Days 289-291: Approaching relationships through negativity

13-14 & 16082013

A friend told me about a notion he had made while dating a girl from a foreign country. He had noticed that it is in the Finnish mentality to look at being attracted to someone a negative thing: that when you notice you're attracted to someone, your reaction is “oh no” instead of “oh yes”. I realized that I had never really thought about this, and when I started looking back on my relationship history it seemed to explain a great deal of things. I don't know if this is exclusively a Finnish trait, but the overall negativity even in relationships certainly is a part of this cultural mindset.

For me having a romantic attraction towards another has always been a burden. Whenever something like that has come about it has felt like a great deal of trouble instead of being a reason for joy. When I look at my first crushes during my childhood and teen years there has always been this despair, a hopelessness, a knowledge that it would never amount to anything anyway because I'm not good enough for the other – and this disempowering way of thinking led me to never act upon my feelings.

There was also a horrifying fear of being “discovered”. I feared that if other kids or family members found out about my crush they would tease me about it. There is this specific “ooooooh” or “aaaaah” people would make when they found out, as if they discovered a juicy secret, as if they knew something super intimate about me and now understood what all of me was about – which they didn't, or that's what I wanted to believe. I didn't want anyone to know because then they would think they knew how I felt when they could not in fact know. I thought of my experience as something “special”, “unique” and “mine” - which in a sense was true – and did not see the value in sharing and cross-referencing things with others.

I still get this embarrassment of sorts, this feeling of being bare in front of others. It's kind of like I'm holding this steel mask of not being emotional at all, and when people hear of me doing something that is perceived to be emotionally charged, like being in a relationship or dating someone, it's like the mask falls off. I don't like it. I am used to being “the stable one” wherever I go and so expressing emotions/feelings is something that is somewhat limited for me. I rarely feel emotions, not always even on a daily basis, but how do I know how much exactly do I suppress? How do I know how much of my non-emotionality is pure blankness and how much of it is suppression?

I know I have picked up this ideal of being “the stable one” from my father, as well as the behavioral pattern of doing it at my own expense by suppressing what I feel. When I look at my parents, the ones who gave me the relationship model I started to follow, I do remember them being openly affectionate towards each other, if not a bit shy about it. There were older siblings who were in their teens when I was a child, and I remember seeing them all embarrassed about their relationships, angry and ashamed when my parents teased them about it – perhaps this is where I picked this up, because my older siblings were a huge role model for me, both consciously and subconsciously.

This is a topic that is (again) on the surface as I have recently met a person with whom I am in a process of building a long-distance relationship. Just writing these words here is difficult for me even though I know that not many people read my blog (voicing things to myself is the most difficult step I guess), and when I think of talking to people about it I notice this nervousness rising immediately. I realize that this is because I have adopted a negative attitude towards the whole concept of two people gravitating towards each other – a filter of shame, worst-case scenarios and negative expectations caused by a poor self-esteem. I'm not saying I should jump to the other extreme and go crazy with excitement, joy and over-confidence (which some people actually do, which is news to me!) but to allow myself the enjoyment of the situation.

