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Permalink Reply by newsi on November 30, 2010 at 6:56am

Life is a journey. How we travel is really up to us. We can just flow with the tide or follow our own dreams./Paulo Coelho/

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Williams on January 16, 2011 at 2:30am

advise on what exactly?

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Permalink Reply by Aaralyn D on August 24, 2011 at 1:42am

I don't know what sort of wisdom you're looking for, but here is something I have been thinking about lately and finding useful for myself.

 

I’ve been learning inside myself recently that, in facing pain (and also anger and fear and other difficult to handle emotions), I can’t just acknowledge it’s there, feel it a tiny bit, then say, “Hey, such and such general description of event happened to me and I notice that I have pain inside me from that, and now that I have felt a little of that pain and generally acknowledged that something bad happened to me, though I haven’t looked closely at it or felt it anywhere near in it’s entirety, I am now over it and can leave it in the past and never have it bother me again and never feel any pain from it ever again.” (Sound unrealistic? I’ve unfortunately not thought about it that hard until now and been doing that with the most painful events from my past, though I have worked through and fully dealt with a fair few of the bit less painful ones since the time I was 11 years old.)

I realise, finally, that I have to actually acknowledge the fine details of the events and look at how the events affected me, in entirety, and actually feel all the pain (and other feelings attached) – I have to let the strong winds of pain flow through me completely so then the warmer, calmer winds of gentler feelings have room to flow into me and fill me and flow through me afterwards, leaving me more peaceful and feeling more whole and well afterwards. Otherwise, when I try not to feel it, it’s like I trap the wind of pain inside me and it becomes like a constantly twisting, escalating whirlwind inside me, battering to get out and constantly trying to suck me back into it, and when a whirlwind is inside, there is nowhere to run or hide, I can only pretend it’s not there and get hurt by it often enough, sometimes very badly, or I can release it from me by feeling it fully, and let it flow back into the atmosphere where it belongs.

I guess I just wanted to get over my difficult past really quickly, not be held back by it but just move on as quickly as I could to a better future, and instead the way I’ve dealt with it has caused the pain (and fear, anger etc) from it to stick around for so long and stay so big, and even increase with the further difficult events that sometimes occur in the present, which means it sometimes gets so big it overwhelms me and I can’t function in life as I ordinarily do, my work and other parts of my life are adversely affected. Of course, there are some parts of my life that I still find too horrific to face without breaking into pieces, but I’m talking about the things that are screaming out for me to face them: it’s only the things I’m ready to face that my unconscious sends up to me and tries to make conscious for me to help me deal with it so it can stop affecting me in ways that keep me from being the person I am meant to be and doing the things I am meant to do.

 

Aaralyn

 

(P.S. I have plenty more thoughts on various other things to do with a fair few aspects of life, so if you want to hear them, let me know, and any specific asks are welcome. For myself, I'd love to ask if any of you know how to work against following bad things you've been taught growing up? 'Cause (though at school I was a straight A student and all teachers thought me very capable and able) I was taught by my parents that I am not a capable person and no-one will ever put up with me in a job for more than 6 months and that I will always be only worth less than the minimum wage and only be able to get menial work that will not use any of my talents and hardly keep me living (money-wise), and it seems I am following their guidelines for my life - I do work for less than the minimum wage and, though I have worked in the place for 3 1/2 years, they treat me (and others) really badly and like we're children, and they don't utilise my skills at all, and I'm too scared to look for somewhere else to work because I feel inside like no-one will ever think I'm a worthwhile person to employ in a better job that gets me the minimum wage or above.

Thankyou to anyone who replies to this - it will be much appreciated!)

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Permalink Reply by Aaralyn D on August 28, 2011 at 3:56am

I just realised how long ago Kat wrote that message - I guess this is not a very popular section? But I'm really needing to share some of this stuff I have inside me at the moment, so if anyone wants to read further thoughts from me below, please do - if not, I'll just know I've helped myself in trying to put my thoughts into words. I hope someone reads, even so. :-)

 

I've been realising lately that it's important to love and accept myself as I am, including all my inadequacies, failings and hangups, and with all the mistakes and 'not good' things I have done in the past, because there is no joy or happiness in my life when I do not forgive myself for the wrongs I've done in the past, nor if I can't give myself a break for not being perfect now and not being the way I wish I was, not having the capabilites and assets and job, etc, that I wish I had.

 

I did try to do that from my mid-teens to some time in my 20's, but then I started working and I didn't feel acceptable as a worker and felt I had to hide who I was so they wouldn't see what a screw-up I was and would continue employing at least until I was unable to hide it constantly anymore. This began the bad self-talk inside me again (it used to be hideous inside from the time I was very small, constant verbiage saying, "You're worthless, you're scum of the earth, you're so stupid you always break things and can't be trusted, you always get everything wrong, no-one likes you, your life will never be any good, no-one could ever love you, you're such an idiot!, people may say they like you but they couldn't possibly mean it 'cause you are scum, you'll never manage to do anything good with your life, you always make mistakes, you take people down all the time just by being alive, you have no useful skills, you're not fit to live!, you should just die but you're too worthless to kill yourself!..."), telling myself my boss would never be happy with me, my co-workers find me useless, I make occasional mistakes so no-one will want to keep me, I'm too socially inept to be kept on as a worker, I'm not skilled enough to be kept on, I fall apart occasionally and need a day off so no-one will want to keep me on, etc etc.

