tiistai 1. tammikuuta 2013

Days 100-102: The Rules - part 4 - eye contact and talking


30122012-01012013

This post is a continuation to:

Part 4 – Rule 3: Don't stare at men and don't talk too much

About the staring: in the book it is advised to not look at a person you are interested in, because (again) he has to look at you first. “If he doesn't notice you, apparently he's not interested. Keep on walking, someone else will notice you.” This continues the theme from Part 3, where the lack of action from others is seen as a symbol of disinterest when nothing of the sorts has been directly communicated, and all other possibilities for the reason behind the lack of action (in this case eye contact) are disregarded.

What I do find supportive here, though, is that throughout the book it is stated that there's “plenty of fish in the sea”, which I see to mean that if a relationship doesn't work the way you've planned it – no biggie, there are a couple more billion people here and you won't be running out of new chances. The danger there is that one starts to believe in one's ideal about a certain kind of relationship and dismisses all possibilities for ones that are built differently – that you start looking for a specific kind of a person who will fit your ideal fantasy future vision. This might result in rejecting people before you've given the both of you any chance to see what could actually be built between the two of you, which might even be “better” than the ideal – what I mean to say is that if one isn't open to all moments and all possibilities, a lot might be missed. But now I digress.

There's advice on how to seem like you're interested in the whole world as that will make you appear attractive: smile generally at everything, look around you, be calm and do not stare at the guy, because that will make him uncomfortable – appear as if the world was more interesting than the person you're with. This advice kinda approaches the point of actually being interested in your living environment and treating everything with kindness and respect, but it only describes how it looks and not how it comes naturally from within. This will most unlikely lead to actual understanding about the kind of stability the book is trying to guide people towards, as it assumes that people are uncertain and that this uncertainty cannot be directly addressed but covered up with positive traits, like wearing shiny jewelry on top of yourself instead of allowing yourself shine.

I used to have trouble with this eye contact thing. As a child I read some dating advice, and it said the exact opposite: look at the guy! That's how he'll know you like him! And I took on a tendency of staring at people I found interesting, which stopped after some years of repression and self-suppression as I shut myself up in my teen years. I have since normalized, but I still find myself avoiding eye contact in situations driven by fear. It's like I sometimes use eye contact to emphasize certain things instead of it being the base form of contact when communicating with another.

About talking: the book gives some good advice on accepting silence among conversation and not stressing about what to talk about – but then it flips all it's advice upside-down as it states that “men should be the ones racking their brains to come up with clever statements and plenty of questions. It's their job to ponder if they'll manage to maintain your interest and attention. Besides most men think babbling women are annoying.” All responsibility over the interaction is dumped on the male, even though the writers make an assumption that all women “love talking” - it is somehow seen logical that women ought to limit their nature and men carry all the responsibility, so that women could appear as a “challenge” and so that men could “hunt”. Plenty of sacrifices just to maintain an imaginary game.

Bringing this back to me: I have never been that talkative, not even with people I am most comfortable with. I simply don't ramble on things as I have preferred to keep discussions to the point, not to say I've necessarily managed to do that, lol. So I have always found dating extremely difficult as I have never been one to devote hours at a time for nothing but talking. I often run out of things to say, and I try to avoid this by preparing topics in advance – and when my planned topics run out, I jam as I try to think of more stuff to say, growing all the more anxious, more tense, blocking all my ability to be present in the moment and let my experience flow. I enjoy silence, but sometimes only when I know the other isn't bothered either. This depends a lot on who I'm with.

