I came home and switched from listening to ST1 on my phone to listening on my PC. I didn’t expect any realization in the first hour I listened, but an uncomfortable awareness became apparent.
First off, I didn’t come straight home. I stopped at a corner store and bought a large coffee, even finishing it before I came back home. Then, while listening on ultrasonic, I chose to watch a collection of funny auditions for America’s Got Talent on YT. It was during watching the video that I became uncomfortable. When I took a minute to consider the reason, something showed itself.
I used coffee to hold back my emotions that listening at home allows to surface. I know I’ve used it to avoid my emotions since I began drinking it occasionally in college.
Then, watching funny videos was another tool to avoid myself. I’d watch an act, then fantasize about being able to pull that off myself. When I couldn’t go into that mental escape mode so easily, I felt uncomfortable since my emotions weren’t going away. They were getting stronger.
This is the very first time I was emotionally and mentally aware of my reasons for my actions, and my thought process seemed more objective and distant, without being punitive. I asked myself if I was happy doing this, and I actually listened. No, it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me angry and anxious about myself, like I’m setting myself up to feel like a failure. It’s self-sabotage, nothing less.
A major difference in how I’m processing this is I’m using my thinking more in dealing with this. My well-used fallback has always been me using my emotions to steer me. This keeps me looping in my old feelings, and the self-sabotage is much more vivid now. Because misguided emotions lead to misguided results. I speak from experience, and this new way of handling it allows a lot more freedom from getting stuck in … shitty emotional spots. Thank you for creating this @Fire and @SaintSovereign.