Usually when things are going well, I don't have much to say. The need to express myself isn't so keen then, and I'd rather submerge myself in the living of my life than take the time to write about it. But for me, writing things down seems to help make them more concrete. Not only do I spend that time focused on the thought, but the act of writing it out clearly enough for another to understand, clarifies it for myself as well. New thoughts become familiar ones that way, and these days, I'm certainly delving into unfamiliar territory, so I figure, I'd better take the time to write this out and make it real.
My counselling sessions with my Therapist are going very well. We talk about everything, from how to keep my hurt inner child from driving the bus, to whether or not a healthy ego is needed to reach spiritual enlightenment. - Much of what I held onto for years as truth has been challenged and I've had to discard it. - New thoughts are replacing old ones, road blocks are being destroyed, and my Therapist's voice is becoming part of what I now hear, as I forge new ways of thinking about myself and the world.
This week I have homework. I'm to do two things: one: I am to note whenever I hear that demeaning voice inside my head, write down what it says and then challenge it, and two: find myself a pithy little mantra that I can quickly use to challenge said thoughts in the future. The theory is that the more you think something, the more real it becomes for you. Sort of like how I got here in the first place, only this time with a positive twist.
So I was thinking about this mantra business and I thought maybe it should be something along the lines of "I am worthy" Nah, I said to myself, that's too general, ... How about "I am worthy of being loved" getting closer, but still I thought, there's something missing. And then it came to me: 'I am worth loving' and I then felt that familiar tightness in the back of my throat, and I knew I had hit the nail on the head.
You may think the two things are equal, that being worthy of love, and being worth loving is one in the same, but the first is a definite; it doesn't depend on an outside source, it's dependent on the fact that all people deserve to be loved, and they do. The latter however, well, that depends wholly on the individual doing the loving, and in my experience, in other people's eyes, I've always seem to fall short.
All though my childhood, my father told me that there was something wrong with me, that I was too deep, that I was too much, that I wasn't worth anything more than his laughter and contempt. I've always tried to be a good person - a worthy person, maybe I've been trying to prove him wrong, I don't know, but it seems that no matter how good I've been, how wide I've opened my heart, or how deeply I love, there's always a reason why those I do love leave me, and each time someone does, it confirms what my father repeatedly told me, that I'm not worth loving.
... It's taken me a long time to write this blog post, each time I come to this point I get stuck in the emotion of it, and I have to take a break to regain control. It's still with me; it's not my words, not my opinion, and now I don't even believe it's the opinion of the friends that have left me, but even though I've fought it all my life, there's still something deep inside that keeps telling me that there is something intrinsically wrong with me! I hear it in every rejection, in every slight, and every time someone I care about doesn't have time for me; I am too deep, too sensitive, too stupid, too much. I am not worth loving.
But the thing is, I've been working on these things with my Therapist, and I've been making progress. I've not been allowing myself to think that every time someone doesn't have time for me it means that they are thinking I'm not worth their time. I've been refusing to believe that every imagined slight is anything more than my being more sensitive than the other about such things. I've not been letting myself react to what I would have seen in the past as rejection, because I now know that the stories I tell myself aren't always true, and my reacting as if they are turns me into someone I don't want to be. It's tough, mindful work, but it's obviously been worth it because I haven't offended a friend since I began therapy, and I haven't heard that demeaning voice that my Therapist told me to watch out for all week. so there has to be something more, doesn't there? I mean, I know that voice is still there just waiting for me to let down my guard...
I'm always amazed at how the otherwise unrelated events in my life always seem relevant to what's happening with me at the time... a couple of days ago a friend shared this inspirational message on his Facebook page. "
she decided to see how her life would change if she dropped the assumption she needed fixing." - It made me chuckle at first. If we have to tell ourselves these things in the first place, I thought, it means that something needs to be fixed, and I wondered what my Therapist would say about this idea... Not only does it seem too simple a solution, it would put him out of a job if everyone discovered this secret. - And then I heard his words, plain as day inside of my head. - I could be poetic here and say that his voice rose up out of the muddle of my cluttered psyche, but to be honest, I simply remembered what he's been telling me, and so it went something like this:
It's not your fault. You are not what needs to be fixed. It's the programming that you were given that's faulty. It's not you.
It's not me. I'm not what needs fixing. You can not imagine how many times I've heard that there is something WRONG with ME. I grew up hearing it almost daily, and every time I've had a falling out with a friend or loved one, their telling me that its my fault, that I have a problem cuts into the core of my being so deeply I feel sometimes that there's nothing left of me but raw open wounds and half healed scars. Heck, I'm seeing a Therapist because there's something wrong with me. I believe it!
But how would my life change if I dropped the assumption that I needed fixing? What if I simply stop believing that if I lose a friend it's my fault? What would happen if I told that voice hiding inside of me waiting for me to let my guard down, waiting for me to be vulnerable so that it can break into it's chorus of 'I told you so's, that I won't listen to it anymore, that I will no longer believe what it's been telling me? Is it that simple?
Well, I guess I'm about to find out, because I now have that mantra that my Therapist suggested I find. It's a little long, and it may get shortened with time, but right now I think it's important that I address the true cause of my problems:
"Go away old man I'm not listening to you anymore. There's nothing wrong with me. The problem's been you all along."
Where it is true, that we all carry something of our past with us, that it has shaped and defined who we are; it is also true that we carry the seeds of our authentic loving selves inside of us as well. Despite the modelling of our past, we have the ability to shape and define ourselves. It is simply where we focus our attention that determines what will grow. 
