Day 158- OCD: The Inner Time Bomb

Within this blog I will be digging in a little deeper, based on the support I was given here:

 “I didn't have such problem with my face per se but arms, and it all stemmed from perceiving myself as being flawed/ inadequate/ ugly/ anxious and it's like a zoning out because of the amount of meticulous attention you put into this mechanical effort yet the relief was not experiencing myself.”

“It's like one is so entertained with doing it that everything else just disappears, including the thoughts because we become that activity in itself without any other consideration. “

…”which was in essence using that physical act to cover up the Inner experience”

“for me the ocd started with obsessive cleaning/arranging stuff in a specific way when I was around 5-6, and I see how I used the point as a way to channel my internal experiences of absolute dread/horror/fear/anxiety - experiences which I had due to living in an abusive environment where I was unable to actually express my experiences.”
 

“What we've identified here is simply a series of distractions that we use to not take self responsibility, which many times it won't be a 'doing something' but rather learning how to exist without a constant need to move/ do something all the time, which is like an ingrained level of 'energy' to deal with and channel it through any means. The 'ways' vary from person to person due to environmental influence as we've described, but the starting point is the same: existing as energy, not physical”

Basically, what I am seeing, realizing and understanding within this recent support from the Desteni community, is that what is being done from an early age, is not dealing with the internal experiences of emotions and feelings, but instead occupying and focusing oneself so much on one activity that the experiences become drowned out. In this, the internal experience is suppressed, pushed down, not understood and at the same time, continuously created. This would predictably lead to the need for more and more distraction, more intense focus, deeper attention to detail, and eventually an all-encompassing disorder- as the generating of internal energies and experiences has not been ceased nor directed, but has been allowed to run rampant. Of course then there is a sense of no control- because nothing is being addressed or directed. Within not understanding what is being created within, or how it’s being created, it will just continue to build. And then in not directing it once it’s there, but instead avoiding it, it will need to come out somewhere, in some form of activity. And that activity will be unique to the individual, based on their life experience, upbringing, genetics, environment etc…

So this leads me to ask myself: what am I generating within myself, and how exactly am I doing it? This will be the topic of my next blog.

OCD blogs:

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 151- OCDas Dermatillomania: Delusional Mind

Day 152- TheFear of Not Having OCD
Day 153- When OCD Prevents Life
Day 154- Dermatillomania: SecretlyOut of Control
Day 155- I Have OCD

Day 156- OCD: It Makes You Super-Human, 'Unstoppable'

 Day 157- OCD:Practical Cessation

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 --Sign up for the free course at this link: DIPLITE, dare yourself to look at what you create within.

 

Day 157- OCD: Practical Cessation

Ces·sa·tion 

/seˈsāSHən/

Noun A ceasing; an end. A pause or interruption.

          Within this blog, I am continuing to de-program my OCD behavior, and replace it with self-directed living. In italics are the self-forgiveness statements from a previous blog, wherein I am looking at the warped/deluded reality I have created in my mind, and revealing it to myself, as it has been the foundation upon which I have based my actions. This foundation, and the actions it produces, predictably lead to obsessive-compulsive behavior, which I experience in every area of my life, and which expresses itself most predominantly and most irrationally in the condition called dermatillomania, or compulsive skin-picking.

This blog is continued from:

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 152- TheFear of Not Having OCD
Day 153- When OCD Prevents Life
Day 154- Dermatillomania: SecretlyOut of Control
Day 155- I Have OCD

Day 156- OCD: It Makes You Super-Human, 'Unstoppable'

The self-forgiveness in this blog is related to the OCD tendency of repetitive behaviour wherein the sufferer would become 'locked-in' to a task, not being able to stop/tear themselves away, as described by the MAYO clinic website here:

"OCD compulsions are repetitive behaviors that you feel driven to perform. These repetitive behaviors are meant to prevent or reduce anxiety related to your obsessions. For instance, if you believe you hit someone with your car, you may return to the apparent scene over and over because you just can't shake your doubts. You may also make up rules or rituals to follow that help control the anxiety you feel when having obsessive thoughts.

