This blog is continued form:
Within my last few blogs, I had been writing through the fact
that I do not want to have OCD/dermatillomania, yet I make the
choice every day, not to change. Anyone who suffers from derma/OCD or any other
kind of addiction, obsession or compulsion might argue with me that the
disorder is not a choice. It is a choice. It is a choice made over and over SO
many times, that it is literally programed into and as us, to the point that it
has become automatic, unconscious and seemingly unstoppable. The fact that it
is a choice can be proven by an interesting thing that I have observed within
myself as well as in support groups: we stop ourselves when we ‘have’ to. If we
have to go to work, we will stop and go to work. It’s not like someone outside
of ourselves came in, bound our hands, got us dressed and pushed us out the
door. It is us that stops ourselves when we deem we ‘have’ to, yet we keep
falling back into it, over and over again.
This is not to say that it can be stopped altogether in one
moment. Maybe it can, because anything Is possible, but as with most addiction
or automatic programmed behavior, it takes a process to stop.
It is this choice that I have been writing through in my past
few blogs. I do not want to have
OCD/derma, I also don’t ever make the genuine decision to stop and change. This
is summed up here:
“I find out that I don’t really WANT to change for real. It’s
like, someone that does drugs like heroine, ‘wants’ to stop, but doesn’t really
want to stop, because they love the drug so much, they’ll use any excuse to
take it. On top of this, once you stop, you have to face everything you’ve done
unto yourself. So, the desire to stop Is present because, we know that it’s
‘wrong’ and ‘not normal’ and harming ourselves, but at the same time, it feels
so good. Herein, it feels good, but it is not good for us in reality. So what
is that feeling but an energetic experience in the mind? “
These writings and realizations
were exploring the ‘positive’ side of the OCD experience—positive in the
respect that it is seemingly ‘giving’ us something (feeding the mind-reality at
the expense of the physical real reality).
There is more to this side and I will go into it in blogs to come, but for the
moment, I am going to explore a bit of the negative side.
The negative side of
OCD/dermatillomania is that side which is unconscious, wherein, it’s like the
hands are roaming and one is not even aware of the fact that there is
scratching, picking, rubbing, etc… going on. For me, it’s when I watch tv or
read, or when I’m studying or really just any time I have a moment. It’s so
automatic that I’m not even aware that I am doing it, and then I’ll realize at
some point and I’ll stop. What I observed it that, I get really uncomfortable
and the OCD is soothing and puts me at ease. When I stop myself, this
uncomfortability overcomes me to the point that I can’t sit still or focus. So
it’s less of a ‘gaining’ something as it is creating an uncomfortability and
then escaping it with OCD/skin-picking.
I will explore this
uncomfortability, which I experiece as an irritation and anxiousness, and how I create it using the tool of self-forgiveness so that
I can get to the bottom of it, and change.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to create an uncomfortability within and as myself which I use
to justify OCD/skin-picking.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to, when I am not completely focused and engaged, allow my mind
to wander about with thoughts that I should check my skin, that I should touch
it and rub it and feel to make sure it is even and smooth.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to become anxious and irritated at the thought that there may
be any kind of roughness or soreness or unevenness or bumps on my skin, and I
forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe or perceive
that if there is, they need to be removed, evened-out, touched and/or rubbed in
order to ‘make it better’ and ‘make it right’.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think, believe and/or perceive that roughness, soreness,
bumps, unevenness, or dryness on my skin is bad or wrong, instead of seeing,
realizing and understanding that it is just my skin processing itself and
maintaining itself as it does every day and will continue to do unconditionally
till I die.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think, believe and/or perceive that if there are any
irregularities on my skin, it is indicative of disease or illness, and I
forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that
if I remove the irregularities, then I have removed the possibility of sickness
and/or disease, and that having smooth and even skin means I’m healthy and
nothing is wrong.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to believe the insane logic that I can impose health upon
myself by manipulating the way I look, and I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to, in an attempt to alter the way my natural skin looks for
the ‘better’, actually harming it and making it not only look way worse, but
actually abusing it in the process.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to fear illness and disease.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to fear dying of an illness or disease.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to fear that my skin will show me the first signs of illness
and disease, if I were to suffer from one.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think, believe or perceive that if I can control my skin’s appearance
then I can control my health.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that my skin, in its natural state,
is dirty, flawed and contaminated, and within this, I forgive myself for
accepting and allowing myself to think, believe or perceive that I can/need
to/have to clean it and maintain it from the skewed perception that my mind
knows what’s best and must impose itself upon my skin, instead of seeing,
realizing and understanding that my skin is actually working, for the most
part, within and as perfection, wherein, perfection is not in the appearance of
the skin, but exists within the skins ability to process, care for and maintain
itself, without any conscious effort on my part.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to impose my mind’s skewed version of reality onto my skin,
which exists within actual reality, and which deals with actual reality in
every moment, unlike myself as my mind, which distorts reality, and then hides
from and escapes this distorted version of reality through self-abuse.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to distort reality by thinking/believing/perceiving that my
skin is dirty, flawed and contaminated.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to become uncomfortable by the thoughts, ideas, perceptions and
beliefs that my skin is dirty, flawed and contaminated, and I forgive myself
for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe and perceive that I must
immediately intervene in order to experience myself as clean and perfect.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think, believe and perceive that in order to experience
myself as clean and perfect, that I have to constantly clean and perfect
myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that if and when I am not
experiencing myself as clean and perfect, that anyone that sees me will see
and/or think that I am dirty, flawed and imperfect.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to judge myself as dirty, flawed and imperfect, instead of
accepting myself as I am, as Who I Am at this point, and accepting my physical
body and skin as it is, which is perfect, as it consistently does the job it is
supposed to do, which is to maintain itself to the highest standard at all
times, despite the abuse I impose upon it.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to judge myself as dirty, flawed and imperfect, without ever
really asking myself or investigating what ‘clean’, ‘flawless’ and ‘perfect’
actually are or what they actually practically entail.
