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Rock Banana
ParticipantThe question isn’t “do you know how to change it”, the question is, “are you committed to changing it”?
Think about it. If you aren’t committed to doing something, you will probably never get around to doing it, especially as it might be a long process. But if you’re committed to change, then it doesn’t matter how it will happen, you will discover that as you go. As long as you spend time finding and ‘trying on’ new perspectives, realizing that the beliefs and ideas you’ve developed around these issues may not be serving you effectively and being committed to change no matter how long it takes, then you can make shifts.
Check out mindfulness, CBT, coaching, philosophy, psychology, discover and implement more useful perspectives, etc etc…
At the moment you are definitely looking for somebody to fulfill a role in your life…somebody who loves you, because you think that will make you happy. Check out this video by Noah Elkrief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0Br05QsSMw
Remember that a thought can only affect you if you take it seriously.
You’ve identified your desire for change quite specifically so now it’s onto you… “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it” – Albert Einstein
Rock Banana
ParticipantAsk them. People are not mind readers.
Rock Banana
Participant1. Your grades have nothing to do with who you are. On the level of identity it doesn’t matter what grades you get. You are not clever, you are not dumb. All that stuff is conceptual. So relax.
2. Study smarter, not harder.
3. Have breaks. Relax. Have a social life. None of those things are going to get in your way. You are giving your brain extremely valuable time to have a break and consolidate information. More importantly you are going to enjoy yourself a bit. This is your life after all.
4. There’s a Paul McKenna book “I can make you smarter”, take a look at that for some ideas on how to study smarter. There are lots of study methods you’re not using and you can find them in that book. Taking notes and looking at them is probably too passive. Using your brain actively will help.
5. Put some activities in your schedule. Get some physical exercise. Go on runs etc. This will help you focus, give you more energy and give you something to do other than sitting around staring at notes.
6. There’s a difference between putting time in and “trying really hard”. When you start tensing up and really “trying” to learn things, you can get in your own way. Sometimes it’s better to relax and soak in the information without all the exertion. Stressing out and “trying” aren’t the same thing as putting the time in to learn and getting effective results.
7. What do you think achieving straight As will offer you? Being “clever”? Being “happy”? Well, “clever” is just a judgement, just a thought, it’s not actually who you are, so that won’t happen. And “happy” isn’t obtained through telling yourself you need to achieve this and that to be happy, it’s achieved by accepting whatever is happening in each moment. So I would seriously question why you want these As. If it’s to, say, get into a good uni or something then that’s fine, but why do you want to get into the uni? And can you handle the thought of not getting into the uni? If not you might want to explore the fear of failure that suggests.
Good luck. Take it easy. Well done for putting the time in – now do that with the broader focus I’m suggesting here. The above 7 points are only SUGGESTIONS but why not see what it’s like to try them on and give them a go.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by
Rock Banana.
Rock Banana
ParticipantThe first thing to do here is to realize that your thoughts are creating this reality for you, not what actually happened. The evidence for this is here: Are there moments when you are not thinking about this, you’re distracted from you’re thinking, e.g. watching a movie, listening to a song etc., and you feel fine? If so then you can see that it’s not what happened that’s creating these feelings, you’re actually feeling the effects of your thinking in the moment. To give you another example, could somebody else feel differently about this? Yes, there are people that kill animals all the time and they don’t feel bad. Therefore killing an animal doesn’t actually make you feel bad for years – it’s your thinking in the present moment that creates the feelings. If killing animals made people feel bad for years, then everybody would feel bad after killing animals, and also you would feel bad all the time after having done so. Are those things the case? No. Therefore can you accept it isn’t what’s happened that creates your feelings, that it is actually instead the effects of your thinking in the present moment?
Once you can realize that it is your thinking creating the feelings, i.e. you are feeling the effects of your thinking, the solution is to see the thoughts for what they really are: mental projections, not reality. For example, a thought you might have from time to time could be, “I am a bad person because of what I did”. To dispute this, you could ask yourself, do bad people feel bad for 4 years after killing an animal? Does thinking I’m bad make me bad? On this last point, if you like a song, is that song actually objectively better than other songs, or do you just think it is? If you think a painting is bad, is that painting actually objectively bad, or do you just think it is? Similarly, if you think you’re bad, does that objectively mean you’re bad, or is it just a thought you have about yourself in the moment? Can you actually “be” “bad” when “bad” is a humanly generated concept? A conceptual construct in your mind? In reality things just “are”, there’s no good or bad.
