Day 411: Sensitivity

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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.”

Day 398: Learning to embrace experiences

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I had an interesting experience today concerning music. I have been practicing this big-scale choir piece with the choir I'm in for a few months now, and the past four weeks or so have been especially intense: not just with the rehearsals, but in emotional terms as well. Somehow this piece of music has become woven into my experience with other things in life, and I find fragments of it echoing in my mind daily, sometimes constantly. I can see how this happens as the result of me linking all of my individual experiences in my mind into this one big storyline experience – the story I tell of my life to myself with pictures and words – and how the music kinda serves as current background music to the movie that is my life experience.

Today I was sitting in the bus and spacing out, wondering around in my mind and not really being here in breath, when I suddenly realized that I was not responding to the weather conditions (gray, rainy and cold) at all with the usual gloominess and weariness. I felt as if I was “glowing from within” - because the music was again playing in my mind, speaking words of light and divinity, reminding me of my experiences of joyful living – and that the feeling of light and warmth I got from the music/experience/feelings was kinda acting as a barrier between me and my surroundings. I found this experience positive, because from within it I was able to face other people with clarity and balance, not responding to their apparent low moods. I did not feel like complaining about the weather, because I had not really even noticed it was “bad” weather – to me it was just weather, how it is every now and then; logically rainy of this time of year, lol.

Upon writing this I noticed waves of self-judgement, as if I was “not supposed to” be feeling anything at all and that standing within an energetic experience like this is not appropriate. This shows how I have misunderstood some parts of this process. Rather than denying my experiences and thus suppressing them, be they positive or negative, I could try to walk, live and breathe through the experiences to fully know them and harness them, whatever that means in whichever context. In this case, for example, I am fully aware of the role of this particular music piece in the workings of my mind. I have seen where and how I have given myself permission to embed the music with my experiences. I am not yet sure if this serves any purpose at all, other than crafting myself nice memories, bonding with others and thus structuring my social networks, or just learning to know myself through relieved self-expression. Through this process of “giving in” to music I have for instance rediscovered the experience and state of being inspired (excited, motivated, seeing possibilities where there were none before – and then acting upon it!), and that alone tells me that I have managed to remove a block that has been in place for years, more or less.

What concerns me is the fact that this wave of positive stuff comes straight after a very low phase of depression and being stuck. I fear that this is “just” another “up” and that I will eventually come crashing down. I am working on this at the moment by stabilizing myself with breath whenever I see myself getting carried away by an experience, or rather by channeling the energy of the experience and living through it, after which I stabilize. I know that I don't have to crash down once (if?) this stuff gets exhausted, but I do realize that whenever I go up, the return to stability will always feel like a dip in comparison. I guess a part of it is also to learn how to deal with the state of “coming down”, which I guess I know a bit better than dealing with “going up”.

It might also be that some of what I am experiencing in my life at the moment is not in fact an energetic “up”, but simply a relieved state of balanced being, which just feels “lighter” in comparison to the constraint I've been under.

I'll continue with this topic later. The jumble of stuff from the past few weeks is kinda big and requires more digging.

Day 396: Resentment towards "love"

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Magical love rainbow beams oh god I just want to VOMIT

While reading through my last post about falling in love I realized how I was trying to distance myself from the concept of love in my writing, trying to make it appear as if “love” was something of lesser value and separate from me. I realized that this is a pattern I have had ever since childhood: I fear admitting to loving or liking someone. I have created a separation between myself and love, alienating myself from love, resenting it – thinking of it as a weakness. This is basically how I have felt myself when exposed in loving someone – weak and vulnerable – and so I have taken on that judgement towards all love, seeing all caring as “infatuation”. To protect myself I have taken an aggressively defensive approach towards the concept of love.

I've been examining this mindset in my habits for some time now. For example, I've had the habit of avoiding the people I like and waiting for them to come to me. I've realized that this is really backwards behavior: how would anyone know I want to approach them if I avoid them?! I have now been practicing for example allowing myself to show and express the fact that I enjoy the presence of someone or that I am happy about seeing someone.

But only now I am starting to see how this refusal of love extends a lot further than just some habits. It is fear of exposement, trying to appear strong and stoic, not realizing that exposement IS the only way of being unwaveringly stable, as then there are no weak spots left to be jabbed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from my feelings of care, attraction, enjoyment, joy and enthusiasm (love) by thinking of them as “foolish” and “stupid”, not realizing that I have been distancing myself from these feelings because I have felt weak and vulnerable when experiencing them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that if my feelings of care, attraction, enjoyment, joy and enthusiasm are seen I will be ridiculed and thus hurt.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all this is actually circular reasoning:

