Stability in Effective Communication - Day 176

My current theory that I am working with is the importance of being stable in order to be effective in communication, and also of basically "meeting someone where they're at" in order to assist and support them through and out of their reaction / experience and understanding that their experience is the extent of their perspective / their sense of "reality".

Here is a really cool post by Emmi about effective communication / sharing perspectives / support: http://thespianjourney.blogspot.com/2013/10/days-334-335-giving-feedback-to-friend.html

This comes up a lot for me at work, as I have written about some in recent posts. It also comes up sometimes with the students, who sometimes might lie or stretch the truth about their experience either at home, in their childhood, or in the classroom as to why they have been sent out for some kind of discipline / intervention.

What I am learning here, and got some confirmation in terms of my approach from one of the therapists, is that it really doesn't matter if they're lying or stretching the truth. What a person communicates as their experience is apparently what they want to work with. So if a kid for example is lying about their behavior in the classroom and says that the teacher sent them out for "no reason" (example: the student was whistling while other students were also talking, and the teacher sent that student out without any warnings), we can still approach the situation thus from understanding the shared perspective of the student and implement solutions based on their perspective (even if, when asking the teacher, we find out the student cussed at the teacher when asked to stop whistling and may have also been play-fighting with a peer) (example: explain to student that during class time no one really should be talking or whistling or singing; just because other students were doing this does not make it okay, and although it is unfortunate that this student was chosen to be sent outside, other students engaging in similar behavior does not make it okay -- you are responsible for yourself).

I had another student the other day that I talked to for about an hour who told me she had been to a juvenile detention center and had friends and family there, and so she did not care if she went back, and therefore she did not care about the consequences for if she were to follow through on her desire to break a specific staff member's nose.

I found out later that according to those with access to her record, as far as they know, she has never been to juvie.

But, the next time I talk to her, if she mentions it, I'm not going to tell her that I know she's never been and call her out on her lie. What does it matter? The motivation, most likely, behind her lying and saying she doesn't care about the consequences is probably as a way to seek out power and control over a situation by purporting that she can do whatever she wants and she doesn't care about the consequences, and also put up a wall to keep others out from even trying to help her calm down or deal with her anger in a productive way. A lot of these kids have very little when they go home, and very little support in their families, so what they do have is their words and their actions and through that, in this culture, they believe they gain the most power by acting tough, getting into fights, or making threats, also basically bragging about how much trouble they've gotten into.

So it doesn't really matter whether or not she's ever been to juvie. It's irrelevant. What's relevant is that I want her to stay in school and I want her to make choices that will support her now and in her future, and I want to encourage her to want the same things for herself (actually, what's really relevant shouldn't start with so many statements about what I want, but you get the picture). I want her to learn new skills for dealing with anger, not just justify her desire for violence with her apathy about incarceration and give up on her because she purports to not care about consequences. I can share with her my own experiences with anger, which I did, and which was cool because in sharing that I am once again given the opportunity to learn more about myself, and I can help her find ways to empower herself rather than giving herself over to her anger / memories of living in fear which "required" violence to survive.

Then this concept is also relevant even when someone is not lying or stretching the truth. A person's experience is their experience. It's where they're at. I recently had a very difficult time with this because I was having some very extreme energetic experiences (I still do sometimes), and the person who was trying to interact with me did not understand this and did not, basically, respect where I'm at, which is not the same as where they're at. Because of this, our interaction and communication was ineffective. For me, I completely lacked tact, because I was completely and utterly consumed by my anger and reactive energy, so that my anger was louder than my words and, I presume, made it difficult for the other person to hear me honestly. For the other person, I believe that the ineffectiveness came from not being able to understand me or empathize or even sympathize with my experience of myself, nor was this person apparently able to even accept or understand / trust the words I explicitly expressed. That is my perspective of what happened, anyway -- my experience that I have to work with.

I could have slowed down and taken the time to express myself effectively by letting go of the reactive energy and just communicating my experience without the anger. And I actually feel that I did that a number of times, but, then, I was still in at least some energy, so perhaps I was not as effective as I thought. What I felt I came up against however was a person who refused to understand me no matter how many times I explained myself (which, because of the energy I was creating, was very exhausting), whether due to incompetence or negligence or simply not being in a position to properly understand me (so, their experience / where they're at / what they understand -- seems likely*). I did try many times however, perhaps not always effectively (I mean, obviously: there was no productive effect) and what I found was that I was abandoning myself in my reaction to the process of trying to be understood by someone who might never understand, and who really doesn't need to understand, at least not as much as I need to take responsibility for myself and my reactions (which is to say, I should have taken responsibility for my reactions by directing and releasing them before trying to communicate / make myself understood because this is clearly best for all -- best for me in terms of taking care of and responsibility for myself and best for the other in terms of me being ready and stable to communicate effectively / not just barrage them with my anger).