To get even deeper, how do you know what you did is “bad”? It was a perfect lung shot. What if you saved that animal from a worse fate? Maybe if you hadn’t done that, it would have suffered a really brutal, savage death the next day that was extremely painful and prolonged. Maybe you actually rescued it from suffering. Now this can’t be proven but the point is: it disputes the thought you have that what you did is definitely “bad”. How can you know it was bad? I’ve already given you one example of how that could be the case. Another example is, maybe if you hadn’t have done it and felt bad for all these years you never would have reflected upon your experience of life so much. Maybe this experience will lead you to becoming much more conscious of how your thoughts create your feelings which could enable you to be happier in the future. So that is also an example of how maybe what happened wasn’t actually definitely “bad”. I’m not saying any of this is “true” in reality, it’s just perspectives to help you dispute the thought that you have done a bad thing.
It’s worth noting here that my response here is heavily, HEAVILY influenced (if not borrowed) from Noah Elkrief. Check out his YouTube videos. Check out Eckhart Tolle – his book “The Power of now” is a good one. Check out Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Also, “You can be happy no matter what” by Richard Carlson will be great for you. MINDFULNESS MEDITATION will likely be a huge help for you. And if you do get somebody to help you through this, get somebody really good and solution focused. A lot of therapists just go over the past and problems and don’t actually like solving problems and creating solutions! So make sure you get somebody good.
If it helps oskarpe, I have no negative judgements about you in this moment and you are 100% ok to me. You are feeling the effects of, and believing in, the judgements you are making about yourself in the moments you feel bad.
Of course it is lovely not to want to kill animals, but the natural feelings of the grief would have passed pretty quickly, that gut sensation of “this is horrible” which you can experience on a purely feeling level. These feelings you’re having now are ok but are unrelated to that immediate primal gut feeling. They are thinking-induced. Nothing to do with what happened. It’s time to move on my friend!
Rock Banana
ParticipantIf you can afford it, consider getting a life coach or career coach for a few sessions. Make sure they’re a good one. Will be able to explore this with you. This isn’t absolutely necessary but could well be useful for you.
Rock Banana
ParticipantHuge fan of the idea of getting a really good lock for your door. That is definitely the way to go.
But of course this isn’t just about preventing this happening again and solving the situation at face value. As you say yourself “it’s just objects that i don’t matter”. Because on a deeper level – as you’re well aware – this is about trust and the relationships you have with your family.
My first advice: Stop trying to be peaceful, trying to control yourself etc. Instead, accept absolutely every feeling that comes up. Meditate. By doing this you will achieve peace but via different means. When you try really hard to be peaceful and calm down you end up becoming more tense because you create a distance between where you are and where you want to be, in your mind. When this distance evaporates (which happens by accepting what IS now – tension and all) this has the effect of you eventually becoming more relaxed, peaceful etc. in the face of whatever you’re experiencing. In other words the frustration, anger, disappointment, negative thinking etc etc…it’s all ok, it’s all fine, allow yourself to experience it. When you really feel all that without blocking it, the acceptance is so healing in and of itself. Note here that accepting the presence of thinking isn’t the same as believing the thinking. In other words, accept thoughts like “she’s a bitch” are there in your mind and don’t need to disappear, but you don’t need to buy into that thought, if that makes sense!
Avoiding confrontation here is not serving you or your family. It may seem like the kind thing to do but it isn’t because this whole situation is creating far more suffering than openness ever would. Just having a real conversation about this with your niece – you don’t need to be rude or blaming, just state your truth and the facts as you see them, that is that you feel hurt and upset and you feel you can’t trust her easily because of this – is so much kinder to all of you. It is so much less horrible to do things this way. I’m not saying she’ll like it. In the short term – that is in the moment of confrontation – she will likely be offended, hurt , angry etc. Humiliated even. Or just denial and not display any of this, acting childishly. What you gotta remember is, it’s not her response that matters but the fact you have at least tried to reconcile things in this way. In the long term though, your relationship may be much better for this short-term discomfort. On the other hand, if she really doesn’t respond well to this at all then maybe it’s time to just accept she’s a 16 year old girl with issues that she’ll hopefully grow out of. Stick that lock on your door, put any possessions you want to keep in that room and be done with it. Maybe in the future when she’s a bit more mature you can feel a bit better about each other. But remember she’s not the only one with issues. You for example have been avoiding confronting her, which in itself could be argued is dysfunctional communication. It’s easy to blame everybody else for what they do, but once you accept you yourself are not so infallible you may find it easier to be compassionate. We all have our problems. I for example can be pretty narcissistic at times. I can be a bit horrible at times. It’s no excuse and we still have full responsibility over our own behaviour, but it’s at least worth bearing in mind when it’s compassion you want to feel.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by
Rock Banana.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by
Rock Banana.
