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sKePTiKal:
You're welcome Echo - and you're not hijacking! We're talking about the same thing... discussing... sharing... exploring "what it is" and maybe figuring out how to not let this limit our lives. (Ya gotta watch out for my tendency to blab on & on, online though... I feel way free-er to bubble over my boundaries here than I do in person. So I'm formally giving you permission to do the same, when you've got something to say. Don 't let me steamroll YOU, in the process and I'll try to rein myself in.)

Something that helped me "come out of my shell" was to realize (and yeah, it had to be pointed out to me) that most people are so self-involved that unless you're actively making an ass out of yourself... they're not examining you with a microscope. You're not topic #1 at all.

But that FEELING - that every single twitch of your nose, strand of hair, how your clothes hang, your posture - is under minute examination and judgement (which just shrinks our real spirit, our self down to be as invisible as possible inside) that feeling has been programmed into us - our brains - and is now a mental habit. I feel it every single time I'm in a social situation. And even though it seems contrary, that practice of letting myself "regroup" myself in that situation before venturing out into conversations with other people, helps me banish that feeling. It seems a little backwards, to be reassured through observation, that no one is paying attention to me at all - hahaha! But it definitely works!

Another thing that helps, is to have something to do. Even though it's simultaneously one of those things I can be really overly self-conscious about. I can focus on the doing - and less on how I feel - and simply interact with others.

This is one of those long-term "effects" of Nparents, I think... it's like a fossil frozen into our experiential memory... and because it was so painful and traumatic for us in the past -- we keep expecting the same thing to happen in the present and future. That memory doesn't take into consideration, that

a) the people are completely different people than those associated with the memory
b) the roles are totally different (we're not in a parent-child role relationship with everyone*)
c) the best thing about life, is that each moment, something completely new can - and does - happen, if we allow it. And a lot of those new things are delightful, happy "discoveries".


* I just tripped over this idea: part of the reason I feel out of step in some situations, is that I'm feeling - perhaps have that need for reassurance - I'm feeling in the child role, when experiencing other situations. Right there - I'm not seeing myself on an equal adult footing with others. So through repetition I'm actively reinforcing the fossil in my brain/feelings. Thank goodness mantras and affirmations and reminders are the simple antidote to that!!

sKePTiKal:

--- Quote --- My need, my way, my perception is no more important than that of others (like that of drama queens).  I want to learn from the experiences of others as well as my own. 
--- End quote ---

Absolutely, tt -- I know this is one major reason I drift through the posts here almost every day. I actually "learn" to see my needa, way of being me & perception more accurately, when it's in the context of how others see and understand themselves. The valuable lessons - of where my self-vision is distorted, perhaps even totally incorrect -- have completely helped me along my path and made it possible to step right over what used to be taboos, self-limitations based on those old-FOO-legacy "rules", for me.

Now, if I can just figure out how to talk - express some of those flashes of insight or learn the language of emotions well enough - so that I'm not tripping all over myself with self-censorship, caution, fear of people reacting in horror at me, and the old "protecting others from the monster that is myself" programming I have... without 40,000 words to do so!!

Get some sleep - I'm gonna have more active, than intellectual day today - I'm between company and we're back to house projects again and plain old housework.

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