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| A scenario I sometimes conjure in my mind as an insecure vegetarian. |
Because my chronic shoulder pain is one
of the major points why my moment-to-moment living is currently
“unpleasant” in such a way that makes me want to “unwind”
through different means of relaxation (alcohol, socializing, video
games, TV, sleeping), I am now focusing on the shoulder point as representing survival systems. Because this pain has arisen during
these past 4 months, where I have also had a lot of changes and faced
new challenges, the question I'm asking myself is: What survival
systems have been activated within myself in my new surroundings and
positions?
Whenever a person interacts with the
world, the mind activates to ask: what should I do to make the best
of this (to survive)? The human mind then searches for cues and clues
for a) what one's surroundings are b) who one is in relation to one's
surroundings. If there are other people involved, the mind maps out
who the others are and who oneself is in relation to them. This
process of mapping out one's reality is often twisted so that one's
assessments don't have anything to do with what is actually here
and what actually happened,
but instead focus on what one believes and perceives or imagines to be true.
For
example, one might talk with another person and interpret their tone
of voice to mean that the other has ill intentions even though
his/her words do not directly imply so. This is when one's perception
of the reality is believed instead of interacting with the actual
reality to find out what actually happened:
whether the other person actually had ill intentions or not.
This
tendency to assume that one “knows” what's going on within other
people affects our actions greatly. The perspective I am now focusing
on are the assumptions I have of other people's expectations for me:
“who do others want me to be?” What would be the best course of
action for me so that this situation with other people would have a
positive outcome for me? Living through this question places a heavy
burden on my shoulders (literally!) as whenever I interact with other
people my actions are determined by what I believe I should be. This
strain and the conflict/friction that occurs when I question this
pattern and try to live otherwise is, I'm guessing, the reason I have
been in intense physical pain for a while now with no help from
external methods (exercise, stretching, massage).
So, I have recently been asking myself
the question “who do I believe and perceive I should be (here)”
or “who am I trying to be”. After observing myself in different
situations I have so far found one common nominator: trying to be
“good” / liked. I immediately associated this to my childhood
where I have learned to try to be pleasing in school to be liked and
to get good grades. The measure for “success” or “appearing
likable” varies according to circumstances.
For example, today I had a small
singing gig with some people from my choir on a very short notice. It
was my first gig with this choir, and I took it very seriously as a
“representation task”, knowing that we would be paid plenty of
money for it, that our future gig invitations rely on how well we
perform and that there would be many “important academic people”
in the audience. I was very stiff and serious, wanting to appear
professional even though we had had very little practice and I was
unsure of the songs, and I noticed that I was projecting my
self-demands on the other singers. I saw myself judging their
laid-back attitudes, their “lack of ambition”, and even the ways
they sat hunched and limp. I realized that I was afraid of “sinking
with the boat”: that the audience would judge me along with the
group no matter how hard I tried individually. I realized that
imposing my self-standards on others is to distract my focus from
myself – to accommodate my world to my demands instead of living
within and as the world – and that I was causing my shoulder pain
to get worse with the stiff way I was sitting.
Now, what is relevant here is who I
believe and perceive “the audience” to be. After 20 years of
performing in front of differing audiences I have come to define “the
audience” as this faceless entity with the power to either
appreciate what I perform (acceptance) or to resent it (rejection). I
have defined “the audience” to have the power to define me, or
more specifically, my self-worth. I have not realized to question the
“power” of the audience and how I have handed it over.
Another point I'm seeing here is the
fact that for me performing is a very selfish thing, even though I
have done it in a group for 15 years. What matters is ME, my ego, my
success, how I look, how I appear, it's always been underneath all
the fancy words about teamwork. Today during that choir gig my
anxiety arose from how it would make ME look bad if the gig didn't go
well. I wanted the others to stop being careless because it would
made me look bad, not because their carelessness has consequences on
themselves and the choir as a whole. In other words, I was not
focusing on the best of All but on my self-interest, which is why I was working "alone" instead of working as a group.
I'll continue from here with self-forgiveness.
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