March 27, 2015 at 10:47 am in reply to: How to overcome the need to seek validation from others? #74531Rock Banana
Participantthese things are judgements you are making about yourself, not who you are. In reality no words can describe you, a word like “introverted” for instance represents a concept in your mind, it is just a thought, in reality you are not “introverted” or “extroverted”, “humorous” or “not humorous”, these words are overgeneralized concepts which you are imposing onto your sense of self in your mind. So in that sense there’s nothing you need to do – because you don’t have to change yourself; you just have to come to realize that these thoughts you are having about yourself are not who you are. The reason what people think about you is irrelevant is because they are just creating judgements about you too, they are never actually describing you. In fact they’re not even making judgements about you, they’re making judgements about their PERCEPTIONS of you, because they can’t experience you directly; they have to do so through the perceptions and workings of their own nervous systems.
“How can I be more confident with all these flaws?” – By disbelieving the thinking that is creating the flaws in your mind.
I’m not saying it’s as simple as just reading that and then that’s it, because it obviously isn’t. But I hope what I’ve written is at least a helpful pointer for you.
Rock Banana
ParticipantGlad to hear it Cianna. I’m working on this too, made enormous breakthroughs though and the transformation is pretty unbelievable, yet there’s still a way to go before I really couldn’t care less about people’s judgements in every moment. (Will I ever get to that place? Who knows, but you have to keep reminding yourself of the new place you want to come from.)
@inky said:The attitude I go with for myself is this: “Well, I’m not for everyone!” with a mental shoulder shrug.
I love it. Seems a very healthy attitude to me… 🙂 .
Rock Banana
Participant@inky said:The attitude I go with for myself is this: “Well, I’m not for everyone!” with a mental shoulder shrug.
I love it. What a healthy perspective. 😀
Rock Banana
ParticipantJust read some stuff by Richard Carlson which I’m sure you will find interesting:
“Happiness is a state of mind, not a set of circumstances. You can never find happiness by searching because happiness is not found outside yourself. When you attach conditions to your happiness, you won’t experience it… Excessive thinking about your past and your problems will convince you that you have good reasons to be upset and unhappy. You can learn from your past, but it is a mistake to continually go into your past or overanalyze life in a search for happiness… Happiness requires no effort at all. It is more of a letting go of unhappiness than it is a striving for happiness.”
Rock Banana
ParticipantIt doesn’t matter what anybody thinks of you because what they think about you changes nothing about who you are.
Is there anybody who doesn’t think you are scary? If so then you aren’t objectively “scary”. If people perceive you to be “scary” that is a judgement they are making about you, they are imposing the concept of scariness onto you. It isn’t a quality you actually have because nobody can “be” “scary”. If you could be scary then everybody would always find you scary all the time. Does that happen? No.
Maybe the non-verbal signals you are giving out could be improved but if you do this to change people’s perceptions of you then your energy will be focused pointlessly and you will never be happy. Instead you could think about changing your non verbal behaviour in order to create a friendlier atmosphere between you and your company etc. Forget about what they think, you’re doing it for you and the relationships you would like to create, NOT so that they can think you are X or Y or Z. Forget about convincing people you’re nice as well, it’s pointless. You’re not actually “nice”, that’s just a judgement you make about yourself. It’s an opinion. If you think a painting is good does that mean that painting is good in reality or does it mean you personally like it? If you think somebody is horrible does that mean they are actually inherently horrible or is that just a judgement you hold about them? Therefore if you think you are nice are you actually inherently nice? No that’s just a judgement you make about yourself. Same about scary, just a judgement. Neither judgement is “who you are”. In reality no words can ever describe you accurately, they are just conceptual ideas. Who you are is infinitely deeper than that: it is the consciousness you experience in each moment. That’s who you are.
