Relationship Issues
Without a doubt in my mind, co-dependency is solidly about relationship issues,... except the relationship issue is with myself, or at least with the imaginary split-off persona's I create myself about my different "selves".
The day I stopped letting my feelings be controlled and blamed on external objects, ideas, and concepts is the day I stopped being a victim to how others think and feel about me. And the truth is I never was a victim of how others felt about me, I was a victim of how and what I felt about myself.
Once I forgave myself for "being a mistake", and "being mistaken", things got easier in my relationship with myself. Previously, the more I resisted the feelings of feeling imperfect, the stronger the need to resist feeling imperfect became.
The moment I accepted my "being a mistake" I no longer concerned myself with or whether others were talking about me and what they were saying. The real perpetrator of my pain was my own bad projected opinion of myself, so I felt certain everyone was saying the same negative imperfections I was saying and identifying about myself.
I am firmly convinced it is all based on the concepts of introjection (assumptions about my opinion of myself that I accepted without truthful examination) and projections (blaming my own feelings for what I was perceiving in my "external mirror").
Here's what I was thinking last night, in an imaginary conversation with "Dave": "Who, among all the people you know and talk to everyday in your world, would you ever talk to in the same way that you talk to yourself?! When you imagine all the awful, nasty, harmful and hurtful things you feel others may be saying in their evaluations about you, would you ever be willing to say those same words you are evaluating yourself with to any other person, or human-being, on the planet? To their face?"
So the question I want to make a point to ask (to myself) is: "Why do you allow yourself to talk to yourself the way you do when you would NEVER dream, except under only the worst possible circumstances imaginable, to talk to anyone else like that?" Why? WHY!? Does such a double standard be permitted of myself to myself? If I, as a kind, caring, protector-of-other people's-feelings, goes out of my way, and to such great lengths, to observe and take care for how I treat others, do I not offer the very same kindness, caring, and forgiving allowances in how I talk to myself and treat my feelings of myself to myself?! How is it I do not feel I deserve the very same treatment I demand of myself in how I treat others?
The only therapy I know to give myself involves my relationship with myself, and how and what I feel about myself. I am so kind and forgiving for almost all the imperfections I visualize about others, and yet I refuse to be as kind, caring, and forgiving to myself in my demands for my "not being a mistake". One thing I learned about myself yesterday is that I often make mistakes, but that does not make ME a "mistake"; I can learn to change my mistakes, but I do not need to change who I am as though I am a mistake because I make mistakes "sometimes". It involves incorporating a split now between the concepts of "doing" and "being"; where in the past I used the label "mistake" to describe those two different aspects to mean the same thing. It was a childish mistake, to do so, and to keep doing so.
For my own therapy, I need to begin to teach myself to be kinder and gentler to myself, in my thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors about myself. I need to feel selfish in caring for myself, and incorporate all my "split-off" parts of my "self" as one whole self, as I do all the other people I love, respect, and care for their welfare. All those other people's feelings I protect as a co-dependent habit is the same kind of protection I owe myself. I will not live by two standards anymore, and treat myself differently than I do others. If I choose to be kind and caring of others, and respect who they are with all the flaws I perceive in "them", then I will offer myself the very same standards of forgiveness for being a "mistake" also. A change in my relationship with myself is long overdue; and has been causing all my fears and anxieties and guilt all this time.
I have learned that there are three main "habits" for me to change, as far as my obsession with my feelings of "shyness" is concerned (where "my shyness" is in how I treat how I feel about myself): 1) anticipating the future; 2) expecting the worse; and 3) "avoiding-behaviors". A key element here is in the "avoiding" habit, where I have used avoiding to limit external conditions for influencing my feelings; the problem is that avoidance only works for those external conditions, and does not work for avoiding my own, thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Those are internal, and I have found I am not very able to avoid my own thoughts and feelings as they come up in my mind. And THAT is a very important difference to be aware of now.
( A good example is that a moment ago I smelled something "sweet" burning, looked toward the kitchen, and saw the ceiling covered in smoke! I had left some "sugar-water" for the hummingbirds boiling on the stove until the contents in pot was completely black, boiling over, and already on FIRE! It didn't do any damage, I took the pot and the contents that were on fire outside, opened all the windows and turned on the fans, and started another pot. It was a mistake, that's all. No berating myself. No catastrophic embarrassment. I moved on. No worrying about what "could have happened", or "would have happened if...", no "shoulds" at all. What actually happened was exactly what happened, and everything was okay. No imagination, no additional "embellished" drama, or criticism!)
