Out of the FOG

The Other Sides of Us => Future Goals => Topic started by: Oscen on December 04, 2019, 06:07:41 AM

Title: Healing - 2019 and beyond
Post by: Oscen on December 04, 2019, 06:07:41 AM
This year, my main goal has been working on healing. I have healed a heck of a lot, so I can safely say "mischief managed".

At the start of the year, I attended my first narcissistic support group meet up. What a game-changer! I feel so lucky I found the group. It has helped me immensely.

I've noticed a lot of internal changes this year, but I think I can sum up the main one as:

Internalising locus of evaluation. I used to rely on others to think for me. If I made a controversial decision, I wasn't comfortable until I found someone to validate me. If I got a bad reaction from someone, I assumed I had done something wrong, instead of looking at both of our behaviour objectively and deciding what was right based on that. Left me extremely susceptible to manipulation and bullying. Now, I feel much more confident in my ability to discern. It's all been through self-education - I've studied logical fallacies, learned more about healthy and unhealthy behaviours in relationships/social interactions, and learned about the stages of childhood development, and how my needs weren't met, and the consequences of that. I can spot manipulation now - in the past I was neurotically naive. Couldn't even conceive that someone would be lying to me/bullying me to get me to do what they wanted. Now I find it funny.

Any other progress? I've looked at my values, worked on emotional literacy, worked on recognising and dealing with emotional flashbacks, and now targeting my super ego and working on reprogramming it. All moving along nicely. Richard Grannon's resources are fantastic. He really gets it.

I'm also dealing better with time and money management, how I visualise and tackle problems, and self-care, self-care, self-care.

And no longer completely terrified of conflict. I'm learning to address things head on, honour my feelings, but also refining my approach so I can assert myself with grace.

Areas where I haven't made so much progress:
Motivation, work ethic, career. Although I've never achieved a great deal in study/career, I did dream big, but my motivator was to get such a fabulous career that I would "earn" worthiness so my family would no longer ignore me or criticise me for petty things. So now that I am addressing the actual abuse, the motivation to move forward in life has dried up, because it was based on satisfying abusive people, not my true self, and I haven't replaced it yet with other dreams/goals. It's hard to find a goal that is realistic but inspiring. Hope is a skill, not just a feeling, and I'm working on that too, step by step.

My time management has improved a little, but I still need to work on productivity and meeting commitments. My trust in myself is improving, but still low. My super ego has been placing such impossibly high (and highly conflicting) demands on me all my life that my only coping strategy has been to dissociate and ignore any imperative placed on me. It's hard to get stuff done, as it usually takes a last-minute panic for me to actually get up and do it. Surprisingly, even fail-proof techniques like watching Shia Laboeuf shout "DO IT!" don't seem to work. I'm reprogramming the inner voice and noticing it's already taking root subconsciously, but I am still coaxing my inner adult out of the cave it's been hiding in. Step by step. I'm getting there.

For the last month of 2019, I'm continuing to prioritise me. I have minimal work, so I'm doing my journalling and healing exercises every day, eating well and regularly, getting in some exercise where I can, having fun where I can, and not pressuring myself to do more.

I'm thinking about what I want from 2020, but even this month may end up being quite transformative, so I'll just slowly plan as I go.