Work & Negative Energy and Social Anxiety - Day 132

This post brings up a variety of points, so bear with me if it seems disjointed.


I moved through today with a sense of having let go, a sense of moving forward. However, I know that I've not yet lived out the points I've been writing these past couple months. There is still a point coming where I will have to see for myself if I have really let go and if I am really moving forward (I will have to choose to really let go and choose to really move forward). So here I reflect on this sense of "accomplishment" and "freedom" and realize that I could easily suppress further reaction / energy through these positive feelings / pretending that I am "over it," thus self-sabotage, and here I commit myself to have awareness of myself as who I am in my relationship to myself as these points.

"Now, because you did not do self correction immediately when it happened - even with doing self correction now, it's going to happen again - until you correct yourself in real time when it happen. Only real-time Correction, when you Move while you have the discomfort and you correct it until the discomfort is no longer there - is the actual, Real, point of Change." Bernard Poolman

However, I also look at what it feels like to move through life without holding onto energy.

I remember this has always been the case with me and crushes. I would develop a crush. Then usually I would tell someone about it, which would make it "real" -- also reinforce it because that person would usually get excited and want to talk about it / entertain themselves with the idea of my crush. Then I would go through a whole series of bullshit surrounding the crush, basically resulting in my own torment because none of it was real, and I wanted it to be real, but it wasn't real and I couldn't simply just make it real. And then I would notice with great relief after a crush had finally "passed," I would realize, "wow, there's no one I 'like' right now, what a relief." Or the same would be true with a grudge. Hah, a grudge or a crush. Not really so different. Reminds me of yesterday when a student came to me and told me another student had said to her, "I want to fight you. Do you want to fight me?" So I find companionship through crushes and grudges. Interesting. Anyway, when I wasn't engaging in a crush or a grudge, I felt the most stable and capable and free. Crushes and grudges both are prisons.

That in between time, though, in between crushes or in between grudges, that was the time I would try to notice and look at and see how it felt and why it was actually better for me to live that way. I would try to learn from myself in those moments to see who I could be if I didn't allow the crushes or grudges. Of course I didn't really have the tools to REALLY see myself in ALL moments until Desteni, so now here I am again, ready to move forward and see myself in a more stable place, without a crush or a grudge.

Holding onto a personality
http://www.taramarynowsky.com

During the last week I struggled some with my relationship with work and myself at work. I think in part this had to do with what I've been walking with the point of the grudge, where when I let go of the anger I felt empty, and so I needed more reasons to exist in negative energy. So I created negative energy about work. However, I also think that the lack of the anger and projection of blame that I carried with me daily through the grudge left me without a throne to sit on as superior and thinking something like, "well, I've got this serious grudge going on, so I'm important, so I can stand up and take care of business, no problem." Something like that. Also a sense of superiority through work, where if I am successful and doing well at work, then I can feel like I am successful and therefore superior, and can continue to not look at myself as the creator of my own negative experiences. So then, without the grudge, I was no longer successful at work for the sake of feeling superior -- superiority didn't matter anymore because I wasn't trying to win anything. And I've not yet learned completely how to live for myself. Being successful at work simply for myself is maybe one or two steps away still. I am grasping it more here just in seeing myself now. Doing anything at all for myself, living for myself: this is still a big lesson to learn, much more of my process ahead of me will likely involve this. 

But one thing that triggered my downfall was the admittance within the email reply wherein I felt relief, at the end I said I was really enjoying my job. 

And so a part of me here is superstitious and believes that somehow by stating this I magically manifested the opposite. I also see how the day before I was excited about a few different things for that day, and so when my mood didn't carry over into the next day, and the things I was excited about weren't actually all that exciting, I of course had a worse experience than I anticipated, like a bigger drop from what would have been if I'd been neutral (or perhaps if I'd been neutral / stable, I'd have actually enjoyed the day for the same reasons I was excited). Lastly, though, I see how I have a habit of not wanting to admit to a person I am mad at or blame for my misfortune that I am actually "happy" and doing well. I have done this a lot with my mom, where I have wanted to blame her for my "mental health" or lack thereof, and so around her I have always gone into a depressed character or otherwise a very unhappy expression of myself. I have not wanted to show her that I am actually happy because then I feel like that lets her off the hook. I have to remain unhappy in order for her to see the consequences of her actions, ie to show her it is her fault that I am so unhappy. 

So this is obviously holding myself hostage in order to punish another person, thus punishing myself. And it doesn't even work anyway, it's not like the other person ever feels "punished." And in fact many might say that you can best "punish" someone by showing them how "happy" you are / "kill them with kindness" in a way to show that their evilness does not affect you. But the thing is, none of these other people are even really to blame. If they REALLY were to blame, maybe I would take the alternate route, try to compensate by being "happy" or focusing on my own achievements / abilities to support myself. Instead, I know I am the only one to blame, and I do not want to see that. So instead I project blame, and I torture myself with some twisted belief that this will make the other person feel bad for how I have perceived them as treating me. 

So in that context, the moment I wrote out that I was actually really enjoying my job, and it seems like a great fit, there was this twinge of cringing and firstly expecting this now to somehow magically superstitiously not be true, and secondly also this feeling of, like... well great, now I don't have anything to show them for how unhappy I am and how useless I am because of how they treated me. I found myself wanting to take it back. 

