Anxiety, Self-Direction, and Getting Lost - Day 149

In some ways, I have noticed a marked increase in my experience of anxiety.

Right now I attribute this to increased awareness. Like a hyper-exposure, as compared to ever before, to my environment and who I am within it. And, since I haven't really addressed anxiety specifically, anxiety is a kind of go-to reaction to that hyper-exposure.

ex·pose
ikˈspōz/
verb
1. make (something) visible, typically by uncovering it.

Visibility implies vulnerability. In becoming more visible to myself, I experience myself also as more visible to others. But nothing has actually changed in physical reality. Only my awareness.

The sensation is interesting. It isn't really an anxiety in my gut. It's more in my chest, in my heart rate, and like a very subtle vibration in my upper arms and shoulders, like making me feel compressed from the sides, with my arms at my sides. A kind of pressure to make myself small and narrow, and collapsed.

It's weird because it's also how I felt when I visited Oakland a few weekend ago. In part I was a little anxious because I was meeting someone for the first time, and that is usually an experience that I react to with anxiety.

But I also attribute my experience in Oakland to this feeling of being kind of trapped and exposed, which for some reason I relate to in terms of transportation. I mean I know that my anxiety in the bay area links me to a memory of the only car accident I've ever been in that was my fault, and that occurred in San Francisco.

So for some reason I associate this particular experience of anxiety of visibility and vulnerability -- this experience becoming normative as my experience now as I become more involved at work especially, and come to see myself more and more in process -- with the experience of being in a large city and having to navigate my transportation therein by myself.

So it's a weird association that I don't really understand yet. But the experience is becoming a frequent, maybe even near-constant experience of myself, even now here where I live and at work.

But interesting to note here in particular in relation to this association is that it is associated with having to rely on myself to navigate in a crowded, highly visible, chaotic environment, where the whole city is not going to stop, where no one really can be expected to stop to help me, or to soothe me, or to give me direction, should I crash, or fall, or make a mistake. I have to do it myself. And, at least in the case of driving, I don't believe I can.

And, really, in the case of living, it is the same. I am saturated with self-doubt, and it feels like my speed is picking up. Like here I am now approaching the city, and now driving in the city, and I can't stop it, I am here in the city, and I am scared. What I do at work matters. What I do in my personal life for myself, matters. I matter, I am beginning to see. And with that comes responsibility, ie self-reliance. Self-trust. Whoa.

And I want to hide. I feel hyper-exposed.

But now I see that my speed is not in fact picking up. As I said above, nothing in reality has changed, only my awareness.

So now, I stop, and I support myself with my breath, when I feel anxious like this. I take deep, slow breaths, and I support myself this way until I can release the anxious energy as pressure and compression on my body from the sides of my arms and shoulders and chest, through my breath.

I realize that as I breathe deeply and slowly, the sensation dissipates. Could the sensation itself be indicative that I have been holding my breath, or breathing too shallow? Maybe. So I look at this.

---

I wrote that last night.

Last night I also watched an episode of Lost (Season 2, Episode 18, "Dave") and it was really a very interesting episode in terms of "mental health." Basically within it we find out that one character, who used to be in a mental institution, was there at least in part because he had an imaginary friend who represented negativity and an addiction to food. And in this episode, the character has a mental break, and this imaginary friend re-emerges, and lures him to a cliff where he suggests that jumping off will allow the character to wake up to see actual reality (the imaginary friend convinces him that everything at that point is an illusion).

I got kind of wrapped up in this. I mean I could really relate, given my own experiences with "mental illness" and the dark places I have gone within my mind, hating myself, limiting myself, even wanting to kill myself, or hurt myself. Paranoia about reality vs illusion. Lack of trust of others, and myself. Really dark negative belief systems about myself. And it was interesting to see how that kind of energy can become separated so far to the point of creating an imaginary friend, although I've not done that. Either way the episode serves as an example of the personalities we create for different parts of ourselves, as we divide ourselves from ourselves as life within our minds. Lost is available to stream on Netflix, by the way. It's a great show.

But I was scared, as I was watching. It's so easy! It's so easy to get lost. It's so easy to let that part take control. It's so easy to fuck up. It would be so easy for me to, for example, believe I should just kill myself. So I was scared. Because I didn't want to go there again. And I didn't want to risk it. And I was scared because I wasn't sure how I would even be able to tell. How can I tell illusion from reality? I've lived in illusion for so long, even if it hasn't always been the kind that leads me over a cliff. How can I trust myself?

So for me this relates back to the hyper-exposure / awareness of myself. I am more aware of who I am, who I have been, the consequences of me. And as I try to pick up the pieces of myself and gather myself as one whole, I am pulling into myself the parts of me I pushed farthest away in separation. The darkest parts of me, are still me. So here I am, like in the same room now with my own death, having to face myself, without separation.

And last night I felt actually kind of scared as I was trying to sleep, because I was afraid that this anxiety would be my demise, that I would somehow really fuck something up, like at work.

I'm trying to identify the anxiety more now. I know for one thing that sometimes the food I eat gives me a physical experience that is similar to anxiety. Just like how one of my old students at my old job would sometimes become scared and thus angry after playing sports, because he confused his increased heart rate for anxiety and fear. Similarly I might be confusing these physical sensations, and reacting to them with anxiety.

But I am also facing a big point right now. And I don't really want to face it. That is probably a huge part of it.

I also see how angry I am. I am so angry. And I see that the things that I say in my mind, the angry energy that I am directing at another in my mind... why, it's so familiar. Because I've hated myself before. Because I've hurt myself before. Because I've wanted to hurt myself before. Because I've raged at myself countless times. So when I realized this, when I realized that everything I was ranting about in my mind about another was the exact same shit I believe about myself, it kind of overcame me. It came back at me, as me. And I just want to rage and throw a fit and break something and hit a punching bag until I cry.

I haven't released it yet. I went through today with this anxiety energy consuming me. The anger is consuming me.

I am not sure, but, I think in some ways, it was probably a self-victimization. I am stressed, I am overwhelming myself. So here I made myself the victim of anxiety. Like, wow, I am really going through something "serious" here, so I need attention. But I didn't seek out attention for it. I just went through my day, feeling anxious, feeling worried, feeling distracted and uncomfortable, feeling afraid, and feeling afraid of fucking up. Seeing how easy it would be to fuck up, and feeling afraid of that, and then feeling stuck, like I am going down this path, like I am driving in the city and I am going to crash.

I don't know. There is a lot right now.

What I do know, but have not been practicing, is that I have control over myself. I know that, even if I don't know how, I am creating this experience. I know that I am feeding it, or else it wouldn't still be here. I mean the mere fact that I moved through the entire day holding onto this anxiety -- obviously I am participating. I was "trying it on" so to speak, to see how it felt. Now I need to take it off, and let it go.

So I breathe. And I also move away from the foods that I suspect might be contributing to the physical experience that I am reacting to as anxiety. And I take care of myself, and be patient with myself, and try to figure out how the fuck I can support myself before I self destruct.

And I continue to look at how to let go of energy, and leave it behind me. Actually release it, and then fill myself with my breath, myself as life.

And I reflect on what I have already written, as a way to see myself, rather than resist myself. I embody myself as one whole; I do not abandon myself, and I am not a lost cause.




I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto anxious energy as a self-definitive experience.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to engage in angry thoughts and hold onto the anger generated by these thoughts so that I am back tracking and creating new energy to hold onto rather than releasing and letting go of energy unconditionally.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to truly be forgiving.

