Day 282 - Self-Judgement Quicksand

While driving the 6 hour trip down to Santa Barbara, CA for a final visit before my remaining friends graduate, I listened to several EQAFE interviews. This one called Omnipresence of Self Judgement really stood out in terms of the descriptive visuals of the experience and dynamics of self-judgement.

In my own language, I conceptualize the judgements of myself feeling like quicksand. At first I wanted to say 'like cement,' but that word implies more of a hopelessness. Specifically, this comes up for me in the moment before I might assert myself socially or professionally. Instead of taking a breath and just speaking what I want to say, I find myself sinking backward into the center of the quicksand of my mind. The more I fight with myself in my mind, the fast I build up the resistance energy into a complete unlikelihood of speaking up.

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Even asking for assistance, sometimes I'll get choked up within the same way. Quicksand is deadly! And self-judgement has been deadly in my social/professional life. This is not acceptable. Today marks the beginning of a new awareness venture: How do I judge myself?

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to freeze up in a moment of interpersonal interaction and continue within my mind domain through various negative backchat related to how or why I shouldn't assert myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not investigate my relationship to my mind and internal reactions when I experience a fear of speaking.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to react to my own inner dialogue instead of participating in reality in being here with others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wander into potentialities that I create in my mind and not realize it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that I will fail if I am to assert myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define failure in such a way that it feels like it would be the end of me if that failure were to happen. Within this there is a fear of embarrassment that comes from having to uphold a reputation or external definition of myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to desire to take the safer route by not asserting myself at all, in this defining failure as a worse than not trying...which is a guaranteed failure.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suppress my failure by inaction, so I do not have to recognize the failure consequence, and in this protect my 'shy' personality and remain within the belief that to try and fail is more scary and not worth it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize that success only comes through failing, learning, and trying again. I only ever really fail when I stop trying.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not try, and to justify that within fear based backchat, and to believe those justifications are valid.

When and as I see myself going into my mind when in the company of others, I stop I breathe. I realize that I do not need to consult my inner self via thoughts to be able to effectively interact with my environment. I commit myself to giving myself the opportunities to try, to fail, and to learn and keep breathing.

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I once read that the first step to getting out of quicksand is to be completely still..