Day 159: From Auto-Parent To Self-Parent

Self-correction and self-commitment for Day 155: Automated Parent


When and as I see that I am being unnecessarily hard on myself as a means to make a situation or event better or more acceptable, I stop, I breath, and I bring myself back here to my physical.  I see, realize, and understand that using words or thoughts to punish myself does not make my mistakes better, more acceptable, nor does it support me as a being - no, this supports me to go into my mind as I go into negatively charged emotions where I do not consider practical, livable solutions for the situation/event I've faced in which I made a mistake.

I commit myself to stopping myself from punishing myself with words and thoughts by reminding myself that punishing myself is not going to make my mistakes better and that going into my mind is not a solution.  I commit myself to, when I make mistakes, to instead breath and bring myself back to the physical where I can actually look at practical, livable solutions that will assist and support me to not repeat the mistakes.

When and as I see that I am angry or disappointed with myself because I have self-judged myself to be in the wrong and that being angry and/or disappointed is the appropriate response in such situations or events, I stop.  I see, realize, and understand that being angry and/or disappointed with/at myself is not the responsible action that I believe it to be and that in reality, it's quite the opposite in that the actual responsible action is to direct myself to solutions and prevention.

I commit myself to stopping self-anger, self-disappointment, and self-judgment by allowing myself to see solutions rather than problems only when and as I am faced with an event or experience where a mistake has been made or could potentially be made.  I allow myself to slow down and to look at the situation or event practically and realistically so that I can determine the change for myself that is best for all.

When and as I see that I have gone into being an Automated Parent where I expect to see remorse or some other emotional reaction that demonstrates shame and/or regret, I stop and I breath myself back to my physical reality.  I see, realize, and understand that I have accepted, allowed, and been participating in this behavior/character for so long that I have integrated into and as myself to such an extent that I do not question it - it is automated.  So, here, my responsibility is to question myself as a parent:  Why do I continue to inflict emotional and mental harm when I have seen time-and-time again that this does not change nor improve anything?  Why do I believe that I must see shame, remorse, or regret when/as a mistake is made in order for me to see that the situation or event has a chance to get better?

I commit myself to stopping myself as an Automated Parent by no longer accepting and allowing myself to go right into expecting to see shame, regret, or remorse and instead breathing, slowing myself down, and allowing myself question myself and what changes I could make. Rather than go on Auto-Parent,  I practice self-parenting where I go over the mistake, consider other decisions/actions that I could have made where the outcome was best, work out a plan for how I will be in the same situation in the future, and commit myself to the change.

I commit myself to stopping myself from bullying, diminishing, and belittling myself by questioning my self-judgments.  And within this, I commit myself to not use self-judgment against myself and to instead work on self-acceptance, self-respect, and problem prevention.

Day 40: I Can't Watch This - Part 4

Here I continue Self-Forgiveness statements for
Day 37: I Can't Watch This
Day 38: I Can't Watch This - Part 2
Day 39: I Can't Watch This - Part 3

ART by Andrew Gable

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself show myself a picture of myself as a very young child swinging a black cat around by it's tail until it died. Within this picture, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see this picture as an outsider and/or observer where I am watching a scene of a me-child with soft, curly baby-hair in a diaper.  When and as when I place myself inside myself as a child, I experience nothing - no emotions, no fears, no cares - and the actual act of swinging the cat by it's tail was 'something to do' in that moment - I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to know, with 100% certainty, if I in-fact anticipated that the cat would die or not as I have allowed myself to become my consciousness and separated myself from myself to such a degree that I do not trust my memories prior to starting kindergarten at age 5.  Within this realization of where I am at the moment when I look back to myself at the age of 3 or 4 when I killed that cat, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see myself as not caring if I removed a life.  I forgive myself that I see myself as a person that does not care nor do I have to care because who I was at 3 or 4 was my 'natural state of being' and thus have given myself permission to be a person that is going to do what I want REGARDLESS of the consequences.

Because of this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give myself permission to do what I want, regardless of the seen and/or justifiable unseen consequences because I can use this memory of myself as an excuse of 'it's who I am/it's my TRUE nature' to do whatever I want to myself and other living and breathing beings/creatures because it is what interests me in the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the excuse of 'she didn't know any better' where I accepted myself as not 'knowing any better' because within that, I saw that I was free from blame.  What I did not see what was going on is that even though I was TOLD that I was free from blame, I was not.  Because I questioned myself as I saw others reacting in fear, embarrassment, and mistrust - over and over again, I abused myself with blame, embarrassment, and doubt over and over and over again until I made myself 'sorry' where I was sorrowful and experienced grief and remorse for what I had done to prove to myself and the world that I was 'a good girl, -really-'.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to express myself as a Sorry-Good-Girl-FOR REAL as a means to make the pain of guilt, remorse, and embarrassment to GO AWAY.  Even though I have said I AM SORRY over and over and over again to absolve myself from my guilt of hurting, disappointing, scaring, manipulating, lying to, and/or not seeing myself as being good, I was absolved from NOTHING.  As:

• I did not change when I said and expressed my sorry-ness.
• I continued to abuse myself with the memory of what I had done as what I saw was 'wrong'.
• I accepted what I have done as 'wrong' and abused myself with my wrongness and so I have allowed others to become the authority of me where I accept what others told me of myself as being wrong and thus allowed myself to be mentally/physically/socially/emotionally abused as a person 'in the wrong'.  I allowed myself to believe/tell myself/see myself as 'deserving it'.
• I rationalized have that my abuse of others was/is 'okay' and/or justifiable if another was in the wrong or had 'done me wrong' or 'broken the pre-determined rules'.
• I saw MYSELF as abused and thus saw myself in others that I saw as being abused as -I- had been abused and from this I judged and then became angry with back-chat - and when I expressed my anger and disappointment at another for their wrongness, I expected to see and/or hear sorry-ness and if I did not see/hear sorry-ness then I would express my anger to others where I would demand JUSTICE and thus build a jury of my peers who would assist me in the persecution of the abuser where we would decide/agree AS A GROUP whether or not to 'let it slide', 'make it hard' for the accused via the threat of exile until we determined they could be trusted again, DEMAND CHANGE, or remove them from ourselves completely.  But ... if any time the accuser came to us and expressed their utmost sorry-ness, sorrow, and remorse for their 'wrong', we accepted the abuser back ... and said, "Aww. See.  Look.  They are trying to change."  And then, "Maybe we were too hard on them ..."

What I did not see here within this pattern is how guilt and the possibility of oneself/the group being in the wrong absolves each other from actually having to change.  I also did not see how Self-Doubt sabotages any chance of change in ourselves, each other and the world which tells me that we have not allowed ourselves as a group within our agreement of the system to stand for anything with 100% certainty which indicates to me that we are all aware that this cycle/system is really messed up - however, we are trapped in it within neutrality, as 'nothing we can do about it' as 'oh well, best thing I can do is cover my own butt'.

And how did this ENTIRE CYCLE start? In that ONE MOMENT of REACTION.

Within this realization,
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself NOT to see, realize, understand, and thus apply myself as a responsible, solution-directed PARENT where in that one moment where I had the choice to 'React' or 'Do Not React', I REACTED.  Because I have seen being able to react as normal, understandable, justifiable, and MY GOD GIVEN RIGHT as a human being with emotions, feelings and pre-determined expectations of RIGHT and WRONG, I did it. I did not see how the consequences of this one moment would perpetuate a system/pattern/cycle/entrapment of myself, others in my life, humans, animals, and all other Earthlings within outrage, abuse, guilt, and complacency.   

To be continued.