Another Insight
My own counselor has been trying to get me to be more aware of the principle of "The Primal Fear", which is the fear of being competent enough to live my life. I understand it is a universal fear "we" all have at some time in our lives, and in some situations. Today, and because of my last entry, I'm getting a little more insight into what is happening to me; an awareness advance. The fear of not being competent to live my life correctly implies, to me, as though there is a pre-set "correct way" or magical end purpose to live up to or become. My take on this idea is that in order to decide whether a glass (life) is half-full or half-empty, you first must have a preset form of a container of glass to put something in. [Or at least that's my perception.] And that's where the trouble begins, in envisioning the glass or "a glass", which would be a future event, or a goal, a defined object or form. Unfortunately, life has no "form". Feelings and thoughts aren't objects, and how we perceive life is based on thoughts, feelings, and sensations; which, by the way, are always changing and NEVER permanent! So as far as life goes, your life, the "glass" can be half-full or half-empty also based on whether the "glass" has changed once something is in it! Anyway, that's not my main point of the insight I want to offer.
As a co-dependent and shy person, I have developed a habit of expecting the worse of any future event, and my focus has been entirely on avoiding the next imagined future pain. And, the three principle patterns of shyness are: anticipating the future (predicting); imagining the worse, and AVOIDANCE; and I've experienced and witnessed myself doing all three way before I ever read these principles.
Now, going back to "peptides", and how they work in the body, my body's cell receptors are addicted to "anxiety peptides" and now crave them as "normal". My duty now, to myself's well-being, is to change what "thought and feeling peptides" I am consciously feeding my body's cells until they adapt to newer "relaxation, compassion, and forgiving peptides" instead of "anxiety, fear, and escape peptides". Evidently, the cells themselves do not care which peptides they get, they just want peptides to feed on. MY CELLS just happen to be "Lack of Competency Junkies" right now, because that is what I continually, and "normally" or "unconsciously", feed them! Now I'm in the "process" of changing their diet to more "positive" peptides that help me feel more comfortable and forgiving of myself. Just like I did when I quit abusing myself with alcohol or nicotine.
So my conclusion at the moment is: AWARENESS that I presently have an addiction to "fearing" is a key insight for my further recovery; even if the fear is competency. The main point is that my body's cells still crave fear, anxiety, avoidance and escape sensations, and they are all imaginary sensations based on anticipating future imagined fears to be avoided. I guess the belief I am attempting to alter is "I must avoid feeling sensations of fear". The correct response to ending that addiction is "REALLY?! I don't believe that! I feel I can survive any feelings or sensations of imaginary fears." The trick is in returning the mind to the body's senses to see if there really is any immanent PHYSICAL danger. It's important to know that the body's senses cannot often tell the difference between imagined or real "visions", and the imagination IS often just a "vision"; just like dreams that seem real, even though we are asleep, actually safe, and IN BED!
I'm feeling that becoming AWAKE is a bigger deal than I had given it credit for being. AND, I am getting less afraid of not feeling competent to be me, since there is no me to be in the future, or the past; only in the present moment, and the present moment is always changing. I am as competent as I need to be in order to be myself, at all times. I always have been, and I always will be.
What I feel now, mood-wise, is that I am out of the diagnostic and analysis phase, and I am working on the therapeutic phase, where I know what I need to do and practice in order to continue the process of change to feel better about myself and my life.
And so it goes for now. On to sobriety!
Keep the Faith!
Rich
As a co-dependent and shy person, I have developed a habit of expecting the worse of any future event, and my focus has been entirely on avoiding the next imagined future pain. And, the three principle patterns of shyness are: anticipating the future (predicting); imagining the worse, and AVOIDANCE; and I've experienced and witnessed myself doing all three way before I ever read these principles.
