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August 27, 2018 at 12:25 pm in reply to: I think I need a rebrith. I believe I need to change myself completelty. #223273
Peter
ParticipantHi KP
This may sound trite however Henry Ford was correct when he said â âThe only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.â
If you are doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different outcome, repeating what you measure as being the same mistakes over and over again then you need to step back and ask yourself why. From the list you provided its clear you know what you want and also clear that you have some level of self awareness of what is keeping you from achieving your goals. â Laziness and perfectionism.
Perfectionism can be an excise for laziness. If I canât be perfect, why try? An excuse to perfectly avoid risk and failure, which is what perfectionism amounts to â a fear of failing and change. And like all such fears it creates itself, failure. (he mistake we make over and over again) Its possible then that your goals are not goals but dreams, if onlyâs, fantasy that you donât really intend to work towards.
In your title you mention the idea a rebirth. A practice of mindfulness and meditation might help you center yourself. At some level each breath we take is a rebirth, every inhale life every exhale a death, every breath a possibility of reincarnation. You are not your thoughts, you are not your memories, you are not your emotions, you are not your judgments, you are not your bodyâŠ
Peter
ParticipantHi Mary
Of course our relationship to our idea and experience of love has many layers.. family , friendship, romantic, self… Universial
The commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, at first glance seems straight forward, yet what does it mean to love ourselves and how does that relate to how we love others. When you look at what it means to love how fortunate we are that the command was not to like our neighbor as ourselves. We can love someone we do not like, even those that who hurt us (even if that means the relationship end… and if we understand love) so much more difficult to like someone we do not love.
I feel that is what we work for in the practice, I feel that is how we love ourselves even when we don’t always like ourselves. In such a state of being we are “nice” because that is who we are, our authentic selves, and being authentic enough.
Just finished a book called -Touching the World A Blind Woman Two Wheels 25000 Miles – about a motorcycle road trip around the world. Everywhere they went they were told to be careful, the people in such a such nation were bad and yet they found that everywhere they went people were people just like them.
Taped to the bikes windshield was a note: What you see depends on what you look for. By the end of their travels they added the word mostly, the were not blind to the reality of the road, yet at a personal level it proved true over and over. When they needed help, help was their, when they needed kindness, kindness was their. Crossing the world it was a authentic smile, a wave and good hummer more then anything helped them navigate their way through.
My experience has been the same, the car goes where the eyes go.
Peter
ParticipantShe’s standing somewhere and I approach to talk to her, telling her that I don’t want to leave college not being on speaking terms with her. She gives me this contemptuous, disdainful look (as she sometimes did after our growing apart) and says it is common knowledge what a lying hypocrite I am.
In dream interpretation the people we dream about can represent attributes of the dreamer. (the image of your ex is projected into the dream via your unconscious so is almost always about the dreamer. Dreams communicate via images that mean something to the dream and can point to areas in the dreamerâs life that the unconscious wishes to make conscious. Making the issue conscious will end the dream)
The question to ask yourself is what associations (words) come to mind that your ex might symbolize. Love lost, Contempt, hypocrisyâsâŠ. How might those associations relate to leaving college: Associations to the word/symbol College, what you learned, your expectation of how life should work⊠what you imagined you would be, do
If this were my dream I would wonder if there wasnât some tension between what I was taught and how life is presenting itself.
Do I trust the idea of Love? Are there any areas in my life were my actions donât match my values? Am I trying to force life to conform to how I was taught it should be, want it to be? Could this dissidence be impacting relationships and or my expectations of love?Peter
ParticipantWhat are the odds⊠ I like the idea of Synchronicity.
âSynchronicity: A meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.â â â “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully relatedâ Â Â â Carl Jung â
In the Hermetic riddle: as above so below, so below as above⊠which Iâve taken to mean that, as above so below, we are influenced as much (most) of our lives are determined by outside factors.  But, as below so above, we also influence as in co-creators. (this idea of co-creation appears in most wisdom traditions in some for or another. The idea of synchronicity is about how it is that we might influence co-create reality.