I commit myself to embodying forgiveness as me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to move through my day filled with self-doubt and self-hatred and questioning my value or my worth to anyone or to myself.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to put it on others to validate me or tell me I am okay.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create a lack or need within myself and then expecting others to fill it, or hoping others will help me feel better somehow.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I cannot do this, where this is supporting myself, this is standing in stability, this is continuing forward.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to engage with this extreme experience of anxiety as if it is the new me, who I am, and who I will be, as if I have no ability to direct the energy.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become this experience of anxiety.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt my ability to direct myself and take responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel exposed and fear being exposed, even though I believe that integrity = transparency.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe and fear that others will judge me as harshly as I judge myself, or as harshly as I judge others.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to embody forgiveness and realize it as the way of life.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am alone, that I do not have the support that other people have, that I do not have the friendships or relationships that other people have, and that because of this I am lost, I am less equipped to get through each day the way that others can. I realize this is self-victimization. I realize my relationships are my own creation. I realize that within this I am denying myself my own ability to support myself. I realize that this does not support me, to entertain these thoughts, and feel sorry for myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel jealous of the relationships or outside support that I perceive others as having. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel jealous of the seeming stability that other people have. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resent people in my life who I feel do not support me the way I wish they would, or the way it seems like other people are able to garner support from those around them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become entranced in a story or theatrical depiction of mental illness and to fear myself having the same experience, or fear my memories of my own dark experiences, to fear that I have no control over myself, that my mind can overtake me and direct me to my death.

It can.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear this, and believe that I can't overcome it, that I can't direct myself to life.

I can.

I commit myself to patience with myself. I commit myself to understanding myself. I commit myself to forgiving myself. I commit myself to letting go. I commit myself to steady breathing, steady walking, and steadiness within myself. I commit myself to slowing down to what is here and now. I commit myself to supporting myself and sympathizing with myself and giving myself whatever I wish another would give me at any given moment, giving myself that moment to be here for and as myself, to care for myself, to care about myself, giving myself what I need but am not getting because I am not giving it to myself.

I commit myself to stop fear of moving forward. I commit myself to stop allowing myself to be overcome by energy.

I commit myself to start by allowing myself to believe I can do this, to stop the self-doubt. Then, I will do it.

Liking the Boy Who Pulls Your Hair - Day 148

Today two of my students came to me to talk about boy troubles. Both girls were talking about how confused they were because the boys they liked were very hot and cold with them, basically being nice especially when they were alone, but mean to them when there were other kids around, or otherwise being generally hot and cold.

We talked about self-respect and I asked why they would like someone who does not respect them or who treats them poorly. This was more just a question I wanted them to think about and reflect on, since it is certainly something that takes a while for most women (and men?) to learn. In fact it is something that I am only learning right now.

I encouraged them to be reflective of themselves and only act based on decisions they make about who they are, not about what other people do or say, or what they think other people want them to do, or what they think other people think.

I encouraged them to think about how they could best support themselves.

I pointed out how we're probably always going to feel those butterflies in our stomach when we see a boy who we think is attractive. Sometimes that's hard to control. But what we can control is what we do with that. We don't have to "like" someone just because of how he looks. It's how he actually is toward us that matters, and how he is in general. I mean, what do they expect a relationship with that person to look like, based on how he treats them now? And what kind of relationship do they really want? "One where we're kind to each other, we don't call each other names..."

And what did I really expect that relationship to look like? More of the same? I hoped it would be different. I hoped he would change. I hoped I could make him change. I hoped I was special enough to make him change, to make him be the person I originally thought he was, or wanted him to be. I hoped. Hope is not real. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create my experience here and now based on what I hoped for the future. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to exist in the here and now of reality, responding to what is here, now, and moving myself in self honesty from the starting point of stability in this moment. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to change another person for the sake of my own ego, of feeling good about myself as being important enough to another person to make them change. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wish that I could have that power, to change another person because they care about me that much. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to equate caring and love with a person changing to be a better person. I realize this goes back to my dad, who said he loved me, but who was abusive. I realize that I wanted him to change in order to show me he loved me. I realize maybe I have a hidden belief that he didn't really love me, since he never changed. So I commit myself to investigate this further. What is "love" in this belief? The belief that I do not matter. That I only matter if I can get another person to change, to treat me better, then I will know I have value. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe this, to put before myself this impossible task that is completely irrelevant to my actual value as life, and which is self-abusive by design. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I can be the person that makes another person change. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to be that person. I see that in this instance I have helped another person see themselves, but only after engaging in much frustration and self-abusive behavior of arguing and not supporting myself. It is not my job to change another. It is not my job to make another see himself. I will not be enticed by this ability -- I am tired! It is not worth it to do this when I am not stable in myself, supporting myself. I cannot support another instead of supporting myself, and I cannot accept or allow myself to be drained by another person who does not understand and respect (see himself as one with and equal to) the consequence of these interactions. I will respect myself and stop my participation. I will create myself now here as the person that I want to be, supporting myself, trusting myself, respecting myself, and taking responsibility for myself NOW, so that I no longer hope for the future to be a certain way. I am here now, I will be here now, I will create myself here and now as what is best for all as best I can in self-support. I stand. 

I also pointed out how, from the sounds of it, it seemed like these boys just wanted attention from them in order to stroke their own egos. And so, when one girl stopped talking to that boy for 4 days, he started giving her a lot of attention on facebook, trying basically to coax her back into the position he had been keeping her in: at arm's length, but still feeding his ego.

Maybe I was projecting from my own experiences; I don't know. But the girls said they could relate to what I was saying. One girl felt sympathetic about a boy who was going through a difficult time with a break up. I pointed out that for me, in the past, I would use that as like an excuse for a boy to be mean to me, and I would think that if I could be stable and consistent, then eventually he'd get over it, and he'd want to be with me, like he'd see how great I am, and we would be together, and everything would be perfect. She laughed and said that's how she feels. The other girl wanted to "blast" one of the boys she had liked but who was being mean on facebook, which I gathered meant that she wanted to basically post a lot on his wall about what she thinks of him. I pointed out how that might feel like taking control, but he's probably not going to reflect on anything based on that. He's not going to say, "you know what? you're right!" or at least he won't say that and mean it. I pointed out how here the three of us were having a nice conversation and we were learning from it, but when other staff, for example, shout at them, it's easy to look away and say "yeah, okay, whatever, oh my god, this is so stupid." So when someone is really reactive at us, we tune them out. But when someone comes to us calmly, or otherwise stops participating in the game / dance of reaction, we realize that something's up, and we look at it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be abused and mistreated with the hopes that a boy / man will see me as valuable. How backwards! 

I realize this only shows what I am accepting and allowing. This communicates that I accept and allow and even invite abuse. 

I commit myself to respect myself by no longer accepting or allowing others to abuse me. I commit myself to set boundaries for myself and live by them. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I will be heard if I am loud, that I will be seen if my actions are big or extreme. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be directed by my reaction with a belief that it will communicate better than me communicating for myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feed into the desire to have retribution through reaction, through "showing another how it feels" or trying to convey my emotional intensity through anger. I see, realize, and am beginning to understand how effective communication comes from a point of stability. I realize that giving myself over to reaction, giving myself over to retribution, is abandoning myself and abusing myself. I realize that I am most easily heard when I am calm. I realize that others do not typically react well to reaction -- they will react in turn, whether by also becoming angry, or discrediting me, or something else. But if I am calm, then I am supporting myself, and there is a better chance I will be heard and understood. So I commit myself to keeping my reactions to myself as much as I can, as much as seems appropriate. I commit myself to not using my anger to communicate. I commit myself to abandoning the belief that if I can show others how much I am hurting, they will feel bad. I realize people don't want to see themselves as bad people, so seeing the consequences of their behavior sometimes makes them just turn away. So I realize this is not effective. So I commit myself to effectively support myself and effectively communicate by finding stability before I communicate. I realize the other person understanding me is not paramount. Understanding myself is what is paramount. Respecting myself is paramount.  

I've been kept at arm's length, and I've been in the position of thinking someone was quite mean to me, disrespectful, and also seeing his behavior as contradictory and even irresponsible. And yet, for some reason, I succumbed to his charm and charisma, and his CONfidence, and his physical appearance, and I decided I "liked" him. I didn't listen to myself in self-honesty. I believed that the other person must genuinely be that great, since he acted so great, since he acted like he was hot shit, since it seemed like other girls liked him too.

I directed myself from what I thought I should do based on what other people thought, based on my perception of how other people received this person -- not how I actually received him, which was a lot of really negative interactions, that I just overlooked, because I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, or I thought he would change, or I thought I was wrong for perceiving things that way, because I trusted him more than I trusted myself.

