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i_wanna_blue
Hulaballoo
Joined: Aug 10, 2008
Age: 24
Posts: 5231
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 Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 6:09 am Post subject: Here I go again. Pushing the self destruct button.... |
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I really wish I knew why I always do this. I feel so stupid !!!!!
It's as if I need misery and regret in my life, and when things are moving well, I need it to take a turn for the worse. I think I get a fix from knowing that I messed up everything and I need to start again, to build myself up and to overcome self fulfilled prophecies.
The other day, after a few good months of somewhat content, it hit me that things might just end up o.k. What did I feel? I felt scared... What if things do go my way? What if I don't have something within me challenging my happiness? It seemed too good to be true...
It seems I need to knocked down, by circumstances, or even worse, myself.
I know this post is rather vague and does not give insight into what I regard as self destructive behaviour. But I just had to say it to anyone listening out there. |
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KayCe
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Feb 06, 2009
Posts: 38
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 7:42 am Post subject: |
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Since your post is vague, what I say may be off base from what you meant, but here's my take:
I think you're saying that that "good months," "things going your way," and not having "[challenges] to your happiness" are all unfamiliar territory to you. That in your life, your experience has taught you that these times are, in essence, a threat--because your experience up to now has been that when you feel good, you're actually on the way to something bad happening.
If this is true, then--up to now--this has been valid experience. You have learned that "good"--in your life--has always led to "bad," based on real things that occurred to you during your life. (Beginning at least from when you were an infant or a toddler; perhaps, from when you were in your mother's womb and were bathed constantly in an amniotic fluid wash of anxiety-producing biochemicals that your mother was creating in response to what was happening in her life.)
So now, as an adult, if feeling good does not lead to feeling bad, this in itself becomes a source of anxiety, which eventually becomes so uncomfortable that you create "bad" for yourself just so you can "relax." Because, to the core of your being, your experience has been that the self-harm you manufacture for yourself will innoculate you against something even worse happening down the line. You are, in effect, cutting your losses so you don't "lose" potentially even more which up to now you have believed might happen if you let life take its course.
If any of this makes sense to you, then I think you first need to congratulate yourself for learning what must have been some very difficult lessons in survival. Maybe not physical survival (though this is a possibility), but psychological survival, emotional survival, intellectual survival, sexual survival, and spiritual survival. Up to now, you have done a very good job of protecting yourself from catastrophe and you need to pat yourself on the back and give yourself some kudos for taking care of yourself as well as you knew how to do.
After you have accepted that you really have been caring for yourself, that you have actually been loving yourself (even if whatever you have done would probably be described as self-harm of some type), then you can begin to move forward.
The first step is realizing that "good"-which-is-not-followed-by-"bad" is new territory to you: Terra Incognita. You will be an explorer exploring and expanding your own psyche, mapping out virgin territory no human being (you!) has ever explored before.  So you enter this unknown, unmapped, and unexperienced territory very carefully...one step at a time. If possible, my suggestion is to take along someone you can trust on the journey with you; brand new things always seem easier with a trusted comrade by your side.
Pause frequently along the way to assess risk: do you hear any wild, dangerous, and unpredictable animals about? Can you identify any real life hazards? Can you see clearly for the new few steps, and is the way for those few steps clear? If you have an unobstructed path, even if it is only for a few steps, take those steps and then pause again to assess risk.
Also take frequent pauses to turn around and, briefly, look back at the progress you have made. You have been engaged in mapping known territory out of previously unknown territory. Get a new perspective on yourself: see how far you have come, both from where you were at the beginning of your life, and also from the last time you paused to turn around and assess your progress.
If you happen to run into a swampy place, or a seemingly impenetrabile barrier, just pause at the impediment, figure out a way through it or around it, and try again. If you get a bit muddy or you get a few scratches along the way...well, explorers in unknown territory always do experience these things, don't they? It's a part of every pioneer's journey.
Just keep on keeping on, step by step, as you learn to work past your own barriers, and more importantly, as you learn to "endure" (mentally, psychologically, physically, sexually, and spiritually) the good feeling of good feelings, without capitulating (feeling yourself pressured to resort to self-harm or depression).
You'll be doing the work of 24 years (according to your info, the amount of time since you were born) in probably one year or two. That's going to be a great deal of making up in a rather short period of time, all things considered, but at the end of it, you will have completely retrained your neural pathways and all of your body and yourself to accept that good can happen, and can continue, without being (or calling down) bad in its wake.
Other people, some of them from war zones, some of them from the most hideous, cruel, abusive backgrounds imaginable, have learned to do this as adults, and so can you.
Good luck, i_wanna_blue.
You can do it, I know you can.
Otherwise, you would have never written this post. |
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i_wanna_blue
Hulaballoo
Joined: Aug 10, 2008
Age: 24
Posts: 5231
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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^
Thank you, for a quite beautifully constructed response. You seem to have hit the nail on the head. I am fearful of having no 'challenges' whether real or imagined. I don't know how to cope with security as my whole life has been insecure.
I guess you're right. I need to learn to cope with what (hopefully) is a brighter future. I wish I could have someone to share this 'adventure' with, but I don't unfortunately. Thank you again for the response.  |
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BoiseAirport
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: Jun 23, 2009
Age: 18
Posts: 32
Location: Born and raised in Boise, Idaho...the City of Trees in the Gem State, I love it here!
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| Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2009 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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I know it's not saying a lot since I haven't entirely been here for very long, but THANK YOU for creating quite possibly the best, most helpful and enlightening post I've seen on this forum, and perhaps even the entirety of the internet. I can't tell you enough how much you hit the nail on the head for me. I've been the EXACT same way right down to the bone. Not a single letter off, every sentence pitch-perfect at describing how I've felt, thank you, thank you, thank you again!!
Amazing, I honestly felt like I was the only one who felt exactly as the OP felt, but as this forum has proven to me on more than one occasion, I'm not. 
_________________
"Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway." |
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littlegreenleaf
Snowy Owl
Joined: Jun 20, 2009
Age: 20
Posts: 170
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| Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 4:05 am Post subject: |
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| I kind of feel that way too, when things are going well I find it unsettling and don't really know how to be happy about it. Part of it for me is probably paranoia. I think we've all been in relationships (the general kind) and situations that seem great but take a terribly ugly turn and then after that we keep thinking that anything good that comes after that is too good to be true. Or sometimes even when I reach some of my goals, it doesn't feel like enough. But I'm going to keep trying to ride whatever good comes my way for as long as I can. Part of what might scare us about the thought that things might actually end up okay is the unknown and not being able to even imagine that kind of world for us where everything is just fine...if you've dealt with negative things on a regular basis, then that's what you're used to and it's familiar and you know what to expect as miserable as it can be. Anyway, I hope you find your happiness and hold on to it. |
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