So: on to self-forgive, so that I may find it comfortable sharing this experience with other people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to feel ashamed of being attracted to another person because I have feared that people would question the target of my feelings – in other words, think less of the person I am attracted to and thus think less of me as well.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear telling my friends/family who I was attracted to because then they would see more of me as well.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear sharing my attractions with others because on some level I understood that within the process of becoming attracted to someone I become in touch with the sides of me which have been hidden – sides of me that have been “secret” because I have not known how to be self-intimate – and that in my choice of who to be attracted to I expose the hidden side of myself.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to H because all the other girls were attracted to him as well and I saw myself to have no chance within that competition.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to H because attraction was a new feeling to me and I had no idea what it was and how to deal with it, and because I did not know how to express an uncertain experience and to seek for answers from others.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to T because he wasn't “good-looking” in the usual way, as I was afraid other kids would tease me for liking someone “ugly” and think less of me as well – that other kids would not understand why I liked this person and instead assume him to be “less” and me to be “less”.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear admitting that I was attracted to T because I believed he did not like me back and I did not want to take the risk of getting rejected, not that I would have known what to do with another person anyway even if he would like me back.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear expressing my attraction because I had no idea what would happen as a result; I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear doing things the outcome of which I could not foretell or, in other words, control.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to fear that I will be defined by who others believe my target of attraction to be and who they believe me to be in relation to that image of him.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that people will assume me to be something I am not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as others have discovered I am attracted to someone, to distance the whole affair from myself and try and avoid the intimacy of sharing something so personal with others.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold myself back from sharing the early stages of a relationship with others because I have wanted to avoid exposing myself in such a sensitive state, rather sharing the news only when a relationship has stabilized and when I can pretend to be all cool about it.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe that my experience of attraction was something “unique” because it felt so overwhelming, not realizing that everyone else experiences basically same thing as the same patterns of thought and behavior create the same experiences.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that even though my feelings were overwhelming in my subjective experience, other people too have had these overwhelming subjective experiences and that the subjectiveness of something is not an indicator of its uniqueness.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel embarrassed when people have found out I am attracted to someone, feeling as if they were looking at something private and wanting them to “not look at me” or to “look away”.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist exposing myself to others as I have not fully exposed myself to myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive relationships, attraction and sexuality through negativity, thus denying myself the enjoyment of embracing the situation.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for having enjoyment in my life through relationships.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel undeserving of enjoyment through relationships.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to being attracted to someone by conjuring up worst-case scenarios, summoning a fear that I will screw things up, that the other will not like me, that things would get complicated and troublesome, that my attraction won't stay hidden, that the other one will abuse me, that the relationship will advance too quickly, that I would have to be tied to a relationship – thus pulling back from the interaction with the other, interacting from behind a defensive personality and being careful not to expose myself until I feel “safe enough” to lower my defenses – which may in fact never happen with a person, or may take a lot of time.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have been in relationships during my life, to not question my defensiveness and fearfulness and thus put a strain on every relationship (also some friendships) by not being “myself” (defenseless) until enough time has passed, if at all.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as a relationship has ended or been in conflict, to blame others for “not having patience” with me, not realizing that I am responsible for being in such a state that requires patience from others.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I am harming myself by holding onto my fearfulness and that it is unacceptable that I keep on living as a “porcupine” that requires others to approach me in a certain way for me to feel safe.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear showing others that I experience emotions and feelings because it would require me to be honest with myself.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear being honest with myself about my emotions and feelings because I have perceived and believed emotions and feelings to be a weakness.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to idolize the model of “stability” that I saw in my father and want to become like him, not seeing, realizing and understanding the damage he did to himself as he played out “stability” through self-suppression, and thus doing the same damage onto myself unquestioned.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to be stable one should have no emotions/feelings.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that stability is to embrace my emotions/feelings as an indicator of who I am and to direct who I am according to how I see best – not to accept and allow my emotions/feelings to direct me; stability is when I am in the wheel and emotions/feelings are riding along.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that stability is to see myself as a whole, embrace myself as a whole and direct myself as a whole – emotions/feelings included.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear admitting to an attraction because I have believed and perceived that attraction makes me “weak” or “less”.

When and as I go into resistance to share the fact that I am involved with or attracted to someone, feeling that inwards pull in my chest as if my physical body was trying to collapse into itself to hide itself from the eyes of others – I stop, I breathe and I realize that this resistance is a sign that I have not fully embraced what is going on and that I am not standing within and as myself in self-honesty. I realize that it is not other people I am trying to keep away from me but myself. I breathe and I release the tension from my physical body and I fix my posture so that I am open, relaxed and balanced. I ask myself: what am I hiding? What am I ashamed of? What do I not want to be seen? And I bring the answer back to myself as I see, realize and understand that I am in fact hiding from myself and not from others. I release the point through self-forgiveness (written, spoken or experienced) and I push through my resistance to share myself with others by speaking through words that best describe my experience.

I commit myself to with myself go through what is going on in this relationship in spoken and written word so that through absolute self-honesty, self-certainty and self-integrity I may stand within and as my decision to be in a relationship and share my decisions with others.

I commit myself to observe and investigate how approaching relationships through the negative polarity manifests in me.