And this is mainly why I am mad, at myself. And I am mad too because I finally let it be known how I felt, and I fear now that this is just being used once again for this individual to stroke his ego. But mainly, I am mad that I abused myself and rejected myself in favor of hanging out with, liking, and pursuing a guy who wasn't nice to me, who didn't treat me with respect, and who behaved egotistically and arrogantly. I'm mad at myself for trusting someone who was obviously not trustworthy. I'm mad at myself for not trusting myself. I'm mad at myself that I believed it was just the way it would be, that it only made sense for us to be together, so it's like I was "stuck" with that, so I found a way to be okay with it. I'm mad at myself that I SAW all of this, and I ignored it. There was no lack of awareness, there was simply a lack of self responsibility. And now I am here as the consequence for that.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to be self-dishonest and twist my own words / memories / experiences to deny that I liked someone because I feel embarrassed and because I do not want this person to have even more food for his ego. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to lie to myself in order to manipulate this other person to feel or not feel a certain way. Again this is holding myself hostage in order to manipulate another's experience. I forgive myself. I let it go. 

I'll make absolutely no excuses for myself. I was only just beginning to receive and learn the tools. But it doesn't change the fact that this is what I accepted and allowed, and now I am here as the consequence of that. And now I must take responsibility.

I realize that my liking this person had a lot more to do with me than it did with him. I realize that the fact that I liked this person shows me myself, and what I have not given myself: Trust, Respect, Support. I realize too that I have not given myself the responsibility to give myself these things. I realize that it is who I was as who I have been in my life that led me to the point of liking this person, as a consequential next step from who I have liked in the past. I realize that even though I thought that every relationship after my first should get "better," they have all actually gotten "worse," because my self-esteem, self-respect, self-support, and self-trust have diminished with every experience I have had with men, and it has not been until now that I have been able to see this as the root, that: I have not allowed myself to trust myself, I have not allowed myself to respect myself, and I have not allowed myself to support myself; instead I have done all of this unto another, without first doing it to myself.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create an extensive belief system within myself centering on the core belief that "my life will finally start when I am in a committed relationship," and so I should hold off on really creating myself, so that I would be more available and free to conform to whatever man decided I was good enough for him, so that I could become whatever he wanted me to become, so that I could finally be in a committed relationship and my life could finally start, and I could finally be happy, where the "start" of my life becomes the end of my living, the end of the only thing I have: myself, my ability to direct myself. I realize this belief is central to how I have accepted and allowed myself to be abused by men, to how I have abused myself through men, and abused myself through this belief. I realize through this belief I have abdicated responsibility for myself throughout my life. I realize I have not trusted myself, that within this belief I have cultivated and nurtured self doubt. I realize I have not allowed myself to really live, as myself, as life. 



I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to normalize the phenomenon that men are abusive of and mistreat women, and this is okay, in fact this is a sign of a good relationship.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto the small few positive interactions, choosing to ignore the negative / abusive interactions, in favor of believing the positives are what is "real" or what will become real, rather than seeing all interactions as what is real, and using all interactions to show me who another person is, and to show myself who I am being, as what I am accepting and allowing within my relationships with others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think that another person is better than me or superior to me simply because they treat me poorly.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take memories of past relationships, especially with my brothers, where these were boys I was supposed to look up to and who were supposed to protect me, who sometimes teased me and treated me poorly.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think / believe that it is acceptable or allowable for someone to treat me poorly.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think / believe that if I accept and allow someone to treat me poorly, they will like me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think / believe that if I accept and allow someone to treat me poorly, they will realize that I am valuable, and they will start to treat me better.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think / believe that my value to another person comes from what I accept and allow them to do to me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be used and abused by men, to stroke their egos, or stroke something else.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be used and abused by men sexually, because I want them to like me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to use and abuse myself sexually.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think / believe that accepting and allowing others to use and abuse me is how I can get other people to like me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it is important or even imperative that other people like me.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to like myself.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself liking myself to be enough.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I need others to like me in order for me to be okay or happy, or for my life to be worthwhile, for the fact that I am alive to be worthwhile.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to trust myself, respect myself, or support myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give gifts to others that I have not given to myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not matter, that only what I can do for other people matters. I realize I cannot really do anything for anyone, only myself, or only once I have done that for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to "like" someone just because I think they are attractive.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to "like" someone just because it seems like other people think they are attractive.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to hide this experience because I do not want the other to use this information to continue to stroke their ego.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel embarrassed when it seems as if I have been more transparent than I realized, that what I was trying to hide actually showed through.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to "like" boys / men who are not kind to me, who do not treat me with respect, and who are not actually supportive of me as life, as an equal.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to "like" boys / men who treat me poorly, who treat me as less than them.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think this is normal, this is just the way it is, and I don't deserve any better.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make excuses for boys / men / people who treat me poorly.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow my own abuse.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify what I perceive as "weaknesses" in another person / areas where they have room to grow, and to believe that I can be the person to show them this, and to help them grow, and within this I find value in myself, I believe I matter.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go out of my way to support another person with the ulterior motive of feeling valued and validated and like I matter.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to validate myself, or realize that I am valuable and I do matter, as all life matters and is valuable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to direct myself from the starting point of what I perceive about what other people want or think, so that, since I never communicated my intent, I didn't know for sure what the other person wanted, so I held onto the hope that maybe this is what they wanted, so I kept that door open as an option, kept imagining that as a possibility, so that rather than listening to myself in self-honesty, and directing myself therefrom, I was more enticed by the possibility that this person might like me, and then I could be liked, even if I did not really, in self-honesty, like this other person, but only liked my idea of who this person could be someday, or what this person represented for me, or what I had imagined about this other person, but actually rather disliked this person based on our actual interactions.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be led on.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want another person to like me who I did not even like. I see this is abusive. I see this is not self honest. I see this is irresponsible.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to do what I could to get another person to like me, to stroke my ego. I realize this is also what they did to me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to be wanted, and want to be liked, so that when I saw the possibility that another person might like me "like that," I fed into it, and allowed myself to be led on, even though I was always kept at arm's length, even though I never felt good, even though I was always confused, even though I felt like I had no control of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to trust another person to be responsible and self-honest because he claimed to be these things, so that, within this, I abdicated my own responsibility and I did not trust myself, because I thought trusting this other person was safer, because he knew more. But I realize it is not about what a person knows, it is about how they live. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to recognize the reality of the interactions and the reality of living, instead engaging in ideas in my mind and ideas as communicated by another, ideas and "knowledge" about who a person is, rather than the reality of who the person shows me he is.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be a person who is self-honest absolutely, because even though I was communicating with myself, I did not listen to myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold onto "what ifs" and "buts" and wondering how things "could" be rather than looking at how things actually are / were and moving myself from within reality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing all of this bullshit that has occurred over the past almost year of my life. I forgive myself for that. I forgive myself and I realize I have learned so, so much about myself through this experience, not only about myself and relationships, but myself and self trust, myself and boundaries, myself and honesty, myself and responsibility, myself and grudges/conflict, myself and friendships, myself and listening to myself, and myself and the desteni message. I realize that I made mistakes. I realize that now I know, and with that knowledge I can now live better, as what is best for all.

I commit myself to continue to work through the reactions.

I commit myself to trusting myself, as I listen to what I communicate to myself.

I commit myself to calming myself and soothing myself when I see myself doubting myself, I commit myself to breathing and investigating the self doubt and the function of the self doubt.

I commit myself to respecting myself. I commit myself to not accepting or allowing others to abuse me. I commit myself to not accepting or allowing myself to abuse myself through accepting and allowing others to abuse me.

I commit myself to support myself absolutely. I commit myself to create and live by boundaries for myself as what I learn to trust in myself, and what I learn is best for all.

Standing as Equals

Here is a cool post by someone else who wrote on a similar topic: Why do I like the guys that do not like me?

Indecision and Self-Trust - Day 52

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to create within and as my mind within and as my imagination an ideal image of what my job would be like.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to participate within and as the thought/belief/statement that this is "the perfect job."

