I'm Here for Me - Day 163

That was my "intention" for my yoga class today. Not really that I set that intention, but it was something I expressed to a friend right before the class as I was answering her when she asked for the fourth time how I was doing (she knew I wasn't just "fine"). The point of my saying that was that I was no longer going to accept and allow myself to be taken over by energies and thoughts and internal conversations about someone else or about some irrelevant situation. Like, that's not here, that's not mine. What's mine, I will face and walk. But the rest isn't mine and I don't have to carry it. I am here for me. I am doing what I see as best to do for me. So, not "dedicating my practice to myself" per se as yoga teachers might suggest sometimes. But dedicating myself to myself, my existence to myself, my choices to myself, in self-honesty and self-responsibility, and especially self-support.

My yoga practice has been "suffering" lately, as have many other areas of my life. I realized today that this is because I have not been showing up for myself in yoga or in other instances. Instead I have been bringing all my junk, all my baggage, all my energy, with me everywhere I go, hauling around all kinds of irrelevant reactions and hang-ups and road-blocks even while I am trying to do something completely unrelated, or even while I am trying to do something for myself, such as practice yoga.

So this was one of the coolest practices I have had in a while. Every time that I saw my mind beginning to get wrapped up in or around some irrelevant thought or experience, I brought myself back to my breath and back to the realization: I am here for me.

It sounds selfish. But one thing that I am learning, or is becoming clearer to me, in my looks at codependence, is how often I put others before myself. I do this most often, probably, in terms of my "mental attention" and energy. So that, even if there is no other with me, they are still with me in my mind, in my thoughts, in my reactions, in my internal conversations, etc. So that an experience that I have to myself by myself is taken over by this other person's presence in my mind. Now, obviously this other person is not actually inserting themselves into my mind. I am doing all of that. I am taking all of the many moments that I have to myself where I could and should be focused on whatever is in front of me, and instead I am devoting myself and my energy and my time toward certain thoughts, energies, reactions, and considerations that are not pertinent to me and are not pertinent to here, where I am.

I am here for me. I am here, for me and all as life. I am here for me, for me and all as life. I am here to support me. The things that I do, I do to support myself, so as to support myself in self responsibility and self honesty as what is best for all. When I am keeping another in my mind, there is no possible way I can do this. When I am keeping another in my mind, there is no possible way that I can support myself or be responsible for myself or ever have stability as myself. Because in this I am not myself, I am all kinds of personalities that are triggered when I think about that person. I am not here, with me, in the physical. I am abandoning myself to my mind and my systems of reaction.

One thing that I noticed too during my practice was how, in this presence with, for, and as myself, when I, for example, took rest: there I was. Often when I will take rest lately I will judge myself in some way, ridiculing myself and also projecting judgments out onto as sourced by others. So I saw in that moment of taking rest and being completely okay with taking rest because I was the rest and was not separate from myself within the rest, how I am almost never really within and as myself, really actually supporting myself and directing myself within the physical as whatever I need and whatever makes sense as a response to real actual experience.

Because: I am often or always judging myself. I am often or always judging others. I am often or always in my mind, considering others more than I consider myself, trying to make others feel a certain way, or otherwise existing atop layers upon layers of personalities, patterns, and characteristics that separate me from my actual self.

I also saw myself becoming wrapped up in thoughts about another person in the room, again not being here for me, not making my experience about me.

That was interesting in terms of the judgment point, too, because I saw how I might for example judge myself within a posture and then project that judgment outward, thinking about who can see me or might be looking at me at that time, and then believing that they are going to judge me and that I better adjust my posture in order to not be judged, or, better yet, to be judged very positively. And so I swing from judging myself to believing another is judging me to believing I can make another judge me highly to then being haughty within myself as I adjust my posture and believe that others will see it and think highly of me.

I mean I've looked at showing up for myself and I've looked at abandoning myself and I've been able to address these patterns thus far in the most obvious forms that they take. But now I am seeing again how these subtle experiences move and overwhelm me, taking me over because I have not directed them, until I am not really here for myself at all but am always in my mind with or about or focused on another. Or, if I am "with" myself, I am in fact against myself, judging myself even if only subtly, or blatantly.

So this practice was really cool because I was able to bring myself into myself and also see myself as I tried to slip away, and stop myself. It was a cool experience I would like to be able to expand to all of my living.


SO:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to the statement "I'm here for myself" as if this means I am selfish, within this judging myself and believing that I should not state this or should not try to live by this statement because it means that I am selfish and I should instead be here for other people or I need to add disclaimers about being here for myself as what is best for all or whatever and whatnot.

I realize that I am codependent and so for me to bring myself to myself in self honesty is for me to consider myself more in self-support rather than only or primarily considering others, and rather than making my existence about others. I realize there are other people who will need to adjust themselves differently in order to live in self honesty, dependent on their patterns and systems. I realize that the judgment that I have for myself in reacting to the statement "I'm here for myself" as selfish is a way to judge myself once again, and once again project those judgments outward with believing others might hear or read those words and believe I am being selfish, where here I realize that I have seen others as selfish when they have focused on taking care of themselves, because I have thought it is more important to take care of others.

