Recovery Nation

I had a major insight this week that I'd like to share with all of you. I think it signifies a change in the way I view myself

A week ago I did an activity that I haven't done in a year. It's one that I really enjoy and something that I get a big kick out of doing but something that I haven't kept up with. Prior to doing this activity, my inner voice was in high gear. I told myself that I would probably screw things up royally but that I should expect to screw things up because I haven't done this in a year. Well, instead of screwing things up, I did great. I was really proud of myself and very happy with my performance. Yes, I did make some mistakes but considering that I haven't done this activity in over a year, I thought I did very well.

On the ride home, I started thinking about this...I mean really thinking about it. I've always had problems with my negative inner voice. Telling myself I would screw things up, that I'm not smart enough or good enough is nothing new but for the first time in my life I realized that the voice was wrong. It was wrong. I mean it said I was going to screw up but I didn't. It was wrong. I mean it's been wrong before. Wrong more times than right. But for the first time, I really realized it. And then I started thinking about the voice, really trying to conceptualize it. I've always thought that my negative inner voice was my voice but when I conceptualized it, really thought about it, I started visualizing this voice as something outside of myself, something separate from the real me. It was a light bulb moment. I mean this hit me really hard. I conceptualized this thing as something not me. I actually cried. That inner voice wasn't really me? Then what the hell is it?

As I was pondering that thought all week, I had another experience yesterday that explained it all. I took part in an event that helps kids in our community. I felt great. For the first time in my life, I took time out of my life to help others. The sheer joy and feelings of inner peace that I had made all the stresses in my life just melt away. For five hours I was involved in something greater than myself and my negative inner voice was no where to be found.

On my ride home, I started thinking again... I thought about how great I felt and that this was nothing like the thoughts I have following another stress reducing activity I take part in...viewing and masturbating to porn. Instead of belittling myself, I felt ten feet tall. I wasn't crawling along the floor in shame.

And that brought me back to that voice. If it's not me.. what is it...some psycho burble from my terrible childhood, part of my darkened porn twisted soul speaking out? No. Maybe it's the beginning. Maybe I'm starting to clean house. You see I really think that voice is me. I think when I conceptualized it as something separate I was really just separating myself from it. Like garbage, I placed it in a black plastic garbage bag, took it outside and placed it in a garbage can- a mental garbage can, but a garbage can none the less. Maybe, just maybe, it's the first step in real change. Maybe I'm beginning to separate my negative thoughts and my addiction (God i hope ) from the real me. In other words, maybe I'm starting to clean up my own house. I'm finally taking out the garbage. I pray to God that it's really true and not some recovery induced euphoria. I know one thing, though. I'll never listen to that negative inner voice the same way again

_________________
Your story may not have such a happy beginning but that doesn't make you who you are. It is the rest of your story...who you chose to be....

Well done captaindoc2
good realisation that it is all in the mind, your mind, and you now have the insight to know hat you can control your mind
its called maturing
you now have choices make sure that you make the right and healthy ones
keep it up and perhaps post this victory on CB's victories thread

_________________
Remember recovery is more than abstinence
Every transition begins with an ending
stay healthy keep safe
Kenzo

Several months ago I had an incredibly vivid dream. You know the kind? Where you feel like you're making the decisions.

It started with me stumbling through an unlocked door out of a dark and narrow stairwell and into a large, light room. There was a party going on and I didn't recognize anyone, nor was I acknowledged by anyone. Walking about the room I noticed a large glass window overlooking a lower floor of he building and the room I was in was longer than I thought; there were several dividers. In one of those sections I found a man sleeping on some folded blankets on the floor. He was a large, strong and ugly looking man and there were several guys hanging around him. As I approached the man, he awoke and stood up. I already knew who this was but not because I knew his face, it was a gut feeling. Face to face I felt very threatened by him, as if I expected him to be violent with me at any moment. In my mind I assured myself that I could win if it came to fighting but the realization that I was deluding myself overpowered that assurance. Somehow I mustered up the courage to speak and it came out something like this - "I know we've had our differences in the past but what you're doing has to stop now, it is destroying both of us. We need to work together if we are to find any happiness."
Terrified of the confrontation at this point, you can imagine my surprise when the man agreed with me. We shook hands and even shared a hug (not a pleasant one) but a hug all the same. In this dream, that man was my step-brother.