*(And what I just noticed here is again this kind of "double-standard" almost where my experience was considered and treated as invalid because it was emotion-based, but their experience was considered valid because it was a "subtle" thing they "had not yet realized"... I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated by this and also enter a state of like "superiority" in noticing this because it makes me feel as if I am "right." I realize "right" and "wrong" does not matter -- only realizing and then changing self in self-responsibility to live as what is best for all. I do however consider this as a way of giving myself the gift of validation for my own experience and the decision that I made to support myself in my experience, whereby I can trust myself instead of doubting myself, where here I am aware of my experience and so must direct it as I see best in self honest self support as what is best for all, rather than accepting and allowing myself to use this realization as justification for my anger / perpetuating my experience even after seeing it or expecting another person to take responsibility for my experience / trying to take responsibility for another's experience.)

This is a long-standing pattern for me in a way, of really disliking the idea of being misunderstood and so getting stuck on that point and trying to make myself understood even to people who don't want to understand me. In this case I felt that I needed to be understood in part so that I could communicate a boundary and hopefully have it respected (fear-driven). But I just couldn't keep on engaging in the conversations / arguments, because they were so ineffective in terms of having the other person understand me and in terms of self-support, and within them I was really not understanding myself and understanding that I really needed me to show up for myself and take care of myself because I was creating so much energy that I was not directing and that I was allowing to consume me and make me sick.

So I wish that this other person was better at this skill of understanding another person's experience as being the extent of their perspective / what they have to "work with" (and it must be worked with, not just set aside as "not real"). But this is a skill I am still learning, so I support myself now to investigate it and live it. My experience may be created through and as my mind but that doesn't make it NOT my present experience / understanding of reality, if I have not yet figured out how to release myself from that experience -- it is the prison in which I am living and I haven't yet realized I am holding the key or how to unlock myself. So for another person to claim that they want to support me from a place of stability as what is best for all, and then to not even respect what I am communicating about myself and my experience... well this is very confusing, and makes me think that this person's experience / understanding is also influencing their perspective in such a way that we will not come to a common understanding as long as we are both clinging to our respective experiences -- as such I took responsibility to take the experience that was mine and work with it for and by myself. And I realized that my energy was just too extreme for me to contain and direct while continually engaging in these kinds of interactions where I felt misunderstood alongside a great many other conflict-related and memory-related points I was facing in these interactions, also coinciding with difficult points in other areas of my life. So, I was not able to further refine my communication so as to make it (more) effective, and I could no longer produce the patience needed to be understood, because through focusing on this from the starting-point of wanting to be understood by someone else, I was not really taking care of or taking responsibility for myself.

Did I really fully understand the other? I don't know. I was not really in a position to. The idea was that I was the one who was "hurt." I guess that is a victim character of believing that I have no or less responsibility in a solution interaction if I am the one who is hurt; that it is more up to the "perpetrator" to listen to me and do what I need in order for me to begin to heal. I mean it really doesn't seem "fair," does it, this whole phenomenon of the oppressed having to carry the burdens placed on them by their oppressors, and then also having then to educate those oppressors about those burdens, only to have more burdens placed on them as the oppressors doubt, question, or otherwise do not embrace or respect the oppressed's experience as "true" inasmuch as it is the experience they are having, let alone the experience placed upon them via the oppressor's actions (or inactions). And that phenomenon is precisely one of the many ways that these interactions were just allowing me to re-enact my relationship with my dad.

But, that's the way it tends to go, as long as we accept and allow ourselves to be internally influenced and directed by the reactions we have to external factors. I could be a legitimate "victim" of some real heinous travesties and yet maintain stability if this was a skill I had mastered, but I have not yet mastered self direction, self trust, and stability, and so I gave myself over to the victim character in this and many other situations.

And so I learn now to not stay in "harmful situations" for too long, and I learn to only ultimately trust myself (so not to distrust others, but also not to miss-trust (trust by mistake) others), and I learn to clear myself of my reactions when and as I hear another person say something that doesn't seem self honest / trustworthy, or when my reaction is not trustworthy / whenever I see myself becoming unstable and shifting away from my own self-honest perspective -- a skill I hadn't yet acquired for many of these old interactions that I still carry around to inform and justify my anger (so now to forgive myself as these memories as they surface in anger). And I also learn to not engage in communication unless or until I can be effective, which means having a stable starting point.

I also learn the futility of coming up with and trying to point out what the other person should have done differently. I can only take responsibility for myself. Pointing this out only serves to justify anger and project blame / responsibility onto another, as if their actions determine mine.

One thing that I do realize I need to work on and expand within myself is the point of direct communication, which is something this person seemed to be kind of pointing out to me (from their perspective, did they communicate it to me as effectively as I thought I was communicating to them? hmmm haha). When you're paranoid and anxious and in a self-belief of inferiority, it can be difficult to direct oneself to communicate directly. You just kind of hope someone sees your pain or understands your need or can read your mind... you don't believe or trust that you're right, so why would you directly say what you're thinking, especially when living in fear that whatever you share/express of yourself will be rejected or even insulted? Or when what you think is directly contradicted by three other things you also think? That has been my internal experience when I am paranoid, anxious, and trusting others more than myself, anyway. But direct communication is obviously a huge part of effective communication and so obviously this is imperative to consider, and so I am glad that it came up in the communication we did have.