I realize that when I showed up to yoga today with the "intention" "I am here for myself," I felt very free and capable and open and welcoming and welcomed and I felt less anxious and more free to talk to others and share myself and interested in getting to know other people too and generally more open and less closed off. I realize within this that by greeting other people with kindness and warmth, as I would like to be greeted, this changed my experience and my experience became one that was positive and welcoming, by being welcoming of others, also by showing gratitude for the community of other people because here I am beginning to see, realize, and understand how when I show up for myself, when I am here for myself, I am no longer expecting anyone else to show up for me or be here for me, nor am I making my experience contingent on anyone else: when I am here for myself I am my own responsibility and my experience is my own responsibility and within this I am free and open and capable and also ready and prepared to adjust and adapt to the reality around me.

I realize that I must be here for myself all the more because the job that I work is stressful and requires that I be ready and prepared to adjust and adapt to the reality around me which is to support others with their own ups and downs and their own strong reactions and to be a pillar of support and I cannot be a pillar of support if I am not first supporting myself by showing up for myself, knowing myself, understanding myself, and taking care of myself, also caring about myself.

So I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to the point of "I'm here for myself" with judgment that it is selfish because I see, realize, and understand how being here for myself is what assists and supports me to live as what is best for all.

I commit myself to continue to assist and support myself with the "intention" or "mantra" that "I'm here for myself," continuing to define for myself what this means and what it feels like to free myself from my own chains of holding myself down and back with the irrelevant energies that I carry with me everywhere. I commit myself to continue to look at and investigate and define and  live out self-support and showing up here for myself, not abandoning myself, but instead living within and as myself, my whole self, because I see that this is the only way to take responsibility for myself, and this is the only way to live as what is best for all.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself at almost every turn, judging myself nearly constantly, judging myself to such a degree that I have gotten so used to it that I have not even really realized how much I have judged myself, and how much those judgments spill out of me and onto or against or as sourced by others, so that what is mine becomes someone else's because I have not been responsible for myself in my own self judgments because judging myself has become such an automated process by which I keep myself enslaved within my mind.

I commit myself to watching and trying to identify even the most subtle judgments I have against myself other others, positive or negative or neutral, because I realize that judgment is a point of separation and within judgment I am no longer one with and equal to that which I am judging but am instead separating myself, creating myself as one with and equal to the judgment, and within separation through judgment I am of course not able to be here for myself because instead I am here against myself or against another and within separation through judgment I am not able to see what is best for all or I am not able to see what makes the most sense within the physical because within separation through judgment I am within and as my mind in separation from what is here and so I am not able to accurately assess what is here nor move and direct myself within what is here in common sense as what is best for all because instead I am stuck in the point of judgment.


I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be here for me and support myself unconditionally, because I realize that it is within this that I do not give to myself that I experience all of the energies that I experience including anger, depression, anxiety, self-judgment, self-doubt, elation, sadness, apathy, and so on and so forth. I realize that if I do not start now to be here for me and support myself unconditionally, I will continue to torment myself within those energies, and within the most extreme instances of those energies I really lose control of myself, and within a loss of control of myself I do not trust myself to behave in a way that is best for me or best for all. I realize that I face a very dark darkness sometimes within myself and it is only through being here for me and supporting myself unconditionally, embodying myself and unifying within and as myself as life, that I will be able to face those darknesses without giving myself over to them. I commit myself to continue this process of being here for me and supporting myself unconditionally and knowing and understanding myself as what is best for all.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to continue to accept and allow myself to participate within and as thoughts and energies, subtle as well as obvious, that do not support me and do not support my stability. I recommit myself to stopping these patterns and reactions and energy creations when and as I see them. I stop, and I breathe, and I realize again that I am here for me, I am here to assist and support myself to be stable. I am here to assist and support myself as life as what is best for all, and it does not assist or support me to engage within and as those energies.

Trying Again Tomorrow - Day 124

Well that didn't go according to plan at all.

First of all I spent more time writing last night's blog than I expected. So I didn't really save any time at all by not showering, and in fact got started on dinner etc. later than usual. So then I didn't really have time to read any blogs. And then I couldn't sleep; my mind was reeling. On the up side I did get up and write some more, which was good, I wrote about some things I have been resisting. But I finally fell asleep about 2 hours later than normal. Then, I messed up on setting my alarm, and the 6am one didn't go off.

Hah! Oh well. Try again tomorrow.

I also noticed that last night I felt really anxious, like churning in my solar plexus region, specifically about the idea of waking up early and doing yoga. Like the same kind of anxiety I felt when thinking about going to the first day of my new job, for example. I didn't really get it; why would I feel anxiety about waking up at a pretty normal time to do something in my own home, with no one else around? Perhaps in part the self imposed pressure to report on my results. Perhaps also what I mentioned yesterday about how there is a good chance that yoga at home will actually be good for me, and so of course I will resist that which will actually support me in changing. Maybe also my expectation that it WILL be good, that it WILL support me in changing -- so what if it doesn't?

