The other related thing I see here is my attempts at controlling life. When I look at just what it means to ‘be in control of my life’ I see that essentially I am trying to hold the entirety of my life in the mind’s eye.
In order to even do this in the first place, life as it actually happens has to be reduced and translated in line with ‘my’ predilections. Then from this blinkered version of the actual ‘I’ can build the structure of ‘my life’.
This is where it gets completely ridiculous though, it’s something I have been observing for a while now. Because at this point the structure becomes the absolute, it is the primary concern. When a friend is late to meet me and ‘my’ plans come crashing down, I do not give a shit about the actual events.
The emotions that I am experiencing are entirely because ‘my structure’ is under attack. Somewhere in there ‘I’ confuse the integrity of the structure for actual safety/danger.
And this mode of operating can never work, because life as it actually happens is infinitely intricate and forever dynamic, then there is the ‘structure of my life’ which is a static construct and an artificial one at that. It needs constant effort to uphold and update, and this is painful effort for ‘my’ very security is intertwined with it’s structure. Every time a part of the structure is threatened, ‘I’ feel threatened, confusing this for actual danger.
I am not sure how to stop this just yet though, it seems to be a feature of the instinctual programming, this propensity to see through a tunnel vision (‘my life’) and passionately hold onto it’s objects in an attempt at gaining safety.