I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to wait and see what the job was like in the moment of experience in the physical.

So now:

I commit myself to maintain a "level head" about my new-new job to where I am not predicting it will be anything other than what it is. I commit myself to prepare myself within and as myself as who I am and within my work ethic and my ability to take responsibility for myself as myself as one as equal.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate within and as an ambivalence to where even though I have been offered a great job, I do not want to close the door on my other job offer. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to increase the value of Job A after I have received an offer for Job B, whereas before the offer for Job B I had a lot of reservations about Job A.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to "feel bad" for turning down Job A just because they have been so welcoming and so clearly want me to work for them and were a "fun bunch." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become attached to these irrelevant "facts" about Job A, wherein these "facts" are actually based on my memory of my interpretation of one experience with these people.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not want to close a door. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not want to walk through one door because it means I have to close another. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to stand still rather than walk, to stagnate rather than move.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to fully see, realize, and understand how I truly make a decision in every moment in every breath: every moment and every breath IS a decision, of who I am, of who I will be, of what I will do, of what I will accept and allow myself to think or feel. I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to bridge the gap between the moment-by-moment breath-by-breath decisions that I make and the other decisions which I imagine as monumental and imp[o/a]ssible.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that there is a "right" choice here and that one choice is "wrong" and another is "right" and that within this actually both choices mean THE END wherein with one choice it is like a disastrous end and with another choice within my mind it's like the end of struggling and not always enjoying work and all of that. So I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive decisions as end-points wherein with the "wrong" choice I imagine absolute misery and with the "right" choice I imagine absolute bliss, rather than seeing, realizing, and understanding that within every moment I make choices and within every choice I continue to live through more moments and that every moment is whatever it is and that life goes on regardless of my choices and I will have more choices still and I choose who I am in every moment regardless of my circumstances.

This is a strange dimension of my mind-relationship with decisions/choices. This strange sense that whatever decision I make is somehow the end of... control. Maybe this is part of why I so fear/resist making decisions:

• Fear of no more decisions and thus no more opportunities to direct myself/control my life. 
• So it's like I think that life stops after a decision comes into effect. Like from the point of that decision onward I will just be automatically existing without directing myself? I will be victim to and completely at the mercy of the circumstances of my decision. Decision is death. 
• But holy crap no! Decision is LIFE. The ability to direct myself, to make a decision within, for, as, and by myself, is LIVING!! It is indecision which is death. And I have known this for YEARS, I even wrote about this on my myspace blog in high school, hahah!! Yet here it is still a struggle to see, realize, and understand. 
• So I place a LOT of weight on each decision like it's an all/nothing absolutely all encompassing self-direction where I am going down that track and no other track and that is my choice and there is no going back or changing my mind... 
• Very limiting, constraining, containing, suffocating. 
• I build up a ton of energy up to the point of decision where I realized last time I wrote about this that, in making a decision, I have to relinquish all of that energy, to where I am just left with whatever is in the here & now, which as far as my mind is concerned within what I have accepted and allowed within and as myself, is not a good thing. Being, here, now = scary. 

Okay, just started memory section of DIP Lite... Are there any memories attached to decision making that could be fueling this anxiety/fear/ambivalence/etc.? 

What first comes to mind is the decisions I made in my education where I was allowed to choose my jr high and high schools and how I regretted those decisions as not actually being best for me, and within this I've been mad at myself for who I was within those educational programs wherein I did not direct myself to take my education seriously but went through school very passively, feeling satisfied as long as I had good grades.  So I accepted and allowed myself to be passive in my education after making those decisions, and then blamed the decisions themselves for who I was, as if I had no control over my education beyond the point of the decision of which school to attend. 

I have also experienced/participated in a lot of regret regarding my decision to move from Denver back to Sacramento. But I was "indecisive" even before then... although that transition probably has increased my experience of myself as "indecisive." 

I think another big part of the fear I have in decision making is that I am solely responsible for my decisions. I both create and face the consequences within my decisions. So through desteni and my JTL process I am learning about being responsible in all decisions in every moment, how every moment is a decision point of deciding who I will be in that moment and how I will direct myself. I am learning to direct myself on the moment-to-moment level. So here I can also expand to directing myself in larger-scale decisions that affect me beyond just that moment (although it could be argued every decision affects me/others beyond just that moment). 

So then here again is the fear of making a mistake, of facing consequences, and of having to answer for those consequences. Answer to whom? Myself, I guess. Well I am learning to be able to do that every day here in my writing, where I have a look at myself and who I have accepted and allowed myself to be, and I answer to myself.

So I am already developing the tools every day to face regret and face fear and face myself as who I have accepted and allowed myself to be, as what I have accepted and allowed within my life. And I have already opened up points on making mistakes and one what a mistake is and how to support myself within mistakes. 

So... 
I can trust myself. 

This is huge. 52 days ago I declared loudly and in distress that I could not trust myself, I had no idea where to start with trusting myself. I began a series on building self-support and I sought out assistance on the forum and I supported myself through my writing and my DIP Lite lessons... and now I know I can trust myself in each moment within and as my breath in self-honesty and self-responsibility and self-support! 

Learn to trust yourself and learn how to live here: 

Desteni I Process Lite


Relevant past posts:
Supporting Myself to Make a Decision - Day 27 pt. 1

What is Process? - Day 33

Here I will look at the definition of the word "process" which is the word desteni uses to describe what we are doing to change ourselves within this journey to life as one and equal with all life.

First I want to point out that "everything is walking process" which could be interpreted accurately, I believe, in both of the following ways:

1. Every thing is walking process
• Every being and thing in this existence is walking a process of purification as life as one and equal. 
• Within this we really are "all in this together." 
2. Everything is walking process
• Everything I do, everything anyone does, is all a part of process, of my process, of each individual's process, and of the process of existence. 
• Within this there really are no "wrong" ways to walk process as everything is walking process, but there are certainly some counter-productive and ineffective ways, some immediately and/or ultimately detrimental strategies for self and all. 
• Within desteni we have the tools of self-honesty, self-forgiveness, self-responsibility, breath, self-commitments, and writing to provide us self-direction within self-awareness toward walking process in a supportive, productive, effective and efficient manner. 

proc·ess, pro·cess
/ˈpräˌses/, /prəˈses/
Noun
- A series of actions or steps taken to achieve an end.
Verb
- Perform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on (something) in order to change or preserve it: "the stages in processing the wool".
- Walk or march in procession: "they processed down the aisle".
Synonyms
noun.
- procedure - method - trial - course - way - progress
verb.
- work

So here I see that a process is a series of steps, not one step, and these steps must be taken, which is to say I must move myself through these steps, in order to achieve an end, which is purifying and aligning myself with that which is best for all in equality and oneness.

• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continually forget what is meant by "process" such that I become impatient and expect myself to automatically change. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that a process is a series of actions or steps which must be built upon and must be practiced. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that a process is a short A -> B transition. 
• When and as I see myself participating within and as impatience with myself wherein I place unrealistic expectations on myself and judge myself, I stop and I breathe. I realize that the very definition of process includes multiple steps between realization and actualization. I commit myself to walk process moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath, step-by-step.

I see too that a process can be compared with a "procedure," wherein a procedure is "an established or official way of doing something" and "a series of actions conducted in a certain order or manner." So here too I see that although my process is individualized for me to direct myself, it is also pre-established within the tools of self-honesty, self-responsibility, self-forgiveness, breath, self-writing, self-commitments, and common sense. I have already seen that, for example, it is not possible to forgive myself or change myself without first being honest with myself, and so I see too that the order of steps is important within this process/procedure, to proceed according to the steps as they have been established by others before me.

I see that a process can be compared with a "method," wherein a method is "a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, esp. a systematic or established one" and "orderliness of thought or behavior, systematic planning or action: 'combination of knowledge and method'." So here I see that by walking process I am engaging within and as a methodical approach toward and as myself as one as equal as life, wherein I am ordering/directing my thought and behavior through a combination of knowledge within myself and action within the physical. Within this my process is "methodical" in the sense that it has order and I direct myself within that order as it is what is most supportive.

• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bastardize the procedural, methodical applications of this process to where I judge myself when I am not able to immediately or automatically fall into alignment with the suggestions given by members of desteni. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take myself as an individual within my individual experience out of the procedure and method of this process to where I attempt to align myself absolutely with what others have already done rather than with what I am doing within who I am and who I am directing myself to be as an individual within self-honesty and self-trust and the other tools of desteni. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see, realize, and understand how the only way I can walk my process is by and as myself. Strangely this was a belief I held prior to my participation within desteni, to where I believed that every individual should walk his/her own path (or process) toward self-realization, but somehow within the decision I made to align myself within the desteni process, I lost sight of my own already established procedures and methods for myself and the process I was already walking. 
  • When and as I see myself taking myself as my individual experience and my self-honesty out of my process, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I am the only person who can walk my process and that my process is created by me. I commit myself to personalize and individualize my process to where it works for me rather than me working for it so that my process is a tool for my self-realization as life as one as equal as best for all. 

I see that a process can be compared with a "trial," wherein trial is to "test (something, esp. a new product) to assess its suitability for performance." So here I see that process requires testing to where as I produce/create myself anew within each moment within each breath, I can test my behavior and my action to see if it is suitable for supporting myself within self-honesty and self-responsibility and if who I am is best for all.

• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see, realize, and understand the lived application as trial within process and within desteni process. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect myself to change as a subsequent automatic response to realizations within and about myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself within these expectations. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to give myself time and space to change and to walk my process, which IS process, as I see here: trial within space and time is a part of process, it is a step of process. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see realize and understand how the trial aspect of process is the aspect within which I can most easily build self-trust within myself to where I am able to write and consider the consequences of my actions, then act and then see the consequences of my actions, then adjust and align myself with what is best for all. 
  • When and as I see myself "forgetting" that process includes trial to where I must write, live, reflect, and adjust, and invariably within this I will make mistakes, and when and as I see myself judging myself for those mistakes: I stop and I breathe. I realize that in order to change I must actually change and change is a process in itself -- not automatic, not "overnight," and not actualized in and as life merely through writing. I commit myself to open up on this point further and how I see my ego interacting within my relationship to changing myself and testing myself to where I do not want to reveal to myself or to others that who I am now is someone who "needs" to be changed. 

I see that a process can be compared with "course," wherein course is "the route or direction followed by a ship, aircraft, road, or river," and "move[ment] without obstruction; flow." So here I see that my process is like my road-map and also a representation of a road-map for others as I share my process. I see also that within process I must overcome obstructions/resistances/walls/boundaries that I place in front of and within myself to where I break down all of the walls I have built and am able to live as myself as one as equal as life as what is best for all life.

• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see resistances within myself and perceived obstacles within or without myself as actual real resistances and obstacles over which I have no control or within which I have not participated in creating. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be derailed off my course when and as I face resistances and obstacles. I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand how these resistances and obstacles are my process and to continue in my process is to continue with, as, and through these resistances and obstacles. 
  • When and as I see myself interacting with resistances and obstacles as if bigger than me and are deterrents within my process, I stop and I breathe. I realize that my resistances and obstacles are me and are created by me and they are parts of my process, that without them this would not really be much of a process because without them I would already be changed and I would not need process. I commit myself to face myself within and as resistances and obstacles and to really look at them/myself to see what is the practical common sense response to them within self-honesty and self-responsibility in order to continue on my process. 

I see that a process can be compared with a "way," wherein way is "a method, style, or manner of doing something." So here again I see that process is a specified way of expanding myself within self-honesty for what is best for all and that there are tools laid out in front of me that I can utilize in order to walk this way, my process.

• I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see realize and understand how I create my way within my process, I choose which way to direct myself, and within this I am creating my process and I am creating myself within my process. I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see realize and understand how whatever way I choose to direct myself is what my process is in that moment and within this I am responsible for myself and my choices that I make within what way I walk my process. 
  • When and as I see myself participating within and as the belief that I can delay or put off my process, I stop and I breathe. I realize that everything I do is a part of process and that the way I direct myself within my process will determine who I am within my process and how I progress within my process.

I see that a process can be compared with "progress," wherein progress is "forward or onward movement toward a destination" or to "move forward or onward in space or time." So here I see that within process I am always moving and within this movement there will be times when I do not feel stable as I am not standing still but am standing up for what is best for all life and within standing up for that specifically I must discover within myself how to live as what is best for all life. I see that I am moving toward the future of the world within and as myself and am moving onward through resistances and doubts and obstacles. I see that within progress I will be able to look back at myself and how far I have come and what progress I have made within myself. I also see that within this movement I am existing within space and time and so I must allow myself the appropriate space and time to change myself to walk my process to move myself to stability within what is best for all life as one and equal as life.

• I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see realize and understand how within process I must progress, or else I am participating within and as some of "process"'s many possible antonyms, such as stagnation, cessation, inertia, and lifelessness. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not view my process as a journey which requires movement and actual change, and that within this change in each moment I will have progressed beyond the last moment to where who I am now is not who I will be in the next moment and so to embrace really seeing who I am now within this moment so that I can really direct myself within the next moment, to where when and as I see myself and do not like what I see, I can use this as a point from which to progress rather than hide. 
  • When and as I see myself hiding from myself in any given moment, I stop and I breathe. I realize that it is only by seeing myself that I can see my progress within my process, and also by seeing myself I am able to know how to direct myself within my process. I commit myself to open my eyes to myself to really see myself within self-honesty. 

I see that a process can be compared with "work," wherein work is "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result." So here I see that process is not automatic and is not easy and is not done without effort; within process I must direct myself in every single moment in every single breath through every single point in myself, so that I might re-align myself within what is best for all life as one and equal as life. Process is WORK and within this work there will be challenges as I have already seen.

• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that process does not take work. Really hard work. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that this process should be easy or else I am "not good at it" and then to judge myself on the basis of how easily I am able to walk process. I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see realize and understand how the hard work that is required in walking process is merely evidence of who I have accepted and allowed myself to be. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify this hard work as "too hard" or as in any way "bad" and something in which I do not wish to participate rather than as an "opportunity" or "challenge" wherein I am able to test myself and see who I am able to direct myself to be in each moment and watch myself grow and progress within the hard work I put forth within my process. Pretty fun, actually! 
• When and as I see myself judging myself within my relationship to the word "work" within process, I stop and I breathe. I realize that it is through work of any kind that people in general progress, change, and grow. I realize that the amount of work I put into my process will determine how effective and productive I am within walking process. I realize that within my work within walking process I am able to see myself as who I have accepted and allowed myself to be and also as who I am directing myself to be. 

Start your process: Desteni I Process Lite

Building Self-Support - Day 23

Today I utilized part of my commute to record a voice memo for myself of some of what is happening for me. It saved as an mp3 and I'm not sure how to get that on here, so maybe if I do it again I'll just shoot a video... but here I transcribed it:

