9 things Things I no Longer Believe

A few years ago, I had a terrible omen-like vision of bitterness in the distance running towards me at a breakneck speed. It was the first time in my life that I can remember worrying about becoming bitter and was sparked by an experience fostering a dog of all the things.

I had the sense that if I didn't realize my dreams soon, it was going to be too late and I would become one of those bitter, cynical people who had given up on life. I felt that if something didn't change soon, bitterness was going to seep into my bones and become a part of my physiology and that simply willing myself to "mind over matter" things was no longer enough - things were falling apart faster than they were coming together, and nothing I was doing was working anymore. It was one of the worst feelings I had ever experienced and the start of new level of depression, despair and hopelessness that lasted the next three years.

Now, up until that point, each year that had passed since my dark high school years I had actually felt like I was getting younger - more hopeful, more innocent, more connected to myself and my dreams. Inspired by my eastern philosophy (mostly buddhism) upbringing, at the age of 17, I realized that the negativity I had somehow become proud of in myself was really just an ego identity I'd copied from my mom - that I was just a shell of a person, and that there was another way to see the world - things didn't have to be so grim. It was a genuinely empowering realization, and so off I went to college determined to become a well adjusted positive person and eventually attain some form of spiritual mastery. 

And it seemed that year after year I was moving forward, becoming more well adjusted, having more positive experiences with people that counteracted my early experiences of low self worth. But, for reasons I still don't fully understand, it wasn't really the progress I had thought, and the skills I acquired over the two decades following high school were no match for the realities of life, let a lone for a creative entrepreneurship journey. 

Little did I know that how I felt in high school was perhaps not the best baselines to compare my progress in life. The despair, bitterness, negativity and anger I felt and acted out in high school was quite intense. So in a way, each year I felt myself feeling more confident was really just me digging myself out of massive disregulation and into a semi-functioning emotionally regulated "adult" state. It was not me healing some great wounds or "catching" up to people who had been born with stable regulated systems, as I delusionally thought was going on.

Little did I know, all the work I had done so far was built on the faulty premise that there was something wrong with me, that it was my fault I couldn't be mindful and in the moment. 

Little did I know that I had embarked on a healing processes without proper guidance and support, and what was really going on those two decades after high school was me swinging to another extreme - desperately willing myself to see the positive in everything, while rejecting the parts of myself that had been negative and cynical (sometimes for good reason!). I had concluded that those parts of me were all faulty and been mistaken perceptions of the world and that I could simply decide one day to see things positively and be done with it.

But I now know that true healing can't happen in an atmosphere of rejection. You don't grow up to be a suicidal 15 year old simply because you were "just being negative", or even due to some chemical imbalance in the brain. The level of emotional instability I demonstrated back then (and even onward through my 20s, though then in the context of at least trying to change) doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens from repeated experiences of being unable to get needs met over and over and over again.

Subscribing to lofty ideals of Buddhism, the prominent religious philosophy in my life growing up, without proper guidance and context, wound up taking the form of spiritual bypassing. I admit, believing I could simply will myself to be more mindful and think good thoughts, allowed me to have hope and gave me the ability to function in a world that actually is full of great tragedy.  But it only got me so far and kept me removed from reality and therefore really living. Now that I am waking up, I'm seeing veils being lifted in ways I didn't expect. 

The 9 things

1. Everything happens for a reason. We can make one up retrospectively, but there’s no way to know if there’s any kind of grand design and in fact you could argue there's  more proof to the contrary.

2. Everything will work out or be Ok. There’s no way to guarantee that. And what are we defining “ok” as? Not dead? Sure, everything is always OK if you want to think of it that way. Life is life. When we die we go back to oneness. I guess that’s ok too. What doesn’t kill you, doesn’t kill you, and if it does, you’re dead and at least not in pain anymore.

3. Life only gives us what we are ready for. Bullshit! One definition of trauma, (physical, mental or emotional) is “too much too soon”.  Conversely, sometimes you can handle more but, for a number reasons, do not. I never had to face the loss of a super close loved one until this year. And at first I thought life graciously waited until I could handle it. Then I realized, no, in the face of losing a loved one imminently, I rose to the occasion - because there really wasn’t an alternative, and became one who could handle it. I grew so much because of it. I feel now that I could have taken on so much more earlier and to do so would have allowed me to grow a lot more. Instead I hid away from much of life's normal challenges, further stunting an already stunted emotional system.

4. Things will work out, you’ll find someone, you’ll find peace. Actually, my family heritage shows that is not the case, and it takes immense concentration and work to steer one's self towards a course where life is going to feel safe, kind and rewarding, both intimately with friends and experientially with money to the extent where one gains true freedom, autonomy and is allowed to live with dignity with access to healthcare, healthy foods, and the therapy needed to overcome cPTSD and early childhood traumas. Any slip in focus on this path to healing can set you back decades, if not generations. There is absolutely no guarantee you will meet someone and have a good life.

