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 397: Compiling secret spite

01042014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 213: Social welfare & fear of survival

23042013

I am now continuing with what I started opening up yesterday because the same point has been influencing my experience today.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to abuse myself with stress.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create resistance to work by stressing about my work, not realizing that I make it more difficult for myself to work when I stress.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that “I will not make it”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that “I will screw it up”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will be left with no financial support platform and that I will have caused it with my own stupidity.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I have caused myself to become dependent on the financial support of others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I am making a mistake.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself through the eyes of others as “stupid”, “dumb”, “irresponsible”, “childish”, “self-centered” and “ignorant”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to doubt my decisions and to not assess my doubts from a practical viewpoint.

Clarifying some of the statements above:

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will be left with no financial support platform and that I will have caused it with my own stupidity.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think of it as “stupidity” when I have misunderstood something and have not realized to figure out the reality of things, perceiving the situation through self-judgement, belittlement and self-hate to exert my fear of survival on myself as self-blame.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that there is no such thing as “stupidity” (“being unable to comprehend”) aside from actual physical disadvantages (such as with people born disabled), and that my actions have thus not been “stupid” but a consequence of the circumstances where I do not understand how the society around me functions and have misunderstood its mechanisms and made decisions based on my misunderstandings.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive myself to have “failed”, not realizing that as I now see where I have misunderstood and take action to sort things out there is no “failure” as I carry my responsibility to do what I can to solve the situation when and as I notice things to require solving.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will be left with no financial support platform.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the social welfare system of my country to be such that will allow no one to be left without basic life support and to thus expect it to take care of me no matter how I live my life, being surprised, disappointed and shocked when I found out that there is indeed a possibility to be left without basic life support if certain conditions are not met.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to secretly fear that the social welfare system will not support me as I have perceived it to have denied me support before in situations where I was in need of support, thus creating an expectation based on earlier experiences that the social welfare system doesn't want what's best for me but is unfair in its judgement and demands impossibilities of me.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a fear of the social welfare system based on my previous experiences where I have trusted the system to take care of me and have been “let down” by the system.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to avoid situations where I would have to ask for support from any instance of the social welfare system because I have feared that they will evaluate and judge me and decide that I do not qualify for their support.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take it personally when an instance of the social welfare system has followed the rules of the system and denied me access to its resources because I have not been qualified according to this set of rules.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rely on the social welfare system to recognize value in all life and to thus create plans and make decisions based on this assumption, not realizing that the social welfare system of my country isn't based on unconditional support for all life but on support for those who fit the definition of a “responsible citizen” as defined in the rules of the system.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get angry when I realized the system is not flexible and does not consider each applicant's situation thoroughly, not realizing that the system does not have the resources for this kind of work as the officers are already overworked.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame “the system” (nation, social welfare, economy, politics) for my adversities as I have felt myself powerless to affect its rules.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that “the world” is hostile towards me out of spite.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think that “the world” hates me as it does not allow me to live without me complying to its rules.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist working with what the system is right now because I do not agree with it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that even though the system isn't right now the best it could be, it is the system I have to work with and live within now as it will not change in a matter of days, weeks or even months – not within the timespan that is relevant to me at the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to refuse to co-operate with the system as it is right now because I have seen that the ways I can influence and change it will only have effect years and decades in the future and felt that this is “unfair”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think it is “unfair” that I have to deal with a complicated system, not realizing that the system as it is right now is a consequence of the past generations the descendant of which I am, and that, unfortunate as it is, I am responsible to deal with the consequences of what this society has accepted and allowed as I am a part of this society and a creator of the future society my children will have to deal with (which hopefully will be a better one).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that there is nothing personal in the complexities of the system that I need to deal with as I live within it, as the system is the same for everyone – everyone deals with the same bureaucracy, inspections and requirements – or at least everyone who ends up in the financial situation where it is necessary to apply for social welfare.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive the system through my frustration, fear, powerlessness, helplessness and spite and judge the system to be malfunctioning, not realizing that even though the flaws I see are real my interpretation of them isn't.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define the social welfare system as “malfunctioning” and thus “rotten” even though it does manage to deliver a lot of people financial support, because I have seen the system's flaws in complexity, understandability, approachability and sometimes also in customer service (which is not only a problem in attitudes but also in resources – these people appear overworked to me).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that there are limits to what this current social welfare system can do because the laws and constitutions it relies on are not based on the value of all life but on the importance of monetary profit.

I commit myself to work with this social welfare system as it is right now as I see, realize and understand that the system will not change for as long as I oppose it and refuse to take part in it.

I commit myself to face the officials that handle my application process as human beings one with and equal to me and to realize that most of them are just doing their job and are doing what they can to earn their living and that what they do is in fact in no way personal.

I commit myself to find out what is possible for me and my situation within the current rules of the system and to do what I can to ensure myself a base foundation for my living expenses.

Also, I commit myself to do this from a practical perspective and to work my way through my emotional reactions as I see, realize and understand that I make it more difficult for myself to work through this if I haze my view with emotions.

I commit myself to keep walking this point until I am clear on it.

Days 166-167: Self-sabotage – turning my back to myself

fuck off, I'm busy

06032013

I was planning on continuing to write about music but I got stuck. I lived out a pattern of self-sabotage today which I will open up as the experience now faded enough for me to move again.