I'm tired of attacking myself, so I've stopped doing that to myself!
Rich
The day I stopped letting my feelings be controlled and blamed on external objects, ideas, and concepts is the day I stopped being a victim to how others think and feel about me. And the truth is I never was a victim of how others felt about me, I was a victim of how and what I felt about myself.
Once I forgave myself for "being a mistake", and "being mistaken", things got easier in my relationship with myself. Previously, the more I resisted the feelings of feeling imperfect, the stronger the need to resist feeling imperfect became.
The moment I accepted my "being a mistake" I no longer concerned myself with or whether others were talking about me and what they were saying. The real perpetrator of my pain was my own bad projected opinion of myself, so I felt certain everyone was saying the same negative imperfections I was saying and identifying about myself.
I am firmly convinced it is all based on the concepts of introjection (assumptions about my opinion of myself that I accepted without truthful examination) and projections (blaming my own feelings for what I was perceiving in my "external mirror").
Here's what I was thinking last night, in an imaginary conversation with "Dave": "Who, among all the people you know and talk to everyday in your world, would you ever talk to in the same way that you talk to yourself?! When you imagine all the awful, nasty, harmful and hurtful things you feel others may be saying in their evaluations about you, would you ever be willing to say those same words you are evaluating yourself with to any other person, or human-being, on the planet? To their face?"
So the question I want to make a point to ask (to myself) is: "Why do you allow yourself to talk to yourself the way you do when you would NEVER dream, except under only the worst possible circumstances imaginable, to talk to anyone else like that?" Why? WHY!? Does such a double standard be permitted of myself to myself? If I, as a kind, caring, protector-of-other people's-feelings, goes out of my way, and to such great lengths, to observe and take care for how I treat others, do I not offer the very same kindness, caring, and forgiving allowances in how I talk to myself and treat my feelings of myself to myself?! How is it I do not feel I deserve the very same treatment I demand of myself in how I treat others?
The only therapy I know to give myself involves my relationship with myself, and how and what I feel about myself. I am so kind and forgiving for almost all the imperfections I visualize about others, and yet I refuse to be as kind, caring, and forgiving to myself in my demands for my "not being a mistake". One thing I learned about myself yesterday is that I often make mistakes, but that does not make ME a "mistake"; I can learn to change my mistakes, but I do not need to change who I am as though I am a mistake because I make mistakes "sometimes". It involves incorporating a split now between the concepts of "doing" and "being"; where in the past I used the label "mistake" to describe those two different aspects to mean the same thing. It was a childish mistake, to do so, and to keep doing so.
For my own therapy, I need to begin to teach myself to be kinder and gentler to myself, in my thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors about myself. I need to feel selfish in caring for myself, and incorporate all my "split-off" parts of my "self" as one whole self, as I do all the other people I love, respect, and care for their welfare. All those other people's feelings I protect as a co-dependent habit is the same kind of protection I owe myself. I will not live by two standards anymore, and treat myself differently than I do others. If I choose to be kind and caring of others, and respect who they are with all the flaws I perceive in "them", then I will offer myself the very same standards of forgiveness for being a "mistake" also. A change in my relationship with myself is long overdue; and has been causing all my fears and anxieties and guilt all this time.
I have learned that there are three main "habits" for me to change, as far as my obsession with my feelings of "shyness" is concerned (where "my shyness" is in how I treat how I feel about myself): 1) anticipating the future; 2) expecting the worse; and 3) "avoiding-behaviors". A key element here is in the "avoiding" habit, where I have used avoiding to limit external conditions for influencing my feelings; the problem is that avoidance only works for those external conditions, and does not work for avoiding my own, thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Those are internal, and I have found I am not very able to avoid my own thoughts and feelings as they come up in my mind. And THAT is a very important difference to be aware of now.
( A good example is that a moment ago I smelled something "sweet" burning, looked toward the kitchen, and saw the ceiling covered in smoke! I had left some "sugar-water" for the hummingbirds boiling on the stove until the contents in pot was completely black, boiling over, and already on FIRE! It didn't do any damage, I took the pot and the contents that were on fire outside, opened all the windows and turned on the fans, and started another pot. It was a mistake, that's all. No berating myself. No catastrophic embarrassment. I moved on. No worrying about what "could have happened", or "would have happened if...", no "shoulds" at all. What actually happened was exactly what happened, and everything was okay. No imagination, no additional "embellished" drama, or criticism!)
I'm tired of attacking myself, so I've stopped doing that to myself!