Now, going back to "peptides", and how they work in the body, my body's cell receptors are addicted to "anxiety peptides" and now crave them as "normal". My duty now, to myself's well-being, is to change what "thought and feeling peptides" I am consciously feeding my body's cells until they adapt to newer "relaxation, compassion, and forgiving peptides" instead of "anxiety, fear, and escape peptides". Evidently, the cells themselves do not care which peptides they get, they just want peptides to feed on. MY CELLS just happen to be "Lack of Competency Junkies" right now, because that is what I continually, and "normally" or "unconsciously", feed them! Now I'm in the "process" of changing their diet to more "positive" peptides that help me feel more comfortable and forgiving of myself. Just like I did when I quit abusing myself with alcohol or nicotine.
So my conclusion at the moment is: AWARENESS that I presently have an addiction to "fearing" is a key insight for my further recovery; even if the fear is competency. The main point is that my body's cells still crave fear, anxiety, avoidance and escape sensations, and they are all imaginary sensations based on anticipating future imagined fears to be avoided. I guess the belief I am attempting to alter is "I must avoid feeling sensations of fear". The correct response to ending that addiction is "REALLY?! I don't believe that! I feel I can survive any feelings or sensations of imaginary fears." The trick is in returning the mind to the body's senses to see if there really is any immanent PHYSICAL danger. It's important to know that the body's senses cannot often tell the difference between imagined or real "visions", and the imagination IS often just a "vision"; just like dreams that seem real, even though we are asleep, actually safe, and IN BED!
I'm feeling that becoming AWAKE is a bigger deal than I had given it credit for being. AND, I am getting less afraid of not feeling competent to be me, since there is no me to be in the future, or the past; only in the present moment, and the present moment is always changing. I am as competent as I need to be in order to be myself, at all times. I always have been, and I always will be.
What I feel now, mood-wise, is that I am out of the diagnostic and analysis phase, and I am working on the therapeutic phase, where I know what I need to do and practice in order to continue the process of change to feel better about myself and my life.
And so it goes for now. On to sobriety!
Keep the Faith!
Rich
Replies
Wait! To be more succinct, I have an even more emphatic point: It is not the future EVENT I fear, it is a FEELING or SENSATION that I am fearing! I want to be more aware that it is not the external object that I am avoiding, it is the emotion, feeling, or sensation inside that I am avoiding. And I am using a focus on the \"trigger\", and blaming IT for the feeling I am trying to prevent myself from feeling. To me, this is a very important distinction.
The whole purpose to avoidance is focused on an externalized concept, except that the \"thing\" that I\'m wanting to avoid is inside; it\'s like trying to avoid cancer by moving someplace else. Once it\'s inside, no matter where I try to go, I take it there with me. The lesson is I cannot avoid what\'s inside myself. That\'s why I want to be more aware of my feelings, they are inside, not outside.
The whole thing is in knowing I will survive my fearfulness sensations. Until now, I have been afraid to feel feelings of fear!
This mindfulness approach is getting better all the time!
I\'m not really in the mood to share too much today, but an interesting comment from my recent reading about awareness that I find to be true by experience is that \"As your awareness grows, one of the things you may notice is that the part of you that\'s aware is not itself anxious.\"
I also find that most of what I\'m reading right now simply confirms what I have been progressively moving towards: My fear of feeling afraid.
The \"control\" and \"trust\" issues I have been struggling with externally for years is really about learning to control my own thoughts and feelings about feeling fear. One feeling I felt yesterday is that there is a close connection to shame and embarrassment about my feelings, where at some point in my life I was \"shamed\" for \"being afraid\" or \"feeling afraid\". And I may have been \"forced\" to do what I was afraid to do instead of being carefully and safely \"encouraged\". The whole thing rings of being told: \"I shouldn\'t be afraid (so there MUST be something wrong with me; because I AM AFRAID)\". Because of that probable event, I learned I could not trust expressing my feelings with others, so I decided to not express myself to anyone again, for fear of having the wrong feelings and feeling embarrassed and shamed for having them be wrong. I suppose that\'s where the split began, since the behavior was not the focus, but the feeling was instead. In that way, I began to not trust my own feelings, or feel them myself either.
However, I am getting over that by using my \"observer-self\" to be more self-compassionate about what I am feeling at any time. Getting over the resistance to feeling embarrassed for feeling fear is a big new step, and it\'s working.
