If I have a business and I need to always feel productive, it’s likely because I then won’t have to shame myself. If I meet my goals and impress people, I won’t have to punish myself or feel bad. If I am addicted to punishing myself, and I’m not quite willing to give up that addiction. So I continue to try to escape this game of punishment by fulfilling demands and roles that I think are useful, when they’re actually preventing me from facing my inner reality.
My inner reality may be scarier to face than the effort it takes to earn my place in society.
My fixation on earning my worth causes me to abandon the feelings inside my nervous system. Whenever I’m abandoning my internal experience, that character I’m playing is what I call “me”. This is a fictional character generated by the abandonment mechanism.
When I’m honestly being with myself, not making meanings out of anything, letting the energy be there without taking it personally, and having no resistance, this is when I am allowing my true self.
My habit is to rationalize things to abandon my feelings, so being this character I call me is an addiction which doesn’t serve my values.
The values I’m serving when I imagine myself to be this avoidant mechanism I call me are shadow values which reinforce shame and guilt, attempting to bully myself into performing a certain way.
The actual freedom I need to remember and have experienced in the past is a very simple and honest experience. True freedom is not what my avoidance thinks it is. If I am trying to escape from a painful lifestyle or experience, I am no longer available for experiencing freedom.