Rich
Replies
Hi Rich,
Bravo! I am working toward following your lead here, about being kinder to self and paying attention to what I say to self. I catch myself sometimes, but I am working at saying the good stuff to me instead of the harsh and judgmental. :-)
Keep the Faith!
Shar
Yay!!! That\'s where I am. I\'m learning to be aware of whenever I am feeling critical and abusive thoughts about myself, and not stopping them, but minimizing their importance to me. Here is what I\'m doing, and I said it Dave too\" I am going out of my way to find some \"thing\" to criticize myself with, to prove my belief about myself that I don\'t deserve to accept myself just the way I am. That belief is \"I must be better than I am\" And I will damn sure go out of my way to find a place, an environment, a situation, where I can put myself to prove it is true and I will look far and wide and in any obscure nook and cranny to find SOMETHING wrong with me to prove my point! AND I DO THIS TO MYSELF, WITH ABSOLUTELY NO HELP FROM ANYONE OUTSIDE OF ME AND MY OWN MIND! HA!!! or HAH!!!
The thing I have always missed, and my friends here may be missing too, is I was not aware of just how critical I was with my thoughts about myself. None of the criticisms was ever coming from outside. Any feelings that I \"blamed\" on anything external was a projection I was purposely misperceiving in order to feel bad about myself, sad, ashamed, afraid, and guilty! My whole purpose in life was to find a way to feel bad about myself, because I believed I deserved to feel bad about myself. And all I\'ve ever had to do to stop that nasty hurtful habit is to STOP that habit!
No matter how much anyone loved me and appreciated me, I could deny it in order to prove to myself that I needed to feel bad about who I was and what I was doing. I, like so many other co-dependents, would isolate even ONE slightest or imaginary fault, and discount hundreds of positive ones, just to prove to my \"Superlative-Ego\" that its perception of me was the correct one. I bought into a game that my \"Superlative-self\" bets me that I can never prove to be good enough to be acceptable to IT! And I went out of my way to prove it was right! That was a mistake, on a very Grand Scale; BUT it does not mean \"I\" am a mistake. It was a habit, a behavior of my mind, of my thinking, that I can change...so I did, and \"I do\".
The only way to stop is to stop evaluating myself. The only way to \"win\" the game of self-abuse is to stop playing the \"game-that\'s-impossible-to-win\". And that\'s the \"addiction\" game I am no longer playing. Hallelujah!!!
The only way to stop judging myself is to stop judging myself, for any reason AT ALL! I am who I am, and I am good enough to be me. NO ONE can be better at being me than me! So I don\'t have to change a thing. However I am, is how I am; and now I\'m okay with that. Finally!!!
All this time I\'ve been attacking myself, and blaming everyone else for my NEED to attack myself. just to prove I could find something about myself to attack.
I don\'t want to do that anymore.
The rest of you can keep doing it to yourselves for a little while longer yet, if you wish, BUT I QUIT! Thank you very much.
I am a \"Highly Sensitive Person\" and I am now highly sensitive to how I let myself talk to myself. In fact...there are no longer two or more parts of me to talk back and forth, listener and complainer; now I\'m teaching myself there\'s just one of me in here, in my body and in my mind. Now I am ready to deny any \"Split\", I do not have separate \"parts, personas; I am a \"whole\".
There is one more thing, I just learned tonight from a book I \"just happened to pick up\" Monday while I was \"wasting time\" at Barnes & Noble since I didn\'t have anything scheduled for a few hours: \"The Mindful Path Through Shyness\" by Steve Flowers, M.D., to wit: The difference between my thoughts, feelings, and sensations is: all of my true sensations only work in the present moment. I can only sense with my eyes what is happening now in front of my eyesight , and I can only feel the sensation of hearing what is happening right now around me, and the same goes for what I am smelling, tasting, and touching. I cannot touch anything in the past or the future right now with my \"senses\" or \"sensations\". My imagination can take me to the future to anticipate criticisms and fears, or to help me remember past feelings of fear and criticisms, but my imagination does not control my immediate sensations. My sensations are what keep me in the present moment, in contact with my body, and in my orientation to reality! All this time I was blaming my \"feelings (attached emotions remembered in memory or imaginary creations by using memories)\" for overwhelming my thinking; and what was really happening is that my imagination was denying me access to my SENSATIONS of NOW! I used my imagination to escape and avoid \"feeling\" my present moment sensations. What I\'m finding out is that I can survive my \"sensations\" without avoiding or escaping them. This is really valuable information to know, for recovering from an addiction to escaping and avoiding my own sensations of fear and anxiety.