I also definitely should have seen and realized that I was in no position to be trying to communicate while I was so much in reaction. But I was pretty lost, and despite the advice given to me to wait until I was stable, I had to learn for myself. I also didn't really see myself coming out of reaction unless I got some "answers" or some communication / mutual understanding. What I found however was not mutual understanding, and so in my state of reaction, I just reacted more. I was not stable. So therein lies my responsibility, which is total, because without my insistence and sense of urgency in communicating even while in reaction, none of this would have come to pass, and my reactions would not have compiled and accumulated to an unmanageable degree.

But if you are going to try to support someone, you should be stable, no? I mean that is the first question we are trained to ask ourselves when facing a crisis with a student: "How am I feeling right now?" I mean if you are seeing that another person is highly reactive and you are thinking that you might be a good candidate to show up and assist and support them through and out of that reaction, then you should be stable, and not in reaction yourself. And I think if you're stable, and if you understand effective communication, then you'll understand that it is most effective to meet a person "where they're at." I mean you wouldn't help someone out of a maze by simply standing outside of it and telling them what the exterior looks like, would you?

So go into the maze with them. Keep the rope of your breath and self-honesty tied to you as you enter, but meet them where they are and lead them out. This is the approach I take with my students, this is the approach I am learning to take with my coworkers, and it is now too the approach I am learning to take not only in friendships / all external interactions of support, but indeed even the approach that I am learning to take with myself, to ground and stabilize myself in the physical as I delve into the depths of my mind to assist and support myself out of my mind and into and as life.

Analyzing My Dog's Eating Behavior, and My Reactions - Day 157

Hazel basil!

Tonight I want to write about my dog. I was inspired to finally do this after reading this post, because my dog is getting older every day (she is 9, nearing 10), I do not want for her to pass away, and I realize that I care more about her in my imagination of her passing than I do in her actual presence here with me, alive.

In the past I have begun to write about my dog because I have struggled to understand her eating behavior, and I have wanted to figure out what's going on with her relationship to food and how I can support her. 

I've begun to write, and then seen the obvious, and then scratched writing because I felt I already knew what to do (well, that is not the whole truth; I will get to that). The main thing I thought I should do is return to regularly scheduled feeding times, as that is how her eating was when I first got her (when she was already 5 years old), but eventually transformed into irregular feeding / keeping her bowl full for the most part. She seems to get anxious about food this way, and seems to stand and stare at a full bowl and whine at me, sometimes until I coax her to eat her food / give her permission, and sometimes she will not eat until I am also eating something (this I sometimes see as neat because sometimes I am delaying eating and am hungry and am risking a migraine, and she whines at me like as if to remind me that it is important to eat; but maybe that is just my imagination!). 

Sometimes she will go a day or two without touching her food, although lately, since I have begun to feed her more consistently every morning and every evening (would I previously go a day or two without giving her food...? I don't think that long, but perhaps I was not consistent enough for her to trust that she would be fed!), she seems to eat at least one serving (bowl) per day. Some days I come home from work and she still has not touched the food from that morning. Some mornings I wake up and she has not touched the food from the previous night. 

I don't know what happened with her previous owner. Although she was never without a sheltered space to live and someone who I assume fed her, she was basically abandoned, so I don't have a lot of information about her life before I met her. 

Truthfully though, my primary aim in trying to figure out her eating behavior has not been to support her. Primarily I have reached the point of figuring this out not out of curiosity or a desire to make her life the best quality I can provide. Instead I have in the past come to the point of figuring this out because I get so frustrated by her whining. Because I am more interested in doing whatever it is that I am doing, as if it is so important, indeed more important than this other life to whom I am the sole provider of care and who depends and relies on me for her livelihood, entertainment, protection, understanding, etc.  

So self-judgment on that point has been part of why I have stopped myself from actually figuring it out and making practical commitment / solutions to try. Instead I shut myself up in shame / guilt and a belief that I am a terrible person / pet owner. 

I have kind of tried to implement one basic change that I discovered through my preliminary writing, which is to return to a more regular feeding schedule. She seems to do better with regular feeding. However she still treats her food with mostly a seeming disdain, until I add fish oil capsules or some coconut oil, or scraps from my own meals. 

When I first took her into my care, she was eating Iams, which I have heard, although I've not researched for myself, is filled with things that are rather bad for dogs; maybe even roadkill. I think that I bought one large bag of some fancy kibble from some specialty pet store, then switched her over to raw food. I had met a dog a few months prior who was on a raw (homemade) diet and its fur was extremely soft; I couldn't believe how soft. So I wanted my dog's fur to be this soft. Interesting to recall this now, since her fur is actually why I started writing this particular post. Now in reflecting I see that this dog's fur was very much a different texture and length and style from my dog's fur. I thought that raw food would like magically make her fur soft and fluffy and light, but her fur is naturally straight and coarse. It's kind of medium in length, but sticks relatively close to her body. Labrador fur, basically, and australian cattle dog -- the two breeds I was told she's a mixture of. 

She was on raw (store-bought) food for quite a few months and she was voracious about her meals during that time. I purchased raw food patties, basically, and also turkey necks (which she preferred to traipse off with into corners of the house to enjoy by herself, but due to the mess factor I could not allow this), which I kept frozen, then thawed, then gave to her. She would generally consume her meals during this time in literally under 5 seconds. The whole thing was quite an ordeal that involved a lot of scheduling and cleaning. It was also extremely expensive, so much so that I was not really able to feed her quite enough (although as far as I know, dogs who eat enough raw food are still rather skinny, as was the one with soft fur that I first met). So, eventually I switched her back to kibble.

