Anxiety, Defenses, and Self-Forgiveness in the Moment of Experience - Day 160

Something occurred to me today as kind of a hint as to another component of my recent spike in anxiety, and that is a point of comparison and surprise. Basically in the last few weeks / months I have been exposed to a lot of new people and a couple new cultures, at work and at CoDA meetings. In both settings I have been somewhat disarmed by what I have found, which is people who, much to my surprise, are seemingly quite genuinely honest, open, aware, compassionate, accepting, and supportive.

I say disarmed because that is really how it feels. Like, here I am, with all these defenses up, and they are really very useless and futile here; in fact they are very obvious self-sabotage. (Are they ever really useful? Probably not. That was one thing mentioned at tonight's CoDA meeting, which is that all these behaviors are ones we learned as children, most likely, but we've just grown out of them. These behaviors and defenses were useful at one time, or else I would have never learned them. But I am not a child trying to survive in a dysfunctional family anymore.)

I'm inclined to say I have not encountered people like this much in my life, although I think I probably have but just have not been able to recognize it, or have dismissed them in some way, or believed myself unworthy of having them in my life, and have engaged in patterns that have led me to pursue intimacy / friendships with people who are not these things (patterns regarding wanting to fix others, patterns regarding inferiority / superiority dynamics, patterns of reliving memories and past experiences, patterns of believing I am not worthy of healthy relationships, etc.).

And, instead of learning how to better assist and support myself to find and develop positive and supportive relationships, I have just become more and more narrow in my social scope and less and less trusting of people around me, within the assumption that everyone is untrustworthy and judgmental and self-interested (much like myself and some other people in "my world," or, let's face it: the entire world).

So obviously I have encountered people like this and I have had experiences throughout my life that have led me to believe that this is normative and to be expected. For that reason, and probably others, I have also accepted and allowed myself to engage in the very same behaviors, inside and out, in part as a defense mechanism so as to seemingly avoid getting hurt by these behaviors from others. But I think primarily I probably learned these behaviors from the modeling provided by my mother and from my own attempts to cope as a child growing up.

So this has induced some anxiety in me as I have encountered people and cultures that are not this way, but that have shown themselves to be honest, open, aware, compassionate, accepting, and supportive, and also tolerant of mistakes and differences. Because, I am surprised. And I wonder if I am perceiving things correctly. And then I look at myself, and realize that I am still operating with the defenses up, and I am still operating as all of these really negative behaviors / thoughts / energies that contribute to creating the destitution in which we live, because it's what I expect from others, but here I see I don't have to expect it from these people. In fact, I can be honest, open, aware, compassionate, accepting, supportive, and tolerant of others, and most importantly of myself -- something I've not thought myself worthy of. And I see people actually applying it and living it, openly and honestly, at least as far as I can tell, and it is really cool!

These people in these new environments and cultures are not repeating the dynamics that I've lived out throughout my life. They're showing me something new. Something I've wanted, but didn't really know was possible. Something I thought I had, because I held the ideals, but wasn't ever really living, because I was too afraid and too defensive to let down my walls.

So I think my anxiety spiked in part because I was surprised and was forced then to look at myself and see how, even in environments that are safe, I was still defensive. I am still defensive. So it is not just others. It is me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that other people are all judgmental, nasty, self-interested, and cruel.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to draw conclusions about people in general based on my experiences with a few which were informed and influenced by my memories with even fewer and my interpretations and energetic reactions within myself through and as my mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit myself within my participation within the social landscape because I have not trusted other people and because I have believed that other people will always somehow harm or betray me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go into a point of superiority sometimes in reaction to these beliefs because of course it is difficult to see myself as equal to and one with all of the nastiness that I have perceived in others, so that within this I tend to judge others before I even get to know them, further limiting my social arena and preventing me from getting to know people who are genuine and have integrity.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to latch onto people who confirm my negative view of people in general and my negative view of myself and what I am worth.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto ideals of compassion and unconditional love and respect and support, but to not live out these as living words because I have been too afraid and too defensive and too caught up in repeating old patterns and reopening old wounds and re-enacting old memories.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create such strong defenses that I have used them always, even when they have not actually been supportive or really defended me from harm, because the defenses themselves have been harmful unto me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be that which I do not wish to see in the world.

I commit myself to investigating my defense patterns and how I have created myself as a wall to keep others out and keep myself locked in, locked up.