(You know what will actually support me in changing? Myself. Not necessarily what I do, but who I am, and what I accept and allow within and as myself, especially in my participation in my mind, and if I support myself within and as my breath.)

And by the time I got up to write, it was already pretty late, and so I had a kind of rushed energy about me, but I figured it would be better to write when I actually wanted to write, since I've been resisting it. And so when I opened my laptop, it took a while to boot up. And I felt really impatient, and really ready to react in impatience and anger. So I stopped, and I just breathed in and out slowly. And then I realized how little I have utilized my breath lately, like really in awareness stopped and breathed.

And it's becoming apparent just how much I am within and as my mind, within and as my energetic experiences. Apathy moved me yesterday, for example. Sure, I worked "around" it, but not through it, I did not direct it. Anger, resentment, and blame continue to move me. My interpretations and reactions at work move me. My excitement over something moves me. Thoughts, emotions, feelings, judgments move me. Energy moves me. I am not moving myself, and I am in no real way stable.

And by refusing to look at specific points within myself, I am losing sight of myself completely. I am losing the foundation I have built for myself of support and trust and honesty and responsibility.

I have lost sight almost completely of the principles of equality and oneness and what is best for all. Because if I was still striving to align myself with these principles, I would not be resisting any points. 

Instead I am distracting myself with energy while I busily construct partitions within my mind where on one side can sit the points I need to face, and they can just hide out over there in the dark, and on the other side I can be free and one and equal with all as life. But it doesn't work like that. What a disaster that will be, if I allow it to continue. 

All this just to protect what I am avoiding seeing. All to hold onto the energy. All to stay stuck. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel anxious about getting up and doing something self supportive.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to quietly judge myself with the thought "you won't get up, you'll groan at the alarm and turn it off and wait for the next one to finally get up."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create friction within myself between wanting to direct myself to get up and practice yoga, and believing that I won't / disparaging myself / not supporting myself as my thoughts.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create pressure on myself to report the results of my hypothesis that getting up early to do yoga will somehow benefit me and will assist and support me in changing myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear being wrong in this, rather than simply investigating it and trying it and seeing what happens, and accepting whatever the results may be.

I forgive myself also for accepting and allowing myself to resist doing something beneficial and supportive for myself, instead only either doing nothing, or doing things that fall under self-sabotage and self-abuse.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that a change in my schedule will change me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that a change in my activities will change me.

However I realize these things might support me, and that if I direct myself to change my schedule or activities from a starting point of self honest exploration of how I can assist and support myself, then this is a good plan. It is not, however, the answer. I am the answer, as who I am, as what I accept and allow, as my breath, as one, as equal, as life, as what is best for all.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to exist within and as my mind as my mind-possessed energetic experiences of myself, allowing my experience of myself to dictate to me who I am, rather than determining for myself who I am, and directing myself within self honesty within and as my breath.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really support myself through and as my breath, as breathing in awareness slowly in and out, aware of my breath in all moments.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to exist within and as my mind as a way to keep myself stuck in stagnation, stuck in energy, and stuck in reactions and beliefs and my mind.

So I commit myself to remembering this and to realigning myself within the principles of oneness and equality and what is best for all as life. I commit myself to returning to myself as my breath within the physical as life. 

Alcohol, Apathy, Routines, and Yoga - Day 123

It's day 4 now of no alcohol. Aside from no alcohol, not a lot has changed. My routine remains basically the same, except that now after eating dinner and watching TV I manage to read quite a few blogs and do other random things before bed.

It hasn't been too bad not drinking. Yesterday was Monday and I definitely wanted to go home and just "relax" -- ie zone out. I was threatened verbally and then also broke up a fight at the school where I work yesterday and I noticed I used that as an excuse in part to "need" to "relax." But reality is I was fine, and I continue to enjoy my job. I was just falling back on the habit I created during the first week and at other periods of time within my life of escaping and zoning out.

I do notice today that I am rather apathetic about process, and within this all the more want to just zone out. I was going to agree with myself that I did not have to write a blog today, because nothing that I was working on was really panning out in clarity. What I've learned in the past of course is that this means I am not facing something; I am suppressing the point in front of me. The point in this case would be apathy. So, write on and solve apathy.

There are many reasons I could be apathetic, not the least of which is a resistance to change, and a resistance to see myself. If "I don't care," then why would I do that?

But another reason is that I am not really supporting myself in trying to change, in trying to use my time during the week effectively, and so I am reacting to this with apathy, thinking something along the lines of "what's the point?" and also "I might as well drink, I'm still not doing anything effective / productive."

At first I wrote "trying to use my time during the week after work effectively," but actually I am realizing that due to my work schedule, I could also easily utilize time before work. Instead, I sleep in. I mean it's not super late or anything; I typically get up around 7:10 or 7:30 so that I can leave between 8:15 and 8:45 depending on if I am trying to arrive early for a meeting. I am able to get ready in that amount of time without really watching the time, but in a leisurely manner eating breakfast, reading a blog or two, checking various sites online, wash my face, get dressed, pack up, and walk my dog. But I have a first alarm set for 6am, and considering that I still go to bed around or before 10, this is plenty of time for appropriate restful sleep. So, I could get up at 6, and use that time.

