I feel like it’s progress report time, being about 4 years since I had to go to the hospital.  I always liked progress reports at school, I kind of wish I got them in therapy.  I suppose I could ask him for one.

At the moment, I’m trying to unlearn the capitalist impulse to turn any creative endeavor into a way to make money.  It’s largely driven by the fact that we never seem to have enough money so I’m partially obsessed with both finding more money in the budget, and with bringing more money into the house.  I feel very blocked in this area, though, by somewhat confusing energies.  On the one hand, I feel strongly that normal fiscal paths are not for me, but on the other hand, I also feel strongly I need to be contributing somehow.

This is currently manifesting as my repeatedly having to tell myself that I’m working on my kitchen witch hobbies for ME, because *I* think it’s fun and fulfilling.  I also have a strong desire to share my creations with others, though, and recognize that I’m talented enough at what I’m doing that, under the right conditions, I could probably sell my products.  That seems like a slippery slope to losing control of my creation and having it ruined by forces I hate, though.  I also recognize that running a large business would mean spending an awful lot of my time doing things I don’t enjoy and not much time doing what I DO enjoy, which is playing witch chemist in my kitchen.

I am mentally slapping my hand for adding ambition to my hobby in the first place.  I feel better when I just focus on the creative aspect and make new things for myself.  I just can’t help but build this little line of quality, self-created products in my mind every time I make something new that’s awesome.  Other people do this, why can’t I?  I think I’m going to go ahead and build this line of products, even if it’s only ever for myself and my friends.

It’s difficult for me to do things just for myself.  It feels so selfish on one level, and I have to pay attention to how I feel really deep down to determine whether I really am being inappropriately selfish.  Sometimes I am and that’s something I try to address, but more often lately, I’ll do something for myself and there’s a non-guilty feeling of satisfaction, like I drank a glass of water when I was thirsty, which is what you’re supposed to do.  There’s still an element of discomfort to it that I’m trying to get over, though.  I’m just not used to it is all, which is a little sad.

A big stumbling block I still deal with almost constantly is an almost narcissistic tendency to think that literally everything is my fault or somehow has something to do with me.  It borders on paranoia.  A neighbor shuts their window: was that because of something I was doing?  My husband expresses annoyance over something: was that because of me?  I hear a random noise down the block: did I do that?  Seriously.  One time my son relayed that he had some tests that revealed low hormone levels, and I immediately asked myself if that was my fault.  This is seriously pathological.

I’m doing better with suspending judgment.  I’m not sure why, but that seems to be an ability that ebbs and flows.  I can tell the ability is connected to other psychological processes, but I haven’t been able to detect the pattern yet.  There’s always a pattern, I just have to find it.  I do worry that I inappropriately suspend judgment sometimes to the extent that I make unwise decisions or behave without compassion.  I also worry that all I’m doing is shifting judgment away from myself and towards everyone else, which wouldn’t be proper.  Things are never all everyone else’s fault while the person in question is perfect.  I know I’m not perfect.  My issue is that I’m pretty far along on my Path, enough to really be aware of my progress and even proud of it, which also makes me aware of how different I am from others in so many ways (but only on the surface, I’m aware of that as well).  Those differences sometimes cause interpersonal conflicts that I am already deficient at dealing with due to my neurodivergence issues.

I’m also getting better at (begrudgingly) acknowledging my positive qualities.  That’s requiring a great deal of intellectualizing that would only be possible if the emotional level of self-loathing hadn’t somehow reduced.  I’m not sure how that happened, but I’ll take it.  Must be a side effect of something else I was doing upstairs (ah, that was it: the exercise of understanding and compassion for why Old Me was such a shitty person).  Some part of me is observing this slow process of lifting my senses of self-worth and esteem and raises its eyebrow in silent appraisal, giving reluctant but tacit approval.  “Okay, fine, I suppose you’ve suffered long enough.”  Like a drill instructor that made a recruit exercise all day in the sun in punishment for some infraction and is finally letting them eat, shower, and go to bed.