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I only get hurt by the remarks of others if I accept and allow myself to take these remarks personally.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I had nothing to hide, I would not be afraid of others seeing who I am.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I showed myself to others, I would not have to fear getting hurt.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by hiding my feelings I sabotage myself by causing myself to be in a position where I will eventually get hurt as something of me gets exposed.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I didn't hide myself, I would in fact be safe.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that exposement is strength.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to learn to fear and hide my feelings by observing my parents.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to reinforce this pattern by succumbing to group dynamics in school where I took the role of the “quiet kid”, thus not expressing myself unabashed but rather letting others take the stage.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to lock myself into this position of not speaking / not expressing, not taking the chance to learn to express myself even when our family dynamics changed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to learn to hide my feelings because I experienced my family environment as “chaotic”, thus attempting to bring balance into my environment by denying my own experiences.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to continue to hide my feelings in an attempt to avoid chaos/conflict as I haven't had a ready model on how to deal with it – not realizing that I am no longer a child and no longer have to fear chaos as I am not “at the mercy” of my environment but can in fact shape it through my own actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if there's chaos/conflict in my environment, I know how to deal with it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to know how to deal with chaos/conflict as I have forgotten to breathe.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe and thus lose my stability in challenging situations.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe when I fear getting exposed, thus forgetting that getting exposed is not dangerous as I will remain here nevertheless.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to forget to breathe when I get exposed (by my own will or another's), thus getting stuck in the situation as the reaction of fear paralyzes me, not realizing that through breathing I could accept my exposement and stand within and as who I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by remembering to breathe and remaining HERE I also support others to remain stable when and as they expose themselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny myself the experience of love.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear losing my status and image if I allowed myself the experience of love, not realizing that I am not actually afraid of my image breaking in the eyes of others but of my self-image breaking in my own eyes, wanting to be stoic and strong because this is the role I assigned for myself as a child per to my circumstances.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I don't have to be stoic and strong.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that self-suppression is not strength.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be embarrassed about using the word “love” as I judge love to be stupid, irrational, worthless and air-headed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the feelings, actions and motivations we compile under the word “love” - which differ from definition to definition – can in fact be beneficial, supportive, constructive, wise and worthwhile, and that it simply depends on how I choose to define “love” for myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent all concepts of love based on those that define love to be possessive, addictive, exclusive, irresponsible and a “mystery”, not realizing that this is not what “love” has to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define love according to how it's portrayed in the mainstream world through stories and images.

• redefining the word 'love' for myself:
  • an act of good will considered upon what is the best for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define love as a bundle of feelings when in fact love can only bear fruit when it is acted upon, not when it's just felt.

“Love, love is a verb

love is a doing word

fearless on my breath”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that simply breathing can be an act of love.

I commit myself to explore the word 'love' and the concept of love in my daily living.

• I commit myself to use the word 'love' to work my way through the resentment I have built against it.

I commit myself to support myself through my fear of exposement through breathing.

I commit myself to show myself love/care by reminding myself to breathe.

Now that I see, realize and understand that I am alive so that I could enjoy life with other living beings – enjoyment here not only meaning positive feelings but all learning experiences, be they more or less painful – I commit myself to take chances with other beings and take “leaps of faith” by exposing myself, thus showing and teaching myself that I have nothing to fear.

I commit myself to investigate my reactions to perceived criticism when I take things personally to lessen my fear of rejection/refusal.

Day 371: Dissolving an emotion: remnants of a panic disorder

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Yesterday I watched a movie which was really shocking and heavy for me to experience. After the movie I had to cry and speak to express some of the emotion that had gathered onto my chest, but for some reason this was not enough. I felt as if I wanted to curl up, be held, be comforted, block out my surroundings. For a while I played along with this desire, seeking for the closeness of another person. But then I started to realize the emotion was still there and blocking me. I started to describe out loud how I felt and I realized that my entire body was collapsing around the weight in my chest. I tried to physically straighten myself up, stand up, open my chest, and I couldn't do it, it was too heavy: as soon as I stood up I wanted go back into hiding, and as I forced myself to stand I could do nothing but moan and breathe.

What helped here was that I allowed myself to curl up into a comfortable spot, which is where I started to go through the reactions I had had towards what was shown in the movie. I used self-forgiveness to face the reasons for my reactions, many so intimate that I can rarely talk about them to anyone. As I went through the reactions I would go through the emotions again, the wave of energy crashing over me, but this time as I went through the specific trigger points the emotions actually dissolved. I focused on my breathing and little by little straightened myself up when opening my chest no longer felt unbearable.

What I realized here is that when I feel heavy emotions (which happens quite rarely) I have a tendency to allow myself to seek for comfort and brush the emotions aside instead of dealing with them directly. For example, when emotions accumulate into my chest, I just want to curl up and be comfortable.

I now see and realize that I have a habit of ignoring heavy emotions for the sake of comfort and that to continue with the habit is to suppress myself and not utilize emotions as indicators of who I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I feel negative emotions in my chest area, to follow that energy and curl up my body around my chest area as if to protect, crystallize and lock in the emotions that I feel.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the fact that I respond to heaviness in my chest by curling up.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape the emotions by curling up instead of facing and embracing them by straightening up and opening my chest.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear facing my emotions because I have feared that they would be “too much” for me; that I would not be able to handle the pain.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to magnify and worsen emotions through my thoughts when and as they are experienced – thinking “oh no, this is so horrible” etc. - thus “fueling the fire” and making an emotion last longer.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that an emotion is but energy within my body which can be released once seen and understood.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to deal with emotions, not realizing that the process of walking through an emotion is something I already know: to recognize, pinpoint and identify the emotion, to find the appropriate ways of physically expressing and venting out the emotion and to release the emotion by embracing it through self-forgiveness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will not be able to dissolve an emotion and accumulate this fear into a panic, thus losing control of my breath (hyperventilation) and locking myself into an emotional clusterfuck (a panic attack that wears out as I run out of stamina).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust that as long as I keep myself to the basics (breathing, movement, speech/writing) I will be able to walk my way through anything.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that the reason I developed a panic disorder around the age of 16 (which continued for years to come) was most likely because of pent up emotions that I did not know how to express or did not want to face.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to learn to hide and suppress my emotions as a child because within my family dynamics I felt as if there was no room for my emotions as it already seemed chaotic enough to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to harm myself by suppressing myself and collapsing inwards for the sake of a sense of balance and harmony within my family.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a habit of curling up to hide my emotions from myself as well as from others.

