Even though we were supposed to spend the two days after writing the open journals reading them and trying to figure out what we want to change, by the time I wrote the last one, I already knew what I wanted to work on. And this is why…
Journal #5 : The Underlying Problem
By now it’s pretty clear to me that my underlying problem is not just the desire to distract, but also in large part self-confidence. Because I don’t think I’m good enough, or pretty enough, or smart enough, I turn negative when I need to be positive and prevent myself from ever fully reaching my potential. I realized yesterday, as I wrote the last entry, that when I start something with the idea of changing in mind, for example starting a new diet, I do so thinking that it will help me emotionally because just knowing that I’m not as fat anymore will make me feel better about myself. I also realized that I go to school because I love it, but I love it because it’s the one area of my life where I feel like I have the most control and the most confidence because I know that I am smart. Although, at the same time, I also realized that even though I know I am smart, I am constantly in fear of failure because that would mean that I am actually not smart and it would ruin my entire concept of myself. Smart, nice, funny, caring, witty, intelligent, bright, sweet, helpful… these are all words that are used to describe me. These are the only things used to describe me and if one of those is wrong, than maybe the others are wrong too. Maybe I have been right my entire life and everyone has been lying to me in order to make me feel better about myself, or in order to not hurt my feelings.And as I thought about these things I realized that maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way. Maybe in order to help me heal emotionally, I have to start with the emotion itself. Before I used to believe that if only I could make myself look better physically, I could make myself feel better emotionally but I’ve tried that numerous times and in numerous ways over the years. So maybe it’s a matter of actually getting to the emotion and starting there.
By the way, like I said before when I started talking about “mental fixation”, this journal has become a mental fixation for me. Usually when I write about something I often forget what I want to say and how I want to say it. But I think I’ve done a fairly good job of keeping my train of thought inline here.