As with obsessions, compulsions typically have themes, such as:

•Washing and cleaning

•Counting

•Checking

•Demanding reassurances

•Performing the same action repeatedly

•Orderliness"

 

Within this blog, I am dealing with one dimension of obssessive compulsive behaviour (OCD):  obsessing over completing tasks (cleaning, working, arranging, grocery shopping). Simplisticly: anything that 'should' be a simple task, which ends up in exhaustion, wherein, I would begin to avoid doing it for fear that I will never finish, predictably creating chaos and disorderliness which leads to further anxiety and perpetuates the 'vicious cycle'.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that I will only experience the feeling of ‘completion’/’doneness’ if I do a task ‘perfectly’, or a very certain specific way that I will only realize if/when I do it that way, wherein, if I don’t experience the feeling of ‘doneness’/’completion’, that it means that I have not done the task properly, perfectly, or the right way, and therefore must keep trying, over and over until I get it, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that the task is complete and done, when it is complete an done, and the proper completion of a task has nothing to do with my internal experience as a ‘feeling’ or ‘experiencing’ of ‘completion’ or ‘doneness’.

I commit myself to participate in the tasks that I do in awareness, wherein, I catch myself from going into ‘the zone’ of ‘zoning out’ and immersing myself in the obsessive drive for the experience of ‘completion’, ‘accomplishment’, and ‘doneness’, and lose all touch with actual reality and base my actions solely on my internal energetic experience which, as I have seen and as has been proven, is not to my benefit and is actually quite debilitating.

When and as I see that I am zoning out and losing touch while participating is tasks, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to physical reality by realizing and understanding that if I continue to accept and allow myself to participate within my mind, which keeps compounding thoughts  that I will have to do ‘more and more’ before I will be able to experience the feeling of ‘accomplishment’, ‘completeness’ and ‘doneness’, but within this, the predictable outcome is that I will never in fact actually be done in reality, if I continue to pile on more and more steps. Therefore, I look at the task and practically script out the fewest and simplest steps towards practical completion of the task, or, if I am ‘too far gone’ to be able to use common sense in this way, I simply stop, and take myself away from the task, I focus on my breath, and do something else, such as make a smoothie, watch some tv, write, or take a walk, until I am ready to complete the task.

 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed at the thought of beginning tasks because I think/believe/perceive that they will be daunting and exhausting, because I have a history of having in fact turned simple tasks into daunting and exhausting tasks within and through endlessly chasing the ‘feeling’ or ‘experience’ of ‘doneness’ or ‘completion’ which isn’t even based in reality.

 

I commit myself to move myself to begin tasks with a ‘blank slate’, wherein, I check myself moment to moment, in order to base my  starting point of each moment I reality, and not in past memories of OCD moments where I accepted/allowed myself to cycle into exhaustion/overwhelmingness.

When and as I see that I am judging a task as overwhelming and daunting, creating powerlessness and resistances I stop, and I breathe. I push myself to move myself despite the experience of a wall of resistance, and I take the very first step, and then the next one, doing only as much as I can do in each breath, realizing that I can only do one thing at a time. I bring myself back to the do-ableness of the moment by stopping myself from imagining an endless amount of steps, and simply focusing on the one step I am doing.
 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give up on tasks before I even start them because I think/believe/perceive that it is unavoidable that I will turn them in to huge, daunting exhausting tasks, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that it is within my power and ability to practically assess the task before I begin, and to decide upon a clear end-point where I will stop working on the task, and then ensure that I do in fact stop, regardless of the presence or lack of an internal feeling or experience of completion.

I commit myself to practically assess tasks before I begin them, wherein I decide upon a clear end-point where I Will stop working on the task, and I commit myself to in fact stop at that decided upon end-point, regardless of the presence or lack of an internal experience of completion.

When and as I see that I am about to begin a task, I stop, and I breathe. I give myself a moment to practically assess the task, and to decide upon a clear end point where I will stop working on the task. I push myself to reach that point, and to stop at that point, regardless of the presence or lack of the experience of ‘accomplishment,’ ‘doneness’, or ‘completion.’
To be continued...
 