And then of course I found myself actually having negative experiences at work, for all of the above reasons, which I'll now summarize here:

1. Let go of grudge, needed replacement negative energy
2. Lack of sense of self-importance through holding grudge and believing I am better / superior for also having this job
• So it's "okay" to be "happy" and enjoy my job, as long as I keep it to myself / don't let the other person in on that secret
• A grudge IS self-importance. So letting go of the grudge in a way also let go of my sense of self-importance, thus no longer seeing myself as important, thus no longer seeing what I do as important / not valuing myself/what I do. Like "if I can't 'win' this grudge/battle, I must not matter" / "why would I care about me if this other person doesn't care about me the way I want them to?"
3. Not living for myself / working successfully for myself 
• Instead doing this for another or to prove something to another or to justify my energetic experiences. 
4. Admitting that I enjoy my job
• Superstitious in belief that saying this too many times will make it not true
• Wanting to hide my success from the person(s) I am mad at / blame for my experience 
• But if I really indeed blamed the other person, I would probably be more apt to want to achieve success and show them that they had no effect on me, so maybe even lie that I am happy and doing great and neener neener neener they don't matter. 
• But since I know that it's not really their fault, and since I know that they actually want to see me as successful, I choose instead the opposite, so as to "punish" them, not giving them what they want (my success), thus also punishing myself by denying myself my own success
• This is a point I wrote about more extensively in private a few weeks ago, perhaps I will edit to be able to share. 
5. Having created excitement in anticipation of events on a particular day, where when I faced those points they were not as enjoyable as I expected, in large part due to drop in my mood
   
   I would add:
6. Continued lack of understanding about some aspects of the population I am working with, so that in the place of my lack of understanding I subconsciously place myself as "knowing already" because I believe I have to operate from "somewhere" rather than allowing myself to operate from a place of not knowing yet, and then finding out, learning, and coming to understand. 
• Because the population is "new" or "foreign" to me in terms of "the kinds of kids" and what their interests are, I find myself "at a loss" for understanding the reasons behind their behaviors and personalities and interests and the culture to which they subscribe. And so I assume simple answers, not realizing that there are systemic reasons having to do with family structure / environment, poverty / socio-economic status, neighborhood, etc. etc. that all contribute to the experiences these kids have and the experiences which have helped create them. 
• In many ways it is not so simple as my old job, in the sense that at least at my old job the majority of people who played any role in the lives of the students, either at school or at home (group home, foster care, or original family), were at least on the "same page" of "supporting" the student to succeed, even if we had variant approaches / beliefs about what this meant. However, here, myself and the other new staff are pretty much the only individuals in the lives of these students who are seeking to support them to be successful. This isn't a "problem" per se, in the sense that it does not have to be problematic for me in the enjoyment of my job, it is just something I haven't understood, and once I understand it I will be better suited to actually support the students, because I will understand them and their experiences better. 
• Example: I've not really understood why it is so bad to be a snitch. When I was young, I always went to adults for help with my problems. With most of these kids, snitching is one of the absolute worst things you can do. 
7. And I see myself even after the last two days having been improvements in my relationship to work and myself at work, nonetheless beginning to revisit memories of my old job in Denver and how much I miss it and even comparing within "better/worse" contrasting. 

But today was a very eventful day in which I learned a lot and also saw more and more the support coming from my coworkers to implement the changes we are here to implement, so I have a more eager sense about me in regards to work again. I also got paid which helps, haha. I differentiate here between being "eager" versus being "excited" in the sense that eagerness is like an excitement to see what happens whereas excitement is excitement about what I expect to have happen. And I would definitely at this point say I am "eager" because I see that there is much more to learn, and I do not really know what to expect, but I am glad and excited to be along for the ride and see what I can learn, how I can grow, what and how I can understand, and how I can help to the best of my abilities. 

Another point that is cropping up for me now is that of social paranoia / anxiety. It seems that staff at work have semi-regular hang outs, and this is cool, but I have not really faced the anxiety that arises when I think about actually attending one of these events (I've not been invited yet; I don't think anybody's gotten together yet). I also was asked tonight by an acquaintance after yoga what I was doing with the rest of my night, and I said I didn't really know, and I left it open, but still I felt anxiety about her asking if I wanted to hang out, and what that would mean, and did I want to, and what would I do instead, and if I didn't how would I decline, etc. etc. Not so frantic as all those questions make it sound, which is cool, but I can see that the point of meeting / hanging out with new people in a social setting hasn't come up for me in a while and so I have to be aware of myself in these reactions / fears / anxieties. Lastly I've been contacted by another destonian and we are trying to schedule a possible meet up this weekend and this brings up anxiety in me as well, so another point to face and write about.

One of the points here is a belief of myself as a failure in friendships/relationships, which, even though now I am working on walking through the point of a grudge, thus not allowing myself to fail in a friendship, I actually believe moreso that I am a failure, perhaps because it would be "better" if I did not get to the point of a grudge in the first place / I am now facing the shame of who I am in friendships / relationships. And related to above, when I have a grudge, I have a belief then that anything I do proves I am "superior" and so I can move more confidently in other friendship / relationship endeavors because I believe success in these areas simply proves that I am not to blame for the failure in another friendship. Admitting I am "at fault" / taking responsibility means that it is me who created this experience (here I see that admitting "fault" and "taking responsibility" are actually two different things -- so to focus on "taking responsibility," which indicates changing myself and being my own self directive principle outside of (self-) blame and (self-) judgment.) Also a belief that friendships / relationships are "too difficult" so I avoid them. Also a belief that I have nothing to offer, and why would anyone be interested in getting to know me? And so on and so forth. 

So there are many points in this one post, some more ripe for expansion and self forgiveness than others. I will return to this post tomorrow or soon, and probably will have to revisit over time. I might be going to Tahoe so I might have limited internet access this weekend.