When and as I see myself physically curling up, I stop, I breathe and I check myself for emotions and energies, both in the body and the mind. If there is emotion/energy within me, I focus on my breath and try to open up my physique. I investigate the trigger/reaction points that have started the emotion/energy and I use self-forgiveness if necessary to release the emotion/energy. I slow down in breath and I continue with this for as long as it takes for the emotion/energy to dissipate.

I commit myself to investigate how I suppress myself emotionally in my current living.

Days 367-368: What would you do if you only had one day?

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Nature showing us how to express affection. No fancy words needed!

Today I came to think of the phrase “live every day as if it was your last”. First I read a facebook post where a friend shared her realization about the unpredictability of life while supporting her friend in an emergency room: you'll never know when your loved ones will be gone forever, so you'd better tell them how you feel about them while you still can. Next, I saw a video where the average amount of a person's living days was visualized with jelly beans, and where at the end of the video only one jelly bean was left and the following question was asked: “what would you do if you had only one day? What will you do today?”

I answered that question myself and I was surprised at the things I said. (Personal stuff.) Mainly the things I thought I would do involved contacting people and enjoying my last moments doing things with them. I then asked myself: well, hold on, why should I not do these things anyway, even if I would not be dying? Couldn't I just call these people up anyway?

What I faced then was a wall of excuses. “They probably have better things to do.” “They'd think you're just wasting their time.” Most of it revolved around fear. The activities I thought of were purely recreational, and I was afraid that if I'd live my life asking people to join me in fun stuff like that I would be judged as lazy, impractical, childish, irresponsible – a foolish hippie not willing to work.

But MAN would I enjoy life where I could do fun stuff! With others!

So I'm thinking how my life would be different if I would express my feelings towards people more openly and initiate activities more frequently than now. It would certainly be a lot more social and my relations with others would be built on a foundation of self-honesty (which I think is the only way to establish solid trust in another). Why am I not doing this already?

I realize that motivational videos like the one I saw play a lot on the fear of death and loss: when the number of my days is clearly shown to me, I react with a slight panic and disregard my responsibilities just to “enjoy while I can”. What I am looking for, though, is a sustainable way of living. I need to integrate the social into my life in a balanced way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear expressing to another how I experience him/her.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear expressing my affection towards another person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear expressing my gratitude towards another person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear expressing my appreciation for another person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear expressing any form of positive experience I have had towards other people, because I have feared that I would then face a negative reaction from the other.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear exposing myself through self-expression because I have associated self-expression with events from my childhood, where my self-expression was responded to with actions that I reacted negatively to.

[A memory from 1^st or 2^nd grade: there was a boy in my class I liked a lot. I never expressed this to him because I didn't really know what to do about the things I felt – I'd never received any sort of guidance concerning relationships. Once during class there was a moment where something we had in common (a toy) was unexpectedly exposed and we would have had a chance to bond over it; however, we didn't. I expressed my interest towards the commonality and was waiting for him to meet me half-way, whereas he sort or “retreated”, withdrew himself, not taking the opportunity and not interacting with me. I thought that this meant he did not like me at all, I felt ashamed and I never tried to talk with him again. I did not take into consideration that he may have withdrawn because of the situation (a boy and a girl bonding with each other during class would have required hell-class bravery and defiance of the social code), or because he, too, was clueless on what to do about his feelings. Because I entered the social world with no guidelines on what to do and how people actually work, I have built my fear of rejection based on possible misinterpretations like this.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that when I express my positive experience of another person, the other will respond in such a way that I might interpret as “judgement”, “rejection” or “resentment” - not realizing that always interpreting things like this is a very narrow viewpoint that does not take into consideration the entire reality of things.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when a person responds to my self-expression by withdrawing themselves, it is not because I have done something “wrong” but because of whatever inner processes the entire situation has triggered within them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame myself for the way another person responds to his/her environment, thus reacting to the other person with fear of losing control, helplessness and panic as my world isn't what I would want it to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question my self-blame, collapsing inwards automatically with my reaction, not stopping to breathe and realize that “HOLD ON, I am taking personally something that is not mine at all”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by believing another person's withdrawal is my fault (because I am not enough), I am NOT supporting and assisting the other to see and question the mind system that made him/her withdraw in the first place, but that I am instead supporting him/her to carry on living within and as the mind system (because he/she is not enough – through my example I show that self-diminishment is acceptable).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not stand my ground when and as I have expressed myself and another has withdrawn as I have not really stood within my self-expression as I have lived as self-doubt, self-denial and self-resentment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seek for validation for myself from outside of myself as I have not really accepted, embraced or trusted myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the behavior of others is caused by me when in fact every individual creates their own behavior by choosing and authorizing their way of moving according to external stimuli.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit myself from participating in social living because I have been afraid of rejection, justifying my seclusion by judging social activities and thus settling for my solitude.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress my wish to participate in social living and make myself believe that “I don't need it” as I have been afraid of taking the “risk” of exposing myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that exposing myself through self-expression – by for example communicating to another how I experience him/her – is in fact NOT a risk where I put my self-worth on line but an opportunity where I don't have to lose myself (as I am always here!) but can in fact only gain and learn new things.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give in to fear by choosing to not express myself to another when I hesitate, when I could instead breathe, return myself HERE and remind myself that the unknown is a window of opportunity leaping through which will always benefit me in the form of new experiences to be learned from.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to pass by that moment of truth, the moment of fear and resistance, with excuses and justifications, thus not gifting myself with the opportunity to grow by pushing through the fear.