--

Another aspect of this point surfaced. In communication with the person I am in a relationship with I noticed in myself a fearfulness, carefulness, behind actions that were necessary – but not necessary to be done through fear. I realized I am scared of losing this relationship and that I am acting through that fear, trying to make sure that I am doing everything possible to maintain the relationship now that for the first time in my life I have some understanding of how to actually do that and NOT mess things up from the start. I regret all the mistakes I have made in my previous relationships and now try to make sure I make no more mistakes, that I would finally “succeed” - and this idea of “success” indicates that there is a relationship ideal I am reaching for, some kind of a goal that I believe to be possible to get to.

I will continue with this point in later writings.

Days 220-221: Anxiety & fear of failure

3004-01052013

I had already written something today but I realized that I had written it to boast about a realization. So instead of publishing it I will now write unplanned about this unclear experience I'm within at the moment.

I am anxious. I am increasingly horrified by my schedule and the fact that I will be leaving the country in 12 days and that my entrance exams are 7 days away. I react to every person suggesting a meeting or otherwise trying to “rob me” of my precious time – every trigger gets me deeper and deeper into anxiety and panic. It's this crushing heaviness and a loud “I'M NOT GOING TO MAKE IT!” in my mind.

I enjoy the acts of studying and preparing for the trip – it's enjoyable to expand myself through applied knowledge, and cleaning up the apartment and packing stuff is refreshing. But this anxiety, it is completely extra, it need not be here. I could be here in simple practicality, doing what I can with the time that I've got, but instead I make it more difficult by stressing and thinking ahead. Momentarily I have been able to remind myself that even though these deadlines loom close-by, they are not here yet, and that I am here now in this moment within which I am able to influence how these deadlines will be met.

I have neglected my need for sleep and rest for a couple of days, and I have noticed how my anxiety levels affect the quality of the little sleep I've had. I've been dreaming restlessly about confusing scenarios with more difficulty waking up than I can remember since a couple years back when I abused myself continuously by not sleeping enough. I've been getting myself out of bed in this half-asleep zombie state in which I'm still partly within the dream experience and from which I snap out of by the time I get to work. It has been frightening to see how little control I have over myself, sleep-walking around. This anxiety cannot linger. I will not allow it.

This experience of sitting on this couch immersed in my anxiety in the middle of the night is familiar to me. I used to do it more often when I was more confused about the workings of my mind. Somehow there is something “familiar” and “safe” about this scenario – yet it is suffocating because those lonesome anxiety nights never got me anywhere. (Except for once, which is when I actually moved tremendously. A benchmark of sorts.) What is my relationship to anxiety? Who am I within anxiety (to myself and others)? What do I get out of anxiety?

Anxiety has been “a part of me” ever since, I don't know, forever. My earliest memories of social anxiety are from my first day of school at 6 years old. So anxiety is to me a feeling that I am used to and familiar with, and it used to be such a dominant part of my experience that I didn't really pay attention to it. I can't say for sure whether I've ever been free of anxiety.

Being anxious also serves as a character with which I can ask for sympathy from others. I make myself helpless and small in front of whatever I'm anxious about and ask for others to save me – it's an act of avoiding facing what I fear. So in my anxiety there is always a key, and it's somewhere in the midst of the cause of the anxiety; I need to face it to find the solution.

So what do I fear here? The worst-case scenario here is that I will have to leave the country with things unfinished, and that I will fail to study enough for the exams an not get into university – I fear I will run out of actual physical time, that even if I cut down on every other aspect of my life I would still just not have enough minutes in my day. But as I look at my situation I know this to be fretful exaggeration. My reactions mostly occur when I remember something I should have done but haven't done yet, so a practical solution to this would be to write a list of everything that needs to be done and plan out how I'm going to get them done – what needs to prioritized, when is the deadline for each, how much time will they take, etc. Right now I have multiple lists all over the place and that doesn't really serve any purpose. So all this panicking around is just forgetting to breathe, be here and do what's necessary. This is probably a mother-pattern, I can see how and where I've learned it.