I'm really frustrated because, it's like I just can't win, because I don't let myself win. I'm never happy. Something's always wrong. I'm always looking to the past in regret, or, sometimes... just wishing I had what I had [used to have]. Or I'm looking to the future to how things could be, and how I want them to be, and imagining hoped-for futures that are not now. And, I do this kind of chaotically, to where I create a lot of mind energy around it. And it becomes difficult for me to just stop and breathe and be here, right now. And to look around me and to see that what's here isn't bad, but I see it as bad, or, I allow myself to see it as bad, and to identify it as bad. I get very stuck in the negative, and I get very stuck in feeling depressed, and that energy... is comfortable to me in the sense that I'm used to it, and it really moves me. Um, it has a really strong hold over me. I don't really know how to break free from that, even though I created it, and I allow it, and that is a part, an aspect of it that I struggle with, too, because, even though I'm supposed to forgive myself, I am so hard on myself, that to acknowledge that I've accepted and allowed this to be me, to be who I am, I see it as... um... I don't know, I react to it in a really negative way about myself. So anyway, I feel like I just can't win, and I feel like I'm never happy, and, you know, my mom just, we just parted ways, and she told me that things would get better. And, I mean, I appreciate her effort to help me feel better and to remind me that what goes up must come down, what goes down must come up and all of that, but, you know, the only way that things are going to get better is if I make them better, and if I'm not the one making them better, you know, yeah maybe tomorrow I'll just be in a better mood or I'll see a friend and that will cheer me up, but you know, it's not going to be stable, it's not going to be consistent, I'll come back down. Unless I do something. But I don't know how to do something, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I mean I guess I'm learning what I'm supposed to do, but I'm, uh, really impatient with myself about it, and about how to achieve it. And within that impatience, I enter back into the chaotic mind energy of judging myself, and judging what is as not okay, judging myself as not okay. So, I have to really calm that mind energy... and... really just, I mean, I guess, just focus, really, focus on that first step, which is to stop and breathe, and to be here now. And, to, um, connect with my breath, to, um, kind of get out of my mind. Cause... that's not working. Um, and from there, I can find some clarity. And, um, within clarity, I can begin to see. And it's a process. And that's where I am, in that process.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create "problems" for myself such that I never allow myself to be stable. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to often look at my present experience as being problematic and as being something that needs to be changed or somehow different. I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to be present and to be okay with being present.

Within this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing and encouraging myself to make a change in my employment at a time when my previous employment situation was actually very stable and was a pretty opportune time to work on stability within myself. I forgive myself for making that change, and I forgive myself for regretting that change. When and as I see myself regretting that change, I stop and I breathe. I realize that by regretting that change, I am participating within and as mind energy and am not productively or effectively supporting myself in my present circumstances. I commit myself to adapt and adjust to my new circumstances such that I can assist and support myself here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as the thought, "I can't do this" such that I am grasping for alternatives and resisting being present. When and as I see myself thinking "I can't do this," I stop and I breathe. I see that I really can completely do this, there is nothing about what is here now that I cannot do, and that my thought "I can't do this" is my mind's justification for taking me out of the present. I commit myself to really stop and breathe here and to breathe until I release myself from my mind.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as the thought and belief that there is no point in loving and supporting and caring for myself, if I don't have someone to be proud of me or to love, support, and care for me, for me. Within this I see that my starting-point is outside myself such that if I do not perceive that support, I believe there is no point in trying to support myself, and I also see that I am abdicating responsibility and ability within and as myself to love, support, and care for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give to others without giving to myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want another to give themselves to me.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to give myself to myself.

I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to learn effective, productive strategies for supporting and assisting myself in years past. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to this realization with thoughts and feelings about being childish and identifying the prospect of supporting and assisting myself as being hopeless. I see that within this realization I have an opportunity to forgive myself for not supporting myself and to commit myself to supporting myself, but that my reaction gets in the way of making this realization productive, and thus participating within and as my reaction is not supportive of myself. I commit myself to recognize when I am behaving in a way that is not supportive of myself, and to stop and breathe here and to come back to a starting point of self-support.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get "stuck" in depressed, negative energy states. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing my negative energy to move me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to idealize depressed states as states in which I can be taken care of and do not have to take care of myself. This may have worked for me at some points in my life, but I am an adult and I need to take care of myself. When and as I see myself getting stuck in a depressed energy state, I stop and I breathe. I realize that getting stuck here is letting my energy overpower me. I commit myself to come back to myself within and as my breath and to consider what is best for all. I commit myself to further investigate why I get stuck here so that I can better understand the consequences so that I can better release myself from this pattern.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as frenetic and frantic mind energy. I see that my participation here is feeding my mind energy and sustaining it. I see that my mind is fed by my dissatisfaction, and here my mind is able to move me. When and as I see myself participating within and as frenetic, frantic, chaotic mind energy, I stop and I breathe. I will wait for the smoke to clear. I commit myself to really stop and breathe so that I can come back to myself and find clarity, so that I can continue to see more of myself and understand more of myself.

The Nature of Anxiety Exercise - Day 18

Tonight I listened to The Nature of Anxiety - Atlanteans' Support - Part 82, and gained some insight on what anxiety is and what function/purpose it serves. Mainly I learned that my consciousness utilizes anxiety as a short-cut to directing me into emotional/feeling energy. So anxiety is really like a flag-point to where, when and as I see myself experiencing anxiety, I can know that I am about to move or be moved, and I can intervene and stop my mind and be my own self-directive principle.

The other point that stood out to me was the point that I cannot be unnecessarily hard on myself. It will take time, practice, dedication, and discipline for me to stop energy before it comes up. So this is important to know when and as I see myself being impatient with myself and my process and becoming discouraged within and as myself. 

It was suggested at the end of the interview to make a list of 3-5 specific instances in my life where I find I go into anxiety, and to describe the scenario with the specific moment that anxiety appears, as this is the moment that I can capture and intervene and decide for myself who I will be in that moment. Presumably the next interview discusses self-forgiveness over these instances and moves on to other ways to assist and support oneself within and as anxiety, so here I will try to first determine what personality/character I tend to go into in each of these instances, then I will apply some self forgiveness and try out my new self corrective statement skills. There will be a lot more that could be opened up on each of these, so that will be nice to come back to in the future when I undoubtedly meet resistance and don't know what to write. It will not be short, but I think it will be pretty sweet!

1. When I think about conflict or see someone with whom I am in "conflict"
• Sometimes I become quite defensive, but I think just as much I become rather helpless and scared. 
• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to view another person through the filter of "conflict" wherein when I am "in conflict" with that person and I see or think about them, I participate in feeling defensive and/or helpless and scared. 
• When and as I see myself participating in feeling defensive and/or helpless and scared within the context of being "in conflict" with someone, I stop and I breathe. 
• I realize that when I participate within and as a feeling of defensiveness and/or helplessness and fear, I am not directing myself to resolve the "conflict" within a common sense best for all solution. 
• I commit myself to really stop and breathe so that I can come back to myself honestly and direct myself to see myself and the other person as one and equal and to seek honest understanding, communication, and resolution without the interference of emotional reaction. 
2. When I think about making art
• Often I go from anxiety about making art into thoughts about being incapable of creating art that is as "good" as past work. 
• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be intimidated by the process of making art such that I doubt that I am able to create art that I "like" or that is as "good" as art I have created in the past. 
• When and as I see myself participating within and as intimidation at the process of making art, I stop and I breathe. 
• I realize that by accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as intimidation, I am setting myself up for failure either by not trying to make art or by trying under too much pressure. 
• I commit myself to really stop and breathe so that I can come back to myself so that I can see that making art is about self expression and freedom within and as myself to create freely without intimidation or judgment or pressure. 
3. When I think about a person to whom I am attracted, or that person moves closer to me
• I passively desire for that person to move even closer, which is to say that I become outwardly shy and/or distant, or remain neutral, but as my internal experience I enter into desire. 
• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as desire and within and as passivity to where I desire another person while at the same time pulling away from them or at least not asserting myself in my expression of my desire to connect with another person intimately. 
• When and as I see myself participating simultaneously within and as desire and passivity, I stop and I breathe. 
• I realize that by participating simultaneously within and as desire and passivity, I am setting myself up for disappointment, confusion, miscommunication, and I am not directing myself but am waiting for feedback from the other person to determine for me how I should proceed (but actually am proceeding from within and as my mind and my interpretations and reactions to the fact that the person did not move even closer). 
• I commit myself to really stop and breathe and to further investigate what desire is and how it functions, and to further investigate what is the best way to proceed toward a best for all relationship so that no confusion or indecision is contributing to my passivity. Then I will continue to investigate my passivity. 
4. When I think about trying something new
• Pretty strong emotional energy of fear and flight; panic; run the other way or I even have a picture of myself crouched down with my eyes shut and hands on my ears saying "no no no no"! 
• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as a strong energetic reaction to the thought of trying something new. 
• When and as I see myself reacting within and as strong resistance, fear, and panic to the thought of trying something new, I stop and I breathe.
• I realize that by participating within and as resistance, fear, and panic about trying something new, I am closing myself off to growth and expansion and also am participating within and as my mind and not within and as my breath. What is really so scary there? Nothing!
• I commit myself to really stop and breathe so that I can come back to myself and see that there is no real threat other than the threats my mind is conceiving, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself," and to, if necessary, systematically assess each fear or excuse and debunk it with common sense solutions within self honesty. 
5. When I think about how soon I start my new job (not when I think about starting my new job, but specifically the time factor)
• I go into half-formed thoughts about what I want to do before I start, how I don't feel ready, what if it was the wrong choice? "I need more time," etc. 
• I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as anxiety in regards to the diminishing timeline until I start my new job. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to halfway participate within and as thoughts about my inability or unpreparedness as I surely move through this transition within space and time. 
• When and as I see myself reacting within and as anxiety to diminishing timelines, I stop and I breathe. When and as I see myself participating within and as thoughts about my inability or unpreparedness, I stop and I breathe.
• I realize that time is going to go on no matter what I do, and when I participate within and as anxiety about time I am actually effectively "speeding time up" because I am accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as my mind where I am not able to see clearly and therefore use time wisely. I realize that when I participate within and as thoughts about my inability or unpreparedness, I am telling myself stories based on fear of failure that will not in any way make me more able or more prepared for what is coming with time. 
• I commit myself to really stop and breathe so that I can come back to myself and "slow down time" by calmly directing myself to be, here, now, where a minute of presence is longer than 5 minutes of anxiety. I commit myself to really stop and breathe so that I can come back to myself and realize that I have taken every step necessary to prepare for my new job and that the best way I can continue to prepare is to continue to practice being, here, now, within and as my breath, so that I direct myself in every moment, thus making me more capable to address whatever challenge I face. 