I commit myself to experiment an give myself opportunities to grow out of my old habits by sharing with each person in my life how I experience them, be it in the form of feedback about their qualities or as a statement of how I feel about them. [Be this my christmas present to all!]

I commit myself to explore ways and chances of expressing gratitude.

I commit myself to support and assist myself within the paralyzing moment of fear and resistance by breathing, grounding and reminding myself that change happens one small movement at a time, one word at a time, one letter at a time, one breath a time – by bringing my focus absolutely on my breath, nothing else, and moving myself relying on my breath and physical existence, as my physical existence will not shudder even though my conceptual realities tremble, crumble, scream and explode.

I commit myself to support and assist others to walk through their process by remaining stable when and as they react instead of taking their reaction personally and counter-reacting, AND in order to do this, I commit myself to further investigate why and how I take things personally.

Days 363-364: Play is real

06-07122013

A theatre improvisation practice, 2013.

I have been thinking about playfulness. Play among children is seen as natural and what they ought to be doing, because in addition to being a venue for self-expression it works as a way for children to practice becoming participants in this reality and members in a society. But what is it when adults play? Is there even such a thing as an adult?

To define an adult is to draw a line in water. One can look at sexual maturity, but it is a well-known fact that even young children already have a sexual drive, and that even though teenagers may be able to reproduce they are not yet capable of parenting. So adulthood does not go hand in hand with sexual maturity.

Neither is adulthood about seriousness. The myth of adulthood is commonly seen in people becoming more “serious” when they reach a certain “adult” age, letting go of old hobbies because they seem “childish” (yet secretly missing them), resenting obvious toys (yet getting new gadgets like smartphones), considering oneself as “above” all children (yet envying them for their freedom) and by no means “sinking” down to a child's level and playing like children with children among children and adults alike. Adult-adult relationships become charged with adult expectations mostly to do with power and sex, which work as means of control when the fear of one's survival in a dog-eats-dog world is one's ultimate motivator.

This is why I am always happy to find adult-aged people who have not forgotten the importance of play. Because I did theatre throughout my childhood and teen years, I grew up into an adult while constantly playing. I never really let go of play or became ashamed of it, and I've noticed that this is not very common even within my age group of 20-somethings.

I came to think about playfulness after an evening where all kinds of spontaneous play took place among adults. I found myself thinking: what are the limits here? How far can play extend? Am I allowed to do whatever? Afterwards I found myself thinking that the evening “meant nothing”, “contributed to nothing”, that “nothing was real” and “it was all just play”. These thoughts were an outcome of my disappointment, because I had secretly set expectations for the evening. With these after-thoughts I downplayed all that happened to negate the meaning I had imagined for what happened within the playing – to soothe my disappointment.

I realize that the main line of play I'm looking at here was a kind of an indirect flirtation scene, where the play just goes on and on without either one really “making the move” to make visible all the desires underneath the surface. (The fears that stop me from speaking up are not my topic this time.) What play is in this scenario is a kind of a test, a warm-up: getting closer inch by inch, little by little, to see how the other one responds, within a setting where you can say “just kidding” if the other one rejects you. It's also a way to for example bring out one's sexual drive in a safe “just kidding” kind of a zone, where you can dance and touch and move to quite an extent while still being able to say “just kidding” - although, if one only looks, what is going on is obvious and doesn't have to be brushed aside. What is here is here, and it is visible if one only looks.

So what bothers me here is the “just kidding” back gate, because to me that seems like an abuse of the concept of play. Within play one can express oneself in ways that would otherwise seem “unacceptable” or “too much”, and from within self-honesty play can then be a really cool way for self-exploration and self-expansion. If for example a flirtation play happens, it can be used to begin to communicate what draws people towards each other and what the following actions could be. The “just kidding” back gate functions as long as play is considered as something that is “not real”, when in fact play IS real, many times more real than the patterns we live our daily lives according to. When play is considered “not real” it is easy for one to accept and allow others to dismiss what they saw of themselves within play, but when play is considered real, there will be no place to hide. This is where I can change myself, so that in addition to supporting myself I can also support others within play to see themselves for who they are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that play is “not real”, when in fact everything we do and are is some form of self-expression and thus very much real.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore who others are within play, thus accepting and allowing them to suppress and hide dimensions of themselves.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore who I am within play as I have been afraid of what I have seen, thus suppressing dimensions of myself and hoping that nobody saw me (or pretends that he/she didn't).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from who I am within play, not realizing that by embracing who I am within play I “expand” myself by giving attention to dimensions of myself I have so far neglected, thus becoming a “fuller” being as I unlock parts of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse the concept of play by escaping who I am within play with the words/thought “just kidding” and excusing my behavior with play.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that play is some kind of a field of its own separate from the reality, a parallel universe in a bubble, that what happens within play is “not real” - not realizing that even though who I am within play is not the personality I usually portray in my life, who I am within play is still real as it happens in this physical reality even though I imagine it to be happening within a conceptual reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the personalities I “wear” in my every day life are my “true self”, thus dismissing everything outside those personalities as “not real”.