And the same goes with anxiety. It is to give in to all those thoughts that hinder action. “Should I do this, no, maybe, I don't know, but what if, where is it, how do I, how is this, I can't, nothing's working, but, no, no I can't do that, fuck I forgot about that, what if, I can't, I can't I CAN'T AAAA I'M GONNA DIE” lol. To dwell in anxiety is to forget one's actual potential and ability to take action. This is just a guess, but some people with difficult anxiety disorders may have simply never learned how to deal with things in a practical manner. I know this is a problem for me with some social issues I'm dealing with: when I face a situation I have never learned how to function within, I lock myself into a panic-mode and look for a way out, and even if I know how to move in theory it is still difficult to move myself according to theory when I have never tried out something in action. But that is a threshold I'm going to have to cross myself – I'm just going to have to trust myself to be able to deal with whatever comes along.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get overwhelmed by the worst-case scenarios I have created in my mind, thus disabling myself from seeing what there is to be done in the practical reality to stop these scenarios from happening as I filter what I see of the reality through emotions (anxiety, panic, confusion, distress, nervousness, fear) instead of seeing what is actually here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give power to the worst-case scenarios of my mind by allowing them to direct my experience into an emotional clusterfuck instead of me directing my experience myself towards a practical solution.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe “I am not going to make it” within my overwhelmedness, not realizing that as I believe a thought like this I accept and allow it to become real; When I believe “I am not going to make it” I will not do my best to actually make it because I have already positioned myself to “fail” as every action is committed from the starting point of the self-definition “I am a failure”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as a “failure” because I have seen myself powerless to direct my life in the prevailing circumstances, not realizing that the perception I base my self-definition on is filtered through emotions and thus is not a reliable assessment of the circumstances I am in.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trust an assessment of the reality I have made through emotions and base my actions on this assessment, not realizing to stop, breathe and allow the emotions to dissipate to make a clear evaluation of the situation at hand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame others for trying to “steal my time” when in fact it is me who refuses to make a clear decision to rule out actions that are unnecessary at the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to desire to do other things than those that are relevant to what is acute as they have been “out of my reach” and thus desirable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to people “demanding” my time as I have placed a high value on time as I see myself to be running out of it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that others “demand” something of me when it is in fact me who recognizes their request to be one that I am responsible to fulfill, and that I thus demand myself to give my time to others and resist doing it because of my unwillingness to set other tasks aside.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to demand myself to do things for others because of promises I have given, doing things in the name of “honor” instead of stopping and negotiating how things could be done in such a way that I wouldn't have to compromise myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compromise myself and my life for the promises I have made and the “honor”, reputation and reliability they represent.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to avoid facing what I fear by making myself helpless through anxiety, blaming the fear for being “too much” and clinging onto others to “save me” from the fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself within and as anxiety to believe I am “small” as compared to what I fear, here separating myself from the fear, not realizing that I am the cause of the fear and thus one with and equal to the fear – I am my fear, I live as my fear – thus, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from myself by refusing to see myself as one with and equal to what I fear and escaping it through anxiety.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see myself to be “small” as compared to my fear of failure (here, failing exams and failing travel preparations) and thus become anxious as I have seen myself “unable” to influence my situation and direct myself in such a way that my fears will not come true – not realizing that as I perceive the exams and travel preparations to be “bigger than” me I make my fears come true as my focus is then not in practical solutions but in exaggeration and complaining.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not accept my situation so that I could do something about it but instead complain about it so that I could avoid carrying responsibility for my actions as my current circumstances are a consequence of my previous actions.

I commit myself to make a list of all the things I need to get done before I leave the country (and another on things I need to remember to do while traveling) and to plan out how I am going to get them done. I commit myself to do this tomorrow morning.

When and as I notice anxiety coming over me as this heavy experience pushing my body downwards, especially around the chest area, as related to thoughts that create anxiety (i.e. self-diminishing words, worst-case scenarios) – I stop and I breathe through the physical experience. I realize that I am making myself helpless to avoid facing what I fear. I remind myself there is always a practical solution to things and that it needs to be found outside of emotions. I look at myself in self-honesty and self-awareness of my movements to determine what my experience actually is and what it is that I fear – this within the realization that if I do not follow the principle of self-honesty, I will remain stuck and will not move. Once I have located the fear(s) at hand I look at how to solve them in practicality by asking myself: “What can I do about this?” I then proceed to living out these solutions.

I commit myself to realize that I am a failure only when I do not learn from my mistakes.

I commit myself to make sure that my starting point is clear when making an evaluation of a situation – that my reason for doing it is not fear but practicality.

I commit myself to no longer book any unnecessary activities until my entrance exams are over.