Dated 10-February-2007

There is a quart of water right next to me.  I’m trying to get my Diet going in the right direction again and Water is one of the things I need to work on.  I tend to drink incessantly, and water is better than any kind of soft drink. 

I’ve always drank incessantly, in fact, when I was a kid, the school thought I might be a diabetic.  The school sent a not home after noticing how often I was thirsty and how often I went to the bathroom.  When I took the note home my stepmother ridiculed me.  I never said anything about being diabetic or complained about being thirsty – I just asked to go to the water fountain a lot.  My stepmom decided to ridicule me though.  She launched into me about how I was just making it up to get attention.  She brought the entire family in on it too to witness it.

She did the same thing when I told her I might need glasses because I was having difficulty seeing the board at school.  She totally ranted on me about how I only wanted glasses for the attention.  What planet is she from where a kid in 8th grade WANTS to get glasses just for attention?

Granted, I DID want attention:  but not every action I did was some screaming out for it.  Besides, instead of embarrassing me for wanting attention, wouldn’t have made more sense, to, well, show me some attention?  My stepmom was such a bitch.

She wasn’t overtly abusive; she never did anything too severe.  She just slowly dismantled my self esteem. I seem to have dated a lot of guys who did the same thing.  Never realized how strongly she imprinted.  Time to break the behavior patterns’

I saw an interesting show on self esteem, addiction and quantum physics called “What The @#*& Do We Know”.  What I got out of it this time is:  all things bad that we do even when we know its bad are addictions – even emotions can be addictions.  Even though I know it will kill me, I eat MacDonald’s – I have an addiction to unhealthy food.  I tend to date people who try to lower my self-esteem because it’s what I was used to as a kid – I’m addicted to that kind of emotional input. 

The show said all the little things you do can form addictions, even emotions.  Your brain releases different chemicals for different emotions.  Your body is constantly flooded with these chemicals; you get used to them and then you crave them.  If you spend a lot of time angry, your body will start to crave the chemicals created when you’re angry and you will look for reason to get angry.  Even falling in love can be addicting take serial daters.  They start a relationship, feel the intense “in love” emotions at the beginning, sabotage the relationship and then do it all over again just to get the “honeymoon fix”.  This gives me a new way to look at some of the things I want to change about myself.  If I treat everything as an addiction – it might give me a better strategy to deal with them. 

The first one is to break the habit of feeling sorry for myself.  I can sometimes be pretty hard on myself and that’s part of the feeling sorry for me really.  It’s a circle of ridiculing myself after which I can say “poor me”.  When I start to call myself lazy, fat, and ugly and all the other self-deprecating comments – it’s all so I can feel sorry for myself.  If I think about it – this feeling victimization can also be why I date people who “beat me up” and why I don’t confront people who I feel behave inappropriately when I’m out.  It gives me something to say “poor me” about.

Poor me – My boy friend treats me bad.  Poor me – gay men are icky.  Poor me – I’m going bankrupt.  Why else would I have sat on my ass so long when I could have had the papers signed to sell the house months ago?  Poor me – I kept the house but now I’m filing for bankruptcy.

It’s almost as if there is one overriding addiction that leads into the rest.  I think I’m addicted to pity.  This might also explain why I hate pity so much.  I have said in the past that pity is a negative emotion coming from a place of superiority when you see some one deserving of pity.

So, all the times people told me to “buck up and stop feeling sorry for myself” – it was probably the best advice I could have been given.  By continuously being in and putting myself in positions where I felt sorry for myself – I’ve grown addicted to it.  I know this sounds simplistic – but it seems to make sense.  Look at all my vent-posts.  They are all about how the world has done stuff against me.  Only in my more lucid moments do I complain about my mistakes.

The old patterns of self-victimization need to end.

The thought manifests the word,
The word manifests the deed,
The deed develops into habit
And habit hardens into character
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of Concern for all beings…
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think,so we become.

– From the Dhammapada, Sayings of the Buddha.

I read this and It hit me like a brick.  I have had this discussion with both <lj user = gigawattwarlock> and my shrink.  Words and language are SO much more important than we ever give them credit for.  Think of it,language is so important there is a special part of the brain just to deal with it.  I think what we don’t realize is how important the words we use to OURSELVES are.

People seem to accept that when the people around  them use derogatory words toward them (you’re stupid, you can’t do anything right,you’re ugly, your fat) that these words will eventually do harm and people will eventually come to look upon them as fact.

Now, replace all the “you’s” with “I’s”.  People do this CONSTANTLY, but never seem to realize that it is MORE harmful than if others use these words.  It will sink in and become fact MUCH faster if you use the words yourself.

When I was younger, one of the churches I attended taught to me that “if you think the thought, you have already committed the sin.”  In the christian sense of things (eternal hell fire and pain) this is a scary concept.  All it really taught me is that if I’m going to hell for THINKING the thought, I may as well DO the action and get some of the pleasure from it.  If I’m going to pay the price – I may as well get my money’s worth.

In the Christian sense of things, you think the thought and get scared, think of yourself as an evil person and proceed to beat your self up and denigrate yourself in a hope that God will forgive the truly evil hateful person that you TRULY are on the inside.

I think in the Buddhist sense the lesson taught is more accurate.  If you think the thought, you have done damage.  If you think the thought enough, you will act.  The idea is to not “beat your self up” for thinking the thought.  Meditate on the thought, get to know it, find out where it comes from and why it felt the need to speak.  What did thinking that thought REALLY mean and what needs is it trying to have met.

I have also realized that this is like a seesaw, as MANY things in life are:  Cause and Effect, Karma.  The thought becomes the action – but the action becomes the thought.  There is the saying “the first time you commit murder is the hard one, it gets easy after that.”  The ACT of committing a deed will reinforce in the mind the thoughts of that deed.  Cause-effect, effect-cause.

So, in this life, you need to treat yourself right and THINK of yourself right.  Pay attention to your thoughts, when you think negatively – be a sap and make your self say positive, reaffirming words in your head.

It does seem to work.  I am an expert at self-deprecation.  I am teaching myself to become an expert on self-celebration and love.