Pretty neat, Huh? Being more compassionate with myself, being kinder and more loving to myself, being \"selfish\", helps me feel better about myself, without depending on anyone to save me but myself.
Tonight I feel better than I have in a very long time; and I deserve it!
Rich
Hi Rich,
Thanks, I think we are in about the same place on this road to recovery. My imagination works o.t. I was watching something last night (do not even remember what it was) but what I do remember is feeling very anxious, as if I was in the midst of the issue (which I was not, I was safe in my living room). And it was just reinforcement to me, that imagined thoughts about was is happening are as equally powerful as the real thing. My body did not know the difference because in my mind, I was \"there\".
Thanks for all of your sharing and insights, which are also helping me. :-)
Keep the Faith!
Shar
Thanks for validating what I\'m saying, as useful to you.
An event this afternoon was that as I was walking through Home Depot I felt a feeling that \"someone is watching me, or will be watching me, to see if I belong here or know what I\'m doing or wanting\" and this time I did not REACT to the feeling, I knew it was a groundless typical shyness thought, and I discounted it immediately. All I had to do is to recognize the feeling, that \"sinking\" feeling, in order to \"let it go on its way\". I did not bother to follow it or justify it; I did not give it my attention. Within a few steps I was over the sensation. Maybe the words \"B.S.\" may have been my response, but it was a major moment of awareness that I have changed and taken control of some of my automatic habits. It was like walking right through smoke; I saw it, the odd attack of embarrassment, and I didn\'t miss a step, or continue the thought and feeling; and kept right on walking. This time I knew it wasn\'t real, and even it it was, I\'m feeling secure enough now that I do not need to defend or justify who I am, or my feelings. It was a little-bitty thing, a few seconds; and a major realization, for me and my recovery.
I glad to hear you are making the same progress. I know it is really helping me recover by keeping an \"eye of awareness\" on my imagination and its needs to escape and avoid.
Rich
What I didn\'t realize when I wrote the above comment is that the paranoid feeling of being \"watched\" is that the one I fear watching me is my \"critical-self\", the \"superlative Ego\". Being more mindful, being more aware of my previous automatic reactions (via my \"Superlative/Critical self) helps me minimize my response time to realizing when I\'m IMAGINING FEELINGS, which is what it really is, is probably the biggest breakthrough yet. I fact, I don\'t feel I\'ve ever used the words \"imagining feeling\" before, so that is a new awareness too. I want to recognize when I am imagining feelings, and then become aware of the truth in my present reality; is the feeling real or imagined, and if it\'s imagined then it is just a reaction to a memory based on an addiction to escaping and avoiding sensations as \"feelings\". I feel that sentence is too wordy, and I\'m going to leave it that way. It makes the point to continue to make the connection between sensations of sudden guilt, shame, or fear and imagination, which is an escape or avoidance of a feeling of reality. And if I give a mental pause to reacting, emotionally and automatically (an anxiety/panic attack) to escape then I can return to my body and my present moment reality; and not try to escape with my imagination to the future or my past. Evidently, continually monitoring my current sensations in reality is what I\'m teaching myself to do.
Understanding that my imagination is not real, and my imaginary feelings are meaningless, will help me stay present.
Another step forward is when yesterday I changed my language in talking to myself when I corrected myself for saying \"I\'m exhausted!\" to \"I feel exhausted!\"; to make certain I am aware of the difference between What I Am, and What I am Feeling. Paying attention to what I am feeling does make a difference in recovering from reacting automatically. The whole new understanding is in knowing that what I am feeling does not make me who I am, my feelings do not rule me, my imagination does not rule me. And maybe that\'s where the real \"Trust Issue\" lies; I\'m learning I cannot trust my feelings to be accurate; I must test them for reality and truth, and whether they are real or imagined, past habits or avoiding the future.
Okay, so here\'s another insight: the \"one\" doing the \"imagining to escape or avoid\" is the \"superlative ego\". It\'s important for me to know when that part of my mind is trying to control my behaviors, based on its belief that it\'s not allowed to feel ashamed or guilty. My \"Superlative Ego\" is actually the errant belief that needs to be changed. Whatever hidden belief I have about myself is directly related to those imaginary sensations for the need to escape and avoid. And the belief is wrong; it is not true. It is a false belief.
So now when I get those strange \"Shyness\" feelings, I know to disregard them, as false \"commands\" to feel and act. Those shy feelings, paranoia, are imaginary needs for protection, protection of an imaginary self\'s beliefs.
Whew! Now for more practice...
Rich
:-)