I’m starting to investigate feelings more deeply than before. Specifically feelings that used to cause a big barrier and cause me to run in the opposite direction.
Right now I’m feeling a lot of anxiety - and this is weird to say but I think I’ve had bad anxiety for a long time and left it quite unaddressed. Which is strange given my commitment to actualism.
I remember so many times at this point I would want to escape, which is where I think all those addiction issues came from. It was as if the anxiety caused an unconscious barrier - driving me all the time but somehow left untreated, mostly because it is so bad to feel and diverts away from itself.
I think in my case it’s like a part of me, the actualist identity part of me; would then push harder. I remember being discouraged so many times by the occurrence of feelings themselves, as if I had already failed just by having them. A poor self image and deep fear of failure only perpetuated this cycle.
Whereas now I’m not diverting away, I’m firmly with my anxious feelings, on the verge of being them. It’s quite scary but also thrilling to neither express nor repress in this way.
It’s also a relief because the nervous feelings are not “getting their way” like they usually do. There is a kind of confidence in the way the feelings are tamed when they are no longer being fought.
I no longer feel the subsequent pain either associated with failure, of having my desire for success be cruelly “scuppered” by the presence of such triggers. I can tell I’m doing something quite new here.
Looking at the anxiety itself, and what triggered it - one thing I’m always doing is looking at myself from outside. As if scoring myself on a checklist of what a successful life looks like. And getting all 0s.
Indeed having gone all in on actualism, with intensity, has meant I haven’t place much value on the things people normally want in life. I don’t think this is a bad thing per se but at the same time, by not making progress with actualism either, I was creating a situation in which my life looked sad or even dangerous to me. I felt I’m not safe, not secure - “I abandoned normal life for actualism and it’s not working…” kind of thing. Immense pressure to put on myself and the process.
But this is starting to change and I seem to be finding that self-sufficiency - not feeling abandoned for the fact of doing this alone and not being so thrown about crazily by intense feelings.