Horrible personal decisions

[darknova]

Hey folks. This post is in part inspired by two threads started earlier by Violet and Joel in the Self Knowledge section here. They really got me thinking about my own quest for self knowledge, and where I stand these days.I started really digging into my past after about a year of listening to these FDR podcasts. I made some really great breakthroughs and some connections I'd never even considered before. It was eye opening and, honestly, terrifying. Over time the anxiety and fear I felt whenever I sat down to journal or generally explore myself became too much, and roughly 18 months ago I made the decision to abandon it all and go with the "easy path" of plugging back into the Matrix.That was the worst decision I've ever made. About 12 months ago I started having dreams all the time that involved being judged and mocked by zombie-like people. It's usually me surrounded by generic and lifeless people in a bathroom (or some other public place where you're really vulnerable in some way) all staring at me and laughing or saying mocking things. On top of that, in the past 6 months my stomach has started feeling worse and worse (gastritis at 32 years old, wonderful), and my blood pressure has been elevated a lot more often. My decision to just abandon the quest for self knowledge has been horrible and is starting to physically harm me.I want to start digging myself out of this mess, and I thought the first important thing to do would be to acknowledge to people that would understand that I've made a terrible personal decision. Typing this has been terribly gut wrenching. I hope none of you ever makes the same mistake. It's truly awful to experience.

[J. D. Stembal]

It would be instructive to share at least one example of a terrible personal decision here for us to consider, if you feel comfortable. I don't have the advantage of reading the previous thread you mentioned, but offering only abstract hints about plugging back into the matrix doesn't describe much for us. It may help to temporarily set aside your fear of being judged or mocked by others. Ask yourself, what is the worst that could happen if you are open and honest with yourself and others? At worst, you face humiliation at the hands of perfect strangers. At best, you will learn something about yourself and those in the FDR community.

 

Perhaps after identifying some specific issues here, you can take your personal research to the call-in show and discuss them with Stefan. What course of action do you think will be most beneficial to you? It seems obvious that you feel that your approach so far is inadequate to alleviate anxiety.

[DaVinci]

I think looking back on your past and making connections that you couldn't make before is scary. I know from my own experience of doing that I see how the hole I thought was my childhood was much deeper than I originally thought. The only thing I can say is I'm sorry about what you found out, but don't quit striving for self knowledge. As you saw going back to pulling the wool over your eyes was not a good thing.

[darknova]

It would be instructive to share at least one example of a terrible personal decision here for us to consider, if you feel comfortable. I don't have the advantage of reading the previous thread you mentioned, but offering only abstract hints about plugging back into the matrix doesn't describe much for us. It may help to temporarily set aside your fear of being judged or mocked by others. Ask yourself, what is the worst that could happen if you are open and honest with yourself and others? At worst, you face humiliation at the hands of perfect strangers. At best, you will learn something about yourself and those in the FDR community.

 

Perhaps after identifying some specific issues here, you can take your personal research to the call-in show and discuss them with Stefan. What course of action do you think will be most beneficial to you? It seems obvious that you feel that your approach so far is inadequate to alleviate anxiety.

 

Thanks for the response. I still self censor quite a bit, which is likely why my post is vague. What I mean by "plugging back in" is that I reverted back to all my old bad habits: self censorship, self attack, isolation, self medication (video games and alcohol), and surrounding myself with toxic people that I have to censor myself around (when not isolating myself, though I guess this is also a form of self imposed isolation).

 

The best course of action to benefit me, I think, would be to figure out a way to get past my anxiety that arises when I try to work on myself. Whenever I try to work on my self, be it through journaling, talking with someone, or just talking it over with myeslf, I get really tense and anxious and wind up giving up after accomplishing nothing. I don't know how to proceed at this point.

I think looking back on your past and making connections that you couldn't make before is scary. I know from my own experience of doing that I see how the hole I thought was my childhood was much deeper than I originally thought. The only thing I can say is I'm sorry about what you found out, but don't quit striving for self knowledge. As you saw going back to pulling the wool over your eyes was not a good thing.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Your first sentence has me thinking maybe I've made the easy connections already, but there are some deeper onces that part of me is afraid to deal with consciously. It feels like there's this huge wall of anxiety between me and the truth and I feel like I'm just beating my head against it fruitlessly.