All of a sudden I'm standing in what appears to be a shopping centre. Not your average one mind you, the feeling I had was theme park. There were escalators to the far left with doors leading outside at the bottom of them and a couple of shops around. I didn't notice much to the right but directly in front of me was a children's train ride. The whole place looked pretty damaged and dirty, and there weren't any customers about. There were some employees though. I stood facing the train ride, it was in use at that moment and the operator of the ride was laying down on top of the train smoking a cigarette. I watched for a few minutes as the train went around the track, figure eight, long straight, then into a pitch black hole in the wall. It came out of another equally dark hole a few moments later, the employee still laying there smoking his cigarette. I called him over and he jumped off the train and come on over to see me. "What are you doing? Aren't you supposed to be working?" I asked. "Why? Who would want to come here anyway. This place is a shit hole." He was right. I looked around the place, it really was worn down. Then a wonderful feeling came over me as I looked at the tattered walls and the battered signs. The only way to describe it is a feeling of inheritance. I felt the this place was once someone else's and that I just realized that now it was mine. To do as I wanted with. I turned to the lazy, dopey eyed operator. "Gather the other employees and meet me upstairs in 10 minutes. We're going to fix this place up starting immediately!" I'm not sure I have ever seen someone's eyes light up so bright. The man perked up right away and dropped his cigarette "Yes sir!" He said and ran off to gather the others. Another employee on the second floor must have heard because she ran off shouting that there was a meeting upstairs in 10 minutes. The employees weren't the only ones to feel a rush of excitement, I felt great too. I felt capable and proud of what we were about to accomplish.
I stood there imagining that place come to life when I heard footsteps behind me. My partner touched my arm and when I faced her I could see there was panic in her eyes. "Three, (of course she didn't call me Three!) I have to go now, I'm going to miss my train!" Somehow I knew I had to go too but I couldn't understand. "Now? But there is so much to do here." Torn, I turned away from my theme park/mall and went with my partner to the train station. I could always come back and I knew the people there were motivated and would get some work done while I was gone.

There is more to the dream but I don't have time to tell it like a story. Finally we took the train and it was a hell of a bumpy ride. We made it though and got off in a quite suburban area. I was happy to be there but I didn't know how to get back to my theme park. One day I know I will go back and finish what I started.

The major point of this story is the communication with my step-brother and I. He after all wasn't really my step brother, he was a part of me. I had already dreamt of him before that but I didn't know who is was then. In that dream he killed my girlfriend. I took my reaction to the dream as a sign of my love for my partner. Had I known at the time what the dream really meant things might have been different. You see, I spent my time pretending that the bad part of me wasn't there. I locked it up in behind a big door and try to keep it trapped. I perceived the world through the eyes of 'good Three' and ignored that other part of me. Little did I know that I was deluding myself by thinking he couldn't do any harm behind that locked door. Locking him away meant that he never matured or learned anything different. He resented me for rejecting and punishing him. One day I will be able to accept that part of me and we can be one instead of living a life of duplicity or multiplicity. On that day I believe that I will see him again but this time he won't be my partners ex-boyfriend or my step-brother. He will be me because I will have the strength and the awareness to truly face myself. It is when we are divided that we are at our weakest. It is when we throw those parts to the garbage or trap them in a prison (abstain) that we live in illusion and don't truly recover. That voice comes from a part of you, you're right it isn't you. But it is better to let it know that it can trust and rely on you, that you can work together and use your combined strengths for positive growth than to throw it to the trash. Because there is a lot of strength in the 'negative' parts of us. We just don't always see that strength as a good thing.

Good luck, I hope you could take something from my story.

- Three

Wow, great insights, both of you.

I want to share how I am starting to see these things now, as I have had very similar experiences.



I am sure this is a fairly common experience for everyone here. I doubt there are many who struggle with addictions who have a positive, reinforcing voice in their heads most of the time.



Here is my take on this as I am starting to understand it, in the context of my own belief system (which is increasingly based on Zen Buddhist philosophy, so feel free to interpret this in the context of your own beliefs, as that is what will matter to you).

These thoughts are both you, and they are not you. They are "you" in the sense that these thoughts still come from within your own brain; they don't come from some place else, so they are still part of you. But they are also not "you" in the sense that they do not entirely describe who you are, despite the fact that when we get hit with an onslaught of these thoughts, they fill us with fear and anxiety because we take them to be true, even though we know they are not. You know that these thoughts do not represent the real "you", because otherwise, why would they fill you with so much fear and anxiety? These thoughts contradict the values that you know to be true about yourself, setting up a value conflict which causes the anxiety.