Working the understanding-and-compassion current really changes what people, relationships, and the world in general look like.  It makes it easier to see the root causes of things and shift blame to where it belongs and away from where and who it doesn’t.  I’ve had to be careful with that, though: I almost wound up in a philosophical place where “no one is to blame for anything” and thinking like that just keeps the world exactly where it is.  If someone is actively aware and embracing of damaging behaviors, then they’re to blame for those behaviors regardless of how they wound up that way.  It’s the “actively aware and embracing of” part that matters.

I wish I could say my temper was in a better place, but I’m still having a problem with being very easily triggered into a very irritated place, without warning.  I’ll be fine, and something small but irritating will happen, and suddenly I’m very angry, and it can take up to an hour (usually more like half an hour) to come down energetically.  I thought I had lost my nice earbuds the other day, and until they were found an hour or so later, I sat on the porch internally erupting (literally: my mind visualized an erupting volcano – it’s the “angriest” geological process I can think of).

I don’t know if this is because of my recent episode or what.  I do tend to be more irritable following an episode for a while and then things even out.  My tendency towards anger also has a lot to do with how much ‘standing wave’ stress there is in my life: that is, things that are stressful that are just kind of ongoing, like medical bullshit.  Too many standing waves, or one that’s too big, and I’m more likely to snap into anger at something small because I’m in constant ‘activation mode’.  I hate it.  Primary standing waves in my life currently are money, medical shit, and kid stuff.  I had a Very Bad Day about a month ago where all three standing waves got hit in one day.  No bueno.

I think I’m making better progress not spending so much of my time ruminating about the past or wasting my time doing the mental equivalent of curling into the fetal position by engaging in “comfort” activities.  That’s fine sometimes, but it’s gone on long enough.  This mental room I’ve been curled up in for the last four years is starting to stink, it needs airing out and everything needs washing, so to speak.  I need to turn the TV off or at least watch something different: one can only watch Star Trek: TNG and Voyager so many times.

At least I’ve been able to engage in this self-evaluation without the use of the self-whacking stick I carry around in my mind.  When I become aware of it, I simply say the word “STICK” to myself and pitch it into the mental campfire I’m always sitting next to.  STICKs keep that thing burning merrily.  Again, this is only possible through the act of suspending judgment.

Suspending judgment also enables the dismantling of the various layers of conditioning I realize I suffer from.  Some are more difficult than others and require a considerable amount of unlearning/reprogramming (depends on how deep into the psychic code they go), but some dissolve immediately upon being recognized and named, like ancient demons.  It’s very freeing, like bursting free of a layer of rock, or chains.  Most of the time it’s more like slowly chipping away at that layer of rock until it finally cracks and falls off, usually in chunks over time.

I’m reluctant to make this observation for fear of jinxing it, but I’ve moved away from a phase of “the better I get, the more fucked up I feel” and more towards “feeling better and less fucked up”.  I’m not going to be surprised if I get hit with another future wave of “look at all these other ways you’re fucked up you didn’t know about!”, but for now I feel like I’m recovering from the last wave of that.  Still, if there’s a NIN album I can currently identify with, it’s probably Broken.  Either that or The Fragile.  I think I’m done with The Downward Spiral, for now anyway.

As far as my inner Voices and dialogues go, they’ve changed tone over time, as one would expect.  When I first bothered to pay any attention, it was nothing but a flood of music lyrics and movie quotes that didn’t stop for months.  Later, speaking characters emerged, some fictional, some my own creations, others of more ethereal origin.  It’s still just as noisy in my head as it was five years ago, but the noise is different.  I have a Self-Therapist that is engaged in constant analysis of my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as long as I am awake.  They are simultaneously extraordinarily useful and very annoying, i.e. “this is all very interesting but JFC would you kindly shut up for just a few minutes, please and thank you.”

