I'm new to self knowledge.

[Rummycat]

I've been listening to Stef and listen to him about 20 hours a week for 6 months.  I need some help or information.I'm currently underemployed.  I left an unsteady, off and on, dead-end job of 3 years and decided to go back to school.  I have been going to school to obtain a degree in psychology.  My father is a disabled veteran and in California that means I get to go to schools tuition free.  (I know I'm not entitled to have this but I don't have many other choices to broaden my job market.)  I'm bisexual and in a relationship with a man that I care about on an emotional level and would like to make it permanent. He feels the same way and we have been together for 4 years.  I live in an appartment with roomates who are steadily employed but are easy to appease their ego's but are rather devoid of any real morality and depth. 

 

I don't have a single flicker of hope or passion for anything in my future right now.  I don't have a support system of friends or family that I can depend on (other than my boyfriend of which I feel guilty about.)  I'm fat because I'm a stress eater and I have alot of internal stress. I don't have a great personality and people seem to gravitate away from me. I know this is wrong for me to be like this for so many reasons. 

 

I have a feeling or a thought that if I had a paying career I can throw myself at, it would solve the majority of my problems since I feel the root of all this is the helplessness.  I feel that if I take on another entry level job I will stagnate myself again.  I can't however come up with an alternative.  I need a starting point and maybe a perspective change.  How can I be more empirical with my approach or thought process so I can move forward?

[adaywillcome]

I will get to your question, but I will address your post in order.

 

I'm sorry for whatever it is that happened to you in your history that resulted in these symptoms you have posted about here.

About the tuition, personally I think that your situation is kind the thing Stef says: You're starving you're gonna steal an apple. From what you say in your post about your desire to change your helplessness, I don't think you would have put yourself in this position without a fight! How did you learn helplessness?

You say this, "I don't have a single flicker of hope or passion for anything in my future right now." But in your post I see you saying you have passions. You are concerned about the morality of your tuition situation. You care about a man on an emotional level and want to make it permanent. Whether or not you are doing wrong is debatable, but you want to do right! You care about justice!

Maybe you don't feel it a lot, but I think you have way more hope and passion buried than you think.

 

One thing to consider is that with this world being so sick and people being so fake -- our society is literally insane -- maybe it is a good sign that people gravitate away from you, as awful as it must feel. I'm not contesting that you have things to work on, of course.

It may be good to get a job, but who's to say you won't experience helplessness in the job?

"I feel that if I take on another entry level job I will stagnate myself again.  I can't however come up with an alternative." -- This is that helplessness, right?

----

 

Here is where I answer the question. Brace yourself for a potential wave of helplessness in response to this.

"How can I be more empirical with my approach or thought process so I can move forward?"

You've listened to almost 500 hours of FDR in 6 months. You know the answer to this. I avoided it myself for a long time, so I think I can relate.

It's therapy!

Therapy and journaling.

 

If you're worried about the cost, given your situation, there are options. You don't have to give up.

I have no insurance and I am paying less than $50 per session on a sliding scale agreement. You can totally make it happen!

I hope this post helps you.

[Rummycat]

I appriciate the help. I know there are things I can do, but I'm tired of making the wrong decisions again.  I have an obligation to pay the rent and that I need to get a job right away.  The problem is, I also have to get through school so that I can broaden my job field.  I have to take 12 units a semester which is alot for me.  My parents took me out of the public school system in the first grade and put me into an extremely difficult homeschooling curriculm with heavy handed catholic doctrine.  Not only was it difficult but they offered little to no help and would yell at me for not doing things I couldn't grasp.  I did learn to read and write and have tested very well in reading and writing (english stuff).  Taking a full load of courses and trying to hold down has proved beyond what I can do in the past. I have been sent to therapy by my parents in the past and my advice was, "Your depression is off the charts but I think you just need to move out."  Which I did and it helped by giving me an out from my insane family.  I can't afford anything right now as I don't have a "legitimate" paying income.  I am on MediCal (by default since california automatically enrolled me) and can possibly seek help through that, but it limits my options to what the state decides I need AND I will be using funds stolen from productive people. 

 

I made the mistake of taking a deskjob that didn't challenge me.  I worked for the laziest assholes contractors that mooch off another company and have even been caught embezzling I came to find out after I stopped working there.  After three years I have been in and out of that job and I need something better but haven't been able to find anything better.  I have a feeling that if I take another entry level job ("would you like fries with that" kinda thing)  I will get stuck in another dead end job just to pay the rent.  I am currently short on rent and what money I do make is given to my roomates.  I know I am capable of more, but I can't find an oppourtunity.  I have looked into creating my own but those plans have fallen apart as well.

