Posts tagged with "self-improvement"

My Therapist is a Rockstar

As I was writ­ing notes for ther­a­py tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I did­n’t feel like I need­ed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I did­n’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s nev­er been any­thing per­ma­nent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­i­fy my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cov­er such a com­plex top­ic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↩]

Surrounding Myself With Great People

It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

  • over­re­act­ing
  • wor­ry­ing
  • ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much
  • being judg­men­tal
  • get­ting emo­tion­al­ly involved in arguments/discussions
  • putting val­ue in mate­r­i­al things
  • being impa­tient
  • get­ting too com­pet­i­tive

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because oth­er peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

Psychoanalytic Reflections 05

Sometimes I come out of a ses­sion feel­ing great. Sometimes I come out feel­ing like a mon­ster, like some hor­ri­ble, fucked-up per­son.

During my first ses­sion, my ther­a­pist not­ed that this was a mutu­al process. It was­n’t as if he was going to sur­gi­cal­ly remove an issue with me, it would take the both of us work­ing togeth­er, with a pro­gres­sive effort from me.

That’s what I’m doing now. I’m deter­mined to fix myself.

Dependence

  • I have a gen­er­al feel­ing of incom­pe­tence, which leads to a lack of trust in my own judg­ments. As a result, I have a very dif­fi­cult time mak­ing deci­sions because I’m par­a­lyzed by the fact that I may make the wrong one.
    • I can trace this back from my child­hood to my ear­ly twen­ties when my par­ents were over­bear­ing and would nev­er let me make any of my own deci­sions. In fact, they would make most of my deci­sions for me, includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant ones, like my pro­gram of study in uni­ver­si­ty.
  • The result is that I tend to ask peo­ple for advice on every­thing, although I’m depen­dent on Pat the most. This is because Pat is so smart and expe­ri­enced, and has nev­er, ever let me down. What I’ve come to real­ize, how­ev­er, is that Pat is so smart because he’s already made his mis­takes.
  • This was linked to my anx­i­ety, where I felt like I could­n’t han­dle any­thing on my own.
  • I’ve been try­ing to fix this is to keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world if I make a mis­take, and that some­times, mak­ing mis­takes is the only way to learn.

Unrelenting Standards revisited

  • I real­ized that I tend to have unre­lent­ing stan­dards when it comes to life in gen­er­al, but espe­cial­ly in my writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, or art because I feel like this is the only way I will ever dis­tin­guish myself and be worth some­thing. I feel like if I’m not the best, then I’m worth­less. As a result, it’s dif­fi­cult for me to enjoy my life, even some­thing as sim­ple as sit­ting down and watch­ing a movie.
    • The roots of this are more dif­fi­cult to trace than I ini­tial­ly thought. While my par­ents were a tremen­dous influ­ence in terms of mak­ing me feel like their love was con­di­tion­al, I believe a large part of this life­trap has to do with me mak­ing up for my emo­tion­al depri­va­tion by fill­ing my deep­er empti­ness with suc­cess.
  • Even when I do some­thing that I know I should be proud of and sat­is­fied, I feel like there’s always anoth­er thing to do, anoth­er lev­el to reach. While this fuels my self-improve­ment and has got­ten me to where I am now, I’ve come to real­ize that there’s an imbal­ance between the effort and the pay­off. I work too hard for too lit­tle enjoy­ment.
  • I may real­ize this, but it’s a hard habit to break. I have a feel­ing that I’ll need to fix my emo­tion­al depri­va­tion at the same time to do so.

Tai Chi Progress

My under­stand­ing of Tai Chi seems to come in the form of a sine wave: the more I learn, the more I real­ize I don’t know, and as I adjust for more and more details, oth­er details get lost.

For the last few months, I felt like I was get­ting nowhere. The con­cepts made sense in my brain, but not in my body. My teacher has said that Tai Chi is already too intel­lec­tu­al­ized, and as a per­son who’s nev­er been very phys­i­cal­ly co-ordi­nat­ed and tries to com­pen­sate in SHEER MENTAL POWA!, this holds true espe­cial­ly for me. Until I’ve mas­tered telekine­sis, how­ev­er, I’ll be reliant on more tra­di­tion­al means of move­ment.

In the last cou­ple weeks I feel like I’ve reached anoth­er lev­el of under­stand­ing, as rudi­men­ta­ry as it may be.

One thing that helped a lot is when a senior stu­dent showed me what ward-off (peng) felt like. As he stood with struc­ture in his body, I tried to push him1, but end­ed up push­ing myself off him and falling over. In order to move him, I was forced to use the prop­er tech­nique (since he’s con­sid­er­ably big­ger than me), and expand with my entire body — legs, waist, arms, chest, lungs — instead of sim­ply try­ing to move through him.

Then we reversed roles and he pushed me until I could chan­nel his ener­gy through my feet. It was the first time I ever felt ground­ed, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing the idea. I still don’t real­ly under­stand it, inso­faras I could­n’t explain it to some­one else.

Adapting this all to the form is some­thing else. I try to focus on one thing at time2 but it falls apart in oth­er places. At this point, I’m just try­ing to get all the gross mechan­ics to be nat­ur­al with­out hav­ing to think about it, hop­ing that I’ll even­tu­al­ly be able to fine tune every­thing else.

  1. It remind­ed me of the feel­ing of squeez­ing a rub­ber stop­per, some­thing with give but not much, that becomes expo­nen­tial­ly dif­fi­cult to com­press. [↩]
  2. Such as stay­ing at one lev­el with­out being rigid (con­sid­ered “breath­ing”), relax­ing my low­er back, think­ing of my body being anchored through my legs, and keep­ing struc­ture and intent in my palms. [↩]

Defining Myself Through Others

I’ve come to real­ize that as much as I’ve grown and gained, I still seek approval from oth­ers, albeit to a much small­er extent than before. This approval is how I define my self worth.

It’s an old, bad habit.

I can trace this habit back to my par­ents. I would always do things to try to win their approval, only to be met with a com­ment about not being good enough, or unsup­port­ive silence. Their con­stant crit­i­cism led to low self-esteem and feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy. Yet anoth­er exam­ple of how they mind­fucked me.

At this point, it’s just a knee-jerk reac­tion. Remnants of my old, inse­cure self creep­ing up. I know that one day, I’ll be able to break the habit com­plete­ly.

Until then, I have to remind myself that it does­n’t mat­ter what any­one thinks of you.