IPSRT (repeat repeat repeat)
I drew.
Apologies for the borked text — I kept forgetting to capitalize the words in the book title. I finally gave up on the third failed attempt.
The pic is basically of me. What it feels like. Just act as if all is fine, but I know it’s gonna get me when I’m not paying attention. The cloud of color is the bipolar monster. Or the CPTSD demon, or whatever the hell else tries to jack me up while I’m just trying to live my life. I wish it’d be a million dollar payout…pfft. But my best writing comes out of that cloud, which is why I wanted it to be so colorful.
Anyway, I did do work on the MSC book today. In module two, which talks about what Self Compassion isn’t. The first question was about what our misgivings of the idea of self-compassion are, and I kinda don’t have any…aside from not feeling like I deserve it when I am at my worst. I remember a big wooden sign on (xxxxx)’s wall when I was a kid that read CHILDREN ARE TO BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD. It had a hook for a whipping stick attached to it.
I used to think (and might still) that self-compassion had to be earned. “You can be nice to yourself if x y and z happen.” But I also used to believe that x y and z had to be perfect — and if I perfected them, I’d move the standards just enough that they were no longer perfect. So I would effectively make myself work tirelessly, thus preventing me from being kind to myself. Knowing what I know about myself now, I wonder if that was the purpose of moving the standards: “I will never be good enough, this is how I can prove that to myself.” It is food for thought, even if sour.
lightbulb: because that’s what people did to me growing up and even the last decade or so of my life before moving out. ohhhhhhhh ok….noted. Like…I know this, but sometimes it doesn’t hit me like that just did.
There’s also a paragraph in this module that I really needed to read a couple of nights ago…like before my internal shit hit the fan, and for those who have the book, page 24 sounds a LOT like something someone said in an interview recently about comparison. My self esteem is fine, except I’m fine because I won’t actually do things I want to do since I’m afraid of negative feedback.
If I were to look at this module in relation to my self-criticism monologue on #006, I’m happy that I wasn’t comparing myself to others, but I’m sad that I was so damned hard on myself about two completely unrelated events, and one batch of events were 100% fine. That’s what I deal with, though. Everything was my fault, I have to come up with a reason why.
But do I compare myself to others? I don’t know. I know at the gym, I compare me to me yesterday. I’m not really chasing other people’s dreams anymore. My goals are self-created and usually self-curated. If I have any low self-esteem, it’s from feeling so bad about how I treat myself when stuff like the other day happens — and that’s all in my head. But right now — downswing, a little sad, a little depressed, but extremely comfortable. Probably because there’s no anxiety, everything is actually done (like my drawing and my quote, which one of the instructors reminded me it’s not a requirement to do, the drawing, I mean — just do something creative every day to achieve something. Learning the lyrics and how to sing Seasick from Silversun Pickups is a creative achievement. I didn’t draw, so I was getting hard on myself about it).
The Daily Carrot talked about staying curious, and the Daily Stoic talked about addictions. Addiction is suffering, can come from boredom (and the compulsions that come from being bored), there is no cure for boredom, but curiosity has no cure.
What if I was addicted to the comfort of the trauma — not that it’s comfortable, but that I’m so used to it that it’s easier to live with it since I know what to expect? That I get bored or idle, and my brain automatically starts looking for things to make me feel guilty about — it needs the “hit” from that self-loathing…I do like not self-loathing. When it isn’t around, I am much more creative and curious about things.
Pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice, comparison is opting to suffer, and curiosity has no cure.
It’s something to think about.