I don't know a lot about dog kibble beyond what the employees at the fancy specialty pet stores tell me. I've had her on at least 3 different highly recommended kibbles. Whenever we first make a change, she is usually excited and eager for about the first week, if that. However, every time, she eventually treats her food with somewhat of a disdain again. Leaving the dish full, avoiding it, just looking at it or ignoring it. 

Some other points to mention include a behavior she has toward her dish that she has displayed ever since we first moved to Denver (I don't recall her doing this in Seattle... I believe I had her on a timed feeding schedule for all of our time there, so perhaps it is part of this food anxiety from the change in feeding schedule that promotes this behavior?). She will nudge her food dish around with her nose, often ending up with the dish pushed under a shelf or otherwise inaccessible, or with the dish knocked upside down, often covering the food, so that in these instances her food becomes inaccessible to her and as far as I can tell she has eaten none. (hmmm, like burying her food??) She used to pretty much only do this while I was away at work, and I would also come home to find items (such as socks) that I had left on the floor put into her water dish (these I believe she was trying to nudge over her food dish, but her water dish at the time was positioned right next to it in a kind of wrought iron holder). This is unusual, but most alarming to me is that this has often resulted in her creating a little open wound on the tip of her nose which bleeds and scabs over. I don't suppose she's actually trying to hurt herself, but it bothers me that this is the result, perhaps in part because of my own history of intentionally hurting myself, and also seeing for example incidents wherein children have inadvertently hurt themselves due to engaging in maladaptive coping behaviors. 

Okay, so she is probably not trying to injure herself. She is probably, most apparently, trying to bury her food. Save it for later? Again this points to not trusting that she will be fed regularly -- so to go back to a strict timed feeding schedule. 

Another point to mention is that it seems that no matter what kibble I give to her, she eats dog poop at the park, and with the kibble she currently eats, she is also a voracious grass eater, every day, most opportunities she can get (so, I don't think it's that she's sick, because she very rarely throws it up). Recently she has also started to eat dirt, although it's not just any dirt, it seems like she'll find a spot she likes and come back to it -- so perhaps there is something else in that spot that I am unaware of. Some people I have talked to suggest that this might mean she is missing nutrients in her regular food, but this is frustrating to me since I buy her very expensive and highly recommended food. I suppose I need to learn more about what exactly is in it, and what exactly she might need. 

She also will eat any food trash she can access, and I have always had to use a baby gate or somehow otherwise make the trash inaccessible. This might again point to a lack of nutrients. It could also indicate that she is very bored with the taste and/or texture of her kibble, which could be the consequence of having been "spoiled" with raw food. It could also say something about her food-related anxiety, like that she will eat whatever she can get, except the food that is actually given to her, which she seems to either reject as worthless, or set aside for later as very valuable... How to tell which, I'm not sure. 

One thing I see repeatedly here is that I am frustrated by her behavior, when her behavior is most likely an indication that she is probably very frustrated herself. 

And so then that leads me to why I really started this post, which is her skin / fur. Part of why I choose to buy her such expensive food is because every pet store employee I talk to tells me that this or that kibble should be good for her fur, and make it soft. 

She has very bad dandruff. Usually even just 2 or 3 days after a bath, her fur is oily and/or dry and flaky. She also absolutely loves rolling in grass, although one person pointed out that she might actually be allergic to grass and this act of herself trying to scratch her own back might actually be making her condition worse. Or, she might have some other kind of allergy about which I am unaware.

(It has been presumed by many that she has an allergy because she is basically bald around her eyes. But, in the almost 5 years that I've known her and the variety of different foods she has eaten, this has never really changed.)

The main point for me here is that I do not like to pet, scratch, or even really touch her once her fur gets to a certain degree of being dirty, which happens quickly. So now I have a dog living under my care who does not like to eat the food I give her, and whom I do not touch as much as she would obviously like and deserves. 

The interesting thing here is that when I first got her, she was very very very un-trusting of me, and did not really let me touch her hardly at all, as much as I wanted to. So I took a long time gaining her trust, only to now be abusing it because I know that she loves me and needs me and wants my attention, and yet I do not give it to her because of details she cannot control -- details which in fact probably bother her a lot more than they bother me, because it is obvious that her skin is very uncomfortable and itchy for her. 

Here at least is a nice example of a time that we
learned and were challenged together to conquer
an apparent fear of swimming with a blatant
love of squeaky tennis balls. :)

(And here I could go off into a tangent about the quality of my relationship with her in general, what it is like for us to exist together in this home, and how it is unsatisfactory and really not acceptable that we are not more of a "team" so to speak, for lack of my own participation in creating / sustaining that kind of relationship.) 

Presently I try to give her a bath about every 2-3 weeks, although tomorrow I am planning to give her another one after only 1 week having passed because her fur is so dry and itchy. I have a "medicated" shampoo that has green tea and tea tree oil in it, but it does not have oatmeal which is one of the #1 things I have heard recommended (and which when I have used in the past has worked well), so I will have to also purchase some of that kind of shampoo and maybe switch back and forth. 