In all of these there is actually a big propensity toward paralysis as my reaction. I don't know what this means as far as my consciousness selecting a personality/character for energetic sustenance. Is my paralysis actually a kind of halfway house between energetic reaction and self directed response? In some ways paralysis is, of course, extremely paralyzing and makes it difficult to move at all, energetically or self-directed, but at the same time it prevents me from participating as much in the emotional/feeling energy. Or is it just another form of suppression? Is paralysis my form of anxiety such that whereas my consciousness uses anxiety to buy time to assess and move me, I can use paralysis to buy time to assess and move myself? Within paralysis, if I can let go of the urgency that comes with anxiety, maybe I can learn to use it as a period of quiet to determine who I will be for myself as myself. 

Maybe? 

Anyway, that was cool! Last night I was really struggling with feeling kind of aimless and lonely in this process. I realized that I had not taken the time to walk some self-supportive avenues through self-education. Tonight I made my DIP Lite lesson my top priority, then transcription, then I listened to an interview that was gifted me, then took on my blog to assist and support myself in seeing that I am capable of walking this process, because here I just walked. 

Thanks all for all the support. 

Awareness, Instability, and Behavior - More for Day 11

I am noticing a shift in my attitude at work, and so are my coworkers. I received a "disciplinary" style talk from my manager today for something I said yesterday. It could easily be written off as me "checking out" since I'm leaving soon, but I think it is just as much the surfacing and purging of all that is coming to my awareness. Either way it's not okay.

I have checked out somewhat. I am in a transition. But there's no reason I can't give 100% at this job through next Friday and still give 100% at my new job on the next Monday. So that's fine: that's easy; I'll keep caring and putting forth my best effort.

But I've noticed that, for example, my experience of impatience with myself is manifesting to an experience of impatience in general. This has a few possible facets:

• I am reserving "energy" for myself as I try to stabilize 
• I notice this especially in my lack of patience in engaging in small talk or niceties with people like I normally would. This varies moment-to-moment, mood-to-mood, and person-to-person. 
• This is something that often happens whenever I am depressed, but in the past I have identified it as some kind of ineptitude and within it I have aligned myself with the victim role. Like, look at all the people interacting and connecting. Look at me sitting here feeling sad and alone. Wah.
• Now I see that, while I was kinda down today, I think my introversion had more to do with not expending excess energy on outside interactions and keeping my focus on myself and gaining stability. 
• Whereas in the past I have still expended energy on assuming the victim role and wondering why no one was saving me when I was clearly soooo devastated. 
• Within this conservation of focus and "energy" for myself, I witnessed TWO people crying today! TWO!! One was within a situation where I easily could have offered an ear or a hug, but I didn't. Why? I didn't want to participate in hand-holding. I didn't want to give something that I so often hope to receive and then engage in resentment when I don't. Is it "better" to be there for a person who is hurting? Maybe, I don't know. But I have to stop being there for other people when I'm not even here for myself. 
• Patience with customers, for example, is a performance
• The tendency to be polite and chatty and all of that which comes with customer service or even just your run-of-the-mill pro-social behavior is a performance I've learned to get people to like me, accept me, be nice to me, or to make other people feel good. 
• So as I am learning to be self-honest I am having to redefine how I interact with others and why. 
• Increased awareness brings seeming increase of what's here
• It seems like the more I unpack, the more there is to unpack, and the more I am aware, the more... I'm aware. Obviously. So I become freshly aware of all that I have accepted and allowed within me, much of which I have suppressed or denied or rationalized or justified. 
• I am aware and so I notice it more within me, so it seems to increase
• I am in the process of re-aligning and re-defining and within this I am unstable and within instability I am a little reckless. New behaviors are coming out as I peer in. 

So this is something to really keep in check... Some of the attitudes and behaviors I am noticing are not okay. And they are even less okay in the context of starting a new job and making positive first impressions, which is then double the reason to really come back to my foundation and take this process slow so that I can find stability and trust within myself. Starting-point is key, and the stage I am in right now is laying the groundwork for everything to come. So here and from here my focus will be on myself, my breath, self-honesty, self forgiveness, and patience. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing my attitude and behavior to shift as a reaction to increased awareness of who I have accepted and allowed myself to be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be reckless with my words and actions within the context of operating within a system that requires me to behave in a "professional" manner in order to succeed.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be reckless within my attitude and behavior, not taking self-directive responsibility over who I am in each moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify, rationalize, deny, and suppress the truth about who I am and have accepted and allowed myself to be.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that what I say and do makes an impact on people that I don't always know about, and that what I say and do tells people and myself about who I am.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to almost always see criticism as something "bad" and "difficult" wherein I resist it and react to it rather than seeing it as an opportunity to gain greater awareness and understanding of myself and who I have accepted and allowed myself to be. 

Tested out some footholds today and found some solid ones. :) 

Forgiving Myself - Day 11

Question about SF:
When should I apply it? There are plenty of things I could say I forgive myself for, but it doesn't mean I really do forgive myself... it doesn't mean I'm fully letting it go. Should I still say it as a way of starting/continuing that process? To me the answer seems like yes, but only within self-honesty and not within an automatic response.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to and judge what I see and am becoming more aware of as already existing within myself through my acceptances and allowances.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become depressed and hopeless whenever I feel unstable or see something about myself I don't like.


I want to gain a better understanding of separation. By not liking myself I am separating myself from myself and from life as all as one as equal... right? But I don't really get what exactly that means, what it means that I have all these parts of myself I've separated or categorized as being separate. How did they become separate and how do I put them back together? What does it mean to be one and equal with myself? What does it mean that I am my depression and my elation?


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to sleep all day until it is absolutely necessary that I get up. I thank myself for getting up and writing this.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to retreat when the going gets tough. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to consider turning back and forgetting it all because I identify what I see as too big or too scary. Within this I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to then go into a place of feeling selfish and petty for caring about my little bullshit when there's so much other shit in the world... in that place I cannot move forward and address any of it. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be overwhelmed by the wall of shit, which is an excuse to resist.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to have my hand held.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want someone else to keep me safe... from myself?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to remain on and fuel this rollercoaster of emotions and feelings and energy by recklessly engaging in my highs as if I am invincible or capable of realizing invincibility.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that time and space are not factors and that I can erase the contents and reactions of my mind simply by merely becoming mildly aware. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself when I see that I cannot do this, that I have to take this one step and one breath at a time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suffocate myself with all of this when I am still learning how to breathe.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel sad and want care and tenderness from another person to shoot me back into feeling good.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not properly communicate my wants and needs in general, but moreso now because I doubt if I really want them or need them, because I am so busy trying to re-align myself with new principles I don't really understand. Do I have legitimate wants and needs or am I making them up in my mind and reactions?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that my quiet, meek, timid, and often passive-aggressive and manipulative communications of my wants and needs are enough for another person to even understand at all that I want or need anything at all. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not be direct. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wait for another person to act on my behalf. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not direct my own internal experience, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not act on my own behalf. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react negatively with emotions such as anger, resentment, worthlessness, etc. when another person does not meet my needs for me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to place my self-worth and my well-being outside myself.

