11-07-2019, 02:16 AM
ME: Im somewhere in loop three tonight, and I got the impression that I needed to bump the volume up a bit. I remember that Shannon said that the higher the volume the more urgency is placed on changing quickly. A while after I did that, I felt that there were some parts that didn’t want to. I and the part that requested the higher volume started screaming at them like a drill sergeant. As in “Execute the ;&;$ program right the &:$$ NOW!!! NO MORE B”$$/)&T!!!”. Apparently the part that wants to execute and get on with improving life is just about sick of the foot dragging on the part of the scared reluctant parts. I agree with it.
Anyway, back to auto psychoanalysis. My fear of failure splits off the same node (remember that metaphor) as my fear of success. These developed in parallel and really made life kind of confusing for me. I was afraid to succeed because it would break the programming from that blueprint I got from my father, and I was afraid to fail for reasons I’ll get into. The only response that was possible was a kind of paralysis. What that translated to in the real world was “don’t try”. Trying could have had one of two results. Either I succeed and break my image of how I’m “supposed to be”, or I fail and pay a pretty horrible price for that. There were no good options there, so I spent a lot of my childhood being pretty passive and not engaging in any activities that could result in success or failure. Everything was a no win scenario in my mind (of course I didn’t really know this). Mostly I read a lot, spent a lot of time in my own head, and frankly tried to hide from everyone. Not an ideal childhood.
Now, why did I fear failure so much? It goes back to my parents again (once again, I’m not blaming them, I kept swallowing the poison pills long after their influence on me waned). First my father. Dad was terrified that I would turn out to be a “failure like he was” and he really didn’t know how to deal with it. He was completely fear based and had no concept of guiding me toward success, he just tried to punish failure and tried to instill fear of failure in me. He also considered every mistake and setback in me and himself as a failure. That meant that I paid the maximum price every mistake or misstep. Now, Dad was not physically abusive, he never once raised a hand to me, but he did scream, swear, call names, and make dire predictions about what my life would look like if I kept being a screw up. He was even harder on himself. Where he never physically assaulted me, he beat the living hell out of himself when he was frustrated. I mean he punched himself in the face hard enough that you heard a thump like in the movies, and rammed his head into walls hard enough to shake the house. And he directed enough of his anger at me that I got I somehow got the idea that his going into this state was my fault wether or not I had anything to do with why he was angry. So I blamed myself when he failed and when I failed. I was never afraid OF my father, I was afraid FOR him. Just like he was afraid for me.
I cared about him deeply, and once again, all this started at the time that I had a natural hero worship of my father. It was natural for me to want to be just like him at that time in my life, and I saw how badly he took his own large scale failures (job loss, and he blamed himself for the divorce) and how that translated to extreme pain/fear/self directed anger at the smallest error after that. I saw how he went off at me for every little error too. To five to ten year old me, this meant one thing. Mistakes (failures) are not acceptable and you should be punished by feeling horrible about yourself for every last one of them. Dad was both leading by example by doing it to himself, and sending me the message directly by doing it to me. Worse yet, his tirades at himself always went from “I failed at that” to “I am such a failure” making a connection in my mind from every mistake to a permanent, irrevocable state of being a failure.
I got a few messages from this. First, no mistake is ok, all mistakes are failures (lie). Second, anything other than perfection on the first try is failure (lie), if you ever fail, you are a failure (you guessed it lie). Dad didn’t mean to do any of this. He had a bad foundation himself, which was dynamited out from under him in a month’s time by the first job loss and the divorce. Then as he saw me start to fail in school he became terrified for me, and I suspect that he also blamed himself (he blamed himself for everything) for me “becoming a failure”. Throughout my growing up, he was trying to steer me away from that by the only means he could figure out. Those being anger, calling me a failure, and at some point telling that a lot of the reason he felt so much stress and was stuck in the cycle he was was because he was so concerned about me.
Oops, I internalized that last one wether he directly stated it or not (I don’t remember, but THERE it is, THATS WHY I felt so much responsibility and guilt for his problems!) I actually convinced myself that he would have been able to be just fine except that I kept screwing up and making him stress out so much. Needless to say, this was a Godzilla sized self lie. It penetrated and set it’s hook deep though. After the divorce, Dad gained a bunch of weight, was very visibly super stressed all the time, and talked about suicide on a daily basis. I lived in daily terror that my Dad was going to die. Now that I’ve written all this I realize that there was more to that. I lived in daily terror that my father was going to die and it would be my fault for failing/being a failure. (He didn’t, he’s still with us and doing a lot better now). It was like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head from age six to about age twenty, though it steadily faded into my subconscious.
It was all a dysfunctional feedback loop. Dad blamed himself for my problems and had a terribly unhealthy reaction, and that lead me to blame myself and have a catastrophically dysfunctional reaction of my own.
My mother wasn’t helpful here either. She never is, but because I chose (rightly in this case) to see her as the bad guy in the divorce, her opinion mattered a lot less than Dad’s did. Teachers school staff and other kids also piled on and maybe made the problem worse, but this was the foundation of it.
So I was telling myself that I couldn’t succeed, but also telling myself that failing was the worst thing in the world. That’s quite a knot I tied myself into.
I have noticed a theme here. A whole lot of the fears and delusions that have caused me problems with living the life I want stem from that one node relating to my relationship with my father. That’s going to be my fear of success, my fear of failure, and my lack of assertiveness/fear of standing up for myself. I might get into that one next.