I also have to continue to stick to a routine feeding schedule, and I should probably also go back to having her sit and wait before releasing her to eat as this is what she was used to from when I fed her raw food and had her on a timed eating schedule, and is perhaps why she sometimes just stands there and whines at me until I encourage / coax her to eat. 

I can also investigate food ingredients and nutritional needs and see what other foods I might try. I can also continue to supplement her food with tasty treats that will entice her to eat the entire dish. 

I can rule out that the kibble is too hard, as compared to raw food, because she is a lover of bones and spends the majority of her day gnawing at them, so I am certain that her teeth are quite strong, but perhaps there is another point to look at in that realm, I do not know. 

I can be sure to brush her regularly too so as to release shedded hair so that it does not add to her itchiness (or my floor!). 

I can also suck it up and give my dog some physical attention multiple times throughout the day, and just wash my hands after since they become so dusty and dirty from touching her even less than a week after her last bath. 

I also really need to be on top of getting her nails trimmed regularly, which I have already determined will happen every other Monday morning, because I see that when they get too long her nails begin to bend toward or away from each other, which invariably affects her toes and joints and I have heard that this is how dogs get arthritis, among other avenues. 

I can also take her on more and longer walks, and we can also go running again like we did for a short while months ago. 

I can also be more observant and make greater efforts to understand her, rather than just becoming frustrated by her whining and other "strange" behaviors, because these behaviors do communicate something if I am willing to listen. 

I mean honestly at this rate I am not an appropriate person to care for a dog, but I see how I can do better, and so I will, because she deserves the best as life. 

So my action plan is as follows, I commit myself to:

1. Possibly purchase a different food dish that will be harder to nudge around or flip over due to structure and the rubber ring around the bottom. 
2. Return to a timed feeding schedule within an hour frame, taking into consideration my own eating times and when I am most consistently home at that time each day out of the week. 
• Including having her sit and wait until she is released -- I hear dogs like structure like this. 
• What to do if I feed her in the morning and come home and the dish is still full...? Should I remove the dish after x amount of time (before I leave for work) even if she has not touched the food...? This would probably only be an issue for a week or two if I do that, and then she might learn that it is time to eat when I give her food. 
3. Investigate different food options / a variety of food options.
• Within this, investigate nutrients and what she might need that she might not be getting.
• Continue to cook for myself and reserve scraps for her ***to give during timed feeding (rather than just as I am cooking / cleaning up / done eating)*** so that she has greater variety 
• Or, should I do none of this at all...? 
• One person suggested that I feed her pulp from my juicer, if/when I ever start actually using my juicer (haha). 
• Investigate how to make her food -- like the person who fed their dog raw homemade food. 
• Supplement her food with various basic "human" food options, or invest in wet dog food / canned raw food to add to her kibble
4. Bathe her frequently
• Try some different shampoos to see what works best
• Try my neighbor's suggestion to bathe her 3 days in a row to see if this will help any (boy she'll love that haha). 
5. Per the suggestion of a fellow dog-park-er, each day rub her down with a damp cloth to remove any pollen or other possible allergy irritants (also dirt, dandruff, excess fur, etc.). 
6. Brush her frequently
7. Wash/replace the blankets in her crate where she sleeps (probably lots of oil and dirt etc. in there that contributes to her fur / skin getting dirty faster)
8. Give her lots of love in the form of scratches, pets, cuddles, and words / sounds. 
9. Give her lots of love in the form of longer walks, runs, or playing fetch. 
10. No longer accept or allow myself to think of myself first when she is communicating to me about her needs. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated when my dog whines at me or seems to want my attention for any reason.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty and ashamed of that to the point where I not only have not wanted to write about it / share it here, but have even ignored it as true in myself by not changing myself and my relationship with her. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore the needs of this animal that is under my care, who needs me and relies and depends on me, who I abuse and neglect by not giving her everything I can give to her, especially that which she cannot give to herself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty about ignoring my dog and basically understand this as the reason that she does not seem as affectionate as some dogs, or as affectionate with me as she is toward some people who do not seem to mind the way her fur is. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to understand that and see that something needs to change in myself and the way that I care for her, but for having not really done this as best I can, so that nothing changes and instead we are like "just two roommates sharing a space," but this is not best for either of us. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to use the action of giving to my dog as an opportunity to also give to myself, giving myself a relationship and companionship with this animal and the opportunity to see myself through and as this animal and our relationship. I do see myself through our relationship, and I do not like what I see. So now I change. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to care more about my own frustration as a reaction to my dog's behavior than I do about the fact that my dog's behavior clearly indicates that she herself is very frustrated, in ways that I can assist and support her to resolve. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to fully assist and support my dog to have a wonderful quality life because I am too busy either being frustrated or guilty or ashamed. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes imagine "what if" my dog died or got very sick and then died or died suddenly, how sad and upset I would be, and realizing in this imagination that I would regret the way our relationship was, and yet not do anything to change our relationship within that realization. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wait until death to resolve my inner battles. I saw this also in my last post: "No one close to me has ever died. The few people who have died, I wasn't that close to, and certainly after they died I told myself we weren't really that close at all anyway. I mean in part this is relevant to my inability to connect with other people on an intimate level of really feeling connected in such a way that I can't just basically flip a switch and suppress any negative reactions I might have over their death (and yet look what happens if someone betrays me or hurts me in some way, how interesting)." where I saw that in life I remain in battle with myself about another, but in death I finally let go. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wait until death occurs to face myself and forgive myself for who I am and have been, and realize that I never really needed to forgive another, that they are gone and I am still here with myself and the consequences of myself, so now that they are gone I can let that go, rather than letting it go unconditionally and changing now. 

