Bewildered Babbling.
I’ve been working on my self-esteem this year. One of my goals for 2015 is to become confident. At this point in my life, I’m giving a big FU to whoever has told or will tell me I’m worthless. I realize now that people tell me that kind of thing as a type of manipulation – a way to keep me subservient or under control. This is not to say I’m super-humanly awesome or something, but just that I realize, logically, that I am a good person. I need to learn, emotionally, to see and treat myself as such. The problem is that I feel like I am not allowed to be confident, because that means I’m “self-centered”.
The hardest part is getting those automatic thoughts of dismissal out of my mind. My default beliefs are that:
1) I’m worthless.
2) I’m ugly.
3) My body is gross.
4) It would be arrogant to believe I should get to choose who I am or how I am defined.
5) I don’t deserve happiness.
6) I don’t deserve to be loved.
7) Nobody could ever love me the way I am anyway.
8) There’s something fundamentally wrong with me.
9) I was born to suffer.
10) I have no right to want a good life.
I can’t really see the alternatives to these beliefs. I mean, I can come up with alternatives, but I don’t think any of them are true. I think, “maybe those are vaguely possible?” but I don’t actually believe it.
Counter-arguments:
1) There are some people who value me.
2) There are some people who think I’m beautiful.
3) There are some people who don’t think my body is gross.
4) There are some people who allow me to be myself.
5) There are some people who want me to be happy.
6) There are some people who want me to feel loved.
7) There are some people who love me.
8) There are some people who think I’m fine the way I am.
9) There are some people who have tried to ease my suffering.
10) There are some people who think I deserve a good life.
My question is: Why are all of my answers based on “some people”? How do I learn to think these things for myself? Or, AS myself? Not some parroting thought of what other people think? Why the hell can I only be myself if I’m “allowed” to be??? Who is telling me what to do?
I’m confused about this. Am I forcing myself to be unhappy? I don’t understand why other people’s thoughts or opinions are more important to me than my own. I really don’t think my thoughts or feelings matter. I truly do believe that I don’t matter, based on my life’s experiences and how other people act around or toward me. I honestly think everyone would be a lot better off if I just disappeared. Logically, I know that’s not true, but that really is how I feel.
My default thought is that I should just leave society. The problem is, I can’t tell if I’d be better off having no human interaction. On the one hand, I think it would be wonderful never to be degraded again. On the other hand, I’d just live alone, repeating all of those memories as “reasons to hate myself”, a justification for why I could never fit into the world. That wouldn’t solve anything.
I think the solution has to be that I learn to put these old beliefs behind me, learn to counteract them automatically, and learn to love myself as I am.
This is an anxiety-inducing idea.
Ugh, my first thought is, “People will think I’m a narcissist if I love myself.” I’m SO SICK OF THAT! I’m sick of every thought in my head being about what other people will think. I can’t take it anymore. To hell with what other people think! They can think whatever they want, I just don’t give a crap anymore. If it means I get labeled by a bunch of judgmental people, so be it. It’s clear to me that my life is far better when I remove those people from my environment. So, that is what I will do.
I just can’t live like this anymore. I feel like I’m a poison to myself – every dark thought is bringing me closer to my death. Or, maybe, the dark thoughts ARE my death. I know the dark thoughts cause my suffering, and that emotional suffering is what makes me feel like I shouldn’t exist. I need to get out of it.
I know I need to change my thoughts so that I can heal. I know I need to change my perspective of my place in the world. I do not want to live thinking everyone else deserves to get their way. I do not want to continue to believe my thoughts, wishes, wants, and needs are void before I even express them.
The main problem is that the things that happen in my life tend to be bad for me. Like, nothing really goes my way. I can force some things to happen, manually force my life to go in a specific direction, but it never goes the way I think or hope it will. I have come to terms with the reality that “perfect” doesn’t exist. But, I am tired of settling for “complete shit spun as acceptable”. The truth is that I just settle for and accept circumstances, because I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it.
This might come from childhood, where the religion I was raised in stressed that everything was “God’s Will”. Essentially, anything that happens to a person is either a trial, reward, or punishment directly from God. My childhood was awful (though I feel like a selfish ass complaining about my childhood when I know there are people who’ve had far worse experiences), so I always just believe there was something wrong with me. “God” must have hated me just for existing if “God” thought I deserved to be so consistently punished. So, it wasn’t any surprise to me that other people told me or treated me like I was just garbage – if a divine creator hated me, humans definitely should hate me and would be justified in doing so.
Even though I don’t believe in or follow a religion, I still have these feelings. I think it’s a little worse in some ways now, though, because there’s no reason (“It’s God’s Will.”) for it anymore . I just think that’s how it is – I wasn’t meant to feel loved or accepted. I was just born to be the outsider, because outsiders have to be born so that everyone else gets to feel good about themselves. Like some kind of statistical variant that can’t be avoided.
Maybe the thing I feel the most resentful about is that I really do believe the only reason I exist is so that other people can feel good about themselves. I was born to be a doormat or punching bag or something. I don’t necessarily think I’m a person, to be honest. I don’t really feel like a human. I know I live in a human body, but I feel so alien; I don’t feel like I belong anywhere or that there’s any reason for people to care about me. I can’t identify with people, no matter how hard I try. They generally don’t bother to identify with me, so it just ends up with me trying to pretend I’m more like them so that they’ll accept me.
Granted, I’ve given up on most of that kind of behavior… but, it’s still automated. I still automatically try to pretend I’m a human. I don’t know why, though.
Where do I get answers? How do I learn to look at myself in the mirror and see a person, someone who deserves to exist?
I don’t have a solution to this. I just don’t know anything about being someone that is worthy of existence. I don’t know how to find people to teach this to me.
Time, I guess, will tell. I don’t feel very optimistic about it.