I commit myself to explore the concept of play within and as self-honesty to support myself and others to learn and grow from what is exposed of us all within play.

I commit myself to stop pretending to not see who others are within play even if they'd directly ask for it.

Days 352-354: Alcohol

16-18112013

Since I am currently on my way to an event that will probably include drinking alcohol, I thought it fitting to address my issue with drinking that has surfaced recently.

I grew up in an environment that encouraged drinking alcohol, and although everyone knew that legally I shouldn't have been drinking before I turned 18, I was pretty much allowed to start drinking when it started to interest me. My older siblings and even parents would buy me drinks if I asked them to: I never asked for anything “too much”, and for them my behavior was normal, what kids my age were doing anyway.

I got “into” drinking when I was about 15-16 and my group of high school friends started forming. For me drinking was a social thing: I enjoyed parties, their exciting, adventurous and carefree atmosphere, and I was thrilled to be meeting people, because I had learned that apparently relationships mostly formed in parties when people are a little drunk (less tense and defensive / more welcoming and appealing). When I look back on it I can see that my reason for partying was mostly sex/relationships, although sometimes it was to feel like I “belonged” somewhere, to feel “connected” to people, and to be less lonely.

After high school I got alienated from my friends and so the social environment I used to drink in was no longer there. My group of friends changed while my income decreased heavily, and because my new friends were always drinking in bars and night clubs I could no longer financially afford to drink socially. I quit drinking through bitterness and it created a nasty undertone to my friendships.

I later realized real reasons to not drink: it's damaging to my physical health AND to my mental condition. For many years I have not really been drinking because I have always been low on money and I have been too busy to fit that kind of socializing into my life.

Now that these limitations (money and time) have been removed, since my income is decent and I have time and opportunities to socialize, I've noticed that I am very prone to drinking. I realize that this is a problem, because the reasons for my drinking are the same as they were when I was 16: relaxing, fitting in and being social. When asking myself “why do I drink” just now, my answer was: “Because I can.” Now I am “finally” able to drink alcohol, and for a while I've just been going with it because of the energetic release of “having access” to something that used to be inaccessible.

But as I am now continuing to write this after the night of drinking I mentioned, I know that this tendency to use alcohol as a way to “unwind” has got to stop. What I witnessed in myself was a relaxation, opening up and talkativeness when I was drinking (like, after two sips of wine, lol – completely a mental thing) with my tension returning twice as bad the following day. The points of nervousness that I bypassed with alcohol were there just the same when I had to face them sober.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape anxiety, tension and nervousness into drinking because when growing up I learned through observation and direct advice that this is what people do and how people live.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a habit of rather escaping anxiety, tension and nervousness than directly dealing with their starting point, because as a child this is what I witnessed the people around me doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a behavioral pattern / a habit out of drinking as an escape from anxiety, tension and nervousness because when I first tried it out it appeared to “work” (when getting drunk for the first time I gave myself the permission to “let loose”, which I misinterpreted to have been caused by the substance itself) and so I continued to do so whenever I wanted to feel relaxed, energetic and excited.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make alcohol the symbol of “fun”, not realizing that by doing so I limit myself from having “fun” without alcohol and make the experience of “fun” dependent on alcohol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child/teenager to create an image of alcohol in my mind – an icon / a symbol – that represented “fun”, “enjoyment”, “relaxation”, “friends”, “leisure”, “good times”, “excitement” and “adventure”, not questioning this positively charged image/icon/symbol even when I saw myself and others manifest the complete opposite when drunk – aggression, depression, hallucinations, violence, regression, physical poisoning, fighting – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore the actual consequences of mine and my friends' reasons for drinking alcohol just to hold onto the positive image of alcohol as the “ultimate release”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to celebrate (to express my gratitude over something) - be it a finished task, the people in my life or life events - I need to drink alcohol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that one of the reasons I feel compelled to drink alcohol when I'm doing something social is because to me socializing is often a form of celebration (expressing my gratitude/appreciation for the people that are there), which I have learned to connect with the culture of drinking.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how vast the culture of drinking alcohol is and that unraveling this habit from myself is a lengthy task.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that alcohol is a “bad” thing and judge myself and others accordingly, not realizing that the substance itself is neither good or evil because it is just a tool, a conveyor of the intentions behind the use of the substance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge others for using alcohol because I have assumed that their intentions to use it are destructive (escapism).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that alcoholism will exist whether I judge it or not, and that if my goal is to affect the existence of alcoholism, judgement doesn't really help me get anywhere.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the world and its phenomenons will exist no matter what I think of them within my mind, and that the way to affect the world is not through the conceptual reality (judgement) but through the physical reality (actions).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge those who drink alcohol as escapism (almost everyone) because I have held onto my self-judgement and projected it onto others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself for drinking alcohol because based on the consequences of my drinking (conflict, mistakes, embarrassment) I have labeled drinking as “bad”, not realizing that it is not alcohol or even the act of drinking that creates the negative consequences but MYSELF, because alcohol releases from me all of the things I would like to express but normally suppress, which makes WHO I AM within the act of drinking the cause for all the consequences of the action itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that drinking alcohol makes me stupid, annoying, reckless, loud, vicious, desperate and depressed, not realizing that alcohol simply brings out who I already am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge the qualities listed above as “no good” (qualities I do not want attached to “who I am” / my personality / the image of me that others see), and to thus judge myself when and as these hidden/suppressed qualities eventually surface.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny these dimensions of myself / of human expression, not realizing that in order to release them and truly make a choice to either live or not live out these dimensions I need to first embrace them all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as long as I judge myself for a dimension of human expression (such as being loud), I will not be able to fully let it go.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that drinking alcohol makes me happy, joyful, laughing, energetic, excited, horny, social, funny and elevated, not realizing that I have already been all this on some level but used alcohol to emphasize these dimensions of human expression to override the negative.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use alcohol to get high on positive energy, not realizing that I am escaping the reality where I do not feel OK with myself into a temporary illusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the illusion of self-elevation created when drunk dissolves easily when the pattern of being drunk is broken.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a mind pattern of a “successful night of drinking”, where the chain of alcohol is uninterrupted, I do not react negatively to anything and I have pleasant people around me all night – not realizing that when I expect my night to go like this the night is easily “ruined” (the energy high crashes) even with a small disturbance.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like a night is “ruined” because I reacted negatively to something.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like the memory of an otherwise fun evening is “ruined” because of something negative that happened at the end of the night.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in drinking to create “nice memories”, not realizing that this starting point itself holds the expectation that the evening as a whole should go “according to plan” so that the memory would be unspoiled, and that having an expectation like this is simply unrealistic because of the numerous factors included in an event that concerns several people, if in a bar maybe even hundreds.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect that drinking should be fun, thus reacting when it is not fun, not realizing that my expectation itself is unrealistic and that having an expectation on any social event doesn't really serve any purpose as the events can't really be foretold.