Actually, I am beginning to understand the comment about \"what we resist, persists!\" I am teaching myself to let the thoughts and feelings move by, not hold on to them by attaching a judgment of \"importance\" to them. To MAKE something important is to tie a strong feeling of good or bad (a judgment) to them; and if it\'s important it must be held on to. \"Letting go\" is the letting go of immediate FEELINGS of anxiety that need to be impulsively escaped or avoided. Facing my fears as only momentary and impermanent feelings is the way to teach myself to \"let go\" of hoarding, making them \"important, and \"trying to change\" what my body is feeling. It is my reaction to the feeling that needs to be changed, not me; and not the triggering event. What I fear is my lack of ability yet to control my feelings inside and the blame I turn outside that I continue to use to excuse my lack of control.
It is about teaching myself how to respond differently to my own feelings. So far, it is working. It is a process of change, over time, by practicing being compassionate with myself and my new feelings while I change. It is the very compassionate encouragement I did not get earlier in life.
\"Mindfulness\" is based on the practice of meditation and I finally understood the part about the focus on the breath, ESPECIALLY \"belly-breathing\"! When \"we\" are anxious, we tend to hold our breath in the top half of our lungs, near our throat, and limit or expressions. It is the part of the \"glass\" (lungs) half-full. One thing that really struck me gets back to finding a way to get back to \"reality\" and the \"present moment\" and this is how I understood it: You can only breath deeply, in the belly, NOW. You cannot breathe a past breath, nor a future breath; you can only breathe right now. So if you\'re trying to avoid the future or escape the past you can return to the present moment by consciously focusing on you breathing now.
It\'s a nice little trick to know in order to control calming myself (WHEN I REMEMBER TO USE IT! LOL!)
Rich
I have just been made aware that self-compassion is more important than self-esteem; so I\'m teaching myself the difference. In fact, compassion for what I was feeling is what I\'ve wanted all along for myself. Only now I\'m teaching myself to give it to myself instead of waiting or expecting some external source to \"give\" it to me.
I have found that self-compassion and self-forgiveness for \"me\" allows \" me\" to have compassion and forgiveness for others! It\'s a wonderful thing...Letting myself off the hook allows me to let others off the hook.
Have an amazing day!
I\'ve always had empathy, compassion, and forgiveness (most of the time) for others, I was co-dependent remember! LOL! ;-) What I didn\'t have until now was compassion for myself and my feelings.
I already forgave myself for my past; and developing self-compassion is a major \"awareness breakthrough\" emotionally for me too. As you say, letting myself off the \"Hook\" for experiencing any un-pleasurable feelings is a wonderful new experience to develop.
As I understood it today, self-esteem is about feelings of \"successful behavior standards\"; whereas self-compassion removes \"the critic\" of my self-esteem and my newer response is more forgiving of my usual reactions, with loving kindness for myself for what I am feelng. Now I\'m teaching myself, like you did, to use the very same forgiveness and caring compassion I\'ve always had for others for how I talk to myself and treat my feelings.
I hope you had a great Sunday too!!!
I always had empathy, compassion and forgiveness for others also; however, if I tell the truth (my truth) a lot of it was phony! Down deep, I still hated myself...and was envious of others being able to express themselves and I would spend soooo much time taking care of them and not me! Just a tad bit co-dependent wouldn\'t you say? Of courrse, I would be the \"good listener\" and provide them with what they needed to hear. I don\'t regret doing that, but now I come first; and you know I don\'t say that in an egotistically way....My truth is authentic now, because i am being authentic with me....I still have work to do as I am feeling a little teary and anxious...I have been visualizing myself sitting in a \"Light-House\" when I do my meditations and I feel safe allowing my feelings while sitting there...when the feeling process is over, I allow the Light to fill the empty spaces....My house (my consciousness) has held a lot of \"un-truths about me; therefore, I have come to realize as i have said, this practice is continueous..I now will accept when I feel \"akward or strange or inadequate\" I !will sit with those feelings, without judgment and honor each and every one of them...Ok, Lighthouse here I come...Have a good one!
I love what you said about self-compassion is more important than self-esteem! Wonderful!