 

With the constant bad self-talk, back came the depression I'd suffered from since I was 6 years old - it had finally gone away almost completely after about a year of combatting the bad self-talk with good self-talk (i.e. "Where is the evidence that no-one likes you? Isn't there more evidence that people do like you?" "All people make mistakes, you are not the only one, and that is okay, you can learn from it and try not to do it next time but if you do it again it is forgiveable 'cause everyone makes mistakes, no-one's perfect" "although that was a silly thing to do, you don't really seem like an idiot - all your teachers think you are rather smart" "you don't know what the future holds for you, but if you try to make it a good one, it is possible it will be a good one, not a bad one - don't hold yourself back by not trying to get good things for your future" "you are as fit to be alive as anyone else - you don't even try to hurt people, you always try to help them (even though you fail sometimes), unlike some people you know, and they are fit to live so why should you not be when you actually try to be good?") and was replaced by frequent bouts of happiness and joy, even in the midst of my very difficult flashbacks to past traumatic events, and stayed away most of the time until a while after I started working.

 

Now I'm realising that hiding myself in order to be accepted at work and by workmates, etc, doesn't work, so I'm trying to accept me as I am, despite what others may think of me (I've always been only able to accept myself if others accept me, but others can be fickle, their acceptance of me can change sometimes for no apparent reason, other times for very small reason, though sometimes for bigger reasons which are generally caused by my reaction to something that triggers a response from me that's to do with my past). I miss the happiness and joy I felt when I was a bit younger, before I started working, and it has been lovely trying out just being myself on Linkin Park.com, 'cause I have felt a little of that happiness again since coming here and saying some things in the discussions that were just from my heart and very myself. It has been lovely making some nice new friends here too, and trying out chat for the first time in my life, which was interesting to talk to people from all around the world and see that we're all pretty much the same as human beings, wherever we're from. It is hard to face life sometimes, especially while going through a new bout of flashbacks (it's been a long time since my last lot, hence why I could work ok) but I am trying and so far getting through, and I hope to manage to keep being real and feel more of the joy and happiness life has to offer. I hope for this for all others, too.

 

With all my best wishes,

 

Aaralyn

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Permalink Reply by Aaralyn D on August 29, 2011 at 3:53am

I wonder if I should mention a little more to do with that, in case anyone is reading, to give the full picture? Anyway, here goes:

 

As a child and adolescent I felt I was the lowest, blackest nastiest oily slime in the bottom of the darkest dankest dungeon of the coldest, most rotten military castle keep used for the most awful purposes in the world (can you tell what sort of books I like to read? :P). I started to realise in my late teens why I felt that way about myself - I began having many flashbacks to my childhood that showed me things I'd been made to do and hat had been done to me that had made me feel that way about myself, plus my parents gave me very bad messages about myself throughout my whole growing up, even when I was just a toddler, and I realised it was not my fault that I'd been part of those things or that those things had been done to me, I would have never chosen to be part of those things myself, so I started to forgive myself and think of myself as a bit of a better person than I'd ever felt I was before, which lightened my heart and helped me enjoy life a little because I no longer felt quite so guilty for being alive (I had often felt I should die but was told by people outside my home that it was a sin to kill yourself, which was probably a good thing or I may have taken that path in order to 'rid the world of my evil', which is what I felt I should do at the time).

 

Anyway, hopefully that's enough from me on that topic. ;)

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Permalink Reply by Aaralyn D on October 4, 2011 at 12:04am

Here I go again, another bout of yapping ;P But I feel this one is very necessary 'cause I'm worried that in what I said in one of my above messages, I may have come across as thinking that menial work is not worthy for people to do? I just thought I'd better tell you how I feel about that truly. :)

 

I believe menial work is very important and must be done. I know in my own life I would be strongly affected by a lack of menial workers and other non-high-flying workers:

• If no-one stacked shelves or served customers at  or drove supplies to my supermarket, it would be a lot harder for me to get food to eat, same if no-one filled the cans that go on the shelves there or worked on the farms that grow the vegies and crops and look after the cattle etc that become the food sold at supermarkets;
• If no-one drove the buses and trains (or cleaned them for our comfort and hygiene) I rely on to get around, I would take a lot longer to get places just on my bicycle (or if I drove a car and no-one worked in the gas stations that provide the fuel for them or in the oil refineries or the trucks that carry the fuel, or in the electricity providers if I owned an electric car, I would find it virtually impossible to use my car, and if no-one chose to be a mechanic my car would stop working after a while because I wouldn't have the expertise to fix everything that goes wrong with it, not to mention if no-one worked in factories that made the replacement parts for the cars);
• If everyone were doctors, who would make the meals for patients, and who would keep the hospitals clean so the doctors could work in hygienic surrounds? Let alone who would do the rest of the stuff that needs doing in this world; :)
• If everyone were rock stars, who would do all the other important tasks in the world that need doing? Who would provide the food, transport, accommodation...?
• & if everyone were politicians, who would be there to implement the plans they made to do with roads, hospitals, schools, childcare, disaster relief etc?

 

So I believe all tasks in this life are important (especially the essential to life ones, like providing food, shelter, clean drinking water and safe waste disposal, as well as providing the soul comfort of music/art etc), they all have their place and people need to take them up. I don't think it's good to look on certain tasks as more important or more worthy than others.

 

I do think we each need to find what tasks we are made for in this life and try to do them, and to the best of our ability, rather than just settling for safe and easy options if we are made for less safe and easy options. ;)

 

& not let others opinions of us, or the tasks we're suited to, stop us from doing them.

 

I hope that makes sense. :) My best wishes to you. :)

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