My after work routine then is typically this: Come home and either walk my dog right away, or try to start on my blog before taking a break to walk her (typically because she whines and I realize that I'm being neglectful and cruel... another point I resist looking at). I will finish my blog, usually a little later than I would like, and then take a shower. After showering I make dinner, watch a tv show, and still have some ice cream. Then when my show is over, I do whatever. Usually read some blogs (last night I read quite a few so that was cool) and do some stuff online. Then I get tired and go to bed by 10, where I "intend" on reading more blogs or reading from a book, but instead fill out my Way of Life app (another intention as well), check instagram, play candy crush, then play a crossword puzzle, then sleep.

What's missing from this? Art. Exercise. Variety. Cleaning / chores. Friends. Activities. Anything outside of this routine where I trap myself within my relationship to time and my belief that I cannot be productive on a work day. "Argue for your limitations, and, sure enough, they're yours." (Richard Bach) Of course I will not be productive if I do not believe I can be; I will not even try.

So today I am going to mix it up a little. Just a little. My original intention was to start a drawing, but now I am letting that go. Instead I am skipping the shower. I am going to make dinner and still engage in that routine. Then I plan to read blogs, including starting on Maya's friendship series, and maybe also her blame series as that also looks interesting and pertinent and supportive. I will take notes, as I have done sometimes when listening to interviews. Maybe I will get to some art, maybe not, I am not too concerned. I will still go to bed relatively early, with again the intent of reading from my book, which is pertinent to work. Then I will wake up with my 6am alarm, and practice yoga.

I used to only practice at home, and "I have been wanting to start that again," or, at least, this is what I keep telling others and myself. So now I will practice listening to myself, and I will support myself by hearing what I am communicating, and following through.

One problem I run into here is that when I used to practice at home, I always smoked first. This had some benefits, definitely, but even then I had friction within myself that I should not only be able to achieve that focus because of drugs.

So it's been hard for me to plan to come home after work and practice yoga. I'm tired by then, I've done a lot in my day already -- this is when I most want to just let loose and relax. However, in the morning, this is a great start to my day! And I am not yet worn out in any way from the events of the day. My body should be well rested, and this is a great time to be with myself, within and as my breath, at the very start of my day. So I am eager to see how this goes.

Then of course I will shower and continue on with my day, and see how this change assists and supports me to see more about myself and to change in other ways.

One step at a time, right?


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to turn to alcohol / substance when I have an unpleasant negative energetic experience of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to justify smoking because I have not written a commitment to myself to not smoke, and because it is now apparent that my job will not be drug testing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I have actually committed to not smoking, when in reality at least half of the reason I haven't smoked in so long is because I was concerned about potential drug testing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes sense the taste of alcohol in my mouth, both when I was drinking daily I would sense this taste near mid afternoon, or even now I will sense the taste intermittently every few days, and within this: I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to this sense with a kind of nostalgia or missing alcohol or wishing I could drink alcohol, wanting to drink alcohol, desiring to make that taste real.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to seemingly uncontrollably drift to the thought, "wine would be nice right now," where here if I had wine I would drink it.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to be trustworthy of my own trust for myself, because here I have to limit myself in even having alcohol in my possession because I do not trust myself not to abuse it within my own definition of substance abuse.

I forgive myself therefore for accepting and allowing myself to move myself to use substances from a self dishonest starting point, whereby I actually am abusing substances because it is not purely for self honest enjoyment and relaxation but instead as a form of escape and evasion and neglect.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to listen to myself in terms of how I have said to myself and others that I want to get back into my home yoga practice. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think that this will just happen magically someday, rather than realizing that I need to actually make it happen by moving myself to enact and embody it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to enter an experience of apathy and use this as an excuse to not try, within this wanting even to give up completely, simply because of a momentary experience of apathy.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to investigate the apathy and how I can assist and support myself to change my routines even more in ways that are non-judgmental.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge the things I DO, whereby I tell myself "I should not do that" rather than assisting and supporting myself by telling myself what I SHOULD do, within this "positively" supporting myself by giving myself a positive behavior rather than negating (negative support) the behaviors in which I already engage.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect myself to take away and disengage from a certain behavior without giving myself an appropriate functional alternative behavior.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to positively support myself through activities and supports that are enriching and enjoyable and have consequences which bring me to myself in the physical, such as exercise and yoga.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit myself within my yoga practice where I have established the belief / preference of only doing yoga at the studio because it is heated and I like having teachers who make up different flows each class, or the belief / preference that yoga at home is only fun or interesting, or I can only be focused within it, if I smoke first.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself limit myself within routines and the belief that I cannot accomplish anything during the work week because I am "too busy" and "too tired" and "work takes up too much of my energy."