In his book Synchronicity Jung tells the following story as an example of a synchronistic event:
My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably “geometrical” idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that would burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab â a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window-pane from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), whose gold-green colour most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, “Here is your scarab.” This experience punctured the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results
Peter
ParticipantHi I loveshopping
Sorry if it sounds trite but, “just do it”. Just Paint, paint with out making self judgments. Experiment, take classes, be bold.
If painting was like shopping what would it look like?
Peter
ParticipantWhat you describe is normal, in that most people at some point in their lives have experience of such negative self-talk, if not a daily occurrence at some level. Â You are correct that such negative self-talk can become a habit.
Youâre on the right track by noticing and asking yourself what the payoff of such self-talk has for you.
Its interesting that at a phycological symbolic level the âstep motherâ in the hero journey often represents negative self talk and inability to positively nurture themselves that the hero needs to overcome.
As we transition into adulthood one of the tasks is to come to terms with the mother/father complex. This may or may not have anything to do with our parents but instead is about taking ownership nurturing/protecting ourselves. Positively connecting to the mother/father archetypes.
Peter
ParticipantHi Dear dreaming715
There is a lot of cognitive dissonance and distortion in the stories you are telling yourself. The good news is that no drugs are required to make these distortions conscious.
I would suggest starting a practice of mindfulness and noticing when and where you start to label yourself, positively or negatively. The task here is just to notice and not to judge and label yourself based on what you notice, which will just feed on its self. There are allot of helpful articles on the site just google tinybudda mindfulness
One of the tasks of individuation is coming to terms with the mother complex. The complex may touch on your experiences with your mother however is really about coming to terms with the mother archetype and taking ownership of how you nurture yourself.
Based on your post your relationship to your âinner motherâ is that as âthe step motherâ, an inner voice always telling you that youâre not good enough.  Your task is to heed the call of the heroâs journey and confront the step mother.  I recommend the book âWomen Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetypeâ  by Clarissa Pinkola EstĂ©s as a guide
Imagine how quite your mind might become when it no longer attaches it self to comparisons, labels, shoulds and if onlyâs.
Stopping Comparisons: Reclaim Reality and Raise Your Self-Esteem
Peter
ParticipantI do not know anyone who has not struggled with coming to terms with Cognitive dissonance/distortions at some time in their life.
Particularly during the transition from one stage of life to another. During these transitions what we were taught, how ‘life should be’ comes in into conflict with our experiences. In many cases we will work very hard to deny that any dissonance exists and admitting any dissonance threatens our sense of identity and belonging to our community. (Equals sadness, depression, existential angst) As Socrates suggests coming to terms with such dissonance and distortions require the life long purist to “Know Thy-Self”
For me the study of how the stories we tell ourselves influence our experiences has been a great help. How much do the stories we tell ourselves create our experiences and how much do our experiences create our stories? Its always a bit of both I think, so its important that we become conscious of when which is happening and in this way, Â we become the master of our stories.
A book I found that help a great deal with this idea of mastering our stories was ‘Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High‘ by Kerry Patterson
You might be asking yourself how a book about communication could help with CMT to which I would answer that Conversation is not just about how we talk to others but also how we talk to ourselves. Becoming the master of how you speak with yourself and you are well on the way to mastering your stories and recognising any dissonance before they take you for a ride.
Another exercise that I found helpful with CMT is becoming aware of the most common cognitive distortions. In this way when I hear myself telling a story I am better able to identity any distortions I may be creating. This creates a space to where I can respond to a experience vice react.
15 common cognitive distortions
- Filtering. We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.
- Polarized Thinking (or âBlack and Whiteâ Thinking). In polarized thinking, things are either âblack-or-white.â We have to be perfect or weâre a failure â there is no middle ground. You place people or situations in âeither/orâ categories, with no shades of gray or allowing for the complexity of most people and situations. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
- Overgeneralization. In this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.
- Jumping to Conclusions. Without individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling toward us.
- Catastrophizing. We expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as âmagnifying or minimizing.â We hear about a problem and use what if questions (e.g., âWhat if tragedy strikes?â âWhat if it happens to me?â). With practice, you can learn to answer each of these cognitive distortions.
- Personalization. Personalization is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to the person. We also compare ourselves to others trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc.
