UMS. Let’s get at it

[findingme]

The good news is that this didn’t take a multi day deep dive into my subconscious. I knew what the problem was in seconds. The process of rooting out the reasons for fear and resistance has become a lot faster, and pretty much automatic as soon as I realize that’s what I’m running into.
The bad news is that this one is older and deeper than the previous ones. Before this, everything seemed to stem from the events in my life after my parents divorced. This one comes from the lead up to it.
I mentioned before that my life as a little kid was pretty idyllic before the divorce. It seemed it to me. There were of course signs that things were messed up, but I was too young to recognize them for what they were. Everything felt stable, warm, and safe. At least to my conscious mind.
My subconscious obviously knew something was up. It threw me a kind of recurring dream theme that perfectly illustrates what was about to happen, and the set of fears it would produce.
The dreams happened in all kinds of different places and involved all kinds of different things, but in all of them, I would step on the ground, and the earth would open up in a huge crack right under my foot and I’d fall in. And I always got that terrifying falling feeling that you sometimes get in dreams too. Sometimes I’d manage to jump away in time, but another crack would open under my foot wherever I landed. There was no winning, I always fell in.
And that’s what metaphorically happened. I felt secure in a world where I was safe, loved (Mom May have been faking it, but if so I didn’t know) and secure, and it was suddenly ripped out from under me. All of the bad crap that I’ve been writing about came from that one thing. It also needs to be said that not only was I dropped from a secure height, but my Dad fell with me.
The fear is this. I don’t trust stability. If something seems stable, I am afraid to commit my weight to it because I’m expecting it to split under me and drop me into something horrible. That’s why I’ve been resisting getting to the next level financially. The next step is stability, and I fear that If I make it there it will be illusory and I’ll be dropped into someplace worse than I’ve ever been. That’s why I have kept my life in a constant chaotic luminal state. If I find a solid ground, I’ll be swallowed up by the earth. That’s why I’ve chosen relationships with women who have major mental issues, they never stabilize and I won’t get comfortable enough to commit my weight. Crap, that’s why I’ve been so hesitant about a lot of things.
I’ve learned to swim in the sea of chaos that I was dropped into when I was five, and I’m good at it. I actually feel more confident handling crisis after crisis than I do where there is no crisis. What I fear is climbing out of the maelstrom, feeling comfortable for a moment, then being plunged into an even worse place by surprise.
This is the source of my self sabotage. I wouldn’t let myself get too high, and to somewhere I thought was solid. I failed out of college because graduating meant a better more secure job, and the further I climb the further there is to fall. I locked up with nervousness to prevent myself from getting into a good solid career. And I’ve been manifesting sabotages on myself to prevent getting to the next level as USLM and UMS have been pushing me to do.
This is all a load of pig poop of course. My world wasn’t stable back then because I was relying on two very unstable people to provide the stability a little kid needs. Of course everything collapsed, my solid ground was a rotting piece of plywood balanced between two sawhorses that were short a few legs apiece. I had no way of knowing that. I had no control over that, and it had absolutely nothing to do with me. Just because my parents were unstable doesn’t mean that the world is, or that any life I create for myself has to be. I’m in a much better place than they were, and if I was capable of surviving all of that chaos, I’m capable of building something secure and solid to any height I want to. I can trust any structure I build.
The other thing that was bothering me was the disorder in the house, and it’s not just that I have to get it cleaned up before I can move forward. My mind has become a lot more orderly. I see that my external environment matches the chaos that my mind used to be, not what it is now, and that causes me stress.

I could relate to a lot of this thinking. A lot. Like those things in my life have been "facts" that I used every day to plot out my steps. And yes, self-sabotage was its entire aim.

I feel like I'm revisiting a spot I experienced while doing UD solo. It was the awakening that my life was completely built on a lie of who I was, and a bit of grieving followed. I felt like I was a kid losing his whole reality, his entire view of what was normal. It pissed me off originally, and truthfully, it scares the s*** out of me now. I'm still practicing some avoidance of this--but I am AWARE of it, which is a huge help. I'd bury and deny it automatically before. Like you, it's based in beliefs that "I can't do this".

And I just realized while writing that fear has kept me there. I thought it this eternal monster, and this has and had been my norm. But that's where I am. I have written and deleted this sentence now about 3 times--since my "norm" is constantly changing for the better. Fears don't have the same power. I'll think of one, but 3 seconds later, when I look at it, it withdraws some. This is major living adjustment for me . I'm looking at a fear right now, and it's not looking me in the eyes, its demeanor has changed to doubt, and it's not moving.

Thank you for your posts Paul. They are often quite clearly stated, I can relate, and taking some time to see your POV has helped me see mine. Thanks for your writings