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 --
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Day 156- OCD: It Makes You Super-Human, 'Unstoppable'

This blog is continued from:

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 152- TheFear of Not Having OCD
Day 153- When OCD Prevents Life
Day 154- Dermatillomania: SecretlyOut of Control
Day 155- I Have OCD

 

Within this blog I am writing out the corrective statements and self-commitments that will assist and support me to understand and change my behavior. Each set of commitments and corrections is related to a self-forgiveness statement from yesterday’s blog. In yesterday's blog I was peeling back the layers of legitimate craziness that leads me to perpetually repeat behaviours when I am working on tasks. I realized that I feel like I can never ever ever ever stop because I never 'feel' like the task is complete, meaning I have based the completion of a task upon the 'experience' of completion, and not actual completion. So, it makes sense to me now, if I were to do something once, and not get that feeling, then I'd do it again, then again, and if I finally get the feeling on the seventh time, well, then I will do the behaviour exaclty seven times the next time, because that is now the magic number; that s the number of times it takes till it 'feels' completed.

Herein, I am basically working though this delusion, and showing myself that I should only base actions on physical reality, otherwise I will remain a slave to the persuit of this 'feeling' of completion or doneness, which I don't even create in awareness- so sometimes I don't acheive this feeling state, no matter how hard I work on something, so that when I stop working due to exhaustion or frustration, I end up feeling like I have 'given up' or 'failed'; as if I had left something 'unfinished,' wherein it would feel like this loose end that creates anxiety and fear within me, because now it is unpredictable- because I haven't dealt with it properly: it is UNFINISHED. So, herewith the correction:

I commit myself to give myself a moment to define the tasks that I decide to take on during my day and in my life, wherein I do a quick run through of what exactly will be involved, how I should reasonably prepare, and at which point I will stop.

When and as I see that I am cycling within a task, repeating behaviours and waiting for the ‘queue’ of the ‘feeling’ ‘experience’ of doneness, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back down to practical reality by taking a step back, both within myself and by literally stepping away from the task, and I take a self-honest look at where I am actually at within the task. I remind myself that I am not at this point a reliable indicator of the completion of tasks, so I must instead use physical queues as to the completeness or actual doneness of the task.

I commit myself to take back my directive decision-making ability through, pushing myself to, within each task, decide where the endpoint is, and trust myself that the decision is sound, and then breathe through the anxiety/fear that the task not complete because I don’t feel that is is complete, and in this, I commit myself to look to physical reality as my reference to the completion of tasks, within the realization that physical reality will always show what the next step is, and what is really done/not done.

 

When and as I see that a task is taking longer than it practically should because I am unable to make the decision to stop due to fear/anxiety connected to the idea of stopping, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to the directive principle of myself by simply tearing myself away, just like a bandaid, quick and painful, and I breathe through the reactions as I keep moving, on to the next thing that requires my attention or that I have decided to do, or simply moving myself to do something practical and physical such as doing the dishes, while I go through the ‘withdrawal’ of not feeding my mind with the cyclical and repetitive behavior that creates the energetic experience of absolute ‘locked in’ possession-state I go into.

 

I commit myself to complete tasks in awareness, and in pushing myself to constantly return to the simplicity of breathing, wherein I can distinguish between the experience of doneness/completion, and actual doneness/completion.

I commit myself to realize that if I stop a task before I attain the experience of doneness or completion, that I am not a quitter or a failure, because the experience of completion or doneness was only ever in my mind and not in my control and not based in reality and thus not real.

When and as I see that I am becoming exhausted or feel like I’m quitting a task before it’s done, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to self-acceptance within  the realization that the feeling is just a feeling I have programmed within and as me based on past memories and experiences, and that it is no basis from which to create myself relationship, and that me making the directive decision to stop a task based on physical queues, that I am actually practicing the greatest self-care in that moment because I am not pushing myself to exhaustion and I am not judging myself as a failure or a quitter.

I commit myself to see and realize that not completing a task is not a ‘deal breaker’ in terms of the order present in my life, and that if I do not complete a task, that I can simply pick it up again later.

I commit myself to pick up tasks that I hadn’t completed, and to see them through in order to work on and develop a self-trust that I can depend on.

