I had a dream today about honesty. I've been wrestling with the idea about my honesty and where do I lie in the spectrum. I was exploring this area in my life because if I am to quit avoiding enduring, facing and resolving emotional pain, I have to be honest with myself and stay in touch with my reality. I cannot be disassociating myself from my circumstance, I need to understand what I am feeling at the moment, identify what is emotionally bothering me and take positive action to resolve the issue by confronting the person, or removing myself from the troubled event.
In my dream, I was in class and we had taken a test in Chinese just a few days ago. I was able to answer everything on the test accurately except for essay question number two. I didn't know what the Chinese words meant, all I understand was that it was a list or identify your answer type of question. I asked a seatmate if she knew the answer, and she handed me a piece of paper that had the answer I needed. All I had to do was copy it down on my paper, which I did. Passed my paper knowing I was able to answer every question and that was that. I didn't feel any remorse with my dishonesty for cheating on the test. (I did go to all-girl school almost all-throughout my early school days, the student helping me with answers being a girl made sense).
A few days afterwards, I found myself in the same classroom. The teacher was talking about dishonesty and cheating on tests. The classmate that showed me the answers to the test exposed what I did to everybody. She told them what I had done in the previous test. I stood up and I denied cheating on the test. After doing so, I woke up from my dream.
I have always thought that I'm a pretty honest person until I really have to lie and cheat my way out of a boxed situation. And then again, being honest is valuable when it is easy to do. It becomes more valuable when it is difficult to be honest. Honesty is a practice that is a required constant regardless of the level of difficulty of such a feat. If I'm dishonest sometimes and in certain situations, that makes me a dishonest person who is at times, have the ability to be honest.
Lying to people is easy and difficult depending on the situation. Everybody looks at the way they treat other people differently. But what do I do when I'm dishonest with myself? When I lie to myself?
I lie to myself all the time! I do it so fluidly and so easily that I'm not aware of it half the time!
When I relate this to self-harm, I lie to myself almost constantly. I tell myself that what I'm doing is actually a good thing. I tell myself that I'm not really hurting myself, its not a big deal, nobody has to know. I lie to myself by thinking that I don't deserve to be happy, I don't deserve to change my hopeless sad circumstance that triggered the self-harm in the first place! I tell myself that my situation will change without my active participation all the while I punish and hurt myself expecting my situation to have a different outcome. When family or friends project their ideas about me, hold me to expectations whether I know them or not, when I begin to think about all my insecurities and all the things where I don't measure up, I accept everybody's judgement on me as valid. I cease to listen to my inner voice that says I don't have to live up to the expectation of others, I don't have to live someone else's dream, I am entitled to pursue my version of happiness and follow my individual path.
Now, if I can disassociate from my emotional pain, I should be able to disassociate myself from self-harm. I have the ability within me, I just need to put the gear in reverse. Instead of not facing/disassociating from my pain and engaging in self-harm, I need to face my pain to resolve it or forget about it and disassociate from my self-harm compulsions.
I need to be honest with myself. Instead of feeding myself lies, I need to have the courage to face the truth about my reality and work towards either resolving my dilemna for good or letting things go.
Upon closer observation, my emotional scars are triggered by similar situations. Sometimes dished out by the same people that always treat me that way, or it's a different group of people but same or similar treatment. The same crisis is experienced over and over again. And I could handle the situation better and in a more healthy way but usually and more often I chose not to. How is that for being crazy? I do the same thing over and over again thinking it will solve my problem. Or maybe how is that for "acting crazy!" I'm aware of the behavior and the lies I've believed, but I still find myself giving in to my compulsions.
When a particular stimulus hits me, I can choose how I react to it. Obviously I have created a brain pathway to faciliate the habit/behavior. It has become almost like instinst, its my first reaction. But can I change the behavior, yes, sure. It won't be easy and it will take time. And lots of patience and being honest with myself.
How hard is it to find myself? I've buried and punished myself for so long with self-hatred and self-loathing for not being "normal", for not meeting family, friends and society's expectations, for not bein just like everybody else. And yet nobody is like everybody else, we are all unique and special in our own way. Why should I punish myself for this? Haven't I suffered enough from rebuke to retaliation to humiliation to being abandoned and disowned? Just because I am not like everybody else?
No more! I have a voice and it is valid. I will be loud and I will live proud! Nobody is going to treat me bad and get away it and most especially me!
Post edited by: AsianGoddess, at: 06/15/2011 03:21 PM
Post edited by: AsianGoddess, at: 06/15/2011 03:24 PM
