Day 277 - Expansion and Growth

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear growing and becoming more responsible.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear my fear, not realizing how I'm holding myself back from growing and expanding my self expression through fearing fear and fearing myself as fear.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear what I might find by expanding myself through self-honesty.

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I've realized some interestingly resilient resistance when it comes to self-change and ending some of those deeply ingrained habits. In particular, I am thinking about my nail biting habit that I keep turning away from. I have heard that biting fingernails is related to limiting self-growth/expansion. It makes sense from a literal perspective, and also from a psyche consideration. I begin nibbling whenever I am nervous, anxious, and/or fearful of a future oriented event, and through this frightfulness, I limit my range of expression to a mere quandary. It's like I shell up to to protect myself/ego from that which I fear. Finger tip to mouth is a closed posture, related to thumb sucking (which I also did)...and I overcame that through a reward system my parents had placed for me...oh dear.

I wasn't at all planning on this connection.  When I was really young, I stopped sucking my thumb so I could get the Grape Escape board game I saw on the television (commercial). All I had to do was stop the habit for 30 days, which took the visual form of placing gold stars on a calendar. I was excited for my prize, and each day I was motivated to get a gold star. Years later, the 'door opened up' for me to revive my oral fixation when the screen door closed on my brother's hand. His fingernail ripped right off, effectively traumatizing me. This vivid childhood memory has been what I thought was the start of this nail biting habit, but not I see there is more to it than just one incident. I also recall the thought that having long nails was a feminine attribute, deeming ridicule as valid. I also resented each moment when my brother would scratch me.

So, I have a lot more now to work with in relation to the nail biting point. Another point I wanted to make: The 'interestingly resilient resistance' that I've been experiencing in relation to stopping my habit is, in part, due to trying to take on too much at once by looking at the point from a distant perspective. I visualize it as standing up over a 5 foot diameter, 2 inch regression in the dirt, and I need to keep digging this hole until it's at least 4 feet deep. It also feels like I've been using the Self-Forgiveness trowel, and I really need to pick up the SF spade and begin shoveling more effectively. And by that I mean I can be using self-forgiveness more effectively by getting specific and thorough, instead of quick and general. I've been more of a big picture guy, so maybe that's another reason I resist getting into the nitty gritty. 

Back to my original point: (fear of) growth and expansion.  Nail biting is but one physical form of this fear. The internal resistance I feel in relation to putting myself 'out there' falls under this umbrella as well. I realize that the only effective way to deal with all of this is by focusing on one scoop at a time. 

Key points:

• Nail biting is just the surface conception or physical manifestation of what's going in relation to my fear of expansion and growing into self-responsibility
• Ending habits within a reward system has consequences:
• habit is transformed; not actually stopped through understanding and self-will
• strengthens relationship to being externally motivated, instead of internally self-willed
• Self-Honesty & Self-Forgiveness are keys to Self-change. Self-Will is using the key.
• Resistance flag point
• check if point is too general. "What else is going on within this?"
• check for fear of self-expansion. "What do I fear here? Why?"

I'll continue with self-forgiveness and corrective application tomorrow.

For now, I'm going to re-read my nail biting support from the Desteni forum here: Establishing Self-Trust to Stop Serious Habits. Thanks for being here to read me.

Day 230 - Digging Deeper into Nails

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I received a comment on my post yesterday that got me thinking about how I have yet still to really consider who I am within my nail biting. I get that the actual nail biting isn't the source of the problem, and that's part of why my initial attempt on Day 14-16 didn't hold up. I was working within a reaction toward what I could directly see as "the problem,' which was that I was allowing my nail biting. I wasn't considering the layers behind it.

The point brought up in the comment by She who yesterday was working with the self-judgement that ensues from my nail biting. Indeed this is a layer of reaction that I need to let go of an stop participating in. While I was reflecting on that, biting my thumbnail and chatting with a friend online, I made an insightful connection between that self-judgement layer and a deeper layer of self-judgement. The relationship isn't clear, but I noticed that went I sent a text message to my friend online, I would be thinking about how it comes off to him, essentially worrying how he will react to my message. "Did it make sense?" was my most prominent concern. "Was it funny/witty?" "Would he respond favorably because of what I said?" Basically any thought pertaining to the successful continuance of a "good" conversation.