Every time you “try to be happy”, you are psychologically separating yourself from the concept of happiness and displacing yourself from it in time. Read that sentence again. Then read it again. Then read it again. That’s it really. Forget about “becoming happy” by changing stuff. My definition of happiness is the lack of suffering-creating thinking that is being believed in this moment. It’s a feeling of peace, not necessarily of joy (though that can be there too). You can be happy in this peaceful sense even in the presence of physical sensations you might otherwise label fear, sadness etc. An example of a thought that creates suffering is “I want to become happy”. Can’t you see what you’re doing when you believe that thought? You’re creating unhappiness, because you’re telling yourself you can’t be happy now. Can’t be happy until you are feeling joy, until you have meditated X amount of times, until you never cry, etc. None of these conditions are true happiness. True happiness is unconditional.
I recommend the book to you “The Antidote” by Oliver Burkeman, you may well enjoy it. It’s about a negative path to happiness…achieving happiness by re-defining it altogether.
Good luck you have a lot of perspective and introspective capacity which means you have a large capacity for change. But that change probably isn’t going to come in the form you expect. It’s not about changing your circumstances, rather than accepting them. About accepting there’s nothing to change before you can allow yourself to be happy. Accepting that “happy” maybe isn’t what you thought it was…
All best!
March 24, 2015 at 7:34 am in reply to: I am shy and more self-conscious around my CLOSE friends. Why is this, and how d #74354Rock Banana
Participant“I almost feel like it’s because I’m afraid of judgement, but I feel like that just doesn’t make sense. It’s irrational for me to fear the judgement of people who love me.”
– On a very deep level it makes no sense whatsoever, because their judgements about you are totally irrelevant to who you are. If they think you’re great that doesn’t make you inherently great and if they think you’re stupid that doesn’t make you inherently stupid. But on a more superficial it makes a lot of sense because you have something to lose with these people, i.e. a close friendship. When you speak to a stranger you have nothing to lose and everything (potentially) to gain. When you are speaking to a close friend you might lose their friendship. They might start disliking you.
The way out of this is to stop caring whether or not they like you and to prefer to have the friendship rather than feel you need to have it. This is a shift in perspective and your ‘way of being’ in life. Easier said than done of course but it gives you an idea of what to work on.
Once you come to realize that you can be happy with or without these close friendships, then you will know you have nothing to lose. How comfortable are you being alone? Can you be alone for long periods without believing lonely thinking? If not work on this – start spending more time alone, maybe in nature, maybe going to concerts etc. Why? Because when you are 100% comfortable being alone, you won’t ‘need’ close friendships any more, you will simply desire them. So you will be able to handle the thought of losing your friendship. In addition when you realize that it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks of you, because their thoughts don’t define who you are, then you will stop fearing them disliking you and so this neurosis will also dissipate.
Here’s a quote from Keith Johnstone’s book “Impro”: “The brain constructs the universe for us, so how is it possible to be ‘stuck’ for an idea? The student hesitates not because he doesn’t have an idea, but to conceal the inappropriate ones that come uninvited.” In other words you are probably rejecting possible conversation ideas and saying “No that’s too boring” or “No they might think this of me if I say that” and that means you have no ideas at all. Just say whatever pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be interesting. Why would you need people to find you interesting? Have you signed a contract saying you will definitely be interesting all the time? Do you think this would even be ‘preferable’? What about things you find ‘boring’, the other person finding ‘interesting’, and vice versa? If it’s so subjective why are you worried about finding the “right” idea for a conversation? Have you also considered that boring conversations can turn into interesting ones, the idea that you start off with small talk and then turn it into something deeper? A lot of conversations begin with “How are you” but quickly become more than that. Would they become more than that without the opening “How are you”? But is the “How are you” inherently interesting on its own?
Even better, next time you have no idea, say nothing and be 100% ok with it. Sit there entirely comfortable with your not saying anything. I notice you take 100% responsibility for the conversation, why? A conversation happens between two or more people, so why are you trying to be the one who makes it interesting? Why shouldn’t the other person have this role? It would be a bit weird of you to assume that the other person must ALWAYS be the interesting one, so why are you burdening yourself with this unrealistic expectation?
Be comfortable with silence. Sometimes sitting with another person and saying nothing can be deeper than anything else. Your presence alone is powerful, you don’t need to fill up every dull second with another bit of speech. The people who are really comfortable in their own skin can have much silence.