I haven't experienced that, actually. That is speculation on my part. But I haven't not imagined my dad's death, for example, or even catastrophic "what ifs" about others, and in that imagination realized (or at least believed) that it would be very easy at that point to forgive and to let go of the energy. So why not now? It's an interesting point to look at, but quite separate from this post. 

Okay, that will do.... 

I've been feeling "out of it" in a way for the last few days, so even though there is much else going on, I determined that this was something I could write out in a productive way, whereas other points I am more just trying to live out right now. 

Correction - Day 109

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to enter into a low energy state of feeling sad and helpless and heavy and lethargic and ashamed because I have kind of been "scolded" where really I have simply been given an expectation and a pointed statement that something I have said is not acceptable and will not be tolerated, as it should not be, but I have reacted to this in feeling ashamed of myself which opens up the doors for further thoughts/emotions/self judgments about who I am and what I am worth, and how I'll "never get it right."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to secretly think, "oh well, no one has to know about this mis-step, I can keep it to myself" and within this also I will not really actually face it, but simply sweep it under the rug.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not take absolute unconditional full responsibility for myself in EVERY moment, every action, every word, every thought, every part of myself as who I am, but instead lie to myself and say that if it was good I will take credit, and if it was bad, well, I didn't really mean it anyway. Thank you Dan for putting this to words, and for showing me how to see myself. "It's like as I participate in this ego/self-definition polarity point, I aim for the positive, and mentally neutralize the negative to not have to take responsibility for my words unless I get positive feedback."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that there is a "right" way to "get it," so that when I perceive that I am "on track" I feel positive energy and feel somewhat invincible and joyous and also imagine what others must be admiring about me and how others must think I am just so great, or maybe even they are jealous, and to have all of this going on in my mind where I feel good about myself and project that others feel good about me, not realizing this is a positive energetic experience -- not stability, not being "on track" but still careening down the track uncontrolled, directed by feelings.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to then feel like "I got it wrong" or "I'll never get it right" when I am corrected or when I see that I did or said something unacceptable, so that now I feel like I should just stop moving altogether.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be all or nothing, either moving full speed ahead in CONfidence in myself or stopping completely in self pity and shame, rather than moving steadily, slowly, in stability, always seeing myself and in awareness of myself in self honesty.

I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to be all or nothing inasmuch as I believe that once a mistake is made, it's over, I can't keep going, I can't be forgiven by myself or another, I should just give up.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself also to fear seeing myself completely at all times no matter what is in front of me because I fear unknowns and I fear new events, such as starting my new job, so I fear looking at myself because I believe I need to be more aware of what is around me that is new than of myself, where who I am right now is who I am, so actually if there is a point in front of me, as there is now, and I set it aside and refuse to look at it, it will still be me as who I am, and thus will influence who I am and how I behave, and thus may actually serve as a point of self sabotage in terms of adjusting to my new job while trying to ignore this seemingly unrelated point, because it is just suppression at that point, and I have already seen for myself what suppression does to me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see things about another and not see these things about myself, but we are equal and one, and I am what I see, and so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to blame another for who I am, not even seeing that I am this way, and also limiting myself within the blame that I place on another, so that what I see in myself as being "problematic" and the fault of another is not even that which I need to see in myself, but is just another layer to peel back before I can really see myself. Thank you Kristina for sharing this post: It's Only Me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be angry with myself, so angry, that I project the anger outward, and react to all that I see in others that is actually in myself, but closing my eyes to myself in favor of seeing and blaming another, but I cannot take responsibility for another, I can only take responsibility for myself, but instead of taking responsibility for myself I am adding still more layers of anger and blame and reaction and also destroying relationships with others and my relationship with myself along the way.

However I see, realize, and understand that although this may seem 'counter productive' and indeed is a less than direct way to equalize myself within and as all life, it is nonetheless my way, as the process I must walk in order to see myself, that this is how I am now seeing myself, and so it is my process to walk, it is what is facilitating my movement through my process -- it is me.

So I do not regret and I do not judge, I simply stop, breathe, and finally see myself.

Artwork by Marlen Vargas Del Razo

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think / believe that I can "get away" with saying "but I didn't know" where "I didn't know" within my mind implies that "no one told me."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to rely on others to tell me or teach me things in order for me to know and learn.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to rely on others to correct me when I express myself or express what it is that I have learned, expecting others to direct me and "show me the way" and ensure that I do not go "off track" as they read or hear or encounter me as who I am as what I have learned.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to direct myself in absolute self honest consideration of what is best for all, what is really self honest, and what is self responsible.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to actually take responsibility for myself by asking myself if what I am doing/saying is really self honest or best for all, obviously within my present understanding / ability to do so, but instead depend / rely on others to do this for me, to observe me and direct their attention toward me within this, giving me thus attention through their observance and then their correction.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others to do this, even like in jr high I know I asked a friend to keep an eye on me and let me know if she ever saw me as doing something wrong, to which she laughed and said absolutely not, that is not my responsibility, you can do this for yourself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others to do this and then to have in stock the excuse/justification that "I did not know" and "no one told me" so that when I make a mistake I blame others for my mistake as my "not knowing" when there really is nothing to know, just myself in self honesty, which is a process, and mistakes will be made, but blame is not acceptable in the picture.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect others to support me more than I support myself, expect others to see me more than I see myself, and expect others to provide me with guidance for correction more than I do this for or actually correct myself.