[DaVinci]

Thanks for the response. I still self censor quite a bit, which is likely why my post is vague. What I mean by "plugging back in" is that I reverted back to all my old bad habits: self censorship, self attack, isolation, self medication (video games and alcohol), and surrounding myself with toxic people that I have to censor myself around (when not isolating myself, though I guess this is also a form of self imposed isolation). The best course of action to benefit me, I think, would be to figure out a way to get past my anxiety that arises when I try to work on myself. Whenever I try to work on my self, be it through journaling, talking with someone, or just talking it over with myeslf, I get really tense and anxious and wind up giving up after accomplishing nothing. I don't know how to proceed at this point. Thanks for the feedback. Your first sentence has me thinking maybe I've made the easy connections already, but there are some deeper onces that part of me is afraid to deal with consciously. It feels like there's this huge wall of anxiety between me and the truth and I feel like I'm just beating my head against it fruitlessly.

The trick for me has been to try and de-normalize the things that were done to me. I've read before that humans evolved to be dependent on their parents and our brains developed to follow their orders. This makes sense as a child could not survive on their own for long without parents to give them food, shelter, clothing etc, so following orders meant survival. The problem is that this unquestioning adherence to parents, and I suppose parental figures, continues long after you are capable of being dependent, and so we end up continuing this behavior of being loyal to our parents and the way they treat us because our brains have been programmed to think "Well, I have to do what they say if I want to survive". I think this is why when we look back at our childhood and really examine it, it is easy to slip into thinking "They did that because they were trying to take care of me" or "I'm alive, so I can't really complain" or something that sounds similar to that. That brain programming from youth is kicking in. Of course when you are trying to examine the roots of some of the issues in your life this programming is now working at a cross purpose from that examination. It's like someone is covering up evidence and saying "That didn't happen the way you suspect it might have." The solution to this for me has been to try and de-normalize my parents behavior. To look at the choices they made outside of the idea that they were helping me to survive, or they were "doing their best". So I will think about a specific instance they did that bothered me, but at the time I couldn't explain why it bothered me, and I will re-examine it and discover that what they were doing was really what was best for them. They were doing things for selfish reasons that came at my expense. I think it also helps that when you find something from your childhood like that to come here and talk about it. It is always helpful when someone else is able to acknowledge what happened to you.

[Bipedal Primate]

After watching 'The Bomb in the Brain' on YouTube, I have been very cognizant of what I call artificially induced anxiety (which is a symptom of my childhood and young adult traumas). I now can quickly recognize when my thinking pattern has changed from rational thinking to irrational thinking. By being aware that my thinking patern has been altered by an external trigger, I am then able to self sooth by listening to music or going outside to look at the sky; these are my tools to retrain my brain to relax and release happy transmissions to my body.

I believe it is possible to retrain the brain. I have been working on my brain for two years and have come a long way :-)

 

It takes a lot of courage to open up and I thank you for sharing. :-)

[Starsky]

I am dealing with a huge amount of anxiety too. I'm currently at a turning point in my life. After staying in a low level job for almost 9 years I decided to end my mother's "curse". She was an immature sadistic witch and I suffered horrific verbal and physical abuse. She did not want me to exist and I, as a child, had to comply. And even though she died almost 30 years ago, she is still in my head abusing me when ever I make a step towards becoming independent and self-sufficient. 

 

A few days ago I had what I consider a breakthrough. I was watching TV and suddenly I had the following question run through my head: If I stop existing, mum, will you then finally love me? As if I were watching myself from the outside I realized that I had been trying to stop existing all my life. I felt deep empathy for my past and current self. My quest for motherly love was absurd. It can't work. It never could have. As a child it probably saved me from being killed but now it's more than useless. And my next thought was that I can finally give up this self-destructive behavior. My mother never loved me, she never will and she never wanted to. 

 

It always felt like waiting at a train station. I saw trains arriving and leaving, filled with people who were on their lives' way and I was still sitting there waiting for something or someone to pick me up. I didn't even know what I was waiting for and I felt so angry and sad at the same time. 

 

So I quit my comfortable yet ridiculously low paid job and I am currently working on becoming a freelancer in the field I graduated in. And it is scaring me shitless. I have to basically start from scratch and I am 40 years old. It is horribly scary and whenever I am overwhelmed by the fear of ending up as a tramp under a bridge (symbol of abandonment) I have to reassure my inner child that she will not die from "growing up", becoming assertive, having an opinion, having needs and having a right to make mistakes. 