So, on the more apparent reaction layer of self-judgement, I have been getting lost in it and only seeing my nail biting habit through that layer. And within this connection of that layer and the deeper layer, I see that through really applying the concept of "who I am within it," my starting point of nail biting that is of anxiety (or at least one of the more common ones) is that fear of not being able to fit it with my word choice in a conversation. Nice, this is really opening up now.

Self-judgement on the deeper level has become an automated response to particular scenarios related to uncertainty of how others react to me. This indicates and confirms how much I have defined myself outside of myself, through others. I have placed much importance on how others react to me...maybe because I have been hurt in my childhood from receiving negative feedback to my natural self-expression. Even that hurt was caused because I placed an emphasis on how others think of me...at this point I'm feeling like I'm getting ahead of myself and getting too deep too fast.

Reeling it back a little: my automated response of self-judgement is the layer behind the automated response of nail biting. So, somewhere along the way, I have decided that I can hide my worry/self-doubt behind my nail biting....maybe nail biting was my coping mechanism as a form of distraction from my internal worry about how others perceive my expression. I don't like to see how I've separated myself in this way because it's an act of self-distrust. Boom, so that could be the source of the pain. Okay going deep again, bear with me.

I didn't trust myself to be confident within my expression, and that pain point was self-inflicted. Now I'm thinking that through childhood ridicule, I projected that self-inflicted pain. Others were just exploiting the weakness that I brought onto myself to show me who I have become. This could even be how/why I began emphasizing my externalized self-definition. Self-distrust snowballs. Writing and self-forgiveness are going to be how I make sense of this nail biting habit and release the automated programs of self-judgement.

I commit myself to walking through the difficult self-honest, self-exposure required to become really intimate with myself and really know myself and really change myself. Thank you for reading.

Day 97 - Swirling in my head

When I don't write, I allow thoughts to swirl around in my head.

I smoked, right before doing this blog. It is a suppression. I didn't want to face the negative emotional conflict outflow of my own thoughts. So I leave here to go off into my own world of self insightfulness of thought. I like it. I enjoy how I get high, the feeling of it,, and I notice how there is a balancing thing going on here. I have a (will be) said amount of +'s for getting high and the -'s, well probably a fair share. I'll map this out now that I'm feeling ready to let go. One of the fears that was keeping me from wanting to expose this side of myself to the net, was how the opinions of me from 'others in my mind' might be that I must walk through what I state and be effective on the first try. Day 14-16, my little nail trio. I didn't hesitate with that because the negatives far out weighed the positives of the nail biting experience...unless the feeling is equal to the physical...shit.

I forigve myself for accepting and allowing myself to separate the positive feeling of chewing my nails by placing it in my mind as inferior to the superior physical damage going on, and so forget to consider the oneness and equality equation.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself with the reaction "shit," because behind that negative view of my self 'why didn't I see this earlier' popped into my mind and quickly translated into this programmed shit response.

^ It's with this level of specificity I work towards. When I write, I catch myself. I see where and how my mind goes. Not in a sense that I am separate or in observer mode, but I can go back to kind of jog the experience again, and keep the writing flow going through the self-forgiveness. Many of my entries thus far were written sober, while many were not. It's funny (in the worst way possible) how some fears seem like a bigger deal than others, and so they just EAT away at us. I'm really done with allowing fears to ruin my life, this life, our life. As I continue to walk and build momentum within the courage to keep facing my fears, I realize that I can't hide anything. Haha! Nothing. So it all comes out. My super secret journal, published for all who care to see. haha, this is going to be fun...and I can already tell that there is going to be polar consequence for that :)

So, for now I will patiently walk myself through this design and addiction. I'm not looking forward to it. There are a lot of positive experiences in my past that have been associated with smoking the green smelly tree. Much in how I relate to others and much in how I relate to me....Woo, I shiver at the thought of how much I've been creating my self concept in relation to weed. It's doable. And I'm not going to give up. I will walk out of this addiction with the patience, honesty, and writing.

Sincerely thanks for reading.

Breaking this down and more self-forgiveness to come!

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