06-23-2012, 09:31 PM
Slowly I feel like I'm getting better. It's like all those negative emotions that were festering up inside of me are slowly being cleared out. I like being honest and saying how I feel the sub is working. Some days it does feel like it's not doing anything, but then there are days where things are great. But the important thing is I do notice a difference.
What I've really started to understand over the past few days is how your internal self image and beliefs have to be taken care of before anyone else can see you the way you want to be seen. This is pretty much self-help 101 here haha, but loving yourself first is so important. For a while I couldn't grasp that. What always amazed me were the individuals that think they are the greatest thing on the face of the planet. The really cocky guys who are so full of themselves, but just don't care or are so deluded. It got me thinking, their beliefs must be so solid and unshakable that they live in a completely different reality.
Now me. I'm humble. Too humble. I was never comfortable with attention and I'd always shy away. I started to realize there are two extremes, treating yourself as an unimportant person and treating yourself as the most important person in your life without regard for others. For too long I've been humble and treated myself as a person that was just not that important. I decided that I'd rather be humble than shine and face rejection. Also there is just a lot of guilt surrounding me being an attractive person. I'm not entirely sure, but I just remember when I was younger if I tried to dress nicer my older brother would ask me why I was wearing it. The way he said it just implied something along the lines of "Are you trying to impress everyone? That's pathetic".
So I just internalized never standing out, never trying to look good because then that would be me seeking validation from others and caring what people think too much. But I realized everyone cares what people think to some degree and it's not a bad thing to want to look good in the eyes of others. If you care too much about not caring what other's think you are still caring too much.
I just feel like I'm learning to value myself more and realizing that I'm an important person too. It's not arrogant, it's healthy. I think my problem was I saw the extreme and I didn't want to be like that. So I jumped to the other extreme, which is being so unimportant.
I feel like I'm pulling back the layers of my defensive shield. I think in my childhood I followed a sequence of events. First I was a little shy, maybe overly sensitive, but I just wanted to make friends like everyone else. As I got older I may have been bullied and trusted people less, still I had good intentions and maybe became a little needy. Eventually I started fearing people more, seeing how many jerks there could be and how I hated some of them. I wanted to push myself as far away from them as possible. Pretty soon I started pushing myself away from everyone, I became judgmental of people and I just stopped trying. It was easier for me to avoid people and be bitter about them than actually put myself out there and face rejection. This attitude led me to stop caring about myself because in my eyes the more I tried to fit in the closer I was to possible rejection.
I feel like a lot of people have the attitude of "it's not me, it's them". I'm guilty of this and I'm recognizing it now. A lot of the time we don't know who "them" actually are. Being judgmental is one of those things I've internalized as another defense to prevent rejection. If I reject them first, how could they possibly reject me? It's one of those subconscious things. Everything I do is just to prevent rejection, the more I try to fit in with people, the more I feel like I'm putting myself in danger.
So there are some thoughts. I'm pretty tired right now and I struggled to get a lot of that out. But I feel like it's some real progress in understanding myself a lot more.
What I've really started to understand over the past few days is how your internal self image and beliefs have to be taken care of before anyone else can see you the way you want to be seen. This is pretty much self-help 101 here haha, but loving yourself first is so important. For a while I couldn't grasp that. What always amazed me were the individuals that think they are the greatest thing on the face of the planet. The really cocky guys who are so full of themselves, but just don't care or are so deluded. It got me thinking, their beliefs must be so solid and unshakable that they live in a completely different reality.
Now me. I'm humble. Too humble. I was never comfortable with attention and I'd always shy away. I started to realize there are two extremes, treating yourself as an unimportant person and treating yourself as the most important person in your life without regard for others. For too long I've been humble and treated myself as a person that was just not that important. I decided that I'd rather be humble than shine and face rejection. Also there is just a lot of guilt surrounding me being an attractive person. I'm not entirely sure, but I just remember when I was younger if I tried to dress nicer my older brother would ask me why I was wearing it. The way he said it just implied something along the lines of "Are you trying to impress everyone? That's pathetic".
So I just internalized never standing out, never trying to look good because then that would be me seeking validation from others and caring what people think too much. But I realized everyone cares what people think to some degree and it's not a bad thing to want to look good in the eyes of others. If you care too much about not caring what other's think you are still caring too much.
I just feel like I'm learning to value myself more and realizing that I'm an important person too. It's not arrogant, it's healthy. I think my problem was I saw the extreme and I didn't want to be like that. So I jumped to the other extreme, which is being so unimportant.
I feel like I'm pulling back the layers of my defensive shield. I think in my childhood I followed a sequence of events. First I was a little shy, maybe overly sensitive, but I just wanted to make friends like everyone else. As I got older I may have been bullied and trusted people less, still I had good intentions and maybe became a little needy. Eventually I started fearing people more, seeing how many jerks there could be and how I hated some of them. I wanted to push myself as far away from them as possible. Pretty soon I started pushing myself away from everyone, I became judgmental of people and I just stopped trying. It was easier for me to avoid people and be bitter about them than actually put myself out there and face rejection. This attitude led me to stop caring about myself because in my eyes the more I tried to fit in the closer I was to possible rejection.
I feel like a lot of people have the attitude of "it's not me, it's them". I'm guilty of this and I'm recognizing it now. A lot of the time we don't know who "them" actually are. Being judgmental is one of those things I've internalized as another defense to prevent rejection. If I reject them first, how could they possibly reject me? It's one of those subconscious things. Everything I do is just to prevent rejection, the more I try to fit in with people, the more I feel like I'm putting myself in danger.
So there are some thoughts. I'm pretty tired right now and I struggled to get a lot of that out. But I feel like it's some real progress in understanding myself a lot more.