When and as I see that I am going into fear and self-judgment of what others will think of me/how others will see me if the y knew the disorder and chaos I exist within and as due to never being able to complete tasks due to never attaining the experience of completion, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to reality by reminding myself that it is not others, but my own self-judgment that I am fearing, and that the chaos and dis-order I’m imagining is not necessarily even there. And if it is, then there is nothing stopping me from taking practical steps to correct the situation, and bring back in order.

There were three more self-forgiveness statements which I will use to derive self-commitments and self-corrections from in my next blog…

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 --
Sign up for the free course at this link: DIPLITE, try it for yourself .

Day 155- I Have OCD

This blog is continued from:

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 152- TheFear of Not Having OCD

Day 153- When OCD Prevents Life

Day 154- Dermatillomania: SecretlyOut of Control

In walking my process of OCD in writing I have discovered an interesting thing: I have OCD. Meaning, I knew that I compulsively picked my skin, and that this was not normal, and it is obsessive, compulsive, and a disorder. But what I hadn’t yet realized is the extent to which I display and participate within obsessive compulsive behaviours in many other areas of my life.

As I have been writing through this disorder, it has been becoming much more intense in my daily living. Although this is difficult, uncomfortable and at times miserable, it is also quite useful as it makes the points more obvious and easier to access and describe or ‘walk through’ in writing.

What I experience recently was OCD sabotaging the simple task of grocery shopping. I don’t generally have an issue with grocery shopping; in fact it is something I rather enjoy, when I am prepared for it. However, when I am engaged within the OCD cycle/energy/character, it is a different story.

I begin by dreading going/leaving the house/moving towards beginning the task. Immediately  the excuses begin: I don’t have time, I don’t have money, it’s too much right now, I can’t handle it in this state, I don’t want to see people, I don’t want to face the world outside my house…and so on. And then when I finally get my ass out the door I usually don’t have enough time because it took me so long to get there. When I’m there I am then easily worked up into a complete state of panic because I think I’m forgetting something, if I get something other than the basics I feel like I’m spending too much money and I’m going to overdraft my bank, I feel like I’m not going to get enough and get home and realize there’s nothing to eat in the house, then I won’t have enough money for gas because I will have used so much going back and forth from the grocery store. It’s funny because all these things have in fact happened at one point or another, but I obviously survived. So really it’s just my mind using past experiences to project in to the future in an intensified way wherein I fear it happening again

Now, to give credit where credit is due, and to avoid focusing only on ‘the problem’, I have to also look at the fact that I have made progress with this, as I have worked on this point throughout my process of self-forgiveness in a roundabout way within directing myself to see tasks through. However, at times it has been unnecessarily difficult as I have not addressed the point directly, thus allowing the pattern to continue. Herein, I address the point directly:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to only consider a task is ‘done’ when and as I experience a feeling of ‘doneness’, instead of basing the completion of the task on actual practical completion. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ‘feel’ like a task is never done, causing me to lock myself into a task, searching for that feeling of ‘doneness’/’completion’ without realizing that the feeling is something I create in unawareness, and thus have no directive decision-making ability within.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give away my directive decision-making ability regarding completing tasks because I have based the point of completion on an energetic experience in the mind, and not on an actual practical assessment grounded in reality, based on the actual reasonable completion of the task in physical reality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to obsess over tasks, searching for the ‘feeling’ of ‘completion’/’doneness’, within the belief that I have to continue to work on the task until I achieve the ‘feeling’ of ‘doneness’/’completion’, wherein I either reach a stage of exhaustion, or give up without having attained ‘completion’/’doneness’ as an experience, because such a  state was not necessarily  even possible, attainable or in my control to attain.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, when and as I ‘give up’ on tasks without attaining the feeling/experience of ‘completion’/’doneness’, to then create and manifest an experience of anger, anxiety and fear due to the thoughts, judgments, backchat and internal conversation I accept and allow within myself, about having ‘given up’ or ‘not finished’ that which I had started/set out to do.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing thoughts, judgments, backchat and internal conversations that tell me I have failed/let myself down/disappointed myself by having not properly completed/finished a task, and that because I have not properly finished/completed the task I will create chaos and disorder in my life that I will not be able to control, and/or others will see or find out that I am one who does not tend to things properly, or properly completes tasks, thus creating anger, fear and anxiety within and as me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that I will only experience the feeling of ‘completion’/’doneness’ if I do a task ‘perfectly’, or a very certain specific way that I will only realize if/when I do it that way, wherein, if I don’t experience the feeling of ‘doneness’/’completion’, that it means that I have not done the task properly, perfectly, or the right way, and therefore  must keep trying, over and over until I get it, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that the task is complete and done, when it is complete an done, and the proper completion of a task has nothing to do with my internal experience as a ‘feeling’ or ‘experiencing’ of ‘completion’ or ‘doneness’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed at the thought of beginning tasks because I think/believe/perceive that they will be daunting and exhausting, because I have a history of having in fact turned simple tasks into daunting and exhausting tasks within and through endlessly chasing the ‘feeling’ or ‘experience’ of ‘doneness’ or ‘completion’ which isn’t even based in reality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to give up on tasks before I even start them because I think/believe/perceive that it is unavoidable that I will turn them in to huge, daunting exhausting tasks, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that it is within my power and ability to practically assess the task before I begin, and to decide upon a clear end-point where I will stop working on the task, and then ensure that I do in fact stop, regardless of the presence or lack of an internal feeling or experience of completion.