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I commit myself to investigate why my life feels tense / unfulfilling so that there is a need for “unwinding” through alcohol-related socializing.

I commit myself to walk through the above-mentioned tension points in writing to see how to release them in order to make life truly and sustainably enjoyable (“fun”) in every single breath.

I commit myself to stop drinking alcohol for now to see how it affects social situations where I would usually drink (e.g. celebration).

I commit myself to be patient with myself concerning this point as I see, realize and understand that I have grown within a culture of drinking and that the culture is thus embedded into me in multiple layers.

I commit myself, in my occupation as an alcohol vendor, to investigate how alcohol as a tool is being used, and instead of judging alcohol itself as “good” or “bad” to look at how and why alcohol is being used.

I commit myself to utilize my position as a bartender to discuss alcohol with other people.

I commit myself to go through memories of differing consequences of my alcohol use and to map out how these consequences have manifested who I was during that time.

When, as and if I do drink alcohol, I commit myself to investigate the dimensions of human expression that arise in me and to investigate them thoroughly in writing to see why I suppress and deny these dimensions in myself.

I commit myself to investigate what kind of expectations I set on different kinds of social situations.

This was a box of worms, whew! Lol, I'm glad to see this point finally opening up, as I've been meaning to focus on it many times before. I'll continue with this later on.

Day 336: Reaching out to strangers

18-19102013

I was just walking down the street next to the university and a young man around my age walked past me. I saw him looking at me and so I looked back, and I saw that me looking at him encouraged him to look back at me after already turning his eyes away. It was a fun moment where I simply looked at another to express my curiosity, but I noticed that I kinda felt like smiling but couldn't do it until he had already passed me by. This has happened to me many times before, that I look at someone and feel like smiling but suppress it until the other cannot see it (or the smile escapes onto my face and I feel embarrassed), or I look at another without smiling and later on fear that maybe I appeared hostile because I did not smile.

I have been born and raised in a culture where strangers do not look at each other on the streets and do not smile, not to each other or to themselves. The lack of smiles is why a lot of foreigners find this place difficult to adapt into, because it appears hostile and cold even though under the serious faces people are really friendly. While talking to a mobile phone one is excused to express oneself because there is someone “familiar” one is talking to – someone from the “inner circle” that has “earned the right” to interact with this person – and after the phone call people revert back to silence and become serious and withdrawn. The phone call is not something you can share with the strangers next to you even though they're right there and heard and saw every bit of the phone call.

Having traveled in cultures where people do engage in contact with strangers much more easily, even if it's somehow superficial, I see that the culture I live in is very fearful, because even when one participates in apparently meaningless small talk one is at least giving oneself a chance to learn something from interaction. Here in Finland we don't even give ourselves that chance. Instead we keep to the small realities we create from the people we “trust” (have allowed ourselves not to be terrified with) and keep the rest of the world away and alienated.

When I look at it from this cultural perspective it is easier for me to see what exactly is wrong with the approach to strangers I have learned while growing up here. Why do I fear smiling to people? Why do I fear looking at people? Why do I fear opening conversations with people? It comes down to self-trust, self-honesty and self-expression – it all comes down to SELF, not who the others are.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear smiling at strangers because I have wanted to appear cool and distant to uphold an appearance of superiority so that the other one would fear me more than I fear him/her. *

* This may date really far back in genetics, even.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to intimidate a stranger with my appearance because I have feared that they might possibly be hostile and thus tried to keep them at a “safe distance”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the behavioral pattern of attempting to intimidate others to protect myself is a defense mechanism I have created in my childhood / teen years when I didn't have the capacity to deal with all kinds of people, and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that this defense mechanism is no longer necessary as I am no longer a child / teenager.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear showing friendliness (good intent) through a smile towards strangers because as a child I learned that I my friendliness is dependent upon the other one's intentions as I was unable to defend myself from bad intent. *

