UMS. Let’s get at it

[Paul1131]

It's a damned good thing I'm not afraid to try something and fail publicly! Lol

I don’t think I will be for much longer either.  It has improved a lot.  But there is still a component of fear that I think degrades my performance in those situations.  When I was able to do it, but I almost Physically felt like there was someone pulling me backwards while I walked in, as well as my stomach dropping out and all kinds of not so fun stuff.  
Now, I don’t feel any of that.  All that’s left is a small sense of hesitancy and awkwardness.

[Paul1131]

ME: I just showed the thing on my love life to a close friend who is a trained counselor and probably the most insightful person I know. She said that I finally see almost all of it, but that I needed to take one more step back to see it all. With very little prompting I saw it. All of the fears, all of the self lies, and all of the choices I made were serving a blueprint that I picked up very early in my development.
My parents divorced when I was five or so. I remember that it was finalized and Dad moved out during the beginning of kindergarten. I didn’t pick up on it consciously at the time, but mom had been fairly subtly mistreating my father for years before that (before I was born). And she is very good at mistreatment. She has a way of finding the exact right words to say to cause psychological damage while looking like she was innocent. My father is a good man (yes, even with how he treated me after this). He always plays things straight, and is very loving. He didn’t have a chance against her, or a real clue as to what was happening.
He’s told me stuff throughout the years that help me fill in the picture. She was using him to get what she wanted in life. She wanted a child (obviously she got one), but she wouldn’t let him touch her after she got pregnant. She had what she wanted though that didn’t stop her from having at least two affairs. She wanted a house in the country, he bought her one. She wanted to go to grad school, he paid for it. All while she demeaned him, and made him feel like he was a monster who was somehow abusing HER.
This all happened when I was between the ages of three and six when we are hard wired to see our fathers as the ideal men who we want to be like, our mothers as ideal women, and their relationship as “how it’s supposed to be”. Had it happened earlier or later, it might not have had the same effect on me.
Well, as soon as my father got done paying off her last semester of grad school, Mom filed for divorce. Dad got fired the same month he moved out. He was no longer useful to her, so she got rid of him.
Dad never got over it. I could tell that from that day to this, he was on one level still in love with her. And he’d also just lost his career, so he also thought of himself as a loser from then on. (Actually, I think the roots of two of my major problems lie in that event)
Here’s what that did to me. I was still in the hero worship of father phase, and I might have gotten stuck there for awhile because he needed me to (I thought). And I watched him continue to be in love with my mother who continued to play control games with him throughout my childhood. Dad never seriously dated again and openly said that the relationship failed because there was something wrong with him. Like he wasn’t good enough for Mom and it was his fault.
Dad had some of the same problems that I do. His view on dating was also to hold on to any woman who would have him. because he felt unworthy or something.
Don’t think I’m blaming my parents here. I’ve been an adult for a long time. It’s my mind, and everything that happens in it is entirely my responsibility.
So the entire story of my love life was about me trying to re enact my parent’s relationship and subconsciously be like my father. All the fears and lies to myself guided me along that path. Every girl I got attached to may not have been much like my mother, (I at least figured out to avoid that) but she played part of the same role in the repeating drama. That’s it. That’s why my love life was dysfunctional from top to bottom.
For the set of loops that I’m currently listening to, the goal is to get at the heart of why I have prevented myself from succeeding much above the bottom rung in academic, professional, and financial matters. I’ve been trying, and gained some understanding, but it’s like I hit a concrete wall at some point. The understanding is purely intellectual, and so far hasn’t rang true like that stuff on my love life. I expect that once that is exposed to daylight I will start to ROCK AND EFFING ROLL on executing the main thrust of the sub.

EDIT: Oh, and why did my subconscious fight so hard against me deviating from the blueprint? When this one hit me I thought that it cannot be this simple. Primal fear of the unknown. That blueprint that I had accepted unconsciously in my childhood was the map that showed me how to be a man in a relationship and how a relationship was supposed to work. I know how it’s supposed to work, how it’s supposed to end, and how that’s supposed to feel. While it sucks, a very deep part of me sees it as wandering away from the campfire into the woods that might be full of Sabre Tooth Tigers. And so it fights really hard, and layers self lie upon self lie in order to keep me with the devil I know because it’s terrified of forging a new path off the map. It’s a really deep primal terror too.
It’s also complete and utter HORSE HOCKEY! This part of the mind developed to keep our ancestors from being eaten or falling off a cliff in the dark. For whatever reason, it’s being applied to modern first world problems. The worst thing that could happen from me breaking that pattern is I find a new and different type of bad relationship to have. SMOKE.