If you want better conversation ideas, become very interested in what the other person is saying. Ask them questions about what they’ve said. One of the most powerful questions is “What kind of X?”. So if they say, “I’ve got a new dog!” you say, “What kind of dog?” They say, it’s a spaniel. “What kind of spaniel?” They might tell you its colour and size and age. You can use the “What kind of X?” question a lot. As long as it isn’t the only thing you say then it sounds normal and is great for eliciting more information. Become GENUINELY curious with what the other person is saying and time will fly. People love talking about their own lives. Once you get them started and keep asking questions they will never stop!
All best. Good luck. You have loads of perspective and ability to be introspective about your experiences so change will be very possible for you indeed. But maybe the real power comes in knowing you don’t have to change anything, just become more comfortable with what happens.
March 14, 2015 at 3:13 am in reply to: Help, being told I need to have a boyfriend to be happy #73917Rock Banana
ParticipantI strongly recommend you check out some of Noah Elkrief’s videos. This one seems like a good fit for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2grbv7lY8c
“I need X in order to be happy” is one of the best formulas for needless suffering going!
Rock Banana
ParticipantThe stories you are telling about yourself aren’t real. “I am worthless” doesn’t make sense. It is unscientific and all it is, is you making up an idea about yourself in your head and then looking through it. You admit as much when you say that you want to change it. But the mistake you make is to think it is real, so it needs to be changed. It needs to be changed to “I am great”, right? But the truth is, “I am great” is just as meaningless as “I am worthless”. How can you “be” “great”? Are you the embodiment of the concept ‘great’? Do you equal everything great means and vice versa? What would that even mean? How would you test for greatness? WHERE is this “Great”? Can you find it? Where is it? point to it! Where is it?
The point I’m making here is, none of these stories you tell about yourself are real in the same way that your hands are real. Your hands are there whether you think about them or not. But when you stop thinking about your stories about yourself, they don’t seem to exist at all. That’s because they’re thoughts about reality – not reality itself.
If you like a song, is that song ACTUALLY better than any other song? Or do you just like it? If you like a person, are they FACTUALLY better than other people, or do you just like them? If you think you’re great, does that ACTUALLY mean you’re great, or does it just mean you think you are? If you’re worthless, does that ACTUALLY mean you are, or does that just mean you think you are?
What you need isn’t to change the self image, it’s to go beyond self image. Transcend self image. When you understand thoughts and concepts of self for what they really are, you don’t need to stop the thoughts. The thoughts will lose their hold over you.
Positive thinking is all about telling yourself how good you are. How is this any more “true” than you telling yourself how worthless you are? Seriously?
The reality is…you are. That’s it. You exist. You are here now. You are alive. You can tell yourself stories about who you are, but none of them, NONE OF THEM, will ever be accurate. Language will never describe the essence of you. It will always be judgement, it will always be thinking.
Say you had a girlfriend and you thought she had cheated on you. You get really angry and it affects you for that week. Then a week later you find evidence that it’s not true, she never did cheat on you. Now your thoughts change and so does your feelings, you feel love again and apologetic. In this scenario, was it the REALITY that made you angry or affected, or was it your THOUGHTS about the reality? Clearly it was your thoughts that affected you. It was only when you thought something that it affected you. But it’s worth noting here that what actually happened isn’t what you thought happened.
What you think you are is never actually what you are. You’re not who you think you are, AND you’re so much more besides. Once you have this realisation then you’ll see why positive thinking is just as meaningless as negative thinking (and in fact, that positive and negative are meaningless judgements to begin with!).
I would say it is useful to rationally dispute the negative beliefs about yourself, CBT would be good for that, yes as would be meditation, I mean look at positive thinking if you really want. Here’s how I see it: believing bad thinking is worse of all for your emotions. Better for your emotions is believing good thinking (but it still is as illogical as believing bad thinking – so on a scientific / logical level, neither of these orientations make sense). But best is to understand the nature of thought and to align with who you really are – that is, the observer of thought. To realize that thought isn’t who you are at all, and to have no reason to believe the thinking at all. This is not only the best for your emotional wellbeing (walking around telling yourself how goddamn awesome you are is exhausting and creates problems of its own – it needs maintenance to stay there as a held belief, especially if you’ve spent your whole life thinking and believing the opposite!) but it is also, by far, the most logical option. Scientifically the judgements you tell yourself about yourself are meaningless. All they tell you, the only information they give you, is what thoughts are arising in this moment, what stories about reality. But what does that have to do with
- you
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“I am an introvert” – a story, a judgement. not reality. dispute this cognition with CBT. not to believe its opposite, but to drop it as a belief.
