UMS. Let’s get at it

[findingme]

That's good to hear. It gives me hope that even in long term relationships some choose to change to help the other person, and themselves. Thanks for sharing this Paul.

[Paul1131]

That's good to hear.    It gives me hope that even in long term relationships some choose to change to help the other person, and themselves.  Thanks for sharing this Paul.

FRM seems to be doing a pretty good job on her too.  She was in a very fearful place not too long ago.  Now she’s doing a lot better.  I’m not sure she realizes it.

[Paul1131]

ME: I had a dream this afternoon, it was really weird and it involved the forum so I think that whatever it’s pointing to relates to whatever the sub is doing to me.
A member to the forum (no one who actually exists) showed up at my place of work. It was a man, and he started talking about how he likes the stuff I’ve written and how he feels a deep connection to me. I asked him how he’d tracked me down. He said he’d found me through YouTube. I’m not sure how that relates to anything, but it made sense in the dream.
The dude was really being touchy with me. I kept backing away and trying to make it clear that I wasn’t comfortable with that without outright stating it. That didn’t work, and from that and what he was saying, it became clear that he was trying to start a romantic/sexual relationship with me. He wasn’t just asking either, he thought he was going to somehow make it happen. He kept getting pushier, and I shoved him away. He got extremely angry. I don’t remember exactly what he yelled at me, but the jest of it is that he felt entitled to some kind of relationship because he felt so strongly about it, and had somehow convinced himself that it was “meant to be”. He was ticked off that I was denying him something that he was “supposed to get”. He then pulled out a retractable baton and looked like he was going to beat me with it. I pulled mine out and knocked it out of his hand. He looked like he was going to charge me, and I wanted to end it so I put my hand on my gun (I carry one at work). I think he backed off at that point, but I woke up shortly after.

I’m looking for other people’s takes on this, but here’s what I think was going on with this. I’ve had some problems setting boundaries in the past. I have given money, energy, the ability to live in my space, and other parts of myself because people felt strongly that they were entitled to them.
The best example of this was my fourth girlfriend. I met her through my second girlfriend shortly after she broke up with me. She decided that she was my soulmate pretty much instantly, and spent the next two or three years acting like we were in a relationship. She lived a few hundred miles away from me, but she came to visit any time she could. At first, I was living in a college town, and she was nominally there to visit ex #2. However they always ended up at my place. And she always tried to sleep with me. I didn’t let it happen, and she acted hurt about it. She got extremely jealous and acted hurt when I so much showed a flicker of interest in any other girl. I was still obsessed with ex #2 so she was getting nowhere.
After I flunked out and moved home, she would call all the time, and a couple of times, she spontaneously showed up on the doorstep, my Mom’s doorstep, without asking me or telling me that she was coming. She felt that she was entitled to a very close, intimate relationship with me and acted like it was hers by right.
Once I moved halfway across the country to go back to school, she kept contact and one day, after I had broken up with ex #3 and was upset about it, she announced that she was coming out. She stayed in my dorm for a week, and stuff happened.
The next year, I had my own apartment. She had some unpleasant things happen with her parents, and she pretty much told me that she was moving out to be with me. I let this happen. She lived with me for six months or so, and she refused to get a job (excuse was that her depression and other problems were so bad that she llliiiittteeerrraaallllyyyh couldn’t) refused to do housework, spent my money like it was hers and there was an infinite amount of it, and alienated all of my friends. I finally got rid of her, but only after she’d cost me thousands of dollars, immense frustration, and damaged relationships.
There have been many other times when I have been persuaded to give of myself by someone who convinced me that they were entitled, but that’s the biggest one. It all goes back to me feeling obligated to “save” my father, but I won’t belabor that point.
I think that my “subconscious teacher” chose to illustrate the point with a male pressing me for a romantic/sexual relationship because it knew that’s something I would draw a hard line at. The message is that I do not owe anyone any part of myself that I do not want to give. Also that I am capable of defending those pieces of myself that I want to, and it’s ok to do so.
That applies to money, intimacy (physical or emotional), living space, energy, or my effort and time no matter how much someone feels that they are owed it.