- Control Fallacies. If we feel externally controlled, we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, âI canât help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work overtime on it.â The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. For example, âWhy arenât you happy? Is it because of something I did?â
- Fallacy of Fairness. We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people wonât agree with us. As our parents tell us when weâre growing up and something doesnât go our way, âLife isnât always fair.â People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its âfairnessâ will often feel badly and negative because of it. Because life isnât âfairâ â things will not always work out in your favor, even when you think they should.
- Blaming. We hold other people responsible for our pain, or take the other track and blame ourselves for every problem. For example, âStop making me feel bad about myself!â Nobody can âmakeâ us feel any particular way â only we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.
- Shoulds. We have a list of ironclad rules about how others and we should behave. People who break the rules make us angry, and we feel guilty when we violate these rules. A person may often believe they are trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldnâts, as if they have to be punished before they can do anything. For example, âI really should exercise. I shouldnât be so lazy.â Musts and oughts are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs should statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.
- Emotional Reasoning. We believe that what we feel must be true automatically. If we feel stupid and boring, then we must be stupid and boring. You assume that your unhealthy emotions reflect he way things really are â âI feel it, therefore it must be true.â
- Fallacy of Change. We expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.
- Global Labeling. We generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. These are extreme forms of generalizing, and are also referred to as âlabelingâ and âmislabeling.â Instead of describing an error in context of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to themselves.
- Always Being Right. We are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, âI donât care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, Iâm going to win this argument no matter what because Iâm right.â Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even loved ones.
- Heavenâs Reward Fallacy. We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when the reward doesnât come.
Peter
ParticipantHi Tonorli
“everyone says love and being loved in return is the best thing” And yet few will agree on what this thing we call Love is.
We say thing like. “Love is all we need” and we sense there is a truth to the statement yet because we define love so narrowly (and our expectations of Love) we worry it might be a lie, or worse that its truth might not be meant for us, perhaps because something is “wrong” with us.
After the end of a loving relationship who have not asked themselves “Whats love got to do with it”…. Everything and Nothing?
Having found myself asking similar questions I found the following book helpful. âHow to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Lovingâ by David Richo
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August 12, 2018 at 2:56 pm in reply to: Searching For Stillness, Uninvolved parents and Now I am a lost adult #221251Peter
ParticipantHi Zita
“There is a lot of chaos inside me and I keep searching for that stillness”
If you have ever read anything about chaos theory you might see that there is order in chaos. If you can learn to breathe through this paradox you may find that within chaos there is also stillness.
Stillness is a paradox. Even when we are still we are moving at amazing speeds through the universes. From which point then can we measure that we are still? The word Seeking is a verb, life is karma (action) cause and affect / movement. As long as someone is seeking stillness as separate from movement it will never be found.
It is when your mind can be calm within movement, the center of the hub of the spinning wheel, that you will discover what you seek and what you seek you already possess.
Here is a riddle for you
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” – TS ElliotPeter
ParticipantThe great thing about having no-thing is that it contains all things.
âAlways we begin again.â – St Benedict
The realty of each breath is that it is a moment of both a death and rebirth. With each breath we empty ourselves and start again.
âThe Rule teaches that if we take control of our lives, if we are intentional and careful in how we spend the hours of each irreplaceable day, if we discipline ourselves to live in a balanced and thankful way, we will create from our experiences, whatever they may be, the best possible life. â John McQuiston – Always We Begin Again
The unexpected is always upon us. And of all the gifts arrayed before me, this one thought at this moment in my life is the most precious. And so, we begin again. – Feast of Love
Peter
ParticipantHi Nirvair
I have a friend that is certain that she can remember many past lives and like many who have the same experience spends a lot of time looking for ways to prove the experiences are “real”. (begs the question what makes a experience real? )
My opinion is that such searches to prove and explain the experiences are interesting but often misses the opportunity to learn something about ourselves from them.
A question I might ask myself is what blue eyes might mean to me. Blue is often symbol of spirituality and enlightenment but it is also a symbol for cold. Can “enlightenment” also leave one feeling cold?
I like what the bible has to say about such experiences – “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” There is a time to share such experiences but also a time to treasure them up. Words have a bad habit of diminishing a experiences, especially the words of others who are more then willing to tell you what qualifies as a real experience.
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This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by
Peter.
