Tacking into the brain chemistry
It's an uphill battle, going up against my evil brain chemistry. And by "going against", I mean any tactic that intends to diminish its influence over my life and actions.
Last night was fucking horrible. I absolutely erupted in rage over all my perceived irreconcilable failures of the past fifteen years of my life, where after I moved out of my parents' house I was unable to figure out what was fundamentally wrong with me, fix it and build a better life for myself. Since then, Evil Brain has been blasting its ideas through my skull with a megaphone and I've scarcely been able to tune it out.
Ok. just for this second, I'm going to try not to think about how evil brain works and try to defeat on its own level. Clearly, that's a bullshit strategy and is not going to work.
Let's just focus on any sort of solution strategy that comes up. Any goals of positive shit that I can think of. If any Alert Readers have any that might have come from my own past entries or their own experience, feel free to recommend something.
It seems that there are two big tools here at my disposal: Acceptance and Letting Go.
There's also a big recognition here: My compulsive comparative and competitive behavior is an addiction. Let's try viewing it as such and see what happens. First let's write some stuff out with Acceptance and Letting Go and their lovely Buddhist natures.
I'm now going to mention that I haven't slept in, what, 36 hours. I am fucking exhausted and at the end of my rope with this stuff. I've no idea where the energy to write all this is coming from. Desperation, I think. Or maybe the caffeine.
*sigh* okay. Acceptance and Letting Go. What first would I like to accept?
myself.
What does that mean?
...dunno. Have some sort of identity of self apart from my accomplishments and abilities and skills.
ok.
But there's a resistance to that, isn't there? Yes. Something in me believes me that as long as I have some sort of accomplishment or skill that's beyond those that any of my peers, that I'm okay. Better than okay, I'm accepted, I'm whole and complete as a human, or at least as complete as I can possibly get. And I want to feel that as hard and deep as I can. I want to feel whole and complete.
Okay. How can I feel whole and complete aside from using accomplishments and abilities and skills as a foundation for that?
*sigh* that's a tough one.
One of the main characteristics of the borderline personality is fear of emptiness, fear of abandonment. I have strong borderline tendencies, depending on how they're diagnosing the illness on any given goddamn day. Letting go of this very strong addiction to a comparison-based sense of self is probably not going to be successful unless there's an equally strong sense of self based on something else that I can put in place in its stead.
There is currently no other version of "me" I believe in as strongly as the one based on performance and comparisons and accomplishments. Nothing else, ironically, compares to it. A risky question, this: Why?
Believing in myself because of any intrinsic qualities to me, be they intelligence or sense of humor or loyalty or helpfulness or whatever... believing in myself for these reasons carries with it pain and risk. This is because of the inconsistent support I received growing up. Bullies and teachers fought against my self-worth, both giving it back momentarily before yanking it away again. My parents had no idea how act the role, so their help in affirming my self-image either didn't exist or was executed in a way that was ultimately ineffective.
Sure, ultimately self-worth is (supposedly) something intrinsic, that can't be taken away, only given. But really, when a huge number and variety of people in your life are trying to take your self-worth away, and you're not receiving reinforcement from your parents, and (oh yeah) you're a little damn kid, what's really to stop you from giving your self-worth away to those who repeatedly, loudly and insistently demand that they have control over it, not you?
So, suppose I gave my self-worth away. Suppose then that I wanted it back. Suppose also that the instant I tried to lay claim to any sort of self-worth, I was then pounced on again by others who didn't want me to have it, who screamed and threw things at me like rocks and insults, until I gave away my self-worth again. What's my incentive to hold onto it if I'm just going to get dirt kicked in my face again if I do?
*sigh* I thought I said I wasn't going to spend a lot of time trying to figure this shit out.
Okay, okay. Back on topic.
The only time I got universal acceptance among all or most of the people in my life is when my accomplishments versus my peers spoke for me. That was something that nobody would argue with, something that would guarantee me a sense of self. For a long long time this was true. Except it isn't anymore because....
because of a state of affairs that I find horrifying and ultimately diminishing to me, because all my peers have some quality in which they exceed me, most of them in multiple large ways. Some of them especially in ways in which I had previously claimed accomplishment for myself, which I feel is now diminished by their success over me. My place on the podium was bumped down, so no longer in the limelight I am now in danger of... everything all over again, the ridicule, the dirt in the face. It's impossible as an adult to be superlative or even comparative to everybody in your life.