[Paul1131]

ME: FRM seems to have been working it’s way down to deeper and deeper levels throughout the year I’ve been using something that contained it. First I noticed less negative thinking and the disappearance of some nervous habits. This was surface stuff. As time went by, I noticed deeper and deeper changes to my beliefs until I got that connection with my subconscious established. Then it went right to the bottom at a pretty amazing rate of speed. Now, I seem to be rising back up and bringing good things with me. Prior to this, it had been helping me eliminate weaknesses. Now, I am replacing them with strengths. That last thing with my wife showed an increased level of assertive confidence, and the dream was allowing me to practice maintaining my boundaries against someone who was really trying to push them with tactics that have worked on me pretty consistently before. Perhaps the fact that it was something that I’d never agree to points to it being the easy level, and later it’ll try me on things I’m more likely to give in on. I look forward to the challenge.
That boundary setting skill is pretty important to the main goal of the program because if you have a lot of money, especially if you just suddenly got it, someone is going to try to talk you out of as much of it as they can. That’s why so many big ticket lotto winners end up broker than they were before within a few years.
It really seems that at this stage of the game the program is helping me to build the skills I’ll need to execute in a big way.

[Paul1131]

ME: Today, I find myself being back to more practical money considerations. I haven’t worried about my credit in a few months while I was doing the intense internal stuff. I checked it in detail tonight, and the news is pretty good. The refi shouldn’t be an issue as soon as I finish cleaning the house to get the best possible value. I’m getting occasional bursts of really good visualization with feeling of this being done and us being on solid ground financially. I don’t know what the next goal is going to be, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out pretty quickly after this one is accomplished.
I think that that’s the best way to work with UMS. Pick a goal, accomplish it, then pick a bigger one. This goal may seem like small potatoes to some here, but it’s within reach and gives me a good foundation to reach higher.

[Paul1131]

ME: I woke up frustrated and somewhat fearful this morning. I kept playing potential arguments with the wife in my head as I was getting ready. This is a completely useless activity which only serves to get me mad at my wife when she has done absolutely nothing wrong. I suppose I used to use it to gird myself for battle when she was likely to go off on me, but I kind of suspect this made things work. We are linked on an energetic level, and may have been pissing each other off while we weren’t even in direct communication with each other. I have noticed that when I do that, more times than not, she comes home ticked off and there’s a night of argument. Tonight was no exception. I had already left for work when she got home, and she was mad that I hadn’t assembled the new snowblower and blown off the drive and sidewalk. It’s true, I didn’t. I work a twelve hour shift, and since there was a blizzard yesterday and today, I had a two hour commute on each end of it. I needed sleep, but I can see how that would irritate her. What she has really been irritated about for the last few days is that she wanted a big thing made for her fortieth birthday and I’ve had my head too far up my own backside lately to plan it. That is horrible and it’s on me.
Anyway, I realized that the angry thoughts I was indulging in may be doing more harm than just making me angry in the moment. I will strive to have better control over that going forward. It’s a sign of progress that I was even able to recognize what was going on here.
Then I asked what was really bothering me. There were two things. First, there’s still some fear, and it’s kind of a different fear on the surface. I’m afraid that it’s not going to work. We are running low on the windfall money, and we need to get the refi done very soon. I need to get the house clean, and all the ducks in a row, and that was looking like a huge job this afternoon. Dispute a rather large amount of evidence that these subs and the resulting thinking and manifesting and whatnot DO keep us afloat, I had some fear that everything is going to fall apart this time. Ok, why?
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.

[Paul1131]

ME: I was reading Findingme’s journal just now, and he made a really good point. Taking responsibility for my life now feels a lot better than dodging it or throwing it off on someone or something else. That’s one of the big take always regarding the last post I made. It would be easy to blame my parents, my peers in school, the system, the universe, or any number of rule 4 things for everything I discovered throughout all of the discoveries I’ve made about my fears and how they’ve been getting in my way. Easy but not honest. The truth is that I chose this. I chose every aspect of how my mind reacted to things. The good and the bad. By doing that I chose the life that that those reactions created. I’m not taking control of my life by doing this. I’ve had control the whole time. That means I have no one to blame for my situation (the bad parts. My life is actually pretty good) but myself.
I choose not to blame at all. I’ve spent enough time beating myself up over poor choices and their consequences. I just need to learn from the choices and make better ones.