One of the central tenets of Buddhist philosophy is the lack of a permanent, unchanging self; that what you consider to be "yourself" is really just a perception created by your brain and that your "self" in the sense of a individual self is always changing. This doesn't mean you don't exist, just that there is no permanent "I" even though you always have thoughts that seem to give qualities to this "I." However, below this personal self created by the notion of "I", there is a "universal self" which I interpret as those values that you just know to be true about yourself, which are always there underneath...who you really are.

How this has been a beneficial understanding for me is that I have always seen myself to have OCD, where I would have obsessive thoughts that continually caused me anxiety and told me things that I knew were not true about myself. But, it's also apparent to me that everyone has random thoughts from time to time. So the way I see this now is that perhaps for me, for whatever reason (possibly biological), these negative thoughts are just a bit louder and seem more significant to me than other people who don't struggle with this as much. Perhaps for others, these random thoughts are quieter or they can ignore them more easily; I don't know, and it doesn't really matter, at least in the context of me managing my own mental state. But because of this, I've ascribe more meaning and value to these random negative thoughts than they really deserve, which only leads to further delusion and pushes me further away from who I know I really am. These negative thoughts lead to negative emotions which must be managed someone...engaging in compulsive behaviours then further leads to more negative thoughts and behaviours, which further warps your sense of identity away from what you know to be true.

This has been my understanding as I've went on...and what I've found to be interesting is that, as I keep managing my life, rooting out unhealthy thought patterns and doing my practice, my head gets clearer and clearer and I continue to realize that, as you have...that negative voice is not you. But also, I have begun to realize that that "real me" and what I truly valued that felt so far away really has always been there in the background...my mind was just so chaotic before that it was difficult to realize. Some may call that "real you" a universal self...some may call it your "soul"...but really, that's all getting into philosophical discussions (even though it's important for your recovery to determine what you believe).

So, that's just how I am coming to see it. Take that for what it's worth.

Also, interesting dream Three. What do you think the theme park, and your partner pulling you away from the theme park, signified?

Boundless

_________________
"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."

"Be a lamp unto yourself."

- Buddha

I have a theory that will explain the inheritance feeling. I call it the puppet theory and it kind of goes as follows.

'I' am the puppet master. On my left hand I dangle an 'evil puppet' and on my right hand I dangle a 'good puppet'. Somewhere during my 'puppet' show I became so immersed in my story that I started to believe that the puppets were me. In some moment's I was the 'evil puppet' and when I saw what I was becoming I switched myself over to the 'good puppet'. So immersed did I become that I forgot that I was the one making up the story. Being the 'good puppet' all I ever wanted was to be good, do the right thing, be respectful, gentle, honest and kind. I wanted to reach my aspirations and be that man I could see in my dreams. But, always the 'bad puppet' was there to stop me, he was disrespectful, negative, dishonest... The complete opposite of 'good' little me, and most importantly, he was stronger. Every day the two puppets would battle and every day would end with my failure to be what I dreamed so much to be. The day that I opened up to my partner was the day that I realized this illusion. I always saw these puppets as parts; My good part and my bad part. I always gave more power to the bad part because I saw him as separate from myself. With the realization that I am the puppet master and these parts are my illusion I can truly be myself. Unfortunately it is easier said than done.

I re-read it and it isn't as clear as I would like but I think it gets the message across.

The theme park is everything about who I am. It is a symbolic combination of the 'inner workings' of my being. It is everything that I value about myself. In all of my 'self discovery' dreams there is a 'bad guy' and several other people who are significant, though originally I dismissed the several others. In this dream the bad guy had several people hanging around him. I believe that those several people were also the employees in my theme park. 'I' as the perspective from which I experience the dream is a significant 'part' of me. The good part. The good puppet. The bad guy is another significant 'part' of me. My arch-enemy. The evil puppet. The two most dominant aspects of my life, fighting for control over the whole being in which they exist. The several others are different 'parts' of me. The train operator represents health and activity to me. The others I haven't really met yet, but they all seem to follow whichever dominant 'part' is in charge.

My partner leading me away from the theme park signifies that her life is in motion. She certainly has her own 'theme park' to take care of but it is most likely a much brighter place than mine - perhaps she has learned that she takes that place with her where ever she goes. My partner has direction and vision and she wants me to go with her. My reluctance to leave is because I felt that little would get done if I left it behind and ending up in a place I didn't know with no knowledge of how to return - signifies that I will not be working on repairing myself and feel lost as to how if I go with my partner into that future.

The dream I had after that was also in a train station but this time we knew which train to catch but we were late. We knew we missed the train but we were okay with that because we knew that there would be another one if we waited.

- Three