Category: Self Worth

  • think…think…think…think…think…think…

    I think till it pales me, and then I observe how my thinking pales me, and then I observe how my observation of my thinking pales me. And the cycle continues until I have no energy nor inclination to think, at which point my brain switches off, my emotions go into neutral, I quite unconsciously assume a detached disposition and I appear as cold and insensitive as a sociopath. Worse still, thoughts that can only be entertained by a sociopath start trickling through my head until suddenly I realise how detached I am, how sullen I appear, and how fatigued my body is, and it prompts a burst of consciousness that jolts me out of that stupor and into a flurry of thoughts and passion and creativity that manifests itself in flirtatious and endearing behaviour that leaves most bewildered at the sudden change in temperament.

    I’m not moody. Sometimes I just succumb to the weight of life. The gentle souls that touch my life in my later years inevitably bear the brunt of the lessons learnt at the hands of the despicable souls in my earlier years. What didn’t kill me didn’t make me stronger, it only made me more jaded, but progressively more impatient. I keep lying to myself thinking that survival implies strength, when in fact it simply implies adaptability. Knowing how to dodge the bullet doesn’t make me bullet proof. It simply makes me smart enough to know when to duck. But eventually, I get tired of ducking and instead, I stand square-shouldered facing the onslaught with eyes wide open, my heart gently ticking away in my chest, waiting for what I always knew was inevitable, knowing that it will hit me hard, but defiantly standing there waiting to see exactly how hard it’s going to hit.

    I look at life and envy those that can live in the moment without a concern for the consequences. It must be so comforting being so numb to what may come next. But I can’t help but look at life and see what came before and what will come next without ever allowing myself enough time to savour what is. The present moment continues to elude me. Silence. Now there’s a nice idea!

  • Question: How does one let go and reveal themselves without shame?

    My blog reeks of regret and longing for the past: golden age thinking gone viral. My grandmother was one of the most significant people in my life; a second mother to me, and the only other human being whom I placed so much of my fragile trust. She died of cancer. I’ve never been the same. How does one let go and reveal themselves without shame?

    You’re blessed to have had such a relationship with your grandmother. I never had such a close or comfortable relationship with mine, although there was a lot of love between us.

    The only time you can reveal yourself without shame is if you’re not ashamed of who you are. Regret and longing for past events is often a defence to justify our unwillingness to look to the future optimistically. The cliched response in all this would be to ask you to think about how your grandmother would have wanted you to look at life and live it that way. But it’s rarely that easy.

    I don’t think it’s a matter of letting go, but more a matter of acceptance. Accepting the good that you experienced and will always have with you from your relationship with her, and also accepting that if you were indeed shameful, or lacking, it would not have been possible for you to have such a relationship with her.

    So rather than focusing on the loss, consider how much richer your outlook on life is compared to someone who never had the benefit of sharing such affection and wisdom with their grandparents. Reminiscing about the past is good as long as it keeps us grounded. The moment it becomes a means of burying our optimism for the future, then we’re using it as a crutch rather than a learning experience.

    Take the beautiful experiences you had with your grandmother and use it to inform what you share with others. Remember, right now, you’re preparing to to become such a role model for the generation that follows you. If you’re going to be caught up in the past, you’ll grow old being bitter and lacking in any real experiences of your own to share with your children or grandchildren.

    It’s not always easy, but it’s always important to remember what made the people we admire so much into the people that we know, or knew them to be. Would love to know which blog is yours. 🙂

  • Question: An abusive father

    Grew up with a father who hated me from day1. Beat me black&blue everyday. Mother stood up for me. He tried to kill her once with knife to throat. But he was so loving to my lil sis. At the same time mother was stronger, more dominant than him. Ive always hated him so the divorce when I was 8 made me happy. Divorce took 3 yrs 2 go through. He wanted money from mother. He still harassed us so we moved twice. Years later mother started treating me the way father did physically&emotionally. Every minute of day scream and hits and mean words. Id wake up with butterflies in belly everyday scared of whats going to happen. would sit on park swing for hours after school to avoid going home. but both mother and father were always loving and nice to my lil sis. i love her shes an angel so i understand. aunty and uncles horrible to me too. not lil sis though. so i always said i must be cursed. years later everyone blames me for divorce&family breakdown. deep down it really hurts. What good…

    As harrowing as an experience as that is, it has a few blessings in it that are not immediately evident. And I say this with every sensitivity that such an experience deserves, because I can relate to some of it. What you may not realise is that you’ve been afforded an insight into the insecurities of adults that most people barely even realise exists. This results in many, like your parents for example, not knowing how to deal with these insecurities when it arises.