As for the origin of my Voices, that is something I let hang out in the ‘question mark’ bucket.  Intuition tells me they’re spiritual in origin and I’m confident in that intuition.  Unfortunately I still have an Inner Psychiatrist doubling as SocioCultural Judgment telling me I’m insane.  This has created an inner division within me I cannot yet reconcile.  I know the Inner Psychiatrist is wrong and has an incomplete picture, and yet I’ve had certain concepts and ideas pounded into my psyche from a very young age, ones that are as pernicious as Drug War propaganda (another Voice I’m slowly breaking down).

All of this growth and breaking down and unlearning and reprogramming is a fun process for me that I enjoy, although an aspect that I do not enjoy is what seems to be an increasing tendency towards conflict with others.  I know what’s happening and it’s not necessarily unhealthy, but it’s not manifesting in a way I like.  Past Me, upon encountering someone overbearing and prickly, would just nod, smile, and leave.  New Me doesn’t do that.  If my toes get stepped on, I do or say something that translates to “yo, you stepped on my toes, back up”, and not everyone responds well to this, particularly if they’re used to stepping on toes and getting away with it.

I don’t know how to feel about this.  I am historically a people pleaser and not in a good way.  Now I’m working with what I recognize as a need to be of service to others without being taken advantage of.  My feeling is that I’m fairly talented and have good things to offer to others and if I choose to do so, others should be grateful if they appreciate those things.  If they don’t appreciate them, that is not an opportunity to nitpick the things they don’t like.  I am not a human bonsai tree to be distorted into a pleasing shape for someone else’s enjoyment.

These conflicts with others make me wonder if my psychic pendulum hasn’t swung too far in the other direction away from flexible dysfunction into rigid functionality.  I’d rather go for flexible functionality, thank you.  I may be a misanthropic and hermetic introvert, but I do have the need for some human interaction in my life.  I am working on that area of my life.  I’ve started a gardening group at the church that will hopefully give me some practice at socializing with others, although I recognize that a big part of my problem is that, no matter where I go, I feel like an outsider, like I just can’t relate to others.  Ironic for someone who has recognized the interconnected Nature of Reality.  I feel like I’m missing something, like I shouldn’t feel so…separated.

Maybe I’m separating myself and need to show mySelf more often to others instead of automatically being afraid they’ll reject what they see.  I’m in a more accepting place of people like me, I just need to get out more and hang out in the same places they do so I can meet some people.  That doesn’t come easily to me, though, I’ve always had a hard time making friends, even in earlier life situations that lent themselves to making social connections.  I think my social skin might be thick enough to withstand passive social rejection, though, that is, friendly situations that don’t necessarily result in actual friends.  I might at least find a nice environment to hang out in.

Last but certainly not least, I recently came up with a more positive counterpart to Yoda’s “Path to the Darkside”.  I was contemplating the concept of forgiveness, either for oneself or someone else, and found myself asking what leads to forgiveness.  “Worth” was the answer.  I had to ask what led to that.  Long story short, I came up with the following:

Understanding leads to compassion.

Compassion leads to love.

Love leads to worth.

Worth leads to forgiveness.

I’m sure that can be further extended in both directions, but for now it stands as a good counterpoint to “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

After all this time, there is also a begrudging sense of pride in the accomplishment of still being alive.  I gave that short shrift for a long time, like “big deal, what’s so hot about being alive?”  I kept making myself look at mySelf again and again: “look at your scars, you should be dead and you’re not: you would make a Klingon bow in respect”.  Equating my life events and internal conflicts in the context of honorable battle actually did make things better.  Now my Inner Observer takes on the guise of Han Solo: “Great kid! Now don’t get cocky.”

That will be a tall order given the number of extraordinarily cocky fictional characters I really, really like.  In the absence of positive human beings to take example from for the vast majority of my upbringing, I’m afraid the fictional world took their place, for better or worse, with a soundtrack provided by the Great Song.  I have to say with confidence that storytellers and musicians who were distant strangers to me and the teachers and friends who introduced me to them did a better job raising me than anyone I grew up with. I am grateful to all of them, and more often than not, for my life.  An accomplishment in and of itself.