I commit myself to embodying the ideals I have claimed to uphold and embrace. I commit myself to equality and oneness as living words. I commit myself to realizing how I have not been these things in stability because I have been afraid and defensive and because I have been existing in and as my mind as my memories and fears and limitations.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become anxious and doubt and judge myself when I encounter people who appear to be living out the ideals I have claimed to uphold. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to realize this as an opportunity to learn more about these ideals as living words and to apply myself to live as these words. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel uncomfortable in the face of people who are open and honest and all the things I wish I was or have believed myself to be. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel anxious at the realization that it might actually be okay to be vulnerable in these settings, to allow myself to be seen, to let my walls down, because it is safe. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel anxious in safety and to try to destroy the sense of safety through self-sabotaging behaviors.


And what I notice the last two days or so is that I am still encountering these thoughts and these tumbles of my gut and these urges to enter anxiety. But, I breathe, and I just sort of notice it, and then I let it pass. But I still fear it, I still fear it taking me over, and like, it's still there. I still allowed it. So I see how I need to start to apply self forgiveness in a moment, not just later in writing. I see how I can assist and support myself with that. In fact I have already practiced this twice now, kind of randomly / unintentionally, when I have lingered my eyes on some man I have thought was attractive only to then find myself enter desire and lack, so I saw how accepting and allowing my eyes to linger was detrimental to my stability, so I forgave myself, rather than getting stuck there not only in that initial energy but also further energies of self judgment.

And that is my fear: getting stuck in the anxiety. Or getting stuck in the anger, too. That is a big one. Getting stuck.

So I forgive myself that I have not accepting or allowed myself to forgive myself in the moment of experience, because it had not occurred to me to support myself this way, even though it has been suggested in multiple media and from multiple sources.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear my energetic experiences because I realize that within this fear I am giving the energy power over me as separate from me as not my own creation, and this is how the energy grows and eventually overcomes me, by me giving it the power to do so.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take a passive approach in finding stability because I had not understood the tool of speaking self forgiveness in a moment of experience to assist and support myself in clearing the energy before it accumulates.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make self forgiveness about writing wherein I draft and formulate a written statement as a presentation of my process, rather than accepting and allowing self forgiveness to be integrated as my process in every moment just as I integrate and utilize my breath in every moment.

So now I commit myself to forgive myself in the moment that I see the energy.



I got a new handout tonight with more statements of patterns of codependency that I wish to share here, which help to shed light on why I have not chosen healthy and supportive relationships but have instead time and again managed to find people who allow me to play out these patterns and roles because:

• My good feelings about who I am stem from being liked by you.
• My good feelings about who I am stem from receiving approval from you.
• Your struggle affects my serenity. My mental attention focuses on solving your problems or relieving your pain.
• My mental attention is focused on pleasing you.
• My mental attention is focused on protecting you.
• My mental attention is focused on manipulating you to do it my way.
• My self-esteem is bolstered by solving your problems.
• My self-esteem is bolstered by relieving your pain.
• My own hobbies and interests are put aside. My time is spent sharing your interests and hobbies. 
• Your clothing and personal appearance are dictated by my desires as I feel you are a reflection of me.
• Your behavior is dictated by my desires as I feel you are a reflection of me.
• I am not aware of how I feel. I am aware of how you feel. 
• I am not aware of what I want. I ask what you want, or I assume. 
• The dreams I have for my future are linked to you. 
• My fear of your anger determines what I say or do. 
• I use giving as a way of feeling safe in our relationship.
• My social circle diminishes as I involve myself with you.
• I put aside my values in order to connect with you.
• I value your opinion and way of doing things more than my own.
• The quality of my life is in relation to the quality of yours. 

And then we can see quite easily how the "borderline" in me is apt to then go to the opposite extreme of absolutely rejecting someone once I have had enough of idealizing them and making my entire existence about them. 

My mom had an interesting idea, as did one woman in the group (apparently this is a "thing" people do), of re-writing these statements (or other statements, such as the 12 steps themselves). In the case of re-writing these statements, my mom's idea was to re-write them in such a way that is like a new promise to oneself, a realization and commitment basically about the behavior. The woman in group was working on re-writing the 12 steps to put them in a language and verbiage that was relevant to her, a process by which she found herself growing all the more as she found more and more ways to apply the steps to work for her. So this is a cool link to the power of words.