I think that my social phobias, specifically about women relate more to my mom, and stem from a different node, though they all tie together.
Note to self, I also need to get into fear of neatness and order. I suspect I have a general fear of having my crap together, and that’s a problem.
Anyway, back to auto psychoanalysis. My fear of failure splits off the same node (remember that metaphor) as my fear of success. These developed in parallel and really made life kind of confusing for me. I was afraid to succeed because it would break the programming from that blueprint I got from my father, and I was afraid to fail for reasons I’ll get into. The only response that was possible was a kind of paralysis. What that translated to in the real world was “don’t try”. Trying could have had one of two results. Either I succeed and break my image of how I’m “supposed to be”, or I fail and pay a pretty horrible price for that. There were no good options there, so I spent a lot of my childhood being pretty passive and not engaging in any activities that could result in success or failure. Everything was a no win scenario in my mind (of course I didn’t really know this). Mostly I read a lot, spent a lot of time in my own head, and frankly tried to hide from everyone. Not an ideal childhood.
Now, why did I fear failure so much? It goes back to my parents again (once again, I’m not blaming them, I kept swallowing the poison pills long after their influence on me waned). First my father. Dad was terrified that I would turn out to be a “failure like he was” and he really didn’t know how to deal with it. He was completely fear based and had no concept of guiding me toward success, he just tried to punish failure and tried to instill fear of failure in me. He also considered every mistake and setback in me and himself as a failure. That meant that I paid the maximum price every mistake or misstep. Now, Dad was not physically abusive, he never once raised a hand to me, but he did scream, swear, call names, and make dire predictions about what my life would look like if I kept being a screw up. He was even harder on himself. Where he never physically assaulted me, he beat the living hell out of himself when he was frustrated. I mean he punched himself in the face hard enough that you heard a thump like in the movies, and rammed his head into walls hard enough to shake the house. And he directed enough of his anger at me that I got I somehow got the idea that his going into this state was my fault wether or not I had anything to do with why he was angry. So I blamed myself when he failed and when I failed. I was never afraid OF my father, I was afraid FOR him. Just like he was afraid for me.
I cared about him deeply, and once again, all this started at the time that I had a natural hero worship of my father. It was natural for me to want to be just like him at that time in my life, and I saw how badly he took his own large scale failures (job loss, and he blamed himself for the divorce) and how that translated to extreme pain/fear/self directed anger at the smallest error after that. I saw how he went off at me for every little error too. To five to ten year old me, this meant one thing. Mistakes (failures) are not acceptable and you should be punished by feeling horrible about yourself for every last one of them. Dad was both leading by example by doing it to himself, and sending me the message directly by doing it to me. Worse yet, his tirades at himself always went from “I failed at that” to “I am such a failure” making a connection in my mind from every mistake to a permanent, irrevocable state of being a failure.
I got a few messages from this. First, no mistake is ok, all mistakes are failures (lie). Second, anything other than perfection on the first try is failure (lie), if you ever fail, you are a failure (you guessed it lie). Dad didn’t mean to do any of this. He had a bad foundation himself, which was dynamited out from under him in a month’s time by the first job loss and the divorce. Then as he saw me start to fail in school he became terrified for me, and I suspect that he also blamed himself (he blamed himself for everything) for me “becoming a failure”. Throughout my growing up, he was trying to steer me away from that by the only means he could figure out. Those being anger, calling me a failure, and at some point telling that a lot of the reason he felt so much stress and was stuck in the cycle he was was because he was so concerned about me.
Oops, I internalized that last one wether he directly stated it or not (I don’t remember, but THERE it is, THATS WHY I felt so much responsibility and guilt for his problems!) I actually convinced myself that he would have been able to be just fine except that I kept screwing up and making him stress out so much. Needless to say, this was a Godzilla sized self lie. It penetrated and set it’s hook deep though. After the divorce, Dad gained a bunch of weight, was very visibly super stressed all the time, and talked about suicide on a daily basis. I lived in daily terror that my Dad was going to die. Now that I’ve written all this I realize that there was more to that. I lived in daily terror that my father was going to die and it would be my fault for failing/being a failure. (He didn’t, he’s still with us and doing a lot better now). It was like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head from age six to about age twenty, though it steadily faded into my subconscious.
It was all a dysfunctional feedback loop. Dad blamed himself for my problems and had a terribly unhealthy reaction, and that lead me to blame myself and have a catastrophically dysfunctional reaction of my own.
My mother wasn’t helpful here either. She never is, but because I chose (rightly in this case) to see her as the bad guy in the divorce, her opinion mattered a lot less than Dad’s did. Teachers school staff and other kids also piled on and maybe made the problem worse, but this was the foundation of it.
So I was telling myself that I couldn’t succeed, but also telling myself that failing was the worst thing in the world. That’s quite a knot I tied myself into.
I have noticed a theme here. A whole lot of the fears and delusions that have caused me problems with living the life I want stem from that one node relating to my relationship with my father. That’s going to be my fear of success, my fear of failure, and my lack of assertiveness/fear of standing up for myself. I might get into that one next.
I think that my social phobias, specifically about women relate more to my mom, and stem from a different node, though they all tie together.
Note to self, I also need to get into fear of neatness and order. I suspect I have a general fear of having my crap together, and that’s a problem.
