into a kind of a purifying fit where I found intense hatred and rage towards men, as if a demon was released from within me. Shouting and crying it all out revealed a point of aggression I have never seen of myself before: a hatred and bitterness towards men and mankind – a regret that mankind has not been able to raise self-honest and stable people – a pity towards all the people who believe and perceive their desires to be the centre of the universe and act like big babies when denied what they want. I see that there is an unfair assumption in my mind about men. Because of what men have been I expect them to uphold it, and by expecting the worst out of men I support them to live out their worst.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame men for not seeing women as equals.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see myself as equal to men.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that when I claim my position as equal to men I will not be “worth” it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see myself to be as “worthy” as men because men can override me with force.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that when I claim my position as equal to men I will face bad consequences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that when I claim my position as equal to men, men will want to hurt me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when and as I attempt to claim my position as equal to men without fully understanding what it means for two genders to be equal, I already judge myself to be “less than” men and cause my own downfall.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not believe that all people are one and equal regardless of gender because I do not believe that who I am is enough to compete with male force.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I would need to be a man to be equal to men – that I would need force to beat force.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that it's not about a competition between the genders – femininity vs. masculinity – but about balancing out the polarity that is currently overriding with the other polarity and through the merging of both finding an equilibrium of humanity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that femininity – whatever the fuck that is – is not “strong enough” to balance out the masculinity in psychosis.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not appreciate and give credit to femininity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not appreciate the femininity in me – the opposite of being “strong”, “powerful”, “fast”, “efficient”, “dominant”, “successful” and a “winner” - I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear exposing and utilizing the opposite of masculinity in me – gentleness, negotiability, care, listening, sensitivity, mercy, patience, compassion, expressiveness – because I have believed and perceived that in a world system the rules of which have been dictated by men I would “not make it”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to “make it” in the world because I have believed and perceived that the world system exists for my benefit and that “surviving” in the race would make my life better – not realizing that the world system where “dog eats dog” and everyone's competing with each other is not fact designed to support all life – and that “making it” in the world system is thus trivial as the world system is a lie.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that while exposing and utilizing my femininity and balancing out both polarities within me might not get me anywhere in the world system, it will get me everywhere in life itself.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interpret a man's gestures based on the expectation that men only appreciate sex, thus believing and perceiving everyone I have come across to have been disappointed about sex in a more or less passive-aggressive way, not realizing that in all cases I cannot actually be sure of this as disappointment was not directly expressed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect men to only appreciate sex and thus build a world-view where everything I have seen and interpreted supports this image in my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to support men to only appreciate sex by expecting them to do so, through my behavior relaying the message that “this is who you are, right?”.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hate men for being fucked up.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that what men need to no longer be fucked up is not hatred but compassion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame men for being fucked up, not realizing that the men did not raise themselves but were raised by this world when they were young and helpless, and that the men cannot be blamed for becoming fucked up, even though it is men's responsibility to no longer uphold what they have become but to question and redirect themselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not support men to outgrow the masculinity possession the world is in by expressing forgiveness, compassion and mercy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that it's a really fucking difficult task to outgrow a few millennia's worth of behavioral patterns and that men need all the support they can get to do it, as well as do women.

• I do realize that the situation has not been created and upheld simply by men but also by women: compliance may have been a survival mechanism, but it has still contributed to the problem at hand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not support women to outgrow the masculinity possession the world is in, as there are plenty of women in addition to myself who have tried to “make it” by becoming men (neglecting the feminine).

• I need to hang out with women more.

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Okay. How to bring this back to the original point? The moment where I go into self-doubt and fear of abandonment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take the reaction of another personally as I have believed and perceived that I am the cause of the reaction, not realizing that who I am simply triggers an existing pattern in the other, which is something the other has created and not me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to learn to take this “disappointment in sex” reaction personally because I have had very few situations where the other would have been completely OK with sex not happening the way it's “supposed to”, therefore never getting the model of how the situation could be directed differently – never seeing, realizing and understanding how the disappointment would not be blamed fully on me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that another will blame his negative experience (disappointment) on me and that I would thus be unfairly judged.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that sex has been the “deal breaker” in all of my relationships, not realizing that there have been many other factors contributing to the relationship not being sustainable, most notably my complete inability to communicate and direct myself - points which have just been most exposed within sex.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interpret the words and gestures of another to mean that he did not understand his experience of disappointment to have been caused by himself, not realizing that I cannot know this until it has been directly expressed, no matter how educated a guess I can make based on body language and tonality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to (within my mind) demand for a reply from the other because I have been frustrated and nervous and wanted to clear things out to have certainty and stability – not realizing that the other might need time to process on his own what has been said so far, and that my sense of stability is in no way dependent on the other, even though certainty of “what is going on” is dependent on him communicating with me.