“when it times to crunch times, I just falter” – another story, this time a generalisation about the whole of your life. generalisations like that don’t make sense, dispute this cognition with CBT. not to believe anything else, but to drop this particular belief.
“People have quite often told me that I’m quite negative” – Cool story. What people think of you has absolutely nothing to do with who you are. If even YOU don’t actually get to dictate who you are using thoughts, do you seriously think other people are qualified to do this? But what you do have is some useful feedback – not about who you are, but about the way people are judging you. This can be useful if everybody is saying it, there might be something in it. Looks like you got the message. Remember, what they said has nothing to do with who you are, it’s some feedback to let you know how negative they judge you to be. When I say that, I’m not doing a cute little mind shift to make everything sound nice. I’m being scientific. I’m being rational. That is the REALITY. People who judge you are not experiencing you and then telling you who you are. This is impossible. They are experiencing you and then judging you, and then telling you who they THINK you are. The difference is seismic if you can see it.
“It’s slowly dawned on me in the last couple of years that they are right – I’m not very positive at all.” – Story. Blah blah blah. They’re not right, actually. it’s a judgement. dispute this cognition using CBT. I’ll give you a bit of help: Some people might see you as positive, say they’re very depressed, they’d say you were more positive than them. Sometimes you would admit you’re being positive in certain moments. So therefore this belief is a meaningless generalisation. But dont take my word for it, actually dispute the belief. Not to replace it with another belief (“I am a positive person” – just as randomly and weirdly imposed onto reality for no particular reason; just as illogical; just as meaningless) but to drop it altogether. You could work on being more optimistic. But notice I’m using the word being, that’s a choice you make in every moment, to see the bright side. It’s not who you are at the identity level. Chuck out all of your ideas of who you are at the identity level, you don’t need them.
“The fear I have is that I try these things & they don’t work because I don’t truly believe them, or that I have to do them forever and that if I stop I’ll be negative again.” – Firstly this is thinking about the future so you can just tune out and stop listening to it. Why believe it? Are you a fortune teller? If not why keep predicting the future? Unless you’re an actual clairvoyant you’ll be wrong a lot of the time so it’s rather pointless to worry about your predictions. Secondly you will now realize that the whole point is not to believe the affirmations at all, positive or negative, and to align yourself with something deeper within you. And clearly you’ll never “be negative again”, because you never “were negative”. That was never who you were. It was just who you told yourself you thought you were. Big difference.
I’m using this tone to just be matter of fact and clear with you hoping that helps you as much as possible. I’m just being realistic here, I’m not dressing anything up but nor am I being cynical. (You’ll notice I’m using the phrase “I’m being (this and that)”, well, it’s a figure of speech and I don’t actually believe I am LITERALLY “being” realistic. It’s a judgement I have about myself which I will happily own – not the reality, but a judgement about myself. But for human interaction it is very useful to have these shortcuts of language. The problem only begins when you start to actually believe that the way we phrase things in a conversation like this is the way things actually are.)
Hope this helps. All best. Check out as much as you can and keep going with the discoveries. It’s a real journey!
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This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by
Rock Banana.
Rock Banana
ParticipantIt’s easy to think this is mutually exclusive, but it isn’t. What about being yourself whether in a relationship or not?
Inherent, INHERENT to your idea that there’s no point dating because you would have to pretend to be somebody else, otherwise they wouldn’t like you, is the belief that they need to like you.
All of your efforts are currently being funneled into avoiding rejection.
I recommend working on this and coming to realize that it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks of you – nothing they think of you changes who you are, or has anything to do with who you are for that matter. That you don’t need them to like you. That you don’t need them in order for you to be happy. That you can live without them, but you desire being with them. But if they don’t love you / respect you then that’s OK too.
As for your list – those are a list of stories you’re telling yourself about who you are. the stories aren’t who you actually are. I admire and appreciate your radical honesty here (especially your self honesty). Remember – the list isn’t who you are. The list is some stuff you’ve noticed you’ve been telling yourself stories about.
Forget about “can’t change”. Hasn’t changed yet is very different to won’t ever change.
I strongly recommend seeking a life coach, therapist or counselor to go through this stuff with you.
Here’s to your wellbeing.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by
Rock Banana.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by
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