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to even try something else.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I have to pick and choose what number of activities I engage in within a day, rather than allowing myself to be focused within each activity so as to complete it in a reasonable amount of time, rather than getting distracted or being unfocused such that it takes longer than is necessary and therefore I manifest for myself a lack of time to get other things done.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes loaf around in apathy or in judgment or beliefs about time, rather than stopping, breathing, and then directing myself in that moment to do whatever it is that I want to do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to constrain myself within judgments of how I should time, where there is a subtle energy of believing others also judge me for how I use my time, and others share these expectations I have created of myself, and so within this I am living up to the expectations of others, not seeing, realizing, and understanding that I am the one who created these expectations and so I am the one who can change them.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand how free I really am, instead entrapping myself within and as my mind as all of my judgments, in this case about time and priorities and my abilities.


When and as I see myself facing apathy and resistance to process, I stop and I breathe. I realize that if I am going back and forth within my mind about whether or not I "should" write a blog, I am being self dishonest. The self honest answer will be clear. So I commit myself to writing through the resistance when I identify my experience as resistance, which in this case means that I have not been clear in my decision to or not to write. I commit myself to always coming back to the point in front of me, even if there are other points I have been putting off. I realize too that sometimes it is precisely the putting off of other points that leads me to an experience of apathy or resistance. However, once I have created and manifested the consequential experience of apathy / resistance, that is the point I must face. I commit myself to writing through my resistance as my resistance and about my resistance until I no longer lack clarity in who I am, until I can see myself, and until I see that I am once again my own self directive principle in my process and in my life.

When and as I see myself desiring alcohol consumption, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I am not stable within my relationship to myself as my consumption of alcohol. I realize at this point I cannot trust myself with alcohol. I commit myself to continuing to see myself as my relationship to alcohol and investigating this so that I can come to a point of stability. Presently I do not know what this will look like. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hope / believe within my mind that this will eventually look like me being able to enjoy alcohol from a self honest starting point periodically. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to establish this hope as a line by which I will walk so as to manifest this, setting myself up thus for the possibility of continuing to abuse alcohol out of my own self interest in allowing myself access. I commit myself to clear the point of alcohol the best that I can before purchasing alcohol again, if I ever do purchase alcohol again.

When and as I see myself resisting engaging in a home yoga practice, I stop and I breathe. I realize this is something I have been practically begging of myself to begin again -- for months! -- and that I have ignored and neglected myself by not listening and not acting on this communication. I realize that part of my ignorance of myself here is probably within the realization that my home yoga practice is supportive, and so it will support me in changing myself, and so within and as my mind I resist this productive effective way of supporting myself. I commit myself to first tonight finding some of my old favorite youtube yoga videos, and then tomorrow morning practicing from those videos. I commit myself to being with myself in all moments, and especially then in these moments, so that it is fully supportive and I can see for myself why I have been asking this of myself.

When and as I see myself feeling stuck within my routine, I stop and I breathe. I realize this routine doesn't matter, it isn't real, I created it. I commit myself to mixing things up to see how I can effectively and productively support myself in all moments, and to see how the world does not end when I stray from my routines. I commit myself to seeing how I can really actually live and be free, if I allow myself to be.

When and as I see myself neglecting and becoming frustrated with my dog's whining for attention, I stop and I breathe. I ask myself what she might need -- are there any basic needs I have not supported her in meeting? I then go over to her. I give her attention. I pet her and scratch her behind the ears, on her back, and on her belly. I talk to her. I realize I am all she has. I commit myself to further investigating my relationship with her, my relationship with animals, and how this relationship can assist and support me, and her, in my process and our lives.


Relevant past posts:
I am a Brick Wall: Seeing Myself by Seeing My Experience of Myself - Day 36
Routines as "Rules" - Day 94
Showing Up for Myself Part 5: Suppression, Depression, Mania, & Writing - Day 95
Self-Efficacy in Time Usage & Practical Daily Living - Day 99
SF in Response to Forum Post Pt. 1 - Day 112 (Listening to myself)

Supporting Myself in an Experience of "Depression" - Day 61

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

I spent the majority of my day either in bed or on the couch. I "slept in," which for me on weekends has consisted of feeling anxious about time slipping away and thus not resting, then checking the time and seeing that it's still quite early, so then resting longer, but then eventually still sleeping/resting beyond a time that is really necessary for rest and relaxation. And sometimes when I sleep/lay down too long, I notice that my head just starts to feel so heavy, and I get a headache.

So that's what happened this morning. Nonetheless I got up and made some breakfast and coffee with the "intention" of making it to my obligations, but as the morning wore on the headache got worse. I laid on the couch. It got worse. I canceled my obligations. I went back to bed. I slept another two hours. I decided all I really expected myself to accomplish today was to eventually go to the grocery store. I stopped fighting.