No wonder I'm fucking miserable lately. Sense-of-self by accomplishment is now more dangerous than it's ever been, but sense-of-self by intrinsic quality never lost its scare value with me.
So now, I've been assured by countless people in my life, people who love and care for me, that I really do have intrinsic value, that I can feel it and show it without fear of being kicked in the teeth. Come on in, the water's fine! All those sharks that were beneath the surface are gone now.
I'm being asked for a leap of faith.
Time now to jump to the addiction perspective, I think. I am addicted to the act of using personal accomplishments as a metric of self-worth. Addiction has been successfully treated for a great many years by the $ADDICTION-Anonymous programs. Let's take a look at the twelve steps courtesy of 12step.org, source of addiction irrespective:
I think I can swipe this and start modifying it to suit my purposes.
I don't believe in God. I believe in the power of Nature as higher, but I believe it is a passive power in the affair of humans, at least with regards to our own self-perceptions.
What if I were to define my higher power as my own intrinsic sense of self? Would that work? A power greater than the emptiness I feel right now might simply be... myself. My own intrinsic being, the one that has qualities irrespective of accomplishment or talent or performance or anything external. For my purposes, that might work here. Because indeed, that's the leap of faith I believe I must make. I can be my own higher power for my addiction, if I'm trying to find strength in myself. Substituting Intrinsic Self in the Steps...
Let's get clever here.
It needs work, but I like the thesis. I like that it's a strong damn framework against addiction and toward a blind faith in my own intrinsic qualities, a commitment to that direction. Instead of being afraid of that perspective, I give it power.
I'll take this to group tomorrow, get some feedback. But one thing's for sure. I have accepted Step One. I am powerless over my addiction, my life has become unmanageable in the face of it.
Last night was fucking horrible. I absolutely erupted in rage over all my perceived irreconcilable failures of the past fifteen years of my life, where after I moved out of my parents' house I was unable to figure out what was fundamentally wrong with me, fix it and build a better life for myself. Since then, Evil Brain has been blasting its ideas through my skull with a megaphone and I've scarcely been able to tune it out.
Ok. just for this second, I'm going to try not to think about how evil brain works and try to defeat on its own level. Clearly, that's a bullshit strategy and is not going to work.
Let's just focus on any sort of solution strategy that comes up. Any goals of positive shit that I can think of. If any Alert Readers have any that might have come from my own past entries or their own experience, feel free to recommend something.
It seems that there are two big tools here at my disposal: Acceptance and Letting Go.
There's also a big recognition here: My compulsive comparative and competitive behavior is an addiction. Let's try viewing it as such and see what happens. First let's write some stuff out with Acceptance and Letting Go and their lovely Buddhist natures.
I'm now going to mention that I haven't slept in, what, 36 hours. I am fucking exhausted and at the end of my rope with this stuff. I've no idea where the energy to write all this is coming from. Desperation, I think. Or maybe the caffeine.
*sigh* okay. Acceptance and Letting Go. What first would I like to accept?
myself.
What does that mean?
...dunno. Have some sort of identity of self apart from my accomplishments and abilities and skills.
ok.
But there's a resistance to that, isn't there? Yes. Something in me believes me that as long as I have some sort of accomplishment or skill that's beyond those that any of my peers, that I'm okay. Better than okay, I'm accepted, I'm whole and complete as a human, or at least as complete as I can possibly get. And I want to feel that as hard and deep as I can. I want to feel whole and complete.
Okay. How can I feel whole and complete aside from using accomplishments and abilities and skills as a foundation for that?
*sigh* that's a tough one.
One of the main characteristics of the borderline personality is fear of emptiness, fear of abandonment. I have strong borderline tendencies, depending on how they're diagnosing the illness on any given goddamn day. Letting go of this very strong addiction to a comparison-based sense of self is probably not going to be successful unless there's an equally strong sense of self based on something else that I can put in place in its stead.
