05-15-2015, 09:22 AM
Alright I gotta get real for a while here. Truthfully I'm still deeply affected by people's opinions of me. I'm not at that point where I'm able to say screw it and just be me. As a consequence some of my posts here have been a little censored. It's tempting to want to keep up with the positive posts, as if my progress is steadily increasing, but the truth is it's all over the place. And I've been trying to be mindful of these defense mechanism and in general just how I live. At the end of the day having a filter that carefully sorts out what I should and shouldn't say is a large mental strain that's just covering up the fact I still have issues owning my stuff.
I chase my tail a lot, I recognize that. From the outside it probably looks like I'm just obsessing over the same stuff and I just need to stop. But ignoring it is definitely what landed me in this predicament to begin with. If I can't identify my triggers and just keep exposing myself with the same undesirable reaction I'll just get more of the same crap.
I told myself the other day, I can't be perfect. And instead of bringing relief it brings on fear. Telling myself I can't be perfect makes me want to be more perfect. It's like when you tell a kid not to touch something because it's hot and then they touch it and burn themselves. And when people say stuff like "stop trying to be perfect all the time!" or "it's ok to make mistakes or not be the best at something", I get it intellectually. Emotionally it just doesn't seem to stick. On top of that my perfectionist mentality can make me very blind to any emotional issues I may have. I can't tell you the number of times I've read about things like fear of intimacy or rejection and thought to myself "nah that's not me, I'm above that". And I'm not. If I was I'd be out there without dealing with any of this stuff. My biggest bout of denial was while I was still in high school, meditating heavily almost every day and came to the realization that I don't really need friends because I'm ok being alone. Which was an outright lie I told myself to make me feel better about the fact that I had intense trouble making friends or being myself around people.
Still I think I've come a long way. I no longer feel like an awful person for having flaws, like I'm broken or defective, and that's huge progress for me. In the past I'd make everything worse by taking all the issues I had and then on top of that piling more crap about hating myself and feeling guilty. I just see them as something that needs to be addressed in order to maximize happiness in my life. But I still have to be careful to not outright deny any problems I do experience because of some fear of not being perfect which still is a very strong fear in my life. The hard part is it doesn't exactly manifest as anxiety and my mind will come up with some damn good reasons that seem convincing to keep it around.
So there it is. True thoughts and feelings on my progress of self improvement. One of my desires is to come out the other side of this hell and show other people it's doable. To provide inspiration for those that maybe don't take to the subliminals as fast as others and get discouraged. I know what it's like to feel hopeless, not believing that you can make the changes you want, feeling like you're trapped in life despite having thousands of different opportunities standing around you, a prisoner of your own mind. Nobody should live like that. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not filled with endless pain and suffering.
I chase my tail a lot, I recognize that. From the outside it probably looks like I'm just obsessing over the same stuff and I just need to stop. But ignoring it is definitely what landed me in this predicament to begin with. If I can't identify my triggers and just keep exposing myself with the same undesirable reaction I'll just get more of the same crap.
I told myself the other day, I can't be perfect. And instead of bringing relief it brings on fear. Telling myself I can't be perfect makes me want to be more perfect. It's like when you tell a kid not to touch something because it's hot and then they touch it and burn themselves. And when people say stuff like "stop trying to be perfect all the time!" or "it's ok to make mistakes or not be the best at something", I get it intellectually. Emotionally it just doesn't seem to stick. On top of that my perfectionist mentality can make me very blind to any emotional issues I may have. I can't tell you the number of times I've read about things like fear of intimacy or rejection and thought to myself "nah that's not me, I'm above that". And I'm not. If I was I'd be out there without dealing with any of this stuff. My biggest bout of denial was while I was still in high school, meditating heavily almost every day and came to the realization that I don't really need friends because I'm ok being alone. Which was an outright lie I told myself to make me feel better about the fact that I had intense trouble making friends or being myself around people.
Still I think I've come a long way. I no longer feel like an awful person for having flaws, like I'm broken or defective, and that's huge progress for me. In the past I'd make everything worse by taking all the issues I had and then on top of that piling more crap about hating myself and feeling guilty. I just see them as something that needs to be addressed in order to maximize happiness in my life. But I still have to be careful to not outright deny any problems I do experience because of some fear of not being perfect which still is a very strong fear in my life. The hard part is it doesn't exactly manifest as anxiety and my mind will come up with some damn good reasons that seem convincing to keep it around.
So there it is. True thoughts and feelings on my progress of self improvement. One of my desires is to come out the other side of this hell and show other people it's doable. To provide inspiration for those that maybe don't take to the subliminals as fast as others and get discouraged. I know what it's like to feel hopeless, not believing that you can make the changes you want, feeling like you're trapped in life despite having thousands of different opportunities standing around you, a prisoner of your own mind. Nobody should live like that. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not filled with endless pain and suffering.
