Dear RedDress:

You wrote that you came to the conclusion that you love hating yourself and ruining your life. Your own words from previous threads are proof that you are not motivated to ruin your life, and to cause yourself pain. Here are your words:

“I just want to be treated right… I do not want to be alone and I want a good relationship… I protect myself… I want to (be) wise and strong… I want to be cherished… wish I could feel happiness and contentment during the day and feel like I have a purpose and goal that I am achieving… I just really want to FEEL. I want to FEEL that feeling that I see in other people when they do something great. I want to feel a rush of positive emotions through my brain and body”.

You wrote here: “inside… I’m not ready to change”- it is not because you don’t want to change. It is because change is very difficult for everyone. I am referring to the commitment to change, change on an ongoing basis, as in a process of changing, a lasting changing.

Our brains are formed as children, beliefs, experiences, habits, all recorded there, triggered and re-experienced and it takes literally a re-wiring of the brain to change these things on an ongoing basis. That takes time and commitment as well as lots and lots of patience.

anita

Dear RedDress:

“whenever I wanted something, I’d work for it and get it… I’d work restlessly to get it. Usually I’d succeed! That is how I got good grades in school”- so you figure, if you want to “become more likeable to people.. more open and trusting around men”, then you should be able to achieve it, just like you achieved good grades in school.

This is why it is way easier to achieve good grades in school but it is very difficult to achieve those other things: when you study hard, let’s say, read and try to remember events and dates from world war 1, there is no voice inside of you saying something like: what you are reading is not true! No such as world war, didn’t happen, you are making it up! Or: it didn’t happen that way, it happened this way!

That would be a troubling voice, wouldn’t it, take your focus away from the reading material and trouble you. You wouldn’t know who to believe: the reading material in front of you or the Voice.

Fortunately there was no  such voice when you studied in school.

On the other hand, when you try to succeed in those other things, you do have that voice saying to you, as you stated in your recent post: “‘wow, you really thought you could be charismatic and open?! No! You are awkward and strange and unlikeable. It is who you are, why try and change!'”

You didn’t have a core belief about word war one when you studied in school, so you were open to receive the information you were reading. But you do have a core belief about your likeability that is raining on your parade, so to speak, standing in your way of changing.

Let me know what you think, will you?

anita

Dear RedDress:

There are things that are determined genetically: the color of your eyes, for example. On the other hand, likeability is not determined genetically, not at all(not as a predisposition or otherwise). Being charming, charismatic, or socially awkward, these too are not determined genetically. People skills are not genetically determined.

In other words, if you, RedDress had a different home life as a child, a different environment, you could have been at the present time a very likeable, charismatic person with great social skills.

This is why it is so difficult to change these things, being socially awkward, for example: even though we are not born socially awkward, connections (aka neuropathways) in our brains are made early on, starting very early in childhood. These connections contain what we believe about ourselves and about life (core beliefs) as well as emotions attached to these beliefs. Fear is a powerful emotion that is part of many of these connections.

It is very difficult to act not in line with those core beliefs. It feels fake. It is uncomfortable.

So you feel uncomfortable faking the behavior of a charismatic person, let’s say, but then you feel  uncomfortable acting awkward. If being socially awkward was who you were authentically, it would not feel uncomfortable.

By nature, we are born to connect with other people. This is genetic. So when we fail to connect, we suffer. We fail to connect because we formed core belief that are not true to reality.

Changing behavior, changing what you referred to as personality traits, takes the slow, gradual, intentional process of rewiring the brain, that is, forming new connections, new neuropathways.

Over time, the new connections change the mapping of the brain and so, the change you want is possible. But unlike the simple forming of connections when studying an academic subject, you have to endure the distress of the old connections while forming new. And you have to be very patient with the slow, slow process.

anita