Hi Seaturtle

I left a long message yesterday, but I believe I forgot something.

Does recognizing your false self help you to find your true self? Do you think that at the core, all of our true selves are morally/ and belief aligned?

Yes and yes. The goal is to learn to see situations as they are without the added pain of the past. This is easier said than done when trauma is involved. Healing the initial trauma and being able to address the past pain separately is important. Therapy is helpful with this.

There are times when people act against their true beliefs and it hurts them. It is said that everyone has buddha nature. In Buddhism there is a journey to Enlightenment that takes many lifetimes.

Hi Tommy

Are you lacking compassion? To me your intent was compassionate? It simply didn’t work out as intended. If only everyone could feel better with a quick shock.

A large part of this forum is not knowing how things are going to turn out. People come here in pain. You try and help as best you can and they leave.

I remember when I had therapy. The goal of therapy and even here is for people to learn to help themselves. In the moment, a person might not be ready. I know I wasn’t. But we have memories and if you share something that one day might be useful, that is a job well done.

You apologised. You live and you learn. You can stop beating yourself up now.

Wishing you all the best! ❤️🙏

Hi Seaturtle

Happy Birthday btw! 🎂🎈🎁🎉 I hope you have a really good party. It sounds amazing! 😊

I think sometimes upbringing and societal expectations can make people uncomfortable with relaxing. I know that it used to make me feel that way. Relaxing is really important though. Perhaps you could experiment with different things and see what you like best? I learned that usually whatever I choose to do, is usually what I want to do in that moment. I found it helpful to make peace with that. There is 100% nothing wrong with watching a movie.

But if you would like to do something productive to fill some time, reflect on your interests and core values. I’m sure that you will be able to come up with some ideas. I found it helpful to have a list of ideas of things to do for when I get bored.

How did your parents handle it when you or they were bored?

I think wanting negativity to leave your body is part of letting go. It’s important for grounding yourself, but I guess tempering that with patience and self compassion is important. If you were bullying yourself for not being able to move on quickly for example. That could be another example of false self because our inner critic picks up patterns from other people. It can be difficult to let go of things.

There can also be compulsions to ruminate on things that hurt us. In psychology there is an idea that people are drawn to what is normal for them. So for kids who are abused, their state of “normality” is abuse. These once children, now adults can go on to psychologically abuse themselves to maintain a state of “normality” once they have been removed from an abusive situation. I don’t know if that makes any sense? It is possible to change these patterns and it involves a lot of relaxation techniques, practising healthy boundaries, communication and self-compassion.

It is difficult to say because it varies from person to person, situation to situation. Any confrontation even polite, if the person isn’t receptive might not help. But it can be worth it if it involves setting a boundary that is healthy for ourselves. It really is down to you to decide what is best.

I will add that the person who I change the topic of conversation with isn’t receptive to discussing these things and has severe depression. I just repeatedly change the topic of conversation over and over otherwise we would be talking about what is depressing them the whole time.

When there are other people it’s easier because I can just talk to someone else when I’m mentally checked out.

Another good one when you are interrupted is, interrupting back and say “Sorry I was actually saying…” and continuing on with what I was talking about. In my culture, in groups people are often talking over each other, so it’s quite loud and tends to be lots of people talking over each other. No one says sorry at that point, but no harm is meant. 😂

Everyone has their personal choices. I think if you try and help someone and they don’t have good boundaries it can set the tone for that being the entire relationship. I prefer friendships to be two sided as opposed to one sided. It’s very difficult to change things once that has happened. It can be painful to not receive support from a friend. If someone has good boundaries it’s easier because you help each other and it’s not one sided.

Wishing you all the best! ❤️🙏

Hi Seaturtle!

Well done on describing your understanding of suffering, attachment and false selves! Buddhism is fascinating, isn’t it? Daoism and Confucianism are related and also very interesting.

Have you got any meditation practices? A large part of Buddhism are meditation practices. There are many to choose from with slightly different intentions.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Traditional Chinese Medicine? It’s a practice that is designed to treat these blockages within the body. Some things that can cause blockages are bad diet, environment (wind, rain, cold), lack of exercise, lack of sleep, exposure to toxins (weed for example), stress, anger is considered a particularly harmful emotion for the body. The aim is to create balance within the body.

False selves. The way I think of it is that anyone we spend a great deal of time around. We learn their traits. Good or bad. Because of our experiences, we are conditioned to behave in certain ways. As adults we have some control, over how we change. Who we choose to spend time with. Buddhism is great at unpicking things and helping you to choose what you’d like to keep and let go.

Rumination for example, would be a good example of false selves. All of the negative self talk and fear. A conditioned response, where we default to a learned pattern in times of stress.

Buddha nature, we all have sparks of the divine within us, but our learned behaviours take over a lot. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it is expected. We are not monks and have to live in the world. A lot of Buddhist practices are designed for monastery life. So it’s hard to get too deep into it, but definitely helpful for lessening suffering.

Surrendering and accepting things as they are is difficult! I always resist. I’m stubborn as a mule!

Not being able to fix someone’s internal world… It’s true, only they can. Mostly because a large part involves changing deeply held beliefs.

But you can try and help and if people are ready then can learn. I think memories are really fantastic tools. My therapist taught me a lot and while I was in therapy I would say I don’t know about that and disagree with her sometimes. Then years later, I would find myself reflecting on those old sessions and realising that she was correct. And some of these books about Buddhism. If you come back to them in a couple of years. Parts will make sense that didn’t make sense before.

I think it’s part of this idea, that the only thing we can control is ourselves and our reactions and actions.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Wishing you all the best! 🙏❤️