[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

[Paul1131]

Wife: She is showing a LOT of progress. She was upset about not having a bigger deal made of her fortieth birthday at first. However, she calmed down and said that she understood that my work keeps jerking my schedule around and I am unable to plan anything more than a week out. We went out with a good friend to celebrate and had a great time.
She had wanted a smart watch that counted steps but because my company had cashed out our sick time, I was able to get her something much more high end than she had asked for. This caused her to be very happy, but then go into kind of a depressed state where she said that she doesn’t deserve me. She said that while I was doing nice stuff for her, she was swearing at me behind my back and throwing my shoes into the closet because I had left them in the bathroom. She said she frequently does that about minor things like that. She recognizes that this is a bad reaction, and that the things that she gets upset about in the moment aren’t big. This is HUGE.
This morning, we had a scary situation where it looked like our two year old may have taken some of her antidepressants. It turned out that he hadn’t, and that they had been safely stored where they were supposed to be. But it looked bad for a second.
After that, she started to express some upset ness that I’d spent the money to get her the watch. She stopped though, and said that she realized that she was just upset by the scary situation, and was channeling it into something else.
We had a very productive discussion in which she told me that she is becoming aware of it when she is having a bad reaction, and in this case was able to tell that it was actually something else upsetting her. She said that that’s what’s going on a lot of the time when she goes off on me. She is beginning to be able to see it while it is happening and to realize that she is having a bad reaction in the moment.
During our discussions, she admitted that she does have an anger problem, that she was taking things out on me that weren’t my fault, that I don’t deserve that. She has not been doing it nearly as much lately, but this is the first sign of introspection, and the first crack in the “I’m always right, everything is your fault, and anything I do to express my anger at you is ok” attitude I’ve ever seen. At least the first one she’s put into words. This is truly amazing progress for her and for our relationship.

ME: I woke up this afternoon feeling powerfully optimistic about getting our financial house in order later this month. There is no doubt in my mind that the refi will work, and that it will get us to a stable situation at the end of the month or early next month. I almost didn’t think to write that because I’m not saying it because my optimism is stronger than my doubt. My optimism is strong, but the doubt simply isn’t there. I have two states when it comes to this now. One where I’m thinking of the positive happening as so much of a matter of course that I barely even notice, and the one where I am now where I feel like I already have it, and I actively feel great about it. I think this is execution. AWESOME!

[Paul1131]

ME: I have also noticed that I’m being a lot more, call it, gregarious than I ever have been. I’m joking with people and acting like I’m happy and glad to be dealing with them. This could be important for networking and whatnot. More execution.

[Paul1131]

ME: I had an intense burst of stress during my fifth loop tonight. I was thinking about the disorder in my house, and the need to get the refi done before we run out of windfall and plunge back into crisis. It still hasn’t passed fully. I haven’t felt this way in quite some time.

[Paul1131]

ME: A bit over an hour later and the stress has passed. I’m not sure what it was, but I have a few theories.

- There is still some fear causing me to resist. I may understand the roots of the fear of achieving stability better, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that those fears have been totally eliminated. This should be closely related to the fear of stability. I don’t think that I’ve accepted that the notion that anything that looks solid to me will suddenly collapse under me as soon as I trust it is a lie quite as deeply as I have some of the others. That’s an old one that I’ve been living with since I was a toddler, so it might have a more difficult time with it. The reasons that I give myself for it not being true just don’t have the same ring of truth to them as the others. I may have to dig deeper. That part of me may be working up negative emotional energy to manifest some kind of sabotage. I don’t think that it has the strength anymore, but this felt similar to what I’ve felt previously before something came out of the blue and derailed things. I think I’m fine if it doesn’t happen very often. Oddly, this is also how I was feeling consistently while on the USLM family of subs just before some really amazing things manifested to pull us out of the fire, so maybe something like that is in the works.