So years ago when reading these kinds of rules that encouraged not talking I allowed myself to not face my discomfort as I justified it by creating a “mysterious woman” personality. This is how the Relationship Game works – this is thus ok – this is accepted and encouraged – there's nothing wrong with me – I know this is manipulation, but - I'll just start talking after we have dated for a while. The thing is, that point of “starting to talk” never happened in the extent that it could've, even though my tension grew less and I became “myself”.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear eye contact because I felt like I was exposing myself to another and thus making myself vulnerable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define exposing myself as something negative because it made me feel vulnerable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that exposing myself is actually quite the good thing because as I expose myself to another I also expose myself to myself and give myself a chance to face myself through self-honesty as I reflect myself back to myself from others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear exposing myself because I have feared facing myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to avoid eye contact because I have wanted to avoid facing myself through exposing myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the reaction of another to me exposing myself, fearing that another might react negatively, not realizing that I actually fear self-judgement as I would take the negative reaction of another personally and use the reaction of another as a justification for my self-judgement and as evidence that I have done something worthy of judgement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not trust myself to be able to stand within and as myself as my directive principle as I expose myself through eye contact (or any other kind of physical contact), allowing the reactions and opinions of others to be a directive authority over me, as I have defined and molded myself according to my perception of others' perception of me. (lol)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not face and embrace myself when/as I expose myself through eye contact, and instead get scared at the first glimpse I get of myself and from that point on refuse to look myself in the eye.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe there are certain behavioral patterns concerning eye contact that I can learn as a choreography and thus portray and communicate my inner experience to others indirectly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I can avoid direct communication by utilizing indirect symbolic means of communication, not realizing these indirect means can very easily be misinterpreted and thus aren't the most reliable way of communicating, and also not realizing they are based on fear.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to misinterpret the advice of looking at others to display one's interest to mean “look at others for as long as it takes for them to come to you and initiate contact”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to justify my fear of initiating contact with people of interest by believing it is their job to come to me and initiate contact after I have displayed my interest in an indirect manner (eye contact).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe an indirect hint is enough for another to understand what I wish to communicate and that thus I “don't have to” communicate directly as I perceived these hints to be enough (even though they never worked!).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe that if another doesn't “get” my indirect hint and does not initiate any kind of contact, it is a sign that the other has rejected me and does not want to engage in any interaction with me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to not realize I too can go to people and initiate contact despite my fear of getting rejected and not knowing what to do/say.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to not realize that I do not need to know what to do/say as I initiate contact with another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to not realize that I misinterpreted the lack of action (others not coming to me) to symbolize action (others rejecting me) as I did not realize I interpreted situations based on my fears and expectations (“they won't like me anyway”) and did not consider the inner experience of the other person which was never directly communicated to me (I did not ask) and which manifested as his/her behavior of not coming to me despite my indirect communication.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to not realize that my attempts to communicate indirectly might have been completely missed by the person I was trying to contact simply because of the unreliable means I was using (eye contact).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the reason another does not respond to my indirect communication attempts (hints) might be anything at all and that the only way of making sure is communicating directly (words).

--

A memory: I was 15 and walking home from school. At this time I had utilized eye contact as means of showing people I'm “different” and “brave” as a part of a personality I was wearing to protect my terrified self and through which I could express my curiosity towards other people. I had a tendency of looking at people passing by. As I was walking home a teenage boy around my age (perhaps a bit younger) passed me by driving his bicycle. As he was approaching I looked up to him and searched for his eyes. He seemed frustrated, angry and sad, he was pedaling really aggressively, and I remember having a wave of sympathy towards him. He looked up to me, noticed my gaze and sharply said: “What the fuck are you looking at?” and drove by fast. I reacted by taking his words personally, perceiving them to have hurt and judged me. I saw myself as a small, pathetic being who had invaded the personal space of another for no other reason than self-interest. I concluded that eye contact was dangerous because it made you draw unwanted attention from those who want to hurt others, and that it's wiser to hide from people who seem like they wish to hurt others. This memory has been used as a building block in my fear of aggression / fear of men. I tried to consider the inner experience of the boy himself as I had noticed his aggression, but the experience of my own emotional pain overrode this point of view.

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to initiate eye contact with others from the starting point of self-interest as I was creating and living a self-image / personality that stated that I am “bold” and within this “different” from others, the mannerisms of which included looking people in the eye despite their discomfort.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to cover my fear of other people underneath a “bold” personality that “dared” to look at strangers in the eye as if challenging the others to compete my level of “boldness”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I engage in eye contact from the starting point of self-interest in an aggressive way I give another a reason to counter-attack.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make eye contact a competition where “boldness” was measured because this was a game where I usually won by getting the other to react with confusion or fear or otherwise getting them to withdraw.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel superior when I “won” in the eye contact game (perceived the other to retract).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I sought out these reactions from others I was showing myself that I am able to defend myself from the attacks of others, and that this was thus an act of fear as I wanted to drive people away from me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear as I faced a response I did not expect as I was used to winning and had been getting confident that I won't be beaten in my own game.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect to win in my eye contact game as I did not realize I had a weak spot, which was all those points of fear I had not faced.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take the words of another personally as I did not consider his inner experience while I was busy reacting to my expectations and character being shattered.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to decide to avoid eye contact based on this one event where I took the words of another personally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the words of this person to have harmed me, not realizing I harmed myself by taking the words personally instead of seeing them as his self-expression, and based on this believe that I was “attacked” and that eye contact will make me vulnerable to “attacks”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to connect the words of another to my inner emotional pain, believing the pain to be the cause of the words because it occurred immediately after the words were said – not realizing that the person did not touch me physically and that thus the pain cannot have been caused by him.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make decisions to limit myself based on misinterpretations.