    As a parent myself, I can assure you that it’s easy to project my shortcomings on my daughter. It’s easy to believe that it would all be so much better if only she would listen, if only she would behave, if only she would comply, if only… But when I sit back and reflect on what’s really happening, I realise that it’s simply me feeling incompetent as a parent because I’m failing to connect with a seven year old in a manner that she can relate to.

    A fear of insignificance, incompetence or likeability is at the core of every single person’s anger. And don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. I learnt that from the man that influenced by his lazy father in that arm chair, and I’ve found it to be true every single time I got angry ever since. Some of the good that came out of your situation is that the divorce happened, and that is good because it would be unimaginably worse if both parents became angry at the same time and you had to bear the brunt of both sides simultaneously.

    The important lesson in all this is that you need to understand that they’re projecting their insecurities on you. Taking ownership for our shortcomings requires us to accept that we’re flawed or weak or incompetent. So most people refuse to accept that they’re less than perfect, so they blame others or environmental factors for everything that goes wrong in their lives.

    The moment you accept that your parent’s actions were a reflection of their insecurities and in no way is rooted in you being who you are or who you were, you’ll save yourself from the trap of acting out the way they do when you reach their age. The only way to break the cycle is to recognise it. So this is your opportunity to extract yourself from that cycle, and to see it for what it is. And by breaking that cycle, you would be giving birth to a new and more wholesome cycle of life that you’ve always yearned for. Chances are, your parents probably also yearn for the same, but they’re too distracted by their anger and insecurities to realise it. So perhaps in you breaking the cycle, you’ll force them to start reflecting rather than constantly projecting.

    Final thought on this is that as humans, we’re prone to memory by association. They may see your presence as an association to a time in their lives when they weren’t proud of themselves. So it once again makes it easy for them to deflect attention away from themselves and instead project it on you so that they don’t have to deal with the reality of their shortcomings. Apologies for the length of this response, but I hope it helped to provide an alternate perspective on something that is difficult to see any good in.

  • Question: Absent father figure

    Daddy issues from age 0-present, does that count? Basically I would be such a better person if I had a different more accepting and encouraging father figure. I can’t say those experiences are past me, we still see each other every day and there’s still pain and anger I get out of our relationship. Shoot?

    Daddy or parental issues are always traumatisingly interesting. Someone once told me that their father was their greatest influence in their life. But they were influenced by him because he just sat and read the newspaper in his favourite arm chair every single day, and that made them wish never to be like him. If they weren’t exposed to that lethargic state in a parental figure, they probably would never have been disgusted by it, and would probably never have developed the drive or ambition to be better than that.

    In your case, if your father is not very supportive or encouraging, and you’ve still managed to achieve significant milestones in your life, then consider that that is a testament to your ability to succeed independent of such support or assistance. It strengthens you in ways that will only become evident and deeply appreciated much later in life. It also gives you a very real view of how you would need to focus your relationship on your own kids, should you have them someday. 🙂

  • Depression is a Symptom, Not A Root Cause

    imaan-daar:

    cynicallyjaded replied to your post: I have come to notice that depression remains…

    I disagree that it is an illness, but I agree that it is a very real mental state. The difference is huge, and the path towards healing is vastly different between the two perspectives. Therapy is only ever an intervention strategy, not a cure.

    I would beg to differ, I’m sorry. Depression is most definitely an illness of the mind. Certain events in life can impact a person in such a way that added stress eventually triggers a dysfunctional imbalance on the serotonin neurotransmitter that is used to promote positivity. Once serotonin levels decrease drastically, it is difficult for the brain to function well emotionally. This is thus called an illness because it then becomes something that cannot be controlled without means of medication or therapy.

    No, there is no definite cure for depression as it varies person to person and most will experience relapses regardless; however, it is confirmed that a combination of prescribed drugs and behavioral therapy can help ease the victim’s mind into a positive state of tranquility.

    Thank you for taking the time to respond. Unfortunately one of your followers made an incorrect assumption about the basis for my views, so in response, all I can say is that assuming that the symptom is in fact the root cause is what is truly blind about the approach to depression. Here’s a link to some previous posts where I shared my views on the subject, and I’d really appreciate your views on those posts as well.

    To avoid labouring the point, depression is a state of mind that is nurtured to the point of it becoming toxic. The chemical balances in our brains are influenced by our thought patterns and sometimes from the foods we eat, but not the other way around. Depression, at best, is a social illness but definitely not a physical one. I’ve shared my views in detail in the posts referred to above, so I won’t go into too much detail again in here.