- It’s my subconscious telling me to accelerate the time table (Read hurry the hell up). It might feel that I need to have a fire lit under me, and the stress is motivation.

- The anti clutter module is really kicking in. I look around and see a severely cluttered house, and it causes me stress. Most of my thoughts during the episode were centered around the general clutter and disorder in the house rather than anything bad happening.

- My mind is now much more ordered, and my personal environment doesn’t reflect that. I now feel like someone who would live in a neat, squared away space, and have a squared away life.

- Awwww CRAP! I’m blowing the mess out of proportion and not addressing it as effectively as I could because I’ve convinced myself that I HAVE TO get it done before the appraisal and I’m using that as an excuse not to start the bloody process. I’m both afraid to end the years of struggle, and afraid that it won’t work. I’m procrastinating so I don’t have to do that.

- All of the above, but that last one is definitely the main thrust of it.

Ok, time to throw clutter in boxes and put them into the basement for the appraisal. We will sort them and impose real order as we bring them back up right after.

[Paul1131]

ME: I feel better now, but after careful analysis of how I’m feeling lately, I do notice that there is still an undertone of stress. UMS has been helping me to deal with the deeper roots of my fear. However, I’ve been stuck in my head, and not dealing with the my immediate sources of stress. I.E. the immediate things I need to be doing to push the goals of the program forward. In this case getting the house clean and pushing the refi forward. Part of this stress is the part of me that wants to execute fighting the part of me that is in the habit of procrastinating, and avoiding looking directly at things that cause stress. That is to say that I often get a fear/stress reaction when I know I need to take a close look at a situation that’s likely to cause me a problem. The simple reason for that is that I am afraid that if I look at it, it might have to face the fact that it has gotten so bad that I will be unable to solve it, and also face the fact that my neglecting it is the reason why it has gotten so bad that I can’t solve it. So what we have here is fear of responsibility and fear of failure leading me to be in denial about the problem. I don’t do it because I’m afraid I won’t be able to, and I’m afraid that I’ll blame myself and others will blame me when it becomes clear that the problem has become too bad to solve.
That is of course completely irrational and dysfunctional thinking, and it creates a self fulfilling prophecy. The longer I let something go, the worse it gets, and the greater the chances are that I really can’t solve it. I have let a whole lot of things turn into massive disasters this way. I knew that they were becoming problems and getting worse for a long time before they blew up to the point that I could no longer ignore them. The consequences have been bad, in my financial life and other aspects. The lie I covered that with was that if I ignored the problem, it would go away.
The truth I should have been telling myself all along is this. If there’s a problem or something that needs to be done, it’s going to stay a problem, or continue needing to be done until I solve it or do it. Not only that, but if I ignore a potential problem, it becomes a real problem, and then it gets worse every day I ignore it. If I ignore it long enough, it will become a crisis and can do major damage to my life.
The truth is, the sooner I deal with something, the less likely it is to get out of hand, and if it doesn’t, then self blame or being blamed by others never becomes an issue. If it turns out that whatever it is blows up anyway, then I won’t blame myself so much because I did everything I could to stop it from happening instead of just letting it.
I think that I’ve done a lot to deal with the underlying fears that caused me to develop those patterns in the first place, so it shouldn’t take much to replace them with better ones.
My short term goal will be to develop the following habits of thinking and acting.

- I need to become aware of that uncomfortable feeling I get when I want to avoid thinking about and dealing with something. It’s a sure sign that that is exactly what I need to be taking care of.

- Check the things that tend to indicate that there’s a potential problem. IE, check the bank balance daily, my credit weekly. Check the mail daily and open everything.

- Keep a list of things that need to be taken care of ASAP. Look at it daily so I can’t lose track of anything.

This should alleviate some of the stress.

[Paul1131]

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

I’m sorry I missed this before.  I’m having a slightly different experience.  I have been destroying my entire frame of who I am and how I relate to the world, but there’s really no grief or fear involved.  My previous frame sucked, and I can’t wait to be rid of it.  This feels like I am resetting myself to who I’m supposed to be.  Who I always was really, under the layers of bad programming that I put there to deal with messed up stuff.