Mantra

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."

loneliness

Sometimes, like tonight, I think there will never be an end to this loneliness that I feel, that the close connection with another that I so crave will always elude me.

Free and easy vs committed friendship

I just woke up, right up from a dead sleep, or what I thought was one, to this thought: "I've got free and easy up the ying-yang, what am I doing looking to have more of that in my life?"

No offense to anyone I've been talking to recently about the subject; I do love you and appreciate your friendships very much, but my problem isn't that I need more free and easy. I've got over one hundred friends on Facebook, and no offense to any of them either; I think it's great that we can connect the way we do. There's a certain intimacy to the availability of the communication we share, something I think we all crave, but I want and need something more in my life as well, at least from a specific few.

The thing is, I make a commitment in my heart to the friends that I love, whether you are online or not, and whether I tell you or not, chances are that I have, I promise you that I will be there for you however I can, and it's not just a responsibility to me, it's a joy and a pleasure.

I'm not a free and easy come and go friend; I am a committed friend. I promise you that I will do the best I can to provide you with the things that you need from our friendship, and no matter what happens in my life, even if it's a problem between the two of us, I make certain that you know that you are a priority of mine.

No offense meant to anyone, but more free and easy is not what I need right now. I need friends that won't disappear out of my life because the important things in their life demand their attention. I need friends that want me to know that I am an important part of their life just like those other things, and I need friends that have no problem telling me this. This is what's lacking in my life, and I don't believe there is something wrong with me because I need theses thing. I think everyone does.

Please don't get me wrong, I so very much appreciate the friendships and connections I have made here online. I met my wife on a newsgroup, so I know that real and devoted friendships can happen here. We are all 'real' people after all. But, - and I'm not certain if its a sign of the times or if its specific to the online communities, from where I sit there doesn't seem to be a lot of commitment made here. Again no disrespect meant, but how can you tell someone that they are a real friend if you can't give them something of that commitment, and how can someone believe they are important to you when everything in your concrete life takes precedence over them?
My reason for writing this is not to say that my online friendships aren't good enough, (believe me, somedays I don't know what I'd do without you), but to confirm, to myself more than anyone else, that I should be able to expect a higher level of commitment from some.

If that's not you, please don't be offended by this post, but I need to put my energy into finding and making those friendships, because right now, that's what's lacking in my life, and I deserve to have it.

Sabotage, or foreword thinking?

I'm wondering if I reveal so much about myself at the beginning, so that I don't have to suffer the rejection later, when my heart is involved.

Progress

So my Therapist tells me that my sensitivity, the breadth and depth of the emotions I feel is part of my personality. The fact that I feel things deeply is who I am, and that is not going to change no matter how much therapy I undergo.

Some, those who exist in a very limited range of emotions, may think that what I feel extends beyond the limits of control,  but I have never crossed the lines into impulsive or reckless behaviour, and I have never, not since I started taking anti depressants three years ago, sunk into despair enough to withdraw from the world.  If I were to draw you a diagram of the range of emotions I feel, I think it would be almost twice as wide and with twice as much oscillation than that of the average person.

But because I am different from the norm, I shouldn't have to apologize to anyone for it. And no one has the right to tell me that I have to change how I am to fit into their idea of what they think is the proper way to behave, or tell me that I am not being responsible if I give myself permission to feel the way I do or express those feelings.  I feel things deeply and this is part of who I am; it is my nature, and basically what you see is what you get. I will never again let anyone tell me that there is something wrong with me because I am different from them...

But having said that, I have felt many strong emotions because my thoughts have mislead me, and  I have been so preoccupied with always telling the truth, I didn't take the time to consider how very subjective my truth can be, to the point where it actually becomes a falsehood.

 Grant it, I do realize that we all see things though our own eyes, and all truths are to a certain degree, subjective, but what I didn't realize was how profoundly my past could colour how I interpret the world around me. So for a very long time I've been reacting to these misleading stories of mine as if they were the truth and that I had no other choice but to tell it.

I can best describe the discontinuity between what is real, and the stories I've been telling myself, by describing something that happened last week:   A friend of mine is recovering from an operation. She is experiencing a lot of pain and so her stress tolerance is  low. After a misunderstanding between her and I, and a confrontation with another, she told me that it was all too much for her and that she was going to take a break from being online.  I agreed that it was a good idea; I didn't like seeing her stressed like that when she should be resting and healing, and I didn't like it that I was partly to blame.  So I told her that she should take care of herself, and that I would use the time to practice becoming aware of when it was that I start thinking that she (or any friend) is not communicating with me because she (or they), want to back out of our friendship. (If you have been reading my blog, and I'm not sure anyone really has, except maybe a bunch of bots in Russia, you'll know that I've been seeing a Therapist because I've been having a problem with maintaining close friendships, and it became quite obvious to me that my reactions to what I falsely see as signs that those I love are leaving me, is the reason for this.)

So like I was saying, I was happy to let my friend disappear out of my awareness for a time, knowing that she was doing so because it was something she needed to do. I was completely aware that her  reasons for this were because of her low tolerance to stress, and that it was a good idea for her to be calm and quiet so that she could concentrate on her recovery, and I agreed whole-heartedly, wanting nothing more than for her to get well and strong again.  But not more then twenty minutes had passed since I had talked to her about it, that I started thinking that I wasn't good enough to be in her life. ... If I was,  she would want to remain in contact with me because doing so would help her through this difficult time. ... Not twenty minutes, and the doubt inside of me started to eat away at my understanding and resolve to be a good friend.

The idea that I wasn't good enough didn't come from her; she didn't say a word to imply it.  And it really didn't come from me either; it came from my past. My father had planted that thought into me, programmed me with idea that I wasn't worthy of his attention, that I was contemptible, that I was too deep, too much, too stupid, something to be scorned and laughed at, not loved...  (breathe...) ... and so whenever I up the ante in a friendship, I start believing that those I've come to care about will think these things of me, and I see the signs of this subjective truth every time there's an ebb in a close friendship, every time the connection is stretched, every time I am left alone.

The change over from rational, understanding adult, to anxious and self-absorbed child has in the past happened so quickly, so seamlessly, that I've been unaware of the change. Usually the story continues with my feeling so shameful of my unworthiness that the only way I can cope with it is to defend myself against the person who I think is seeing me as unworthy - the friend who I think is trying to back away. (flight or fight response) I'd stew on it for what seems like a very long time, (in reality only a few short hours, or a three quarters of a day at the most) and then confront them with their insult, rejection, disrespect, - however it is that I am interpreting it at the time.  And they, unaware of the story that's been playing out in my head, are confused and hurt by my accusations. They object, and I immediately come back into my adult self,  and in turn, I feel shameful that I treated them so terribly, adding yet another layer to my unworthiness.

But this time, because I've been talking for a couple of weeks to my Therapist about these alternate realities and because I am now seeing them for the false truths that they really are, I caught the moment where the change over from rational understanding adult to anxious child was about to occur, and I stopped it from happening.  I admit, there was a bit of a back and forth, a struggle to determine who was going to drive the bus, but ultimately, the adult won.

My Therapist thought this was wonderful news, but I need it to somehow become part of my reality outside of his office for it to be real.  ... I told my partner, but I don't think she's into this psychology stuff enough to realize how big of a moment this is. The fact that I was able to stop that old tape from playing again gives me hope that I will be able to control this thing that I do, and once and for all, get my fathers voice out of my head!

I need to share this achievement with someone, and for some reason writing it down makes it more concrete for me.  ... Whoever you are, and if you are anyone at all, thank you for reading. I really appreciate thinking that I have someone to share this good news with.