In some ways I was totally okay with this. I think it's perfectly okay to give myself time and space to rest, even if it is more rest than is physically necessary. I work hard all week, and I have been pushing myself to work hard at home too. I still waste a LOT of time, but it's minuscule compared to the amount of time I used to waste. Also over the last week I'd noticed myself feeling somewhat "blah" (aka depressed) and procrastinating on some obligations out of a feeling of resistance, overwhelmingness, and/or simply not wanting to and thus not directing myself to fulfill those obligations. In some ways too, I "reason" that perhaps it is supportive to give in to patterns/resistance/depression/etc. and to really give in full force, without judgment. Say, this is what I'm going to do, and I'm okay with that. Stop the fight -- act. Then:

1. "It gets it out of my system," and it really gets it out so that I can actually DO THAT without judging myself and believing I "should" be doing something else, so here I can experience it fully, here if I am going to "be depressed," at least I am really actually BEING "depressed" and not fighting with myself over it. 
2. I can see for real, not perceive through judgment, that it's not necessary, not worth it, not productive, not actually self-supportive, etc. OR I can see that maybe it is! I don't know. The point isn't to judge myself and place unreasonable expectations of myself to simply suddenly be something I am not and have not been and thus to wear myself out and be hard on myself and unforgiving with myself. The point is to support myself. The point is to forgive myself. The point is to direct myself as myself, not as some expectations I have created for myself under the guise of what I "should" or "shouldn't" be able to do at all times, self-expectations which I have created through the internalization of what others have established as expectations for themselves. 

And within all of that above, obviously, the point is also to be self-honest and self-responsible. So to not fight with myself relentlessly but to allow myself the time and space to see for myself, to trial for myself, what is really best for me/all in a self-supportive, self-honest, self-responsible manner. 

I notice a lot in general in any way that I try to change myself or try to push through resistance that within that all I am really doing is judging myself and fighting with myself within and as my mind. So here the point I think is to CHOOSE what to do and DO it, all the while being self-honest and self-responsible and self-aware of what that doing is actually doing for me and for all. I will not change overnight. I cannot know what is best without trying. 

• This is actually how I quit smoking or drinking every day. Rather than make some lofty commitment to myself to "quit," I simply became aware of myself in every moment, and made commitments in and for each moment. I did not tell myself what I would do tomorrow, or in a week, or even in an hour. I simply made self-honest self-responsible decisions in how to direct myself in each moment. And it's been 4 months. 

But back to today/this past week:
Even small, potentially fun/enjoyable things that I would put on my to-do list would go by the way-side, like browsing books pertinent to my new job on amazon (oh how I love adding to my enormous amazon wishlist), or looking through a magazine I got in the mail full of recipes. Pretty much the only things that were appealing to me were: sleeping, eating, watching my tv show, and sleeping a lot more.

Obviously yesterday I went on that great bike adventure by myself and that was great and obviously I went to work all week and obviously not all I actually did was sleep, eat, watch tv, and sleep a lot more. But that's all I really WANTED to do the majority of the time, and today I finally let myself do basically just that.

That is until I woke up today again with just enough time to either make it to the obligations I had canceled, or go to yoga. I decided to go to yoga. I used to go to yoga 3-5 times per week before I started this job at the beginning of May. Since then, I only go 1-2 times per week, if that, and it's always on the weekends, so it's not like the beneficial effects of relaxation, exercise, stretching, and an opportunity to be alone with myself and my breath are spread out throughout the week as they have been previously. I know that exercise in general is purported to be a top tier solution or remedy for "depression" and I know that from my own experience, it works, which is simply to say that the "symptoms" of "depression" are alleviated and not as prominent or even existent when I exercise regularly. I also know that yoga in particular is a form of exercise that I particularly enjoy for a variety of reasons. So to me this seems like the poster-child of practical self-support inasmuch as I can support myself within and through the activities that I choose to engage in. And I was able to go to two yoga classes back to back this afternoon and it felt pretty great. I'm standing taller, I'm stretched out, I sweat out a lot of shit, and I breathed. I left feeling a lot more ready to take on my various obligations as simply tasks necessary to accomplish. I went to the store, bought some healthy food, and now I am re-assessing my to-do list with the realization that I can get a lot more done than I had originally expected of myself today.


Some things that I think are going to be important to consider moving forward:

• Continuing to investigate self-support in daily lived applications of myself and my time as well as my responsibilities. 
• Cleaning regularly
• Taking care of my body through nutrition and exercise 
• Continuing to investigate the ways that I feel imprisoned by this heat, the ways that I allow myself to be bogged down by this heat. 
• Continuing to investigate my regrets over not living in Denver. Since writing that post, the regret has actually only been more on my mind. The weather doesn't help, as the summers in Denver are much milder. 
• Continuing to investigate how to support myself in resistance and how to stop the fight and simply make a decision, and to make that decision, as all decisions, fully: to live it fully rather than continue to keep one foot on either side of the line, or judge myself, or question myself. Is this self-supportive? 
• Continuing to investigate TIME and time management and how I seem to think that all these obligations I must fulfill and have established within myself as being chores and things that are not fun or enjoyable and therefore I resist doing... well, investigate all that, for one thing, but also investigate for myself to further my realization and understanding that none of these things actually take that much time if I can just stop dragging my feet and actually DO them. 
• Then they are done, and then I still have time to do whatever else is so much "more important" which I might have done in resistance, or even better to move myself toward other enjoyable tasks, and to release myself from the heavy weight of procrastination and resistance which tends to push me into an experience of depression when I let that weight get too heavy or be there for too long, and to show myself that I am capable, I am responsible, I can take care of myself and my obligations, and in fact life is not just one big chore with mess after mess and obligation after obligation and blah blah blah until I hate life. 