I know that I still have a lot of work ahead of me and I will certainly be drawn to sinking back into the wheel chair of my former passive life. But I can now remind myself that nobody is coming to pick me up from that isolated train station. Life is now and even though it took me decades to really understand this, I regret wasting so many pointless years trying to obtain a validation from my narcissistic parents. 

 

I didn't know what would happen next but I got on the train. The more I work on my new destination, the better I sleep, the less panicky I become and the less bodily symptoms I have. Fuck, I only have one life and I want to enjoy and embrace every part of it and not just be an apathetic bystander. 

 

I already posted this link somewhere else but this was my lifeboat in the rough sea during the pursuit of self-knowledge: 

http://www.pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm

 

I wish you the best of luck and success in unplugging from the matrix. I know I'm late at the age of 40 but every other option feels like suicide, just like the life my mother designed for me.  

[kavih]

@darknova, thank you for sharing your experience. I sometimes imagine what my life would have been like, had I not investigated how the matrix really runs. I'm still new to transitioning out of it. My first step is to become independent, in as many ways as possible. This is going to require removing myself from the area in which I grew up for most of my life, because the physically environment that had been part of my programming for so long keeps re-enforcing the programming since I have so many memories here... memories from the matrix. So, step #1 is moving. I like the weather and beach here, but I am going to move somewhere even nicer, so I will have a chance to start over in a sense. Moving will also take me away from the current set of people in my life, of which, most are still plugged in to the matrix. I will miss them, for the good times we had, but it's only necessary to start over in this way, for me. I don't know how anchored you are in your current location, but maybe moving somewhere new, near like-minded people, will help your transition and maybe give you the sense of starting over, if that can help your self-knowledge work.

[darknova]

The trick for me has been to try and de-normalize the things that were done to me. I've read before that humans evolved to be dependent on their parents and our brains developed to follow their orders. This makes sense as a child could not survive on their own for long without parents to give them food, shelter, clothing etc, so following orders meant survival. The problem is that this unquestioning adherence to parents, and I suppose parental figures, continues long after you are capable of being dependent, and so we end up continuing this behavior of being loyal to our parents and the way they treat us because our brains have been programmed to think "Well, I have to do what they say if I want to survive". I think this is why when we look back at our childhood and really examine it, it is easy to slip into thinking "They did that because they were trying to take care of me" or "I'm alive, so I can't really complain" or something that sounds similar to that. That brain programming from youth is kicking in. Of course when you are trying to examine the roots of some of the issues in your life this programming is now working at a cross purpose from that examination. It's like someone is covering up evidence and saying "That didn't happen the way you suspect it might have." The solution to this for me has been to try and de-normalize my parents behavior. To look at the choices they made outside of the idea that they were helping me to survive, or they were "doing their best". So I will think about a specific instance they did that bothered me, but at the time I couldn't explain why it bothered me, and I will re-examine it and discover that what they were doing was really what was best for them. They were doing things for selfish reasons that came at my expense.I think it also helps that when you find something from your childhood like that to come here and talk about it. It is always helpful when someone else is able to acknowledge what happened to you.

 

Your main point here hits home quite strongly for me. My mother essentially told me, extremely passive aggressively, throughout my childhood to not think for myself or think or do anything that she didn't like. Basically to erase myself and be a ghost that solely lives to please others at my own expense. It's possible that this is part of the anxiety because exploring myself goes completely against the message I internalized from my mother during my childhood.

 

Thank you so much for the feedback. I think this'll provide a great starting point for another round of journaling.

It always felt like waiting at a train station. I saw trains arriving and leaving, filled with people who were on their lives' way and I was still sitting there waiting for something or someone to pick me up. I didn't even know what I was waiting for and I felt so angry and sad at the same time. 

 

The above quote is an excellent way of describing how I've felt for most of my life. I know the pain of that kind of lonely isolation and abandonment. Thank you for sharing your story. What you wrote has me wondering if maybe I tried moving a bit too fast without truly connecting with my inner child. Emotional connections have always been tough for me. My parents certainly never provided a good model of healthy emotional connection, and I definitely never had any emotional connection with them.