I forgive myself also therefore for accepting and allowing myself to "support" others, within my definition of "support," more than I actually practically support myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to "see" others, within my definition of seeing, which is only my perception and interpretation through my mind, which is not clear, because I have not actually seen myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to provide "guidance" for "correction" to others, within my very limited definition and understanding of what these things actually mean, more than I reflect within, on and as myself to provide myself with direction for correction and actually practically correct and change myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, within all of this, develop resentment toward others / another because I feel I have given of myself to this other, and have not received back. But here I see, realize, and understand that I gave of myself within the expectation of receiving back, while at the same time refusing to give unto myself that which I would like to receive, instead giving unto another that which I cannot give, and not giving unto myself that which no one but myself can give.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to first believe that I have supported, seen, and guided another, and then that I have expected the same or something similar in return, and then that I have developed resentment against this other when I have not received -- or have failed to recognize that I have received -- the same or similar in return, and then that I have not realized either that it was not requested of me to give anything of myself, in fact it was always only ever requested that I give to myself, that I be a gift to myself, and I did not even take that gift of those words as that suggestion that was given unto me, I rejected it, and yet still continued to "give" of myself to another, and so I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed all of this to occur within and as myself and in this friendship.

I forgive myself too for accepting and allowing myself to, upon beginning to realize and understand what it means to be a gift to myself, not recognize the gift that was given me in those first words as the suggestion to be a gift to myself, but instead disregard the source as the catalyst for my investigation into myself, saying it was worthless, it was not needed, I did this all by myself -- which is not true. Were it not for that gift of those words, and the other gifts given me through conversation and friendship, I would not be here writing this blog today, I would not be seeing even glimpses of myself at all, let alone seeing myself in my totality as is my goal here, I would not be here walking this process at all, I would have no idea, and I do not perceive within reflections of myself that I would have ever pushed through the resistances were Desteni ever introduced to me in any other way.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take credit because I have wanted credit, rather than giving credit as it is what I would like to receive, where within this we are all credited with the gifts that we give to each other each day in sharing our writing and our support, and we are also all credited with the reality of what this world is as who we each are, so we must here take responsibility for and as ourselves, and so that is what I am here to do, unconditionally and absolutely, which includes now facing this point in front of me.



There is much work to be done. It may or may not be done in this blog as the platform for writing, but it will be written, it will be done, each day. I'll not resist, and I'll not accept or allow myself to continue to create more layers to peel away.

Seeing, Realizing and Understanding for, as, and by Self - Day 56

For much of my life I have participated within and as a personality of "therapist" or "helper" or "person who can help others see (what they should do, how they should be, what choices they should make)." Sometimes this assertion and insertion of myself and my opinions has been requested and sought out by friends and family. Sometimes, however, it has been unsolicited. In many of the times I would see that the other person might seem to benefit from the conversation wherein I shared with them my perspective of "what they should do" (of course this perceived benefit may have merely been a projection of my ego state of being a "good helper" and "having the answers"), but nonetheless there have been many times when actual change within the person did not manifest, which is to say that they did not choose to apply my "teachings" and went about living their life as they saw fit. Also sometimes my insistence on sharing my perspective has actually become a point of conflict in relationships to where I was basically telling a person what I thought they should do without any regard for what they thought they should do and the fact that they are walking their own process and must make their own choices. So in all of this I have almost always been invested in the outcome where I have attached myself to a desired outcome in what the other person decides to do with the "assistance" I have given them.

I have become increasingly aware over the years how my approach in these instances sometimes is experienced by others as abrasive. Even in an approach of simply asking another questions which might assist them in coming to their own self-supportive conclusions, I have been told or have otherwise realized that I am often asking these questions with my own answer in mind, and thus the questions are "leading" with the expectation of the other person reaching that same conclusion, and within this I have been informed that sometimes others experience awareness of this expectation to where they sense that I have this expectation of them and feel pressured to come to that conclusion or feel like they are wrong if they do not come to that conclusion. It has also been pointed out to me that I will make this expectation all the more obvious by continuing to ask questions beyond their answer if their answer is "wrong"/not the answer I "wanted to hear." So here again it is obvious that even in the act of attempting to assist/support/help another, I have my own self-interest in mind as my starting-point as a way to feed my ego within feeling "good" about helping another and feeling "smart" for having the best answers for their problems.

I can also recall a great many times in my life when I have received advice from others, both solicited and non, and I have in fact become defensive within this advice or otherwise have not implemented it within myself.

My point here is that this exchange of advice is not always supportive, productive, or beneficial.