There is currently no other version of "me" I believe in as strongly as the one based on performance and comparisons and accomplishments. Nothing else, ironically, compares to it. A risky question, this: Why?
Believing in myself because of any intrinsic qualities to me, be they intelligence or sense of humor or loyalty or helpfulness or whatever... believing in myself for these reasons carries with it pain and risk. This is because of the inconsistent support I received growing up. Bullies and teachers fought against my self-worth, both giving it back momentarily before yanking it away again. My parents had no idea how act the role, so their help in affirming my self-image either didn't exist or was executed in a way that was ultimately ineffective.
Sure, ultimately self-worth is (supposedly) something intrinsic, that can't be taken away, only given. But really, when a huge number and variety of people in your life are trying to take your self-worth away, and you're not receiving reinforcement from your parents, and (oh yeah) you're a little damn kid, what's really to stop you from giving your self-worth away to those who repeatedly, loudly and insistently demand that they have control over it, not you?
So, suppose I gave my self-worth away. Suppose then that I wanted it back. Suppose also that the instant I tried to lay claim to any sort of self-worth, I was then pounced on again by others who didn't want me to have it, who screamed and threw things at me like rocks and insults, until I gave away my self-worth again. What's my incentive to hold onto it if I'm just going to get dirt kicked in my face again if I do?
*sigh* I thought I said I wasn't going to spend a lot of time trying to figure this shit out.
Okay, okay. Back on topic.
The only time I got universal acceptance among all or most of the people in my life is when my accomplishments versus my peers spoke for me. That was something that nobody would argue with, something that would guarantee me a sense of self. For a long long time this was true. Except it isn't anymore because....
because of a state of affairs that I find horrifying and ultimately diminishing to me, because all my peers have some quality in which they exceed me, most of them in multiple large ways. Some of them especially in ways in which I had previously claimed accomplishment for myself, which I feel is now diminished by their success over me. My place on the podium was bumped down, so no longer in the limelight I am now in danger of... everything all over again, the ridicule, the dirt in the face. It's impossible as an adult to be superlative or even comparative to everybody in your life.
No wonder I'm fucking miserable lately. Sense-of-self by accomplishment is now more dangerous than it's ever been, but sense-of-self by intrinsic quality never lost its scare value with me.
So now, I've been assured by countless people in my life, people who love and care for me, that I really do have intrinsic value, that I can feel it and show it without fear of being kicked in the teeth. Come on in, the water's fine! All those sharks that were beneath the surface are gone now.
I'm being asked for a leap of faith.
Time now to jump to the addiction perspective, I think. I am addicted to the act of using personal accomplishments as a metric of self-worth. Addiction has been successfully treated for a great many years by the $ADDICTION-Anonymous programs. Let's take a look at the twelve steps courtesy of 12step.org, source of addiction irrespective:
- We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
- Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
I think I can swipe this and start modifying it to suit my purposes.
I don't believe in God. I believe in the power of Nature as higher, but I believe it is a passive power in the affair of humans, at least with regards to our own self-perceptions.
What if I were to define my higher power as my own intrinsic sense of self? Would that work? A power greater than the emptiness I feel right now might simply be... myself. My own intrinsic being, the one that has qualities irrespective of accomplishment or talent or performance or anything external. For my purposes, that might work here. Because indeed, that's the leap of faith I believe I must make. I can be my own higher power for my addiction, if I'm trying to find strength in myself. Substituting Intrinsic Self in the Steps...
Let's get clever here.
- We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
- Came to believe that a belief in intrinsic Self could restore us to sanity
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our intrinsic Self as we understood It
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
- Admitted to our Self, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
- Were entirely ready to have our Self let go of all these defects of character
- Humbly asked our Self to let go of our shortcomings
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Self as we understood our Self, praying only for knowledge of our Self's will for us and the power to carry that out
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
It needs work, but I like the thesis. I like that it's a strong damn framework against addiction and toward a blind faith in my own intrinsic qualities, a commitment to that direction. Instead of being afraid of that perspective, I give it power.
I'll take this to group tomorrow, get some feedback. But one thing's for sure. I have accepted Step One. I am powerless over my addiction, my life has become unmanageable in the face of it.