This self-sabotage began with me working in spite of my resistance towards my tasks – and I emphasize the word “spite” because I wasn't pushing through the resistances by letting them go, but instead more like saying “fuck you” to myself as the resistance, like turning my back to myself completely when I should've assisted and supported myself to stop and face the initial resistance towards my tasks. There was resistance, I noticed the resistance, I decided to not deal with it with the justification that I had a lot to do (“I can't afford to stop now”), and I accumulated the stress caused by this moment after moment, decision after decision until I was once again at such a state where my body was shutting down and I was forced to have a break. I realized I'm repeating a pattern, and so I laid down, stabilized myself within breath, let go of all my tasks and “have to's” and relaxed my body.

This is the same thing that happened to me before, as described in the post I have to keep moving, almost exactly identical in fact. This time around I didn't get any physical pain, but a feeling of constraint in all of my being, like I was being squeezed inside a fist.

So today I did get stuff done, but concerning the state I am in now and the loss of time and energy on solving this mess it was not worth it. Some factors contributing to my state of being today have been the overconsumption of sugar and being completely out of breath for the entire day.

--

07032013

I am continuing with this for the second day because I was unable to continue further yesterday. It has been a good decision because today from the morning onwards I was more aware of myself and the inner movements that caused yesterday's experience.

I decided to pay attention to all moments when I create resistance to do something – to not accept and allow any of those moments to slip by unnoticed as I did yesterday. It was interesting because the very first moment of resistance I noticed was when waking up, which is unusual to me because normally I get up with no trouble at all. My reaction to my alarm was *ring ring* “I don't wanna” instead of the usual *ring ring* “yes, now I get up”. And the very second moment of resistance came when I wondered into the kitchen and saw the dishes I had been piling up for days: “I don't want to” was again my response.

So these small moments of resistance came and went and I tried to face them as much as possible. However, we were so busy at work today that despite my efforts to keep myself in check the frustration accumulated to a point where I had an argument with my work partner.

What I'm seeing here is that right now as my situation is somewhat demanding concerning my work load I create resistance towards small things more easily – the threshold for my resistances to be triggered is really low. As these small triggers keep firing from my first waking moments it's no wonder that by the evening I literally can't carry myself on my feet anymore.

So as I ignore a moment of resistance I actually give the resistance permission to exist, and I accept and allow it to take hold of me. It's like I'm closing my eyes and hoping that it will go away – but again, through spite and with a “fuck you” because I'm tired of these resistances existing. So when I see that there is resistance the reaction is like “why the fuck are you here?” because I'm tired of dealing with the same shit and would like to be done with it already.

So hold on here. Let's have a closer look at this. I'm now looking at a specific moment from yesterday where I was doing sewing work and thought I would watch something at the same time. I had an urge to watch some silly TV shows, but I shoved this desire to have a laugh aside and thought “NO. I will instead watch this documentary.” and ignored the uncomfortable feeling (of suppression) that was left lingering. The tone of the “NO” was more specifically “no, you idiot! God, here we go again with this stupid desire to waste time on entertainment”. So I quietly allowed a shitload of judgement to come up completely unnoticed.

So, to further simplify, the chain of command is: (null point) – desire – reaction – judgement – suppression – action – resistance towards action. The desire then lingers and the action is half-assed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to turn my back on myself when I need my self-support and -assistance the most.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to an arising point with frustration and continue on to judge myself for the point, when I should instead be forgiving myself and directing the point.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to choose to ignore a point instead of directing it, not realizing that ignoring the point will not change it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to an arising point with frustration because I fear facing who I have accepted and allowed myself to become.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to seeing a point I have seen in myself before with fear because it is an indication that I have not been living according to my commitment and need to have a closer look at what I'm doing and make a re-assessment of my starting point – which I fear doing because I would then have to admit that I have “failed” and not reached the ideal form I want to become.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create and uphold an ideal about who I should become as I walk my process and constantly give myself feedback about how far or close I am to the ideal. [This I need to elaborate on.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and judge myself to have “failed” when a point re-surfaces, because this brings out the fear that I will never be able to change, that I will always fail – not realizing that this is an emotionally filtered view of what is actually here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to view my situation through despair and thus perceive it to be more serious and dramatic than it actually is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as a point re-surfaces it is simply an indicator that there is something I missed the last time I was facing this point and that it would benefit me and everyone and everything else that I had another look at the point.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the consequence of me not going through a point thoroughly is that the point will re-surface – this is pure mathematics of cause and effect – and that the consequence of this action in itself does not hold any kind of value (in this case: negative) unless I assign it a value by separating the point from myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to see myself as one and equal to the consequences of my actions (the points that re-surface when I have not been thorough).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the consequences of my actions because facing them and seeing myself as one and equal to them would be too uncomfortable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive having a point re-surface as “negative” as I have not wanted to stand as one with and equal to the point and rather separated it from myself to have it somewhere outside of myself in the “negative” compartment where it could be judged without me getting judged.

I commit myself, when and as a point I have already been dealing with comes up again in my living, to stop, breathe and face the myself as the point in question – myself as living as the point. I take note of any and all judgement towards the point (self-judgement towards myself) which may be seen in violent backchat or resistance to face the point. If there is resistance to face the point, I stop, breathe and return myself here, and remind myself that the point is and will be here whether I face it or not, and that by running away from it I make sure I will not change. I then utilize self-forgiveness to let go of the the self-judgement and when I am done with this I will proceed to dealing with the initial point that I reacted to.

I commit myself to realize that if I turn my back on myself by being spiteful towards myself, I deny myself the only source of support that I can actually rely on and thus live as self-sabotage.

I commit myself to realize that to truly love and care for myself is to be there for myself unconditionally, like a parent to a child.