I have been feeling extremely scatter brained and have been having trouble forcing myself to sit still for 10 minutes a day. Today I managed to do it. I realized that the feeling of having 1 million thoughts going through my brain is just the overstimulation of substances like caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or even carbonated water. My hypersensitivity really means I should just drink more still water instead.
I also still feel like my mother would pop out at any time to criticize and nag. I have left home for >6 years now. I don't think the feeling will ever go away completely. It is really terrible I internalized her anxieties. I feel like I would go a lot further in life if she didn't nag so excessively. I did leave home for 2 years after I got my uni degree, but the masochist in me returned home, because at the bottom of my heart, I am really attached to the idea of home and family. For all of my life I wished for a mentor who would guide me through life, help me understand how to navigate through society. I never had that mentor. I learned through just placing myself in foreign situations.
I don't really know why I get so scared about the possibility of being hurt emotionally. I seem to think that if I don't get hired for a job, if the boss doesn't like me, if I made a big mistake at work, if I get fired, if I get rejected by a man, then gasp, my world would crumble. The floor below me would disappear and I would fall eternally towards and beyond hell, or something dramatic like that. This is why I am so scared to try anything involving interacting with other human beings. I'm trying to figure out why I feel this way. I'm guessing it's because my mother used to react so dramatically when I made any small mistakes. Her response to my toddler misdemeanours felt like how a more normal person would react to her child setting the house on fire, or shooting someone in the face with a gun. It really seems like her melodramatic reactions over the years have caused long lasting trauma in me. I recently read that emotionally immature parents are simply unable to feel empathy towards their children's distress. I guess all these years I had been wishing for mother to become a bit better at sympathy is like wishing a blind person could recover his/her sight.
When I meditate I feel a lot of jitter. I am unable to focus with all these jitter going on, so I try to cover them up by drinking sugary/caffeinated drinks. I go climbing, because the intensity of the sport justifies for the jitters that I feel. Actually, climbing brings out a lot of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. When positioned on an inclined, overhang wall, with wind blowing at me, feeling extremely insecure, the sensations feel extremely familiar. It feels just like when I'm about to make a mistake, or when someone is screaming in my face. In these situations, I feel like I'm about to fall. I never actually "fall", but I feel like if I dare to go as far as actually letting myself fall, then my life, as I know it, will be over. And it's not just my life. The Earth itself will explode spectacularly right after I die (cue some glorious Hollywood explosion scene).
It's not just my mother. My aunts, my cousins, sometimes my sister, also let me feel that my mere existence is one big mistake. Everything I do is wrong. I say the phrases that are negative and hurtful to them, I don't perform certain cultural formalities that are expected of me at the appropriate times. Whenever I return home, I feel like I say all the things and shouldn't say and don't say all the things I am supposed to say. I actively bring unhappiness to those who are around me.
Is this true? I have been examining myself. It's partly true. I do tend to point out the negative aspects of what I observe and fail to mention the positive aspects. Why do I do it? I want things to CHANGE FOR THE BETTER, to IMPROVE. But I am the only person in the family who feels that way. The others in the family maintain the status quo by just saying niceties. Floral wishes. They perpetuate old wives' tales and pretend the ongoing conflicts do not exist. By faking a celebratory ambience every time the family meets up, the conflicts are never actually resolved. Everyone still secretly hates each other. People's lives do not improve. Marriages fall apart. People's healths deteriorate (due to wrong beliefs regarding what is good for health). Meanwhile they become more and more intentionally psychologically delusional in order to maintain the mirage.
The last paragraph came out of nowhere. But it did point how how I have felt for a long time. I want to point out things that are wrong (with the intention to fix the problems). They point out I am (one of the) problem instead. If everyone says I am wrong, then who am I to argue with the majority? So something must be wrong with me. It is true that I am wrecking the harmony and the celebratory mood of the family gathering. But indeed their lives are progressively doing worse. The intention of my family (and most organizations) is to sound positive and maintain the status quo. I have a desire to diagnose problems and resolve them, which is not welcomed. For my own sake, it would be better to go along with whatever they say, ignore the errors, try focus on the positive aspects of the interaction/relationship.
It took me nearly 40 years to understand that that most people have zero interest in truths. They are not interested exploration, or finding the best path towards getting what they want. They want shortcuts. They would rather pretend to have gotten what they want than to spend time to find the right strategies / correct paths. They take turns boasted about their limited knowledge, even though they sound clownish in front of anyone with actual knowledge on the topics. It seems wildly absurd to me, but I suppose this type of chest puffing probably was effective before the Internet was invented.
