The problem is me. My personality. The way I think about and react to things. I cause myself huge amounts of needless, pointless distress. But I’m also way too stubborn to change that. I’m so in love with hating myself at this point that I won’t ever let myself change.
I need a personality transplant. This one isn’t viable anymore. It sabotages any attempt to help it. The rot has gone too deep. I need to be brainwashed. Mindwiped. Reprogrammed. Basically I need someone to imprison me, erase all my memories, and totally retrain me like a newborn child.
Of course that isn’t possible. Any intervention depends on my personal commitment. And my personality is fucking ridiculous.
5 comments
I think you will find that even the most apparently pointless things that you do achieve some desired end goal. It’s hurting the rest, but it does something for you. That’s the bitter pill; you choose who you are, and you do it every day.
Granted I’m no better. In the end the only thing left to “save” me is my savage fury at being underestimated. This, which I still consider a flaw, will either make or destroy me. I’m stubborn to the point that I will throw away anything and everything necessary to secure my freedom. Past that, I don’t know a damn thing, but I know that I want to be free of specific pressures because only then can I make my stubbornness obsolete.
Hmmm, not sure. For example, I assume the subconscious aim of much of my social anxiety is to alter my behaviour so I’m more socially acceptable, whereas it often has the opposite effect. I suppose in some ways that part of me is still satisfied by simply being able to get good and anxious, but it doesn’t really achieve anything beyond that.
I do indeed choose who I am, but the me that is choosing is formed of countless subconscious contradictory aspects, which themselves were formed by chains of causation stretching far beyond me. I can tell myself that I will be confident and calm as much as I want, but that doesn’t stop my brain getting hijacked as soon as I walk out the door.
It sounds like you still have a lot of fight in you. I’m pretty low on that right now – I can’t convince myself I’ll ever be anything better than this.
It is completely and totally possible through the process of integrating your shadow as outlined by Carl Jung, so the question becomes are you willing to do that or are you just going to stick your head in the sand
I’ve found the idea of ‘shadow integration’ interesting for a while now. I just struggle to see how to integrate aspects of myself that are so fundamentally opposed. Some key aspects of me are genuinely destructive and cannot be acted on in any meaningful sense. I also can’t discuss them freely with therapists (or anyone else.) So it’s hard to know how to make progress in that regard, but perhaps you could elaborate?
I like the idea of it, but whether or not I’m willing to seems likely to fluctuate depending on mood. Sticking my head in the sand would always seem to be the default. I can and will be both ridiculous and do ridiculous things.
You can be ridiculous or you can do ridiculous things