5. Time heals all wounds. Time and facing the pain in the right way with the right help can heal wounds and yes, the sting of certain disappointments surely can fade over time; but with respect to deep impacts, time by itself often just serves as a boiler room for unmet needs and traumas to grow.

6. There is something that I’m meant to do and I’ll figure it out.  Millions of people die every day on their way to figuring out their purpose, many with unlived dreams that die inside them. There’s no guarantee of figuring it out or living it. Unless you were raised in a loving environment with basic human emotional survival skills, it will take every last bit of focus, energy and concentration to turn your ship in the right direction and then live long enough to see some of your dreams actually come true.

7. Slow and steady wins the race. This is another old adage that is true in certain contexts but is by no means universal and can definitely be misunderstood. The wisdom in this is basically not to erratically rush things because you can wind up making costly mistakes that set you back as a result.

But if you want to get anywhere, steady, yes, is important (though there's no rule that says major spurts of creativity can't also be helpful), AND in many contexts the pace needs to be at least a brisk walk. Because it IS possible to go so slow that you will not reap the benefits of your actions in this life time. Furthermore, there are things that require momentum to accomplish, especially big changes. A great nature analogy for this is leaping over, say a wide river or crevice. If it's a great enough distance, walking up to it and then jumping may never allow you to get over it, no matter how many times you repeat it - you may actually need a running start.

​This adage brings up another big theme for me, namely that many truth do have great wisdom, but are meant for certain contexts, not to be used as a blanked truth for every situation. For someone like me, with a mathematical/science brain looking for universal laws, it has taken awhile to grasp this.

8. The Law of Attraction (LOA) is a neutral universal force of natural (spiritual and physical) that we can easily work with at the level of thought to create the life we desire. LOA is a monstrous beast and is behind why abused children put themselves in abusive situations in their adult life that reinforce the self perception and internal map of the world and their worth in it (and/or become abusers themselves). LOA is the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - it's reflected in the math behind interest rates and exponential functions.

Additionally, evidence shows that trauma and childhood conditioning lives in our bodies more than our minds, that the mind often actually serves as a defense mechanism against feeling our bodies and the wisdom stored in them, and that our thoughts are the effects of dysregulated nervous system as much if not more than the cause of it. Thus, the focus on changing our lives with thoughts alone is like trying to make a marble sculpture with a toothpick. 

9. That I am responsible for my actions.  I know, I know. this one is loaded - but it actually brings this piece full circle from where I started about going from extremes. Ever since I realized in high school that I had a choice in how to look at life, I concluded that I had created all misery in my life thus far by having a negative attitude. Now, if we get down to the cellular law of attraction level, sure, I have attracted and created everything in my life - cause and effect. But that's not the whole picture, doesn't get to the what actually caused our cells and subconscious to wire and attract the way it does in the first place - do you blame a cheetah for being born a cheetah and being a carnivore? Is it going to think itself into being a zebra?

I've been carrying this burden of everything being my fault my whole life - I felt responsible for my family disfunction even before my high school epiphany. All that high school realization about having a choice to think more positively about things did was add more weight to an already self blaming predisposition. *(OK, maybe it was an honest insight with some truth, but it just was so incomplete.)

​Past lives aside (which is a nice way to explain the injustices in this world but is NOT the way to heal personal trauma), it is NOT my fault that I was wired a certain way, that I was raised with neglect or trauma, that I developed such low self worth and then attracted low self worth situations that further perpetuated ancestral stories. It's not my fault that trying to get out of the cycle often just kept perpetuating the cycle. It's not even my fault that I had a predisposition for seeking help or educating myself - that was wired in too.

I'm starting to believe that where I am in my life could have been largely predicted within some margin of error, based on the upbringing and genes and environment I was born into. (Read The Body Keeps the Score if you don't believe me).  Is everything predetermined? I can't say for sure of course, and in many ways it really doesn't matter because we are still going to try our damnedest to heal. 

The point is, the act of "taking responsibility for all one's actions" is so much more nuanced than I took it to mean and can in fact be toxic for those who already blame themselves for everything.

Is there a point here?

Perhaps a couple of concrete takeaways from all this are:

• So many adages are really context-specific, often serving as great advice if you are at one extreme of a spectrum, but terrible advice if at the other extreme); and
  
• the more clearly we can see where we are without illusion, the more powerful actions we can take to move forward. Conversely, the less clear we are on where we are, the harder it is to take the steps to get where we want to go.