August 2, 2018 at 6:59 pm in reply to: Can this relationship still work after NC for a while? #220105Peter
ParticipantHi Gracie
My opinion, for what its worth and having been that guy, would be to say that I don’t think its worth trying to reach out or playing the friend game when you know you want more.
There is some truth to the saying âIf you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesnât, then it was never meant to beâ. Leave the ball stay in this guys hands. He made the choice to end the relationship which I think you should honor. If you attempt to re-engage there will be the possibly he will dig in or use the experience (probably unconsciously) to keep you off balance and or create a co-dependent relationship.
There is the possibility that the two of you are attracted to each other in the hopes of healing each other. However, that requires a great deal of self knowledge from both sides, as well as a agreement to do the work.
If he does reach out to you be careful that you understand your boundaries and keep them, or you will find yourself in the same situation again and again
I recommend the book âHow to be an Adult in Relationshipsâ if you want to challenge your ideas about your expectations of relationship.
When you are dating â unsuccessfully â it can feel like you’re repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
Humans are creatures of habit, and out of a subconscious desire to re-live and correct the issues from our past, we may seek out the same sort of partners and find ourselves in a destructive cycle.
Some people may do this because they have an unhealthy attachment style, which is the way they form bonds and connect to others.
One style is called “avoidant attachment,” according to psychotherapist Allison Abrams, our experiences in childhood shape our style of attachment, which then becomes the template for how we behave in future relationships.
“Insecure attachment styles, such as avoidant attachment, usually stem from some sort of early trauma,” she said. “When our needs aren’t met consistently by our primary caregivers, we form the belief that they won’t be met by any significant other, [and] that we can’t ever rely on others.”
Essentially, it is a defense mechanism, and people with avoidant attachment style may completely avoid relationships altogether, or keep anyone new they meet at a distance. They may sabotage their blossoming romances out of nowhere, because they are scared their new partner will leave them â so they get in there first.
“This is an unconscious attempt to make sure that they never again go through anything like they went through with their original caregiver,” Abrams said. “The irony is that by engaging in these defenses that we’ve learned we are actually recreating the very thing we were trying to avoid.”
Avoidant people find faults in anyone
Rather than letting a relationship grow naturally, an avoidant person tends to dwell on areas they are unsatisfied with. While people with healthy attachment styles are able to compromise with their partners and focus on the positives, avoidant people cannot. They zero in on minor flaws and imagine how they were happier being single, or how they might be better off finding someone else.
And they don’t just harm themselves. They often attract people with an anxious attachment style, who give up all their own needs to please and accommodate their partner.Anxiously attached people become incredibly unhappy and worried about being too much or too little for the person they are dating, and take everything incredibly personally.
August 2, 2018 at 1:26 pm in reply to: Can this relationship still work after NC for a while? #220079Peter
ParticipantSounds to me like the guy has issues with the idea of love and relationship in general.
For whatever reasons he’s not ready or willing to to work on a relationship. This is about him not you, and better you know now before spending anymore time on it. You can’t fix him. If you did get back together, my bet is that it will become one of those on again, off again, on again, off again…. relationships.Peter
ParticipantHi Kaledoscope: (Great name –Â mirrors and color whose reflections produce changing patterns… we are more then sum of our parts, more wondrous then we imagine ourselves to be. Note mirroring plays a important part in counselling… )
Counselling can become complex, what with transference and counter transference. The reality is therapists are human with there own stuff to work out. A good therapist will know when their stuff is getting in the way of âseeingâ there clients. Actually, this noticing can provide clues to the therapist about what the client needs to address.
Anyway, its inevitable in a long-term counselling relationship for there to be a fall out. More often then not such âfalloutsâ are needed as part of the healing process. Life demands growth and sometimes counselling can become a to safe place that keeps us the same. When this happens, Life will challenge the relationship. In this case the consoling relationship is providing you with an opportunity to deal with your fear of confrontation. Imagine being fully honest with your therapist and telling him the concerns that you have mention in your post? How would you feel about yourself if you were able to talk about your concerns without fear of what the reply might be? There is nothing in what you said that is embarrassing or are even that confrontational for a professional.
As in all relationships there is always a desire of growth, for all involved, however there is also a desire that things stay the same. Noticing when the confrontation is present is a opportunity that can lead to a âawakeningâ
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