Understanding Myself
And maybe learning to be a little kind to myself too
This child reminds me a bit of me at a similar age.
March 5
Understanding Myself
EDA Core Concepts Writing Meeting
Prompts
We needed to become reliable, calm, and supportive to ourselves. Write about your progress in this area.
We take small risks to develop trust with ourselves. Write about how you are putting this suggestion to work in your life.
One writer said that “taking care of my basic needs without guilt or shame” has cultivated self-trust. Write about that.
Self-trust grew as I learned to listen to myself with interest and curiosity. Write about your willingness to engage with yourself in this way.
https://odysee.com/@visantet:8/Queen--The-Game%2C-Full-Album:6?r=GTwnGJ4fFBQfzuJgpHVpfKBKaC9b8B16
Our soundtrack this morning is Queen’s The Game. If there is a cooler song than Dragon Attack, I’d like to hear it!
Anyway, regarding the fourth prompt...
I watched an interview with David Bowie where he discussed his songwriting process. He kept a little notebook with him and would write down whatever odd phrases popped into his head that he found interesting. Later, he would take those thought snippets, cut them out, mix them up, and draw a few of them at random. These sentences would form the basis for songs.
I enjoy constructing poems from a random starter line or a selection of words. I find that I end up working on poetry a couple of times a year. I still haven’t figured out how to have a balanced approach to my writing.
Another thing David said that stuck with me was he did a lot of journaling because it helped him learn things about himself. He said, “I’m a bit of a mystery to me.”
His way of phrasing his desire to understand himself struck a chord with me. (See what I did there? Musician? Chord? I didn’t mean to do it, honestly.) In the past I had always berated myself for being “so weird.” My inner critic told me that journaling was a hippie-dippy, namby-pamby, self-indulgent waste of time.
“That’s just like you to be thinking about yourself, like always,” she would sneer whenever I tried to do a journaling session.
There are many reasons why I feel David Bowie was a gift to the world, his kindness and his talent being among them. However, he also gave me permission to work on understanding myself, something I had never yet been able to do. I am grateful.
EDA Thursday Writing Meeting
Prompt #1
EDA Recovery Tools pamphlet
Tools help us achieve the goal of building trust – with ourselves, God/Higher Power/higher purpose, and others:
▪️ Trust
o Trust means being conscious of our thoughts and actions, and doing no harm.
It certainly took me a hot minute to learn that trusting myself is integral to my recovery. I have to live with myself 24-7. There is no vacation from being me. If I can’t trust myself to at least be compassionate with me, it makes life very difficult.
I seem to have a gift for always taking the hard way with things. The concept of loving myself is completely alien to me. I need to change the language on this because it is never going to resonate with me. I can accept myself, like myself, respect myself, make a truce with myself, learn to live at peace with myself.
I don’t agree that I can’t love anyone else because I don’t love myself. There are those I love with every fiber of my being whom I would give everything for. My problems with myself don’t change that.
Still, always being at war with myself makes it difficult if not impossible to make positive changes. I used to confuse perfection with improvement. I got the idea in my head that in order to be successful, I needed to be not just practically perfect in every way but absolutely perfect in every way. Compared to my inner taskmaster, Mary Poppins is a slacker.
According to the inner critic, being clean and well groomed is not enough. Being pleasant-looking is nowhere near good enough. I needed to be stunning! If I had looked like Rita Hayworth in her prime, that would have been acceptable. However, that is not even close to what I looked like, and my inner critic berated me mercilessly for it.
It’s all about looks with my inner critic. She’s a shallow bitch. Why should I jump through flaming hoops for this jerk? Of course, my inner critic is a reflection of a society that sees it as acceptable to shame and ridicule people for not being stunningly attractive. We live in a vanity-based society where physical appearance overrides all other traits or accomplishments.
It is time I take a stand against such ugliness.
Prompt #2
Daily Meditations: Reflections on Recovery from EDA Members*
January 4
“I looked up to see the feeder tilting precariously sideways. An iridescent green hummingbird was taking a drink, completely unbothered despite having to perch at an odd angle. There had been no questioning, no giving up. The little hummingbird simply flew in and landed where it needed to be, making small adjustments as it went”.
Other creatures in the animal kingdom often seem so much better than humans. I’ve always said that I like people in a one on one context, but I despise the human race. We are such destructive creatures. We ravage the planet. We savage other beings. We brutalize one another. If I had to vote for a race that should go extinct for the sake of the world, it would be humans, hands down.
I realize what a misanthropic statement this is. I am not actually wishing for the elimination of the human race, even if I long ago gave up on the idea of people changing for the better. My fiction writing reflects my inner thoughts. I am much more likely to write dystopian than solarpunk.
I find the fact that most of my published stories have been romances hilarious. I am one of the most unromantic people on the planet. I finally faced the ugly truth that I have never been in love, not even when I felt like I would just die if I couldn’t be with a certain guy. That wasn’t love, it was limerence. Limerence is a manifestation of trauma.
Still, there’s something satisfying about writing a story where, unlike in my life, things work out for a couple. Even if I manage to choose a guy who isn’t abusive, I blow things up with my jealousy and insecurity. I came to the conclusion that I’m better off not pursuing such relationships. I’m not interested in having such a connection anymore anyway. My physical and emotional problems take up enough of my time and energy. I have enough left over for family, but nothing left to give for anything else.
It makes me tired and more than a little frustrated to think about all the time I wasted trying to find some kind of Hallmark romance. Hallmark romance is in the dictionary next to the word “unrealistic.” It’s time to get real.
Ornery Owl Has Spoken
Resources
Eating Disorders Anonymous