in listening to dr gabor mate I've gained an important insight into myself, namely that i live a lot of my life in the realm of hungry ghosts, always looking for something from the outside to feed me, and wonder if, as he says, my parents were under a lot of stress when I was young. it would explain why I've rocked myself to sleep for 49 years, obviously a self-soothing technique that raises my dopamine levels, and makes me feel connected as I think in whirl-wind about people and events, while I rock myself to sleep.
This puts my sudden enthrallment with the stories presented by "the Left" in relief. Am I so concerned about these issues, or are they a device whereby my body can generate a dopamine drip, in compensation for being around parents who weren't emotionally calm and available when I was young. They were young and without much education, my dad was innappropriately mad, and was probably suffering from developmental problems himself, and used alcohol to self-sooth himself.
How am i doing as a father, of a fourteen year old?
I haven't managed my expectations, and my love life, so have fallen into ways of thinking that justify my anger, and playing out small vignettes or drama-lets...five minutes of "being right" about this or that, using my family members a foil for these little plays, essentially my body bitching about not having my needs met for a very long time.
And no one else in the house is having their needs met either.
So, to say that we can't have a rational conversation about simple things is true, how do you talk about your feelings when your wife won't have sex with you for two years? It really needs family counselling.
On my part, I have felt a certain, healthy, sense of shame after these realizations, and that awareness has really prevented me from getting screwed up as I had been getting so easily and so frequently. Now I find I am able to use the tools I learned in Anger Management class, to do thought stopping, thought replacement, or writing down my feelings in the mood-log format to get at what's really driving me.
These realizations have given me a better understanding of my id and super-ego, and can sometimes see those components of myself in my thoughts, the ways I self-sooth and make myself right or just how i think i fit in (how I think I think I fit in, and how i've been white-washing the situation for a long time).
I've even, in the last few days, been more attuned to the spin on Democracy Now. There was a favorite story about to be re-hashed and I noticed the way it was completely over-stated, and it made me think I may have just exchanged one lens for another's in switching from the popular media to the Left's.
So, in effect what I've been bitching about is my own stupidity. As I am the one who was not a cautious news consumer. And I am the one who has hidden from the learning I so desire (I mean that I say to myself often that i feel most alive when i am learning something new, but when superiors have asked me to acquire specific new knowledge I have often run and hid).
So, now I'm at a point where my Life Training instructors said is the Kairos moment, the one moment that allows transformation. In other words, "what do i want to do about it?"
(sigh)
I am much more hopefull of change for the better, having been given this set of realizations, and having started on this path of self-treatment, but of course have to get my family on board or enroll others who can help me develop. And I've already formed a new understanding with my daughter, and need to deepen and strengthen our understanding, because in the absense of my spouse's help, I need hers more than ever.
We'll see.
na, keep it.
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