 

I feel horrible that my roomates have been letting me stay where I am after two months of coming up short with the rent.  I feel horrible that am a burden on my artist boyfriend who's income in what little he can get off of commissions and some help that his father sends him from time to time. But I'm ready to act on this feelings of guilt and the mire that is my shitty past choices.  I need a starting point I can throw myself at so I can be productive again.

[darknova]

"Not only was it difficult but they offered little to no help and would yell at me for not doing things I couldn't grasp."

 

That statement stands out to me quite strongly after reading the other post you made. Do you remember how you felt when they yelled at you for this? I think this may be something worth exploring, as you mention feeling helplessness a lot in your first post, and I have to imagine a child would feel pretty damn helpless when getting yelled at for not understanding something. Maybe reflecting on that could be a good jumping off point for some journaling.

 

And that's a really shitty thing to do to a child (or anyone, really). If you can't grasp a concept, it's not your fault. To yell at a kid for it... man, that's just pure evil. I'm really sorry you had to experience this. Then you get the Catholic indoctrination on top of it all!

[Rummycat]

I appriciate the understanding and help that you are giving me.

 

So this may be the most retarded question ever posed, but how exactly do you journal?  I think of it as a log book that you record stuff that happened in sequential order.  Does journaling mean simply just owning a journal and writing in it or is it anything that helps you get out bad feelings?

[adaywillcome]

"So this may be the most retarded question ever posed, but how exactly do you journal?"

 

Like how you were basically called retarded as a child for not getting something!?

 

As for journaling, you might check out the ultimate guide to journaling. I don't follow the book myself, but it may help you get started.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Journaling-Hannah-Braime-ebook/dp/B009HP2T6C/

[darknova]

Journaling can be whatever you want (yeah, that's a pretty broad statement). To me it's a place to write about whatever you want as you search for emotional connections to your past. It's a place to get out all of your concerns about your life and your personality and to search to root causes for your personal defense mechanisms. It can be anything you want, really. It's really just supposed to be a means to an end. The 'end' is self knowledge that helps you denormalize all the shit that happened to you throughout your life. It's supposed to help you get back in touch with your real, true, self. I've been having my own issues with how to practically proceed. It can be really tough. But that's what self knowledge is all about. If it's not easy, you're probably making real progress.

[Slavik]

I find it helpful for me to dig deep and catch my automatic thoughts as well as underlying believes.

 

1) Automatic thoughts - thoughts which come up on a daily bases, after which my mood changes.

 

2) Underlying believes - are the main believes of myself, what I think of myself in general. (the examination of which I try to trace to my childhood, to understand where they came from)

 

I lay out these thoughts and examine them, to see if they are correct or not using "Socratic method"

 

Next I find it helpful to engage in some activities, the record part here is rather simple,  before engaging in the activity I score it on the perceived pleasure scale of 1-10, then after activity I score it again to see what number comes up.  Which allows me to reshape my approach a bit.

 

Hope it helps.

[adaywillcome]

That scale idea is a good one.

[_LiveFree_]

Journaling is a funny thing for someone who was taught to keep their thoughts to himself. I know I ran into this problem when I tried to start journaling. I'd sit down with an open journal, blank page and brand new pen. And as soon as I touched the page with the tip of the pen........*crickets*. It took me a while to realize that I had been programmed to shutoff when it came time to express what was inside of me. My feelings and thoughts were replaced with an "I don't know...". When you journal you are practicing not censoring yourself. 

 

It doesn't matter what you write, even if what you write are random lines all over the page (this is still self-expression). What really helped open me up is the idea of absolutely writing whatever thought popped up in my mind, which quite often was "I don't know what to write." 

 

So I'd write down, "I don't know what to write." This might lead to a feeling of frustration. "Dammit, it's so frustrating to want to journal but not know what to write." Which could lead to a question, "Why don't I know what to write?" or an expression of a desire, "I wish I knew what to write." Then I might get distracted by something, "Shit my knee hurts." 

 

The point is if you are experiencing a block at journaling, that is a sign that you are blocking yourself. If you are blocking yourself, this is likely because you are experiencing emotions in the present moment that you were not allowed to express in the past. The programming, which is not allowing you to express those emotions, is showing up. 

 

You can even try starting out by writing, "It is safe for me to write what I think. It is safe for me to write what I feel. It is safe for me to write about my experiences." My journaling mainly started out just trying to remember the basic details of where I had lived since birth. 

 

Anyway, that has been my bit of experience. Hope it helps. Congratulations on pursuing self-knowledge!

[PatrickC]

If people have issues with a written journal then you might like to do a voice journal to kick start it. I personally found it to be the most useful way to gather my thoughts at the beginning. I eventually became more proficient at writing a journal after some time. The great advantage of a voice journal is that you can listen back to it on headphones and it normally spawns new thoughts and feelings as you do so. At least it did for me. Hope that helps and all the best.