I should try to participate in their charade next time, and see if I get a different outcome than my normal yearly visit.
[p.s. This post definitely needs major rewrite, but I just wanted to get the ideas down into some written form first]
I also still feel like my mother would pop out at any time to criticize and nag. I have left home for >6 years now. I don't think the feeling will ever go away completely. It is really terrible I internalized her anxieties. I feel like I would go a lot further in life if she didn't nag so excessively. I did leave home for 2 years after I got my uni degree, but the masochist in me returned home, because at the bottom of my heart, I am really attached to the idea of home and family. For all of my life I wished for a mentor who would guide me through life, help me understand how to navigate through society. I never had that mentor. I learned through just placing myself in foreign situations.
I don't really know why I get so scared about the possibility of being hurt emotionally. I seem to think that if I don't get hired for a job, if the boss doesn't like me, if I made a big mistake at work, if I get fired, if I get rejected by a man, then gasp, my world would crumble. The floor below me would disappear and I would fall eternally towards and beyond hell, or something dramatic like that. This is why I am so scared to try anything involving interacting with other human beings. I'm trying to figure out why I feel this way. I'm guessing it's because my mother used to react so dramatically when I made any small mistakes. Her response to my toddler misdemeanours felt like how a more normal person would react to her child setting the house on fire, or shooting someone in the face with a gun. It really seems like her melodramatic reactions over the years have caused long lasting trauma in me. I recently read that emotionally immature parents are simply unable to feel empathy towards their children's distress. I guess all these years I had been wishing for mother to become a bit better at sympathy is like wishing a blind person could recover his/her sight.
When I meditate I feel a lot of jitter. I am unable to focus with all these jitter going on, so I try to cover them up by drinking sugary/caffeinated drinks. I go climbing, because the intensity of the sport justifies for the jitters that I feel. Actually, climbing brings out a lot of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. When positioned on an inclined, overhang wall, with wind blowing at me, feeling extremely insecure, the sensations feel extremely familiar. It feels just like when I'm about to make a mistake, or when someone is screaming in my face. In these situations, I feel like I'm about to fall. I never actually "fall", but I feel like if I dare to go as far as actually letting myself fall, then my life, as I know it, will be over. And it's not just my life. The Earth itself will explode spectacularly right after I die (cue some glorious Hollywood explosion scene).
It's not just my mother. My aunts, my cousins, sometimes my sister, also let me feel that my mere existence is one big mistake. Everything I do is wrong. I say the phrases that are negative and hurtful to them, I don't perform certain cultural formalities that are expected of me at the appropriate times. Whenever I return home, I feel like I say all the things and shouldn't say and don't say all the things I am supposed to say. I actively bring unhappiness to those who are around me.
Is this true? I have been examining myself. It's partly true. I do tend to point out the negative aspects of what I observe and fail to mention the positive aspects. Why do I do it? I want things to CHANGE FOR THE BETTER, to IMPROVE. But I am the only person in the family who feels that way. The others in the family maintain the status quo by just saying niceties. Floral wishes. They perpetuate old wives' tales and pretend the ongoing conflicts do not exist. By faking a celebratory ambience every time the family meets up, the conflicts are never actually resolved. Everyone still secretly hates each other. People's lives do not improve. Marriages fall apart. People's healths deteriorate (due to wrong beliefs regarding what is good for health). Meanwhile they become more and more intentionally psychologically delusional in order to maintain the mirage.
The last paragraph came out of nowhere. But it did point how how I have felt for a long time. I want to point out things that are wrong (with the intention to fix the problems). They point out I am (one of the) problem instead. If everyone says I am wrong, then who am I to argue with the majority? So something must be wrong with me. It is true that I am wrecking the harmony and the celebratory mood of the family gathering. But indeed their lives are progressively doing worse. The intention of my family (and most organizations) is to sound positive and maintain the status quo. I have a desire to diagnose problems and resolve them, which is not welcomed. For my own sake, it would be better to go along with whatever they say, ignore the errors, try focus on the positive aspects of the interaction/relationship.
It took me nearly 40 years to understand that that most people have zero interest in truths. They are not interested exploration, or finding the best path towards getting what they want. They want shortcuts. They would rather pretend to have gotten what they want than to spend time to find the right strategies / correct paths. They take turns boasted about their limited knowledge, even though they sound clownish in front of anyone with actual knowledge on the topics. It seems wildly absurd to me, but I suppose this type of chest puffing probably was effective before the Internet was invented.
I should try to participate in their charade next time, and see if I get a different outcome than my normal yearly visit.
[p.s. This post definitely needs major rewrite, but I just wanted to get the ideas down into some written form first]
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