Self-corrective statements to follow…

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 --
Sign up for the free course at this link: DIPLITE, try it for yourself .

Day 154- Dermatillomania: Secretly Out of Control

This blog is continued from:

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 152- TheFear of Not Having OCD

Day 153- When OCD Prevents Life

Within this blog I am writing out a recent experience.

Iforgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe or perceive that if I stop picking my skin, my skin will somehow go out of control so that within this, I create and manifest a constant ‘need’ to skin-pick in order to ‘keep everything in order’ in terms of my appearance, the appearance of my skin, and my physical body.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe or perceive that I am keeping anything in order by picking my skin, and I accept and allow myself to see, realize and understand that I actually create dis-order in my life and world by constantly feeding this disorder, and so the fear of dis-order fuels the disorder and thus fuels the dis-order instead of stopping, and created real order by walking myself towards self-supportive living by understanding how I created the disorder, thus making it orderly and manageable, because then I will have all the answers, the seeing, the realizing, and the understanding, thus walking this process as a realization and a decision, rather than a fight of=r a battle. Because a fight or a battle implies two sides, or a split within one being. Instead I become one with the disorder through living it and being aware of it, standing up from within and as it in order to stop as it through a process of forgiveness, which bring understanding, which allows for self-correction, and eventual change. This does not involve a forcing, a suppressing, or a conquering per se, but a being and becoming of the living realization that I have the choice, and I decide, not my disorder, ME.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think, believe or perceive that if I stop myself from compulsively picking at my skin before I am ‘done’, that I am leaving something unfinished and out of control, and that I can only stop when I’m done because then the process is ‘complete’ and everything is ‘in order’ again, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that I have never even taken a moment to investigate what is actually occurring when I consider myself to be ‘done’,  or why I then feel ‘completed’ and everything back ‘in order’.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to only feel that the process is done when I have experienced some kind of elusive relief within me, wherein, the pursuit of this release is absolutely overtaking me, and has got complete control over my own directive principle, wherein I am placed in the background, and this want/need/desire takes complete control  and makes me feel ‘stuck’ within it, because of the thought/perception/belief that if I stop, and unstick myself, I will experience a terrible feeling of withdrawal, and then everything will spiral out of control.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to NOT see, realize and understand that I am in fact spriraling out of control when I succumb to skin picking, because Who I AM takes a back seat, and the disorder takes over completely, proving to myself that I am in fact out of control, which is what I fear, and which is what I ‘m attempting to change through skin picking, when actually I am exactly creating myself as ‘out of control’ in my life and world.
More to come....

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 --
Sign up for the free course at this link: DIPLITE, try it for yourself .