Week 9 reflections tomorrow probably. 

Healthy =/= Thin - Day 50

Here is a growing problem, no pun intended.

Weight.

... Where do I even begin? Bullet points to the rescue:

• I "starved" myself in high school as a distraction from things happening in my family. When the situation improved, so did my approach to my body (I "cold turkey" stopped counting calories and restricting). 
• But during this time I indoctrinated myself with beliefs and thoughts about my weight and my value within my weight and how I should look and how much I should weigh. 
• So the urgency to distract myself with a preoccupation with my weight subsided and I was able to take a relatively more healthful approach to my body / worry about things besides my body (like college), but the thoughts and beliefs became ingrained within my mind to where I still believe and think these things, 7 years later. 
• For the last two years I have been losing significant weight as an "unintended" side-effect of becoming more healthy through regular exercise and better eating from the initial starting-point of a work morale competition for improving employee health which then developed into an interest in yoga and rock climbing which then developed into an increased care for my body and what I put in it. 
• I developed consistency within exercise and diet that for a variety of reasons has been relatively easy to maintain, not the least of which has been the "success" as proven by physical appearance as well as experience of myself within my body (increased energy, stamina, strength). 
• When I first began to lose weight at the start of this process, I would look in the mirror and see that I had lost weight and I would be pleased, and then FLASH right along with/immediately subsequent to that pleasure I would be bombarded with all of the old thoughts and beliefs that I had indoctrinated into myself in high school where I would look at parts of my body that were still "not good enough" or where I still needed to lose weight, or memories of things my mother had said to me about my weight. 
• And so in once again seeing my body get smaller, suddenly I would be IN MEMORY of those experiences where I would abuse myself in the mirror and where I would visually switch back and forth between seeing my body and perceiving my body wherein with seeing my body in the mirror I was seeing it physically and then my mind would switch over to perceiving my body and suddenly it would be bloated and disproportionate and in my mind in my perception/seeing of my body I would really literally fluctuate between these two images of my body in a matter of seconds, back and forth or sustaining in perception after initial seeing. It was alarming, kind of scary actually, to see how my perception of myself could change so drastically and so quickly when all I was doing was standing there, looking in a mirror. 

I forgive myself that, when searching for this image and seeing an image that said "skip dinner and wake up thinner," I accepted and allowed myself to become charged within this statement to where I wanted to enter a competition with myself to see how much weight I could lose and how quickly and how long I could go without eating or how little I could eat, effectively taking me completely out of the physical as the here and now as one as equal as life and into my mind into my fucked up game where I abuse myself, right back to who I was 7 years ago and now I see as who I still am within what I have accepted and allowed and continue to accept and allow. 

• Eventually that experience of myself in the mirror subsided and I consistently lost weight and my clothes became larger and I was consistently happier with my body. When the flashes would happen in my mind in my image of myself in the mirror I noticed them but I did not pursue/accept/allow the thoughts/beliefs any more than simply inasmuch as they happened. So their power subsided as consistent healthful weight loss increased along with healthful attitudes and healthy diet and exercise. 
• So here I have not had to really face any of what I created and then participated in within and as myself as my abuse of my body through and as my beliefs within and as my mind ever since I first created them in high school. 

Now fast-forward to now:

• For the last month+ I've been working at this new job and I haven't directed myself to exercise as much as I did before starting this job. First I noticed that my body became less toned, and tone was something I had already been striving to achieve/increase so it wasn't even yet fully satisfactory within my mind perception of my body, and here I am regressing. Now I have noticed the girth of my torso and arms increasing and some clothes being tighter or otherwise not fitting the same. 
• For the last week I've been eating quite a bit of ice cream every night, mainly because I have it and therefore I eat it... so there is something to look at just right here. 
• I notice that I feel really anxious when I'm eating this ice cream. I almost feel like I can literally feel the fat sticking to my arms -- not a new sensation, but recently increasing in incidence and magnitude. And each day I notice that I feel within my body and that physically as I move my hands over my body it feels fatter and flabbier. And then I experience a kind of anxiety where I think "I'm getting fat" and within this I feel helpless and hopeless because for some reason I believe this is irreversible and that I cannot intervene here to direct myself toward a "healthy" body. 
• But here I see that for me a "healthy" body in this statement is a "thin" and "toned" body, and so within this I see that there is nothing "unhealthy" about my body as it is now, although I can see that eating ice cream like I have been every night for very long would likely begin to be detrimental to my health. 
• And here I see that I am completely ignoring the need for a "healthy" mind within which I would not accept or allow myself to become anxious just because I have gained 5lbs or just because my body is changing. 
• And then within all of this I have for many years told myself that I am "cured" -- that, because I no longer live in the conditions where this all began, I no longer have an "eating disorder" or experience "disordered eating" or have a poor relationship with food or with my body. But I have also always known that I have created these beliefs/thoughts within myself especially through my deliberate participation in online "pro-ana/mia" communities when I was in high school and I have known that these beliefs/thoughts have remained at least "in the back of my head" throughout all of these years, and sometimes have come to the "forefront" of my mind to where I have been more aware of them and they have had greater directional influence over who I am, usually when I have experienced myself as "gaining weight" (which may or may not mean an actual change in the scale but means merely that I experience myself as fatter or flabbier). 

