Day 403: Shedding the spikes

29052014

2011 - http://efana.deviantart.com/art/Spikes-30DC-258571057

After three days of accumulating self-judgement through various points, I came to a culmination point where I stopped and started to trace back those three days worth of chain reactions. After walking through each point in detail I realized that I had clenched myself into a state, where because I was afraid of judgement I took upon a defensive stance to protect myself from external judgement.

What I realized today as I was walking through these experiences was that the defensive state that had been triggered is a remnant of the armour I have built around myself throughout my life. Four years ago a person told me I reminded him of a porcupine, because it was as if I was putting up spikes and needles to fend off people. From his words I realized that I was in fact aggressively shutting everyone out and I have been walking through this porcupine identity ever since. Today as I thought of this concept of an armour I realized that in order to protect myself from external judgement and rejection I have tensed myself up, not realizing that the judgement is not in fact coming from outside of me but from within – and that the armour has not been keeping judgement out but rather functioned as a lid to keep it in.

According to current leading theories in development psychology when a child is born he/she doesn't yet have an inner “voice” to direct his/her behavior. This voice is in fact internalized from the voices, commands and guidance of the people who the child has in his/her environment when growing up. This development happens mostly within the first few years of a child's life, but major life events may also affect it later on.

The “inner voice” I have constructed – meaning the thoughts, sounds, images, beliefs and reactions that direct my behavior – has become one of judgement, guilt, shame, demands, perfectionism and cruelty. This has been the result of my family environment (where teaching a child was often done by pointing out what was wrong through one's own reaction of anger, frustration, weariness, irritation and/or aggression), school environment (where teaching was based on validation) and social environment (where kids exerted their mindfucks on each other with no support or interventions from adults).

My back, shoulders and neck have been very tense, stuck and painful for at least the past few years, and lately I have been focusing on figuring out the cause for the remaining areas of tension, which are mainly in the other side of my my upper back and both shoulders. I realized today that those are the last of my porcupine spikes – the armor I have not yet shed. They are held in place by my patterns of self-judgement, all the small points where I jab myself mentally and believe it. The key here to releasing the remnants of my spikes is to stop with each point of self-judgement I come across, to realize it is not valid and to correct my line of thinking – to rewrite the lines of code in my mind. For example, there have been several moments within the past few days where I have judged myself for waking up “too late”. This is where I need to walk through my definitions of “late” and “early” and to realize that my definitions, which I base my judgement on, are quite possibly not valid at all. These definitions, for example, come directly from my family without me really stopping to consider what I find most commonsensical, and the judgements are even spoken in my mind with the voice of my mother/father/sister. Thus, I need to evaluate my life and the reality on my own and redefine what is practical in my living.

Because my spiky defensiveness quite frightened me when I looked at my behavior, I went looking for softness today through swimming and meditation. It was interesting to see how after a tiring workout all of my muscles were really tender and soft, except for these tension areas in my back/shoulders. I realized that once I stop judging myself, the need to defend myself will also vanish. I just need to pick up the lid, set it aside, take the points out one at a time, discuss with them until I release them and repeat until I'm empty of all judgement. The spikes are not only pointing outwards, but also inwards.

Day 402: Back stabbing

19052014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 401: Trust issues

15052014

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

Day 400: Fear of being happy

06052014

I realized today that I am afraid of being happy. I was talking to a friend and trying to explain how I have experienced myself and life lately, and when it came down to saying “I have simply been happy” I noticed a resentment towards making a statement like that. To break the moment down: there was an impulse/idea to express myself through the word “happy” - I reacted to the word with resentment – a push to say the words despite the resentment – followed by the fear of having made a mistake – followed by thoughts along the lines of “what does he think of me now”, “did I screw it up”.

When I stopped to think about this experience I realized that because I have grown used to thinking of life in polarities – the good and the bad – I am constantly both afraid of being unhappy (because it is unpleasant) and happy (because it always leads to unhappiness, which is again unpleasant). Because I have seen how the ups and downs of living life in autopilot always lead to each other, I have created an ideal and a desire to find the in-between, the equilibrium – a state of balance that would be neither here nor there. I realized that because of this goal I am afraid of any experience that is NOT bad (unpleasant), because I interpret them to be in the “good” end of the spectrum (red flag - “you're gonna crash!”, “this is not going to last!”), when in fact this might not be the case.

In my experience there are three ways to position oneself towards life and the experience thereof. One can either filter one's experience through the negative (pessimism, cynicism) or through the positive (optimism, hope) – or one can do neither, and simply take the reality in as it is (realism, pragmatism). I do not mean to place these three in any order, and I do not claim that the latter is the “best” way to live life – I have simply found through my own experience that it is usually the most real, genuine or honest way of living, and I do prefer truth over happiness, as focusing on the truth usually leads to solutions whereas focusing on happiness usually leads to compromises.