[Starsky]

 

The above quote is an excellent way of describing how I've felt for most of my life. I know the pain of that kind of lonely isolation and abandonment. Thank you for sharing your story. What you wrote has me wondering if maybe I tried moving a bit too fast without truly connecting with my inner child. Emotional connections have always been tough for me. My parents certainly never provided a good model of healthy emotional connection, and I definitely never had any emotional connection with them.

 

 

I tried to move on with my life without picking up the child from the abandoned station. It just couldn't work. She cried louder and louder because she was terrified. I was abandoning her just like my parents abandoned me. It was like leaving my inner child behind in the mess of arrested development. What she desperately needed was someone who truly noticed her needs and sorrow. That is easier said than done and it took me years. 

 

When I was young I correctly sensed that my mother didn't give a shit about me. Yet everyone around me, including my dad, told me the exact opposite like "she didn't mean it" or "she's just stressed" or "don't take it so seriously" or even "she's beating you so you don't become an arsehole". I was made to believe that it was all my fault and that I just had to suck it up. Two therapists even told me that. I had no allies except for my twin sister who suffered the exact same abuse as me. The thought that somehow somewhere my mother did love me (I just didn't get it yet) completely defanged my anger and separated me more and more from my inner child who knew the truth all along. 

 

About 4 weeks ago I read a blog by a daughter of a malignant narcissistic mother. What she described spot-on was my loveless, hostile childhood. I finally had the confirmation that my mother did not love me, no matter what everyone around me said. I was disgusted and outranged, a feeling I never had before. Only then I was able to call my mother an outright liar. Everything she said about me was a complete and utter lie. What a relief! I could finally dismiss her from my life. Only then I was able to have deep deep empathy for my inner child and my current self. I tried so so hard to be the person she wanted me to be so that I was worthy of her love. It never worked and it never will. And my observing ego suddenly saw the whole picture: I was wasting my life on a rotting corpse that was already a rotting corpse when it was still roaming this earth. 

 

I always had trouble connecting with my inner child because I was made to believe, especially by my father, that my mother loved me. She had a good intent, she meant well... HELL NO! I was able to connect with my inner child because I finally gave her a voice.

 

I know it is a long and hard journey but the reward is beyond words. I couldn't have made it without this fantastic community here for which I want to express my deepest gratitude. THANK YOU! 

 

Maybe the milestones I described help you connect to your child and lets you advance to the forbidden territory of truth. 

[darknova]

Starsky, thank you so so much for sharing your story. First off, your past sounds so brutal and painful, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. That's so twisted and awful. "She beats you so you don't become an arsehole"... there are no words for how fucking twisted and disgusting those kinds of justifications are.

 

I connect with your story on many levels. My parents never used physical attacks, but my mom was like a surgeon with her verbal assaults. She used her words like a scalpal to cut me down in the most painful ways during my whole childhood. It's likely she never really cared about me other than as a container she could vomit her own poison into. I think the next step for me is to examine the "relationship" I had with her while I was growing up and try to really connect to how I FELT about the whole thing. The emotional connection is what I've always been lacking with myself.

[Starsky]

I'm so sorry that your mom abused you. She sounds like a verbal Nazi. Being vomited into is a very familiar feeling to me and it is terribly painful and shaming. 

 

How did your mom usually cut you down and what was her justification for it? 

 

I had to emotionally disconnect from myself too. Trusting my own feelings of terror and injustice might have gotten me killed as a child. I was only there to fulfill my mother's needs which left me with the question of "who am I?"

 

What helped me to connect to my child self was looking at photos from back then thinking, "how dare you hurt those sweet children, you disgusting insidious bitch!"

[darknova]

Here's on example of what she does. If I'm looking through a cabinet in the kitchen to find a pot or pan and I don't know where it is, she'll see me looking and ask what I'm looking for. Then she'll roll her eyes, sigh very loudly, says "I'll get it" in a very annoyed/angry tone, opens a cabinet and points to it saying "it's RIGHT here!".

 

Also, randomly she'll go on loud yelly outbursts, triggered by something random that one of us said or did. Then we'll find out later that she was pissed about something else, and just took it out on us.

 

Another thing she does is, if I'm in the living room talking to my dad and one of us states an opinion about the topic we're discussing, she'll yell something completely contradictory from the next room just to cut one of us down. So I basically spent my whole childhood in a hyper vigilant state because I never what I was going to say or do that would invite her passive aggressive, or outright aggressive, attacks. And they wondered why I was so much happier when I moved three hours away to college.