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I commit myself to not wait around for a reply from X and to thus stagnate in uncertainty, but to instead direct myself in every breath of my living to utilize and enjoy my life the best I can.

I commit myself to write about whatever points of fear, uncertainty and instability I may come across while breathing and moving myself out of this state of self-judgement into self-support.

I commit myself to support and assist X in whatever ways I can to become the best he can be.

I commit myself to slow down and express myself as clearly as possible to support and assist X to understand what I am trying to discuss, as a lot of the vocabulary and concepts that I use are new to him.

I commit myself to be patient with myself within the process of learning to build functioning relationships.

I commit myself to utilize the company of the women in my life to look for and investigate the femininity in them.

I commit myself to support myself to embrace femininity by spending time with feminine women – the exact kind of women I usually resent.

I commit myself to grow myself into a being that is a living example of humanity: femininity and masculinity combined.

Day 319: Who am I with others?

21092013

A little while ago after some kind of a social situation I asked myself: is there anyone I would be completely relaxed with? In other words, is there any person in the company of whom I would be completely “myself”, as I would be alone at home with no one watching?

I answered no, and it shocked me.

I realized that no matter who I am with, I am always a little bit tense. There's always something about me that I am trying to hide from my company, which of course varies from person to person, group to group. Be it big or small, there is fear in me wherever I go.

I have been socially very withdrawn and defensive ever since I got bullied in school starting from the age of 9. I got depressed and kept to myself, and I rarely actively tried to get myself any friends because I was so afraid of rejection and abandonment. I only had friends who had approached me first. This tendency of never approaching people and always waiting for someone else to make the “first move” (so that I would be certain that the person is not attacking me) continued on to my adult years and resulted in a solitary and insecure life that I would not want to return to.

I started actively moving myself out of this behavioral pattern at the beginning of 2012, about 8 months before I started to walk my process in the form of writing this daily journal. I had realized that I cannot continue this way, waiting around for others to “pull me in”, and so I took small “leaps of faith” in situations where I was so heavily emotionally burdened that without me approaching another person and dealing with things I would have collapsed. I opened conversations. I shared my feelings. I showed my interest. Later on I have continued to walk myself out of my social fears with more precision, targeting specific points of resistance.

The process still continues, and at the moment I'm at a very interesting spot in my life considering this process of de-assembling my introversion. I've just started studying in university, where I meet new people every day. I also work as a bartender, which is a position where I get to meet and discuss with all kinds of people – including the ones I disagree with on many things and would never associate myself with! I am utilizing these social environments for my growth, but I feel like I could be doing it more actively, more specifically. And that's why I'm writing here right now.

I realized that this process of walking myself out of my social fears is not structured well at all. The realization I mentioned at the beginning of this post provides one clear solution model: when you meet people and you feel tense, make a mental note of it: stop and breathe in the moment and ask yourself what is going on, why there is a tension, what am I afraid of, what kind of a mask am I wearing, what is the role I'm pulling, what do I hope to gain? The answers are usually very simple and self-evident once I give myself the chance to look at myself by stopping and no longer just “going with it”.

This may require me to go through this mapping with every single person I meet. With some there might be a generalized pattern that applies to many individuals, but for example with family members and long-time friends there's such a long and unique history of interaction that no general patterns necessarily apply. I've been avoiding doing this in precision because it has felt so burdensome and “big”, but I see that now (as I am not going through a bigger crisis) I have a great chance to allow myself to focus on this specific point (social fears, desires and tensions – who am I with others), which I will in time be “done” with, because all it takes is time and consistency. The shit I've compiled within myself is not infinite, as are not the people I interact with.

Thus,

I commit myself to write about who I am in the presence of specific people or groups and to write myself clear directions on how to change my behavior, and I commit myself to share in public what I can without violating anyone's privacy (including mine).

I commit myself to write down what I face of myself in social situations, even if it's just a few words, because a small note can be expanded later in more specific writing.

I commit myself to start walking these social points in the order that they occur – meaning I start with the points that I notice when I interact with other people today.

I commit myself to be patient with every point as a single aspect to my social fears can be incredibly vast and require several days, weeks, months or even years of writing and corrective action to be “done”.