* Just think of a small child: many of them do not smile unconditionally to strangers (at least not after a certain point of development) but instead become restrained and nervous around strange adults. This only wears out after the adult has shown the child that he/she is “safe” to be around and approach.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being unconditionally “open” to all people (welcoming, friendly, warm) because as a child I have learned to protect myself by clamming up until my environment appears “safe” as I could not yet fully rely on myself regardless of my environment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my environment was “unsafe” in my childhood because I did not have the tools and the capacity to deal with everything that there is to the world, and that the fear of “unsafe” environments and people is therefore no longer valid as I now do have the tools and the capacity to deal with whatever I come across. (May sound “big”, but the basics are actually really simple.)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though I still come across “new” situations where things feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and strange, these situations are not in fact “unsafe” - such where I would have to fear for my well-being – but that I can support myself through these uncomfortable, unfamiliar and strange situations unharmed (although most likely I will be changed) with the cognitive, social and physical tools I have learned while growing up to become a self-supported adult being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear looking at a stranger because I have perceived it as a threat, not realizing that it is in fact a window of opportunity and that my perception is outdated.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear smiling at people because I have perceived it to be a threat – that I am exposing myself to abuse by inviting another closer – not realizing that abuse will not simply “happen” to me but that I am capable of NOT accepting and allowing myself to be abused numerous times “along the way” (during the course of the interaction).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to label the action “inviting people closer” as something negative because this has sometimes resulted to me being abused, thus blaming and guilting myself in advance to protect myself from getting abused again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the act of “inviting people closer” or choosing to trust people (which is initially self-trust - “I can trust myself to survive around this person” - “my abilities are enough to survive with this person”) is NOT in fact a negative act but that I have labeled it as such to protect myself from getting hurt.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear talking to strangers because I have feared getting judged because in this culture strangers talking comfortably to each other is uncommon.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that the people in Finland will think that I am “strange”, “weird” or “crazy” for talking comfortably to strangers as my equals and that people will not want to interact with me because of how they perceive and believe me to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if another chooses to seclude me from their reality because of their perception of me, it is not because I am somehow “not good enough” but because I trigger discomfort in the person on such a level that the person cannot / will not face.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up on interacting with the locals after the first difficult words/sentences because I have interpreted this difficulty/stiffness to mean that the other doesn't like me and that I should just shut up – not realizing that the people who have grown up here just “warm up” really slowly because they're (we're) so afraid of each other, and that it may take a while to actually get close to a new person. *

* I witnessed an interesting scene in the bus where a man was talking to a woman with a dog. The woman was replying with very short sentences, just one or two words, but after a couple of silent moments the man kept on going in a very friendly manner. Little by little the woman's sentences got longer (which is also when I heard her accent and realized finnish is not her first language) and she got more comfortable with the man talking to her, even though in the beginning she seemed very uncomfortable. I admire that man for his uncompromised perseverance! I will learn from his example.

Whenever I remember to do this, I commit myself to practice looking at, smiling at and talking to strangers on the streets by walking with my posture straight, eyes forward and face “open” (no scarves or hats “blocking” my face) and by keeping myself grounded in breath aware of my movements and aware of what I see around me. I commit myself to take note of all reactions that occur in me when I do this and to go through each revealed point in written or spoken self-forgiveness.

When and as I feel resistance/hesitation to look at, smile at or talk to a stranger, I stop, I breathe and I realize that the resistance is a remnant of a childhood defense mechanism that is no longer valid because I am no longer a child. I realize that I am now in fact fully capable of facing and supporting myself through everything that may come about within interaction with other human beings, because I know how to learn, adapt, express and communicate. I bring my focus to breath and ground myself back into my body and allow myself and my existence to rely on my physical completely. If the stranger is still there, I return to the interaction within and as self-trust. If not, I utilize my stabilized state otherwise.

Day 323: Attraction, part 1

27092013

Lately I've been thinking a lot about attraction. When one is attracted to someone, in essence it is a kind of a pull – being drawn towards something – but these phrases suggest that it is someone else pulling, that a force outside of me is drawing me towards someone, when in fact I create the pull as I have created who I am at the moment.

I think the metaphor “people are mirrors to each other” describes it quite well. When I am attracted towards another, I either enjoy something the other person “has” - like a trait or a quality – or I enjoy who I am in the presence of another, or maybe both. In other words, the other reflects back to me what I lack or I wish I had – who I am is reflected for me to see, which is an awesome opportunity for growth. “Who I am” is not a constant, it's not something that would remain unchangeable from situation to another, but is in fact relative to all the factors that affect any situation, such as the people who are present, the activities involved, the physical location, the time of the day... So when I find myself to be “more” in some way when in another's presence (more kind, more relaxed, more funny, more intelligent, more active etc.) I am drawn towards that person's company, because I haven't yet realized how to bring out that quality in me without that person around.

So basically I am pretty clear on what attraction is and how it functions, and when I have come across people I am drawn to I have stopped to map out what is going on in me when this happens. The issue that somewhat remains is the fact that I suddenly find myself drawn to many people at once – not that it wouldn't have happened before, but before I have simply told myself “no” and refused to explore the situation further. It's either been a “no, I'm already in a relationship” or a “no, I've already got a main romantic interest”. So basically I have already made up my mind about who I will be intimate with, as if there was a spot I'm reserving – and I'm not talking about only sex, but about all levels of physical AND mental intimacy.