[Shannon]

Congratulations. You're making great progress.

[Paul1131]

Congratulations.  You're making great progress.

Thanks, and thank you for making it possible.  

ME:  I woke up this morning with a pretty severe sub hangover.  No pain, but it almost felt like a real hangover.  It didn’t last long though.  At work I noticed that my mind felt absolutely clear.  I’m functioning normally, but there isn’t any excessive mental chatter going on.  I’m not doing much, but I don’t feel bored.  I think that my subconscious is using up a lot of the processing power on whatever it’s working on right now.
I’m still consciously probing at the reasons for my fear of success because that’s the one that makes me the most curious.  I’m getting some logical answers, but it still feels like I’m scratching at a wall in my mind.  The thing with my love life happened with a tremendous moment of clairty.  There was a sudden feeling of TRUTH associated with it, and a kind of feeling of release or relief as I put it into words so that I could look and see it laid out like that.  I think that those issues are done with after that happened.
Thinking and writing about it did help to speed up the process though so I’m going to give it a try.  I suspect that even if I get the answer correct, it needs to happen on a different level before it’s TrueType internalized, and thus the associated fear and issues are dealt with.  It’s that EURIKA feeling and sudden crystal clear picture that lets me know that my subconscious has really solved something under the direction of FRM.  
So why TflamingF have I always held myself back from achieving anywhere near the level of success in just about anything that I am capable of.  I know that I’m afraid of it for some reason, but that’s a really stupid thing to be afraid of.  I have some ideas, and I’ll write them out.  What I’m mostly doing is trying to spur on whatever is digging at that wall in my head.  So far, one insight plus a lot of thought has lead to the next insight.
The short version is that it is the same problem as with my love life.  The blueprint on how to be a man that I received starting with the time my parents divorced and he got fired precludes major success.  I could be off base or only seeing part of the picture here, but it makes sense in light of what I found before.  
Here’s how that has looked:  I was a very smart kid born to two very smart parents, but throughout school and all the way to now, my achievements have barely risen to mediocrity let alone above it, and often were flat out abysmal.  It was kind of like being a muscle car with a supercharged 427 in it, and a governor set to forty MPH.  It still seems like that sometimes.  I had unlimited potential, but never got anything going.  I had the ability to be at the top of my class from kindergarten onwards, but I chose not to.
This started in kindergarten which is when the divorce happened I just didn’t do the work, and no amount of coaxing or cajoling from the teachers or my parents could make me.  Now, it’s not like I didn’t understand what was being taught, I did, I just didn’t do the busy work.  I honestly don’t remember what I was thinking or feeling during this time period (and I’m talking Kintergarten through grade 10 here) that seems to be what’s behind the wall. 
I was also “weird” smarter than most, and well versed in various intellectual subjects that were probably off putting to other kids.  My Dad was a former soldier and taught me a lot about that, and where other kids watched Seseme Street, I watched Cosmos and things like that with my parents.  I understood the stuff too.  I had no qualms about speaking my mind either.  The teachers and the principal knew exactly what I thought.  They didn’t like that.  
I found myself getting into more and more trouble for things that I didn’t think I should be in trouble for, and the other kids singled me out as the one to pick on.  At some point I started seeing the school staff and most of the other kids as being against me.  As the enemy (ok, maybe I Am starting to remember what I was thinking). I started having violent fantasies (STOP before you report me to the FBI, I had the fantasies, but the thought of actually doing anything horrible never crossed my mind).  I increasingly fell into a mindset where I thought everyone was out to get me.  
This was a self lie of course, but it lead me to a reason for my aversion to anything that would lead me to academic success.  That is that if “the enemy” was trying to make me do things, then those things (you know, like homework and stuff) must be bad, so I MUST RESIST.  It was the only thing I had the power to do to fight back against “the enemy” (who I was lying to myself about).  This was an actual conscious thought pattern (I was a little kid OK) that became my day to day mental reality.  
As I got older and more sophisticated, I stopped thinking of it so directly, and it faded from my mind as new mental realities took over, but it was still there.  And so was the aversion to doing anything that would lead me to success in school or much of anything else.  Since my parents were pushing me to do what “the enemy” wanted, I also started seeing them as “the enemy”.  I also idolized my dad, so I could only half see him that way.  
My parents tried to help.  My father was terrified for my future, and remember he was severely mentally broken and had the emotional control of a two year old.  Being terrified did not lead to a good reaction.  He yelled, he screamed, he insulted, he told me that I wasn’t going to amount to crap if I didn’t change. That wasn’t helpful apparently ye olde subconscious doesn’t hear the if you don’t part, and just ran with the you aren’t going to amount to crap part.  Since I loved and idolized my Dad, it penetrated.  Matter of fact, everyone around me was telling me that I wouldn’t amount to crap, and that I was a piece of crap, stupid, a loser, ect.  Im not the one who originally told that lie, but I am still responsible for telling it to myself over and over again for thirty some odd years.  