The dilemma that bothers me here is that what I have defined as the in-between/equilibrium is actually enjoyable – just not in the same way as the positive polarity. I interpret myself enjoying life as “bad” because I believe I should not be enjoying myself, that enjoyment is bad because if I enjoy myself I must be off-balance. This is a misunderstanding I need to correct. There is a clear difference between enjoyment and having my head in the clouds, so to speak – as well as there's a difference in experiencing pain and suffering. The equilibrium does not mean that I should not be experiencing anything at all, but that I simply experience the things I come across without holding onto them, without transforming them into mental scenarios, into rocks that I load onto my back, and instead allowing them to just flow through me as space flows through time. Perhaps to be in balance is to know how to bring myself down from the clouds as well as to pick myself up from the ditch.

I realize that the experience I now labeled as “happiness” has not been just pure enjoyment but that I have slightly gone to the positive end, and what I need to realize is that IT'S ALRIGHT – I don't need to panic, lol - “oh fuck, I'm gonna crash now?!” - lol – no, what I need to do now is simply to land gracefully from the heights. I can trust myself to handle myself well enough to not plummet back down.

And to be honest, I am not entirely sure how much of my happiness experience has been balanced and how much of it has been hype, precisely because of the resentment. I am probably looking at my enjoyable experiences through the resentment filter and seeing “bad” in them even though there would actually be none (or very little).

This dilemma of what kind of enjoyment is OK and what is not calls for an experiment:

• I commit myself to allow myself to enjoy life and self-expression without guilt.
• I commit myself to allow myself to use the word “happy” to express myself (because when I observe myself it is clear that I am living this word at the moment – no point in suppressing myself).
• I commit myself to observe and take note of any and all energetic sensations I experience in order to map out my happiness experience.
• I commit myself to not suppress any of the energetic sensations (feelings) I experience, but to instead live through them within and as breath.

Day 399: Of existence and will

29042014

http://salamanderking.deviantart.com/art/Ghost-170997222

Today a chain of events, triggers and reactions led to me realizing that despite the fact that I tell myself that I am of the same value and worth as every other bit and piece of life, I do not actually believe it. I kind of entered a new level of self-honesty, where I finally admitted to myself that my mantras do not work: despite the knowledge of how things are, I do not live out or live as that knowledge.

I asked myself why I crave for appreciation, acceptance and affection from others, as the perceived lack of them triggered a reaction in me. I realized how it all – again – comes down to the phrase “I'm not (good) enough”, the one thing I keep on returning to in every moment of crisis. I realize that the issue is not that others take me for granted or don't appreciate me, but the fact that I allow the thoughts, actions and feelings/emotions of others to define myself, my value and my worth. On a rational level I know that my value is unchangeable, stable, in precise unity with everything else – but I don't feel it. I don't believe it. I am not living as these words. How can I be of value when I don't live as if I did? What is worthwhile living and am I doing any of it at all? Would I find value in myself through actions? If so, what kind of actions would those be? How do I need to live to live as if I mattered? And yet, how do I live so that I am of value despite my actions, so that I don't act just for the sake of salvation?

Apart from this existential crisis, which raised some really valid questions, I also came across one of my old behavioral patterns. I have lived a life of seclusion because whenever I have wanted myself to not be seen, I have pushed people away from me. I realize my wish to hide is to cover myself from my own eyes, so that I wouldn't be exposed to myself, and thus I have refused the approaches of others as I have not been willing to embrace myself as I am. I had an inner dialogue with myself and an imagined person in my mind, where I was explaining this to the other and they responded:

“You're pretty fucked up, aren't you?”

“We're all fucked up to some extent, that's nothing special. But I am tired of being broken. I want to be whole. I choose to want to be whole. I know I can be. I could choose otherwise, but my will is to mend myself. I choose to not stay broken.”

I see how this behavioral pattern of pushing people away and escaping them is still a part of me, and today I felt pity towards myself for it, as I saw how I cause all of my own misfortune by following the same routes over and over again. But I also realized that pity will only give me an excuse to not change as I define myself through it. “Poor pitiful me, this is who I am.” NO. I have a choice, and I have it right here. The past cannot be changed, but most of its effects can be mended, and so I choose to do. I refuse to be a victim of myself.

What I need to learn is to let people see me – to embrace the exposure as it is a gift and a lesson. Self-forgiveness will help me work my way there, and I will continue with it from here.

Day 398: Learning to embrace experiences

07042014

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 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.