    Two important points worth noting again. Firstly, neuroplasticity. Secondly, I speak from experience and not conjecture. I can absolutely guarantee you that anyone that is depressed experienced an intense betrayal at some point before the depression set in, often more than once. Depression always has a severe underlying influence of insecurity. Like I said in one of my posts before, show me a depressed baby and I’ll reconsider my views.

    When we invest our trust in those that do not wish to bear such a burden, we set ourselves up for betrayal. Once the betrayal occurs, and we continue to wish for that person to see us as significant and worthy of affection in the way in which we want it to be without those feelings being reciprocated, we slip into a depressive state because we start questioning our self-worth rather than questioning the merits of the one from whom we so desperately seek affirmation. I’m not making light of the condition in any way at all. But if we believe that it is an illness and not a damaged state of mind, we automatically become victims to the mentality rather than masters of our own thoughts.

  • Dress your soul in modesty and wear your spirit with confidence

    Cynically Jaded (via cynicallyjaded)

  • Suicide

    Suicide is a reflection of your self-worth, and not the worth that society places on you. We cannot act selfishly and still demand compassion and understanding from others. The two are mutually exclusive, and hypocritical if demanded. Life is therefore not about the rights of the individual, but the rights of the collective whole. Logic and nature dictates that it can be nothing less.

    Cynically Jaded (via cynicallyjaded)

  • The Truth About Introverts

    I get the good intention behind this poster that has been going around for a while now, but I respectfully disagree with it. It is based on the premise that being an introvert is actually a handicap of sorts and requires special attention. It also labels people, which is something that I vehemently disagree with in the strongest of terms. 

    I have seen, and continue to see many people that actually succumb to the expected behavioural patterns of the labels that they’re assigned by society to the point where they start acting the way they’re conditioned to do so rather than because it’s something they would actively or consciously do. The moment we label people’s state of mind, we set in motion many negative sequences and patterns of behaviour. 

    The point I’m trying to make is that unless there is a physical defect that causes someone to behave strangely, any awkwardness or unusual behaviour is simply a symptom of their self-esteem or present state of mind. If this label of introvert were true, you would never see an ‘introvert’ light up the moment they find they’re in their element amongst people they can trust where their contribution is appreciated and they have no need to feel incompetent or insignificant. If they were truly afflicted with a state of ‘introvertism’ then that kind of behaviour would never be possible.

    It’s not about introverts versus extroverts. It’s about confidence or a lack thereof. It’s a simple matter of someone feeling significant and appreciated, or not. And don’t confuse it with someone that is naturally introspective versus someone that has no time for the detail that begs to be observed. It’s simply about focus, personal preferences, and the like. 

    Some colleagues of mine once played a trick on one of their co-workers. Despite the guy being perfectly healthy, they all conspired to make comments about how he wasn’t looking very well at all, and that he really should take time to rest. They repeated this cycle for a few hours in the morning with various people making comments about the way he looked, his demeanour, his eyes looking tired, etc. By lunchtime, he felt physically ill and asked for time off work. And he looked ill as well. 

    Another experiment carried out on kids in the first or second grade showed how negative associations play out in actual academic performance. Half the kids in the class were given blue ribbons to tie around their heads with the other half given red ribbons. The one group was told that they got the blue ribbons because they weren’t so smart, and the other group was told that they were smarter than the blue team. That resulted in the normally smart kids with blue ribbons suddenly doubting themselves and slipping back when asked questions in class, while kids that were normally slackers wearing red ribbons were suddenly enthusiastic and engaged. 

    We often respond to the labels and stereotypes that society places on us without realising it. It starts out innocently because it just makes it easier to put people into boxes the moment they act against the norm, but this convenience for the ‘normal’ people has massively detrimental effects on those being boxed in this way. This instant gratification culture that we have going suggests that anything out of the norm should be fixed with a pill. It’s made us lazy to apply our minds and to engage meaningfully. Anything outside the norm is inconvenient and shunned unless it has a sensational or fashionable quality about it. 

    Sorry for the word spam, but there’s so much more that can be said about this. The bottom line is:

    Please don’t label people’s state of mind just because they appear to be different. It’s the ones that sit back and observe that see things with a fresh perspective, rather than the ones that fit in and do nothing but perpetuate the norms, that actually add to the wholesomeness and progress of society. The rest just maintain the status quo.