I commit myself to write myself
out of the skewed version of reality I have created for myself, and the skewed
version of myself I have created in my mind, until I make actual reality so
undeniable to myself, that I will no longer be able to fool myself and
manipulate myself with these mind-games that I use to justify and create and
cause me to compulsively pick my skin.
I commit myself to teach myself
how to treat my body with dignity and respect, and to leave it alone within the
understanding that it does not require my intervention in any way whatsoever,
unless I am sick or have a condition that needs to be tended to, in which case
I will tend to it in the most practical and reasonable way possible, by
supporting my body to function to its utmost capacity, as it is design to do so
long as I give it what it needs, and nothing more.
I commit myself to learn to accept
myself and my body and skin as what I am in each moment, without looking at
myself through my mind’s eye, without distorting my self-perception, and
without creating something more or less than what is actually here.
I commit myself to slow myself
down and observe myself when I am participating in activities that do not
require my full attention, so that I can identify and stop the thoughts as
seemingly automatic flashes of images of my skin connected to irritation and anxiousness
about what may be present on it.
When and as I see that I am following
and participating in he thoughts as flashes of images of my skin with
irregularities and imperfections, connected with the emotional experience of
irritation, anxiety and fear, I stop and I breathe. I bring myself back to
self-acceptance by reminding myself that touching or ‘tending’ to those
thoughts by following them through to physical action, will only actually
create and manifest exactly that which is causing my to feel irritated, anxious
and fearful, thus creating a vicious cycle of self-abuse and self-enslavement
to addiction and obsessive compulsion. I see, realize and understand that by
stopping my participation within/as these thoughts as they occur, I can break
the cycle and free myself from the disorder forevermore.
When and as I see that I am
becoming uncomfortable and irritated and anxious at the thoughts of being
dirty, flawed and imperfect, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to
self-acceptance by reminding myself that if I don’t accept myself as I am now,
I certainly won’t be able to accept the diminished version of myself that I
create through my participation in the thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas,
perceptions, beliefs and judgments that I impose on to myself with and as my
mind, so I am better off if I simply stop, breathe, and make the decision to let
it go.
To be continued....
To read more about the process of self-acceptance, check out this blog I worte on beauty:
Day 3- Beauty Is A Beast
And this one is about honouring the physical body, which I took a moment to realize once my relationship ended and I realized I had been compromising myself within ALL of my relationships:
Day 31- Quitting Love- No Sense of Self
Self Study with support,
learn to respect you
and others, learn how to stop mind chatter, learn how to forgive so effectively
that you actually change forever, learn how to stop and change the automatic thoughts that run your life --This is some of the benefits and rewards that
one receive with walking the DIP LITE training -- and it is ALL FREE and will
even FREE you from your EGO.
Sign up for the free course
at this link: DIPLITE,
try it for yourself .
To clarify the title: In my previous blog I wrote about how
when I stop myself from participating in the obsessive-compulsive rituals of
OCD (specifically dermatillomania) I get an uncomfortability. There had been on
several occasions, times where I stopped myself, and have then been overcome by
this experience that I call ‘the terrible feeling, which is the experience of
an all-consuming fear that I can do nothing but breathe through until it stops.
What is interesting is that when I watch tv shows on addiction, I can relate
the experience to the ‘withdrawal’ stage that addicts go through when they initially
stop using the drug.