That helped to add another layer explanation for my failures.  It was also a lie.  That I was a worthless piece of crap loser who would never amount to anything of course.  My mother of course also had her own contributions to make with her more subtle, surgical way of cutting me down.
Mom also took me to a long string of child psychologists.  None of whom did I cooperate with, because I saw them as “the enemy”.  
By the middle of eighth grade, I had been failing just about everything for years.  Oddly, while I failed most classes I got Near perfect scores on almost every test.  I just did zero homework.  (Aside:Why in the ;$king ;$ does it matter if I do the busy work when I clearly had a good grasp of the subject). 
They sent me to a special school for behavior problems for the last half of eighth grade.  It was horrible, and since I wasn’t a real behavior problem, I had a rougher time than anyone else. 
Here’s where fear actually did something good for me.  What I had to get out relatively quickly was to have perfect behavior and as close as possible to perfect grades.  I did that despite going to school in a war zone.  My performance there was entirely motivated by fear and a desire to escape from that hellhole, but it showed me that I was capable of doing it, and that it was necessary to go along just enough that something horrible doesn’t happen to you.  This long term traumatic experience may be a big contributor to my fear of failure as well.  After that not only did I fear (at this point I didn’t understand it as fear) doing things that made me successful, but I also feared failing too badly.  At first it was because I was afraid of going back there, but it did become a subconscious fear as well.  
Shortly after I got out of there I moved to the other school.  I did much better there and was much happier.  I also found something I excelled at.  I wrote for the school newspaper for three years, and I had two columns and a few articles in every issue.  I loved it, and many other people loved reading it.  My Junior year I was invited to write for the teen section in our metropolitan area’s big newspaper.  This was one of the best feeling times of my life.  I was good at something, I was getting decent grades, and I had found a profession that I was excited about getting the education for and getting into.  The gig with the newspaper could well have lead me to a scholarship to one of the best journalism schools in the country.  If I had actually done it.  other schools who had done the same assignment.  Every month (or was it week, I don’t remember) I would get what they wanted written on, look at it, think I should do it constantly and then it off until it was too late.  I actually felt a pull away from doing it every time I thought about it.  I didn’t think about it as fear, I had zero understanding of why I did this, but every time I decided not to take that wonderful opportunity for success that I’d earned, and was very much good enough to capitalize on.  
My mother had an explanation for me.  I was lazy.  This time I believed her, and added another lie onto the layer cake.  So now I was a lazy incompetent piece of crap in my own mind, though the incompetent piece of crap part had been somewhat shoved down into my subconscious.  I began to act accordingly.  Though that didn’t stop me from graduating with decent grades and getting into a decent journalism program.
It started out well.  I went to my classes and didn’t find any of them that hard.  When the midterm grades for the first semester came out I was doing awesome.  It felt good so of course I got involved with a social group who had all kinds of fun and drama, and I stopped going to class.  Once again, every time I knew i should do something, I decided not to.  One skip became a week of skips became flunking out.  
After that I moved home, worked my butt off at two jobs, and earned almost straight As at a community college.  This should have conclusively disproven the laziness hypothesis as well as the incompetent piece of crap hypothesis.  But they remained there under the surface because I didn’t do anything about them.
Then I went to another college out of state.  I did pretty well there too.  I didn’t graduate though.  I decided to quit and take the certification training for the field of work I’ve been trying to get into for many years.  I did very well at the training, and got a related job, but at first I was afraid to try to get hired, and when I started I did horribly on the interviews.  I eventually got the easiest to get job that kept my certification good, and kept trying and trying to get where I really wanted to be. I just never got there.  That is until I tried FYPJ.  
That experience was kind of like having a door that you’ve been pushing on with all your might for a long time suddenly fall open.  I fell flat on my face.  It turned out that I had a very poor sense of direction which was a deal killer in this job.  What was actually happening?  My subconscious was going oooohhhh crap!  We just succeeded and invalidated all of those lies that we hold true about ourselves!  And it caused my mind to vapor lock and not let me pick up a skill that I was able to develop quite easily afterwards.  That way it put itself back into a spot it finds comfortable.  I consciously felt some of this happen.  I felt very in over my head as it began, and found myself wishing for something comfortable and boring.  Matter of fact, I may have manifested my current job.
The same thing happened again a year and a half later, though that job was kind of a bad scene to begin with.
That brings me up to date.  I have a job that’s really nothing to be proud of, but just paid the bills.  Not too much success, but not a complete failure.  