--

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will run out of things to discuss when meeting people.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will “run out of” things to say as I have been afraid that the silence that falls might be uncomfortable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to have plenty of things to discuss so I would seem interesting; I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear I will have nothing to say in the fear that I would seem dull.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will seem dull, not realizing that I myself see myself to be dull and desire to be something else.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that:

lots of talk = interesting
no talk = not interesting

in other words:

talk/information = positive
lack of talk/information = negative

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize all of these values are dependent on how I believe other people see me and not on real life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe what other people wanted me to be was interesting (lots of talk) and judge myself when I did not reach this imagined standard/ideal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to become that which I perceived others to want me to be - which I wanted to be because I wanted the acceptance of others to define me as “worthy” - by preparing for situations where I needed to appear interesting (lots of talk).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to prepare topics to discuss by in my mind going through my life, what I know of the life of the other and what's happening in our surroundings to be able to go through all kinds of “relevant”, “interesting” and “insightful” topics to show I am an interesting person (worthy of the acceptance of the other).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the only acceptance I need is that of my own and that this search for approval shows that I do not see myself to be whatever the phrase “interesting person” portrays.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I am a complex human being with a life experience of incalculable dimensions adding up in each breath, and that in this every single being of life has plenty of things to share, communicate and discuss – and that those moments where I feel like “I have nothing to say” I either suppress my current experience and refuse to communicate or simply do not have anything I could communicate in words.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to value words above other means of communicating.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think before I speak, assessing whether what I'm about to say will be accepted by the other or not and limiting myself accordingly.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to limit what I share in speech according to how I believe (guess) the other will perceive me, not realizing that as I make this assessment within my mind I do not consider that which is real as the “person” in my mind that I play out scenarios with is not the other person him/herself but an image/reflection/interpretation of this person which has been morphed, shaped and stereotyped in the mind according to my past experiences with this person or others who resemble this person.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I make these assessments to limit my speech based on guesswork.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I limit my speech I compromise myself and make myself live as less than I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I limit myself from the starting point of wanting to appear interesting, I actually manifest just my limitations and bring about that which I fear (not appearing interesting) as I do not accept and allow myself to share myself as I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I live as limitations and manifest nothing but limitations I become difficult to approach and then it is no wonder situations get stuck.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that if another reacts to what I say it is my fault, thus blaming myself for the reaction of another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if another reacts to my self-expression, assuming that my starting point is clear, the other creates his/her inner experience (reaction) all by him/herself using my words as a trigger.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to mistake my words to be the cause of another's reaction because the reaction occurred immediately after my words.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that unless there's a physical contact, there is no way a being could access, affect and/or harm another without the acceptance and allowance of another.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that it is possible for a human being to access the inner experience of another and “make” the other experience things (emotions, feelings, thoughts, backchat, fears, desires) he/she has no control over – not seeing, realizing and understanding the responsibility we all have of ourselves as an entire life experience of inner and outer realities.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be manipulated into believing that through guilt, shame and blame I am responsible for the inner experience of others.



I commit myself to engage in eye contact with all people I meet, thus creating eye contact as my primary way of physically contacting with others and building interaction upon that foundation of self-exposement.

When and as I avoid eye contact with another, I stop, I breathe and I realize this is me trying to hide myself from myself and the other. I then check myself for any possible points that may be causing me to want to hide. I then physically push through the resistance and lift my eyes to meet those of another (if they are there to be met) and take note of whatever might move within me as I do so.

I commit myself to stop relying on indirect communication and carry my responsibility over communication by utilizing direct communication when possible and always when necessary.

When and as I have second thoughts about saying something within discussion, I stop, I breathe and I realize my starting point for the discussion is in trying to validate myself through another as acceptance. I check myself for whatever points there may be concerning the person or the situation at hand as in why I need to find acceptance from outside of myself. I then return to the conversation and my initial idea of what I was about to say and if possible/necessary push myself to voice that which I was initially going to say.

I commit myself to realize conversation isn't a situation where I need to “prove” myself by appearing a certain way, but a moment of expression where I share myself according to my actual experience – and I commit myself to bring this realization to practice by stabilizing myself before and within conversations by breathing and slowing myself down, bringing myself HERE and being aware of the movements of my mind.

I commit myself to trust my initial impulses to express myself within any and all interaction.

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