So I don't really know where to go from here. I do not want to hate my body and I do not want to hate myself for having my body and I do not want to separate myself from my body and I want to approach this from the starting-point of releasing myself from the power that I have given my mind over my relationship within and as myself as my body and as my mind.

BUT I also don't want to "get fat" and I also do still maintain and want to hold onto the "ideal body" that I have been working toward, to where I am not "ready" to release myself of this ideal because I still want it.

So there's like this tug-of-war of starting points/motivations. 

But one thing I can know for sure, to start, is that I am not in any way "unhealthy" in my body just because I have gained 5lbs. And so I cannot use as an excuse within myself that "I want to be healthy" and therefore I have to somehow restrict my dieting or exercise more or things like that. So that is a good place to start here. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to equate "healthy" with "thin." 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hate myself as who I see in the mirror as my body . 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to run my hands over parts of my body and to feel the fat and to hate myself for having this fat on my body. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see other women with toned arms or other parts of their bodies and to then hate myself because I do not look like them, but also within this I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to really look at and see myself as what I look like in the physical but only as what I look like within my mind to where I am not even actually physically comparing myself to these women but am only comparing my perception of myself with my perception of them. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare at all, though. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hate what I have and to desire what another has. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to view a body as a thing to be "had" rather than as what to BE as myself as my body in whatever form. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to distract myself from reality in high school when things were bad in my family. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to create, develop, feed, and sustain an "eating disorder" and a really fucked up relationship with food and myself as my body as a distraction from what was already really fucked up in my family. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fully deliberately participate in the creation of disordered eating and a fucked up relationship with myself as my body within my mind. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to starve myself. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to count all of my calories.

I forgive myself that I did not accept or allow myself to feed my body the sustenance it requires to be healthy.  

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to exercise my body to the point of exhaustion and to the point that I burned more calories than I consumed. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to weigh myself 2-3 times per day and to become obsessed with numbers both on the scale and on food packaging. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, within and as my mind, deliberately morph and manipulate my perception of myself to where I looked for flaws in my body, hated myself for those flaws, punished myself for those flaws, and did everything I could to eliminate those flaws as quickly as possible. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to brainwash myself into having an eating disorder to serve as self-survival as distraction from what was happening in my environment. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to, in the midst of what was already fucked up, create even more fucked up situations within and as myself, wherein I was not supporting or assisting myself within the environment that I could not control but was controlling my internal environment to match my external environment to where both were fucked up and I was deliberately fucking myself up. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that this is all a non-issue simply because I have not been facing it, because it has not come up, because I have managed to be "thin enough" that my mind has not raised any large objection. 

I thank myself that I was able to develop actual healthy habits within exercise and eating over the last two years, and I commit myself to use this as a foundation to continue on this path. 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to still be motivated within and as a desire to be "thin" even as I participated in creating and maintaining an actually healthy lifestyle for myself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react within anxiety and worry about my weight when I have only gained about 5lbs. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hate my body. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hate myself as my body. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and align myself as absolutely my mind in what I tell myself about myself and about my body. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to experience friction between wanting to be "healthy" (thin) and wanting to be healthy within and as myself, my body, and my mind. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want to lose weight so that I do not have to experience the judgments within and as my mind about my body to where losing weight becomes the solution to what I am noticing within myself within and as my mind. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as a sense of "hopelessness" when I notice that I begin to gain weight or begin to lose muscle tone or strength, to where I then set myself up for an increase of that effect within hopelessness and helplessness because within these states I do not direct myself to actually do something about it toward the end that I desire of a specific physical appearance and also a physical experience of myself, to where when I am muscularly stronger I have more energy and stamina and am more capable of various physical activities, which I see as positive attributes for the enjoyment of life, but instead I exist within and as hopelessness/helplessness and within this I eat more or sleep more and then gain more weight and the cycle accelerates. 

When and as I see myself equating "healthy" with "thin," I stop and I breathe. I realize that this is not what healthy means, and that health has as much to do with my mind as it does my body. So within this I realize that by equating "healthy" with "thin," I am not healthy within and as my mind. I commit myself to really stop myself when I use this as a justification for abusing my body through my actions (or inactions) or abusing myself through my mind as what I tell myself about my body and about myself. I commit myself to aligning myself with the starting point of self-support in self-honesty and self-responsibility, as one as equal as life, within and as the starting point of true and actual health for my mind, body, and self. 

Points that I can see to expand on in the future:

• Separation of self from body
• "Ownership" of body as "object" to be "had" within comparison between bodies
• The disparate starting points of wanting to be self-honest and self-responsible within and as my mind, and wanting to be thin and achieve an ideal body image, and also the desire to find a way to have both. 
• Residual thoughts/beliefs indoctrinated into myself through my participation in creating these thoughts/beliefs so many years ago. 
• Why do I want to be "thin"? 
• How to support myself in self-honesty and self-responsibility and how to direct myself here.