This fear and set of lies has cost me more than the last one. I have chosen not to have the spectacular life that I had the innate ability to have because of this one.  Several different versions of it.  I could be a millionaire, a famous journalist, or a hero right now if I had not let this implant itself into my head.  Well, I’m done with it.  I can still be any of those things, I may just be a bet later than expected getting there.

Edit: Guess I was wrong in the beginning. Once I started writing the information flowed right out of my subconscious.

[Paul1131]

One more quick thought came up. When I was a correctional officer I was in the habit of asking inmates why they were there shortly before they left. It was an amazingly good way to gauge wether or not we’d be seeing them again in the near future. If the statement began with because I, we would most likely never see them again. If there were any other word after the because, they’d be back within a year or two.
Until now I had neglected to apply that thinking to myself.

[Have at ye]

That's some serious work you're doing there! Good on you.

[Paul1131]

That's some serious work you're doing there! Good on you.

Thanks brother.  It’s long overdue.

[Shannon]

It's too bad nobody bothers to try to teach that sort of thing in some way while they are in prison.

[Paul1131]

It's too bad nobody bothers to try to teach that sort of thing in some way while they are in prison.

They do.  It’s not really a lack of water, it’s that so many horses say they aren’t thirsty.

[Shannon]

It's too bad nobody bothers to try to teach that sort of thing in some way while they are in prison.

They do.  It’s not really a lack of water, it’s that so many horses say they aren’t thirsty.

There is teaching, and then there is teaching.  They are not using methods that work, or not work as well as they could. But you do have a point.

[findingme]

Yeah, I worked in a prison too for a couple of years, and openly admitting liking growth and learning was akin to admitting one was weak. Prison is all about survival, from the least to the greatest in there.

I work with a few former inmates, as my company will hire felons. I'm realizing that time in prison really affects people long term. The habits of survival are not easily dropped when they're out, even decades later.

[Paul1131]

Yeah, I worked in a prison too for a couple of years, and openly admitting liking growth and learning was akin to admitting one was weak.  Prison is all about survival, from the least to the greatest in there.

I work with a few former inmates, as my company will hire felons.  I'm realizing that time in prison really affects people long term.  The habits of survival are not easily dropped when they're out, even decades later.

Well congrats on doing the job and congrats on getting out of it Brother.  
The one thing that we need to do that we really don’t do is separate the ones who have a chance at learning and changing from the ones who are not going to and keeping them separate.  Exposure to the ones who choose a criminal lifestyle and revel in it is what makes the other ones adopt the survival habits.  The system’s refusal to give up on the hard cases is the reason that so many are not helped.

[findingme]

Yeah. I met both types. Those who liked the lifestyle were scary, and now I can say--very obviously misinformed. I did find a few good ones in there, and they've stuck with me. I worked with young men, ages 16-23, and while doing my post in the isolation ward one night, one young guy asked to talk with me. He was getting out of prison in a day or 2, and he said he'd actually trusted me, and he shared some feelings about getting out. As long as I'd known him, I knew him to have a soft heart, and it showed in that conversation. It's always safe to be aware and cautious in there, but I knew this guy didn't belong there, showing by his desire and day-to-day choices. It's the guys who enjoy this consequence who are scary individuals, to me.

[Paul1131]

ME: I woke up with what felt like a sub hangover again today. Whatever I did to extract the information I wrote last night took energy. A lot of it. I felt exhausted until I started to get ready for work. Then I realized that my mind felt absolutely clear. It was a very visceral sensation. My thoughts were my own, and there was a distinct lack of noise and pressure that I hadn’t really realized was there. It’s silent and peaceful in my head for the first time I can remember. Comparing my mind even a few months ago to what I woke up to this morning is like comparing the inside of a gaudy Vargas casino to a mountaintop under a clear starry night sky. The sense hasn’t gone away either. As I go about my day I still have it, though it’s not as pronounced.
For the last couple of days, I’ve had an increasing sense of my mind as a physical place that I can wonder around in. I felt the “wall” where the things about my fear of success hid behind, and it felt a little tender. Apparently I had to use a mental breaching charge to get through that sucker. Now though, where I sensed horrible things behind it, there is more peaceful emptiness.
When I came back to focusing on my body, I very clearly felt my energy field extending a few feet away from my skin. I was swimming in a soup of highly charged energy. It also felt very clean and pure. The word that came to mind was “powerful”. My subconscious voice told me “you are about to set the world on fire with this. It also said at some point “this is the last phase, you are almost through.