Day 153- When OCD Prevents Life

This blog is continued from:

 

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 152- TheFear of Not Having OCD

 

     I was going to write about the terrible feeling I get when I do not complete OCD rituals, and how I create this feeling and perpetuate it. But I have to jump back to a couple blogs ago wherein I identified the self-sabotage that creates a world of chaos, disorder and fear which then justifies the OCD. I want to  address this point again because it recently played out in an event in my life.

It’s hard to wrap the mind around self-sabotage, because why would anyone do things that make life harder for themselves? I had long been under the impression that things will just work themselves out, and my ‘natural state of being’ is one that will automatically work towards improvement and doing what’s best for me. But this is not so. And once you start looking at things and events within the understanding that subtle or unconscious self-sabotage is in fact a possibility, you start to see it everywhere. Just a simplified example: if you are cooking or cleaning or something, and you knock something over and make a mess, how mad do you get? If you forget your keys or accidentally lock yourself out or forget to pick something up at the grocery store, don’t you notice yourself saying things like “I can’t believe I did that, I’m so stupid, I ALWAYS do that, when am I going to learn?” This is some nasty stuff to say to oneself over little insignificant things that could instead be dealt with by, for example, taking a breath and just cleaning up the mess, calling your roommate to let you in, using a different ingredient in the recipe, etc… and reminding yourself to cook or clean a little more slowly, to always put your keys in the same spot, or to bring a list when shopping (problem, solution, learning, prevention, benefit). But instead we create this meanness within ourselves. It’s this brutality that most would probably never impose upon another person, so why ourselves? It just makes us feel bad! We’re manipulating our own emotions and creating an internal environment that is not stable and ready to take on the day, and to take on life.

And the question that has to be asked in self-honesty is: do we really even want to take on the day, and take on Life?   Getting angry and mad and resentful towards oneself, for whatever reason, is disempowering. It really does a good job of setting one up to say “fuck it- I can’t do anything about it and I can’t do anything about myself. I am unforgiveable, unchangeable, so I might as well just succumb to it…

And then we succumb; because what is the point or life, really, if we’re just nasty towards ourselves all the time, creating this internal environment of self-hate, disappointment and anger? And then this is where addiction can come in, wherein, I would find myself thinking: “this is the only thing I enjoy and the only thing that gives me pleasure.”

It’s like, in our mind we know what we’re doing, we are not exactly dummies in this respect. We know how we are going to make ourselves feel when we treat ourselves like shit within ourselves. And we know if we start to take responsibility and start to change this, we will lose our excuses, justifications and reasons for our addictions- the one (or more) thing(s) that ‘gives us pleasure’- and I mean all addictions here- addiction to television, drugs, food, OCD, worrying,-   everything that is habitual and comfortable for the mind- activities which are not beneficial for self, yet that are participated in daily. And this is what I have notice within myself: we beat ourselves up and in turn we justify addictions that make us feel better.

So, this is a whole can of worms that I’m not going to go into any further in this blog, but I wanted to clarify my understanding of self-sabotage in simplistic terms, because today I saw very clearly how I sabotage myself in a way that has been causing huge problems for me. I wrote a small series about it in relation to the difficulties I was experiencing while studying and finishing my degree- but I never quite got to the bottom of it (Blog Series- Becoming An Effective Student). It plays out daily in so many ways. Sometimes it is very small, and sometimes it runs my day- but each time it happens, it is an opportunity for me to look into what exactly is going on within myself, and to identify and take apart the pattern that is sabotaging me from really actually living for real.

So, what happens for me is, on my days off for example: I’ll say, I ‘m going to go to yoga today, I ‘m going to get some groceries and cook for the week, and I’m going to do some writing. But then, what will happen is varying degrees of self-sabotage (I can’t go to the grocery store, I look like shit, it will take too long anyways, and I don’t have the money. I’m too tired to go to yoga, I have nothing to wear, all my clothes look bad, I’m just going to stay home, I ‘ll go tomorrow, etc…)

So today, I woke up and there was a note for me that the car needed to be registered, which would involve me taking 2 or 3 very easy steps, and driving but 15 minutes away to the town hall to pay for it and get the stickers. What happened was- I got myself to the point of moving towards starting the task, and I had huge resistances like “I don’t want to do this, I can’t do this, ” etc… The fact that I HAD to do it is kind of like cheating, because I couldn’t get out of it and drive around in an unregistered car…. I did contemplate it- but this is something I HAD to do. When it’s something I don’t absolutely HAVE to do, it’s easier to succumb to the self-sabotage.

