Much better

Progress continues on healing and accepting who I am right now. I'll still not where I want to be,and I'm not where I once was. Paying more attention to my thoughts and feelings definitely helps. Correctly stating the problem is an important step, and each time I define the problem and practice a fix that doesn't work helps me ask again what do I really want, what is really the problem? As best as I can determine this morning, it's about my identity. It seems I was taught to not like who I am because I wasn't taught that I could be responsible for doing that myself; instead I was taught I am a lable, and without that lable, I don't exist. The need to destroy that identity FEELS like death. That identity is who I believe I am, and without that identity I'm lost. Now the question is: who do I want to be? Or better yet, what do I want to be. I'm not used to feeling responsible for myself, I was taught that it was the responsibility of others to define who I am to be. To look outside for direction, not look inside for direction. So that's what I still do.  One thing I've learned recently is automitization; where we do things so repetively that we do them without awareness, and that it's very difficult to bring those automatic habits back to awareness, like how I have always thought about myself. It's automatic, I don't think about it, I do it. Now I question some of those thoughts about myself as I become aware of how I talk to myself, and how I let others talk to me. I'm learning new ways to be, that are in conflict with those deeply entrenched ways of thinking and feeling. I'm learning not to be automatic, especially about the things that hurt me, more especially the things I do to hurt myself.  Hoop's "Invalidation" website is the tip of the iceberg. Allowing others to invalidate my feeliongs may be another key to freedom; that I was taught not to depend on my feelings, to question them, to not trust them, to not trust myself. And THAT may be where I get my trust issues from. I was told how to feel, and when I didn't feel what I was told to feel, I assumed I was WRONG. And pretty soon I was WRONG about a lot of things. The next step is to begin to listen to my feelings, and validate them my self, without going outside to depend on others to validate my feelings. To learn to listen, and trust, my own feelings. Trust myself, what a concept!