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Mar 29, 2011, 02:44 AM
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Member Since: Feb 2008
Posts: 2,363
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lavieenrose
I lay this trip on myself. If I were stronger in character, smarter, etc., I'd have solved my problems and would have the things that others have. I scarcely realize how brutal I am to myself. I'd never treat someone else that way.
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Same... just today after a heated round with my ex.... hearing him say 'You bring this on yourself, you need to get a job and quit sitting around feeling sorry for yourself..... blah blah blah'... I went to the river and cried out... if I am doing this to myself please help me to stop. If I am just not getting it... if I am just too afraid.... if I am just too this or that... then I guess I deserve to be in the mess I am in. I guess it is my fault. His words just reinforced my own sense of weakness and incompetence.
It is beyond sad how brutal we can be with ourselves while our hearts are always open to offer compassion, patience and unconditional understanding to others in pain. How can we turn that around I wonder. Might it be linked to growing up having to prove ourselves in order to be validated or loved? If so then how do we compensate for that training and find a new way of feeling worthy of love, especially self love without those kinds of conditions? How do we get beyond the pass or fail testing that measures our value in the world?
We might know some of the answers intellectually, even spiritually but emotionally the answers seem to remain out of reach. Or perhaps more accurately no answers seem believable enough because we have been carrying the sense of not being or doing 'enough' to earn any internal credibility for so very long. We may know it is about 'reframing' but our sense of our own inability to 'reframe' just takes us full circle to not being enough again. Geesh Lavie... we are a couple of crazy makers!! We must put a stop to this now!
Perhaps.... we might first acknowledge the gains we have already made. The choices were are already making in our own best interests. We started this thread with one determination.... to help ourselves. We may not have arrived at our hoped for destination but we are on the journey to find out. We may feel as though we have a million miles yet to go to be where we want to be, who we want to be, how we want our lives to be.... but we are miles from where we once were. And most importantly, even with the times we feel as though we are just treading water or spinning around in the currents, or being pushed back upstream we in fact are making gains. On those things we must ponder and acknowledge and celebrate.
In the interest of abandoning the hurtful ways of viewing ourselves if we were to keep plugging away at reframing our perceptions with things like the metta meditations, the self loving affirmations, the self loving care and kindness, the love and kindness shared so unconditionally among our friends here.... then maybe we would have clearer eyes to see the breakthroughs we actually are making in our lives.
I think at the end of the day we need to declare, even when we don't quite believe, that every deficiency we perceive about ourselves is really our strength. Again we may know this intellectually but the pain blinds us from seeing it, feeling it or owning. Back to naming the distraction and claiming the victory yet to be realized.
I appreciate you sharing how you can relate to my confusions. I know we are not alone. Like you say we would never be as brutal to others as we are to ourselves. Not even close. As my heart breaks for you and your heart breaks for me maybe we can begin to consider how we might reflect the compassion bestowed upon us by others who see all of us and deflect the judgements we so brutally inflict on ourselves when we can only see part of us.
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