So I was standing there thinking to myself  that I was so stressed and anxious, and I just wanted to stay home, I don’t want to go out there and see people, and have people looking at me and seeing me like this, and I felt completely stuck. And then all of a sudden I had this moment, where I just said to myself, “how am I creating this for myself?” And I realized I was in fact creating it for myself, and that I don’t want to be this way. And it is my choice to either be this way or to change.

So I ‘m going to use self-forgiveness to look into how I create this stuck-ness, this inability to move myself to do the things I plan to do- which are all things that are beneficial to me, and that would be taking steps toward expanding my potential. But instead I remain stuck, unable, and the only thing that gives me any satisfaction in those moments is picking my skin.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to turn thoughts of tasks and responsibilities into energetic charges and experiences within me, by constantly and continuously thinking seemingly imperceptible thoughts such as “I can’t do this, I’m not going to be able to do it, something is going to prevent me from doing this, if I start I will never finish, I won’t do it well enough and I will be disappointed, etc..” which are all actually thoughts based on memories of times where the play-out of events didn’t go the way I planned, or I gave up, or accepted and allowed myself to succumb to fear, and instead of learning from those situations, I took them to be ‘just who I am’, I identified with them and perpetuated them until I actually made them into true statements of who I am, and so now I have to deal with them In real time, because the past is always present here with us.

I commit myself to continue learning how to recognize those moments I experience as a complete ‘stuckness’ for what they are, which are moments of resistance because of and due to the fact that I have projected the past into the future and allowed it to freeze me in time because I’m too scared to walk into the disaster I have already created for myself in my mind.

 

I commit myself to, in moments of ‘stuckness’, unstick myself within the realization that I can direct myself through any and every moment as the choice to not continue repeating the past, but to walk myself into and as an unscripted future which I decide.

When and as I feel the ‘stuckness’ wherein I just want to stay home and not see anyone and not move myself, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to self-movement by reminding myself that I am the creator of this experience, and this experience does not determine Who I Am, and I show myself that this in fact a FACT, by walking myself through the situation in awareness, so that my thoughts are not directing me, but I am directing myself, and I show myself that my thoughts are wrong: I Am Not a disaster, a disappointment and a failure, this is NOT who I am, I am rather capable, learning, adaptive and able.

I will continue with self-forgiveness in my next blog…

 

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 .

Day 152- The Fear of Not Having OCD

 

This blog is continued form:

Day 143- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face
Day 144- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 2)
Day 145- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 3)
Day 146- Dermatillomania: Staring the Beast in the Face (pt 4)
Day 147- The Comfort and Security of OCD
Day 149- OCD: It Doesn't Matter, If No One Knows
Day 150- OCD and Distorting Reality

Day 151- OCD asDermatillomania: Delusional Mind

 

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.

There are several elements here that I would be dealing with, which are as follows:  1) I am the creator of both the ‘terrible feeling’ which I would describe as an overwhelming fear, AND the OCD itself as an escape. So I would have to look into how I create the overwhelming fear in the first place, and then go into a bit more about how and why participating in OCD is seen as a release and an escape, when in reality, it merely perpetuates the entire cycle. And 2) I fear NOT participating in OCD, because I fear that if I do not do it, I will get that feeling again. Within this element, I would look at the back-chat and internal conversations I have with myself that cause me to believe that if I stop this obsessive compulsion, I will suffer. This back chat and internal conversation also justifies the participation, as well as contributes to creating the uncomfortability as a self-fulfilling prophecy by TELLING myself, if I stop, I will feel terrible, instead of actually writing out some practical applications for myself and stopping myself to see if in fact there is a reaction.

Within my next blog, I will begin by identifying and forgiving these backchats and internal conversations, in order that I may stop them and facilitate my self-change.

To be continued…

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 .