The change I'm seeing in myself is that there's no longer that need to reserve intimacy for one person, and I am in fact very comfortable with these people all around. I have realized that all interaction is actually allowed, because all interaction – talking, touching, moving – is self-expression, and as long as I am honest with myself about what I am doing and why there is no rule that would forbid me from exploring human interaction with all the people I come across. And no, I am not saying that I will now go and have sex with everyone – that's not the point at all – even though I could do that. The point is that what my relations are with the individual people I come across of the world's population of 7 billion are what I make of them – they are at best a creation by two – and that if I do one thing with someone it does not exclude me from doing another thing with somebody else.

I'm still trying to find the right words to crystallize this realization, and I'm sure I'll find them once I just write about this enough. So pardon my messiness! Lol.

The thing is, I don't think that attraction is a “bad thing” in itself. Attraction is an indicator of who I am and the people it is pointing me towards may provide important lessons. Attraction becomes dangerous when I forget that it is my creation, because then I lose myself into the other. I believe the other to be my “destiny” or my “soulmate” or “the one” et cetera – I create an obsession of the other because I believe the other to be the cause of my attraction when in fact he/she is just the trigger.

Oh right, another point I've been thinking about in relation to this are attraction patterns: how mutual attraction usually “ends up” in sex through certain layers of interaction. I've realized that one reason I have refrained from acting upon attraction is the fact that I already saw the whole pathway leading up to sex looming in front of me and I got really fucking scared of it, and so I rather just staid away from people. What I've realized now is that I don't (necessarily) have to follow that pathway. I have a choice in each moment of breath – I have a choice in every single moment I interact with another, and so in a way every moment is a blank slate. This realization has been a great relief for me, because I have understood that I am in fact in charge of myself and my life, and that such a thing as attraction is no longer “in the wheel”. From this starting point of self-trust I am glad to continue exploring human interaction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear attraction.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being attracted to another because I have believed and perceived that attraction can only “end up” in a specific, predetermined outcome – not realizing that people never simply “end up” somewhere but always bring it upon themselves one way or another, and that therefore I have taken myself to situations where an attraction leads to a familiar result – and that if I am the one taking myself to places, I have the power to stop and decide to change my route.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist attraction because I have feared acting upon it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear attraction because it is an indicator of my wish to be intimately close to/with another being which is something I have feared because I have not wanted to expose myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear exposing myself to myself by exposing myself to another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to avoid acting upon attraction because I have not known what it will lead into.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear not being able to define what my relation to another being is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to define all of my relations with other people so that I would know in advance what is possible and what is not possible within the interaction I have with each one – thus creating “safe zones” where I can “let loose” of one aspect of myself with one person and of another with someone else – not realizing that when I create these definitions (i.e. I can hug A, I can't hug B, I can hug C a little if it's the right moment, I can hug D all the time, I can't hug E unless I do it the right way...) I limit myself extensively by accepting and allowing my relations with people to remain the way they have initially appeared to “work” (not causing conflict or confusion), not realizing that for every limitation I place in interaction there is a cause – a fear – and a border I fear crossing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear physically touching people in a way that makes them react because I have feared that they would then pull away from me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear addressing topics that make others react because I have feared that they will blame their reaction on me and accuse me of being “invasive” and “inappropriate”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that if I behave in a way that makes the other react, the other will judge me and think less of me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to create and uphold “safe zones” with other people where I can trust the other to not “invade” my “personal space” (to not do whatever I have defined to not be “included” in the relationship I have with the other).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by allowing these “safe zones” to exist I serve both my self-interest and the other's and in no way actually support and assist either of us to face and deal with what is really going on within us (the fears that create our limitations).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to – generally speaking – define my relationships with female friends to only include specific kind of touching and only a specific amount of it.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to touch my female friends' breasts, butt, thighs, hips, neck, chest, ears, face, stomach or sides because I have defined these body parts to be “sexual”, “intimate” or otherwise reserved to only be touched within a romantic or otherwise “special” relationship.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to – generally speaking – define my relationships with male friends to only include specific kind of touching and only a specific amount of it.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to touch my male friends too much because I have feared it might be misinterpreted as “romantic interest” - not realizing that every time I fear this, I am actually on some level attracted to the person in question, and that I am covering my own ass while blaming my fear of facing myself on the other.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to touch my male friends' butt, thighs, scalp, face, ears, stomach, hips, sides or neck because I have defined these body parts to be “sexual”, “intimate” or otherwise only to be touched with a male I am in a romantic relationship with.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I have limited myself from touching almost 3/4 of the human body regardless of gender because I have feared intimacy (which, in essence, is always self-intimacy - “in-to-me-I-see”).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny myself to be touched anywhere but a very limited “safe zone” of my body as I have defined most of my body to be “too intimate/personal/private” for others to touch – when in fact I have isolated and separated my own body parts from myself, which makes them feel “private” and “different” when in fact they're just the same tissue as all of my body is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that I don't want others to touch a “private” part of my body (any of the ones listed above) because others “should not” be touching it, when in fact I avoid it being touched because I do not want to be reminded of the existence of the body part.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all the limitations I have on my self-expression (the “walls” of discomfort I come across) are in fact a structure I have created in my mind and NOT some universal truth of “shoulds” and “shouldn'ts”.

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This topic is apparently really vast and this SF seems to be a bit all over the place, so I will continue tomorrow in more specificity. Points to go through:

• private writings on specific people
• definition of attraction
• reserving intimacy for someone “special”
• attraction patterns

Plus others if they emerge.