At one point in college I was living with two other young women, one of whom was my age ("T") and the other about 4-5 years older ("C"). At one point, I was in the process of making life decisions for T under the premise of helping her and creating friction within myself regarding my investment in T's choices or T's adherence to my set of life guidelines to where our friendship suffered not only because I was inserting and asserting my opinion but also because I was attaching myself to the specific outcome I had destined to be the one true "right" outcome rather than aligning myself with T as one and equal to where I would see and respect her as able to make her own decisions and walk her own process for herself and not for me. It was all very self-centered, among other things, such as interactions with my ego and pride and multiple personalities I have created for myself.

At one point, C pointed out to me that T needed to see, realize, and understand for herself (not these exact words of course), that I cannot direct T according to my will. This serves here as an example of advice that I received and rejected because I was so insistent on not only having and providing but in fact BEing T's answer/solution. And now I see why I received and rejected: I, too, needed to see, realize, and understand for myself that every individual needs to see, realize, and understand for themselves. C had the "wisdom" of having already seen, realized, and understood this for herself. Here she was trying to bestow this lesson upon me by sharing her perspective (and only sharing it once), but when she saw that I rejected it and continued to insert/assert myself to the detriment of my relationship with T, she continued to embrace me and T as equal as life forms who have not yet seen, realized, and understood for ourselves various aspects of our processes. She let us make mistakes so that we could see, realize, and understand for ourselves, and she loved us unconditionally.

The strategy which C utilized here to assist and support me in my relationship with T is one that I have attempted to use to varying degrees of success and about which I have decided upon a useful metaphor, which is to lay information on a table and let the other person pick it up rather than forcing it upon them, forcing it into their hands, at which point it is much more likely they will reject it / react to it. "Laying it on the table" allows the other person to see it and consider it and either leave it or take it, and also to come back to it later to pick it up for, as, and by themselves, while decreasing the likelihood that they will go into a reaction about it or engage within and as their pride/ego to the reception of guidance. It also safeguards against the fact that not every solution is best for every person or situation, and that the person giving suggestions does not know the entirety of the situation and thus cannot always offer the best advice. And within this metaphor and within my pattern of investing myself in the outcome of my assistance of others, it is then imperative that I remain unattached to whether or not the other person "picks up" what I have "laid down" such that I am merely sharing my perspective, "take it or leave it." So it leaves it up to the individual to take responsibility for themselves while still assisting them with perspective. Generally speaking this seems like a very effective way to communicate any kind of differing perspectives which could turn into conflict/debate/argument, since the only person who can change one's mind is oneself.

It is through my own process and also now reflecting upon the example that C set (laid on the table) that I am able to see, realize, and understand now for myself that every individual must see, realize, and understand for themselves and direct themselves to change themselves for, as, and by themselves.



I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take on a role/personality of "ultimate helper" and "knower" and "seer" when others experience "problems" that I believe I can answer.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to help others from the starting point of my ego and self-interest.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as an egotistical energy when and as I am helping/assisting/supporting others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, when I see myself helping another through advice-giving, hear what I am saying, "like" it, and then actually just like the sound of my own voice continuing to help this person, within and as the thought "yeah! I'm so smart! I'm so great for helping this person!"

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to invest myself in and attach myself to the outcome of my assistance/support of another to where I project expectations of what that outcome should look like within what the other person decides to do in response/reaction to my help.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that other people must see, realize, and understand for themselves and make decisions about their lives for themselves and face consequences for themselves.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that I must see, realize, and understand for myself and make decisions for myself and face consequences for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the destruction/demise of friendships because I am so attached to my ego and the outcome of the advice that I give to others, where I want to possess/control others through and as my self-interested egotistical desire to be right and to have the answer.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assist/support others from and as the starting-point of my self-interest and ego and that within this I have not accepted or allowed myself to align myself with another as one as equal as life and so within this I have not accepted or allowed myself to align myself with what is best for all and align my advice/support/assistance/help with what is best for all.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to give "advice," support/assistance/help as a suggestion but instead have given it as a command.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to, within and as my self-interest and ego, create a presentation of myself which is "abrasive" even as I am attempting to "assist," "support" and "help" another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I know the answer to another's problems and that from this even when I ask questions in an attempt to allow another to draw their own conclusions, I am asking "leading questions" with the expectation of the other person arriving at the same answer I have.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to assist/support/help/advise another from the starting point of self-honesty within and as what is best for all.

Perhaps all of this is relevant to and as why I have a tendency to become so defensive/self-protective when I receive support in the form of a differing perspective of what I should do?

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to hear and receive another's support/assistance/help/advice/perspective from the starting point of self-honesty as what is best for all and instead have reacted within and as my ego/self-interest/self-preservation.


When and as I see myself in the position of providing support/assistance/help/advice/perspective to another person, I stop and I breathe. I have a look at myself and who I am within this moment. Am I being self-honest? Am I aligning myself as one as equal as life with this other being? Am I respecting this other being as one as equal as life? Is my approach here what is best for all? I realize that if I am participating within and as my ego and self-interest while attempting to support another, then I am supporting no one. I commit myself to being considerate of all of this and of the other person as one as equal as life and to align myself within and as what I am able to share with another to assist and support another from the starting point of self-honesty and what is best for all.