Writing On and Through Resistance - Part 2 - Day 6

Tonight the words I would use to describe my current (both presently as it is my experience and as an energetic wave) attitude toward this writing process are:

• blocked
• unenthusiastic
• cliche
• fraudulent 

Resistance Pattern:

I notice a pattern emerging wherein I go through my morning intermittently identifying topics I could write about in the evening. I then go through my afternoon not caring as much about identifying a topic and figuring that I will figure something out. I make a to-do list on my phone. I drive home thinking of what I will do first. Usually I intend to write early on, probably after taking my dog out and eating something. But I have a strong long-standing habit of eating while I watch something, so I often get distracted there. Other items on my to-do list, including writing, are neglected in favor of zoning out and/or engaging in a fiction, or other meaningless fruitless tasks. 

Eventually I try to write. And tonight, as I write, and as I see myself typing words that might actually lead somewhere (where am I trying to identify my words as leading? what is my preconceived destination? how am I judging my words? how is this judgment contributing to my resistance? where is this judgment coming from?), I feel an impulse to get up and go take care of something else I've been needing to do. Tonight it is that I feel an impulse to get up and wash my face. Get my face clean, get that out of the way, then I'll be able to focus. 

I justify this impulse as an opportunity to step away from what I have just written, which contains its own current of momentum, which perhaps I find the experience of to be a little jarring, like it's scary to get out what's inside: it's a little scary to open up and let it out honestly. So maybe this is where the impulse to get up comes from just as my momentum is picking up. Like, okay, there's my topic! Now let's delay some more before actually writing on it. So I justify this as an opportunity to step away and "clear my head" while engaging in some other activity, at this stage most often some kind of bodily cleansing activity (at earlier stages before identifying a topic, delay and impulses are frequently more in the realm of consumption: food, media, but not limited to that). 

So momentum picks up and I want to clean myself. At least, that's the pattern so far. This opening up of what's inside perhaps holds a correlative experience to me of being presentable physically. I am about to open up and maybe I don't want what's in there to be seen. Maybe I don't want to show it. Maybe it's not clean. 

Or maybe it's just plain old delay. Maybe I am giving this impulse too much power and meaning. Maybe my face just feels oily and I'm over it. 

The point then is to stop and breathe. And there I notice the anxiety that is strangling my mid-section. The effort involved in taking a full deep slow breath. But I persist, and in persistence of breath I resist the impulse to get up or to click on another tab or in some other way distract myself from what is in front of me. And then I keep writing. And then suddenly I have something written, this time a somewhat specific breakdown of my resistance. Kinda cool. 

Living Words:

Coming back to the words at the start of this post, the identification of which is a strategy I've gleaned from early lessons in DIP Lite of identifying emotions and feelings:

How am I presently living "blocked"?

• I feel blocked because even though there are topics about which I know I could write, I feel limited to some kind of rule about only writing on experiences from my day. This is self-imposed. 
• I also feel blocked because in my consumption of desteni articles and blogs, I find that I relate to much of what I read but am not sure yet how to integrate it within myself and articulate it in my own writing and am more in a stage of marination. I think it is okay and smart to marinate, but it does not mean I have to feel blocked. 
• I also feel blocked physically. The anxiety in my mid-section is a choking feeling; the racing of my heart is as if my blood flow is blocked. 

How am I presently living "unenthusiastic"?

• I feel unenthusiastic because within my resistance I become tired and then apathetic. 
• I feel unenthusiastic because my high energy from the momentum of previous posts has waned. 
• I feel unenthusiastic because without that high energy and without lots of page views or comments or +1s or feedback, I am failing to see the benefit, "what's in it for me," when I write. When really all that's in my writing is in it for me. It's for me. 

How am I presently living "cliche"?

• I feel cliche because writing self forgiveness is monotonous. The thought has even crossed my mind to copy "I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to" to my clipboard so I can just paste it before each line. I do not do this though because in actually typing those words out I am bringing them to life. Nonetheless, it is monotonous and can feel cliche. Really though I think the feeling of cliche is closely tied to the next:

How am I presently living "fraudulent"? 

• I feel fraudulent because here I am participating in an organized systematic form of writing alongside people who have been doing so for 100s of more days than I have, and in a way I feel like I am in too deep or over my head. 
• I feel fraudulent because I know that as I take in desteni articles or other blogs, I begin to feel intimidated by their clarity and focus or their topic depth, and within that intimidation I want to emulate what I read within my own writing, which would be false and not true to wherever I am within my process. Right now I am walking through resistance, not how to practically save the world. 
• I feel fraudulent because I have sort of halfway kinda made a commitment to write every day, but I don't know that I ever really MADE that commitment so much as just decided that it was important and started slapping Day counts in my titles. I have been trying this desteni thing out, and trying it out each day, and then the next. But I don't know for sure what I will do tomorrow, and so I feel fraudulent for implying a commitment to desteni and to blogging through my desire to show up on here every day and write. 
• What is standing in the way of that commitment? What's going on with that desire? 
• I feel fraudulent because I feel contrived. I like to make pretty strings of words. Sometimes the words I write evoke more feelings in me than they do to describe them. I am trying to keep it honest, but sometimes it is tempting to get creative. 

Self Forgiveness:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing a pattern of resistance to emerge within me and my energy. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to justify some of my distractions or ways of zoning out as necessary to "recharge" or deserved because I worked 8 hours today. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not have a firm grasp on how to best schedule my time within my current work schedule so that I often look at the clock and wonder where the time went. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "blocked." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my writing in any way. Likewise I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my ability to write in any way. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to self-impose both external and internal limitations to my writing, creating a state of paralysis. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to energetically feel "blocked" in my body, in my joints, in my stomach, in my chest and accepting and allowing this as a reason to resist writing. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "unenthusiastic." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become tired and apathetic when faced with resistance. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to first obtain a high level of energy and then to react to the drop of that energy with a drop in enthusiasm or determination. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to identify the end-goal of my writing as anything other than self-intimacy and self-growth. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to check my page-views and to feel disappointed when I don't have any. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect support from strangers and friends alike when I know that the reason I am here is to develop self-support. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that what I write is great and warrants lots of page views and +1s and attention and glory. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to crave this praise, attention, and glory. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "cliche." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to see this process as monotonous and boring within and through my resistance. I know it is neither monotonous or boring within and through my experience of it. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to live the word "fraudulent." I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to adhere to a standard and system of writing that I don't yet completely understand. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to emulate the content of other blogs, especially when I am on day 6 and they are on day 3xx. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compare myself in opposition to and as separate from anyone, setting up a void between us to be filled with competition within my self-interested need for survival. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to pressure myself to have new ideas about and answers to the problems in the world. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not start with the problems within myself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes think, "well, what if there's nothing I need to forgive myself for today?" Haha! 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to play-act the role of a destonian when I am not sure if I am committed to desteni and whatever commitment I have struggles against even the test of my own wavering stance. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to dive into something without being clear in my commitment. It reminds me of the last time I went swimming, in my friend's pool. I jumped right into the cold water, water so cold it literally took my breath away. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be attracted to pretty strings of words and to feel positively about my ability to create pretty strings of words. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create pretty, dramatic strings of words especially throughout all of my previous years of journaling, wherein the pretty strings of words were a way to feed my need for attention and validation and also served as a fuel to build up dramatic emotions within me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing this propensity toward pretty strings of words to persist even within this writing process.