[SELF-HELP] Betrayal as a Primer for Social Anxiety

in #selfhelp8 years ago (edited)

Some nights ago I dreamed about an old male school friend that I will call "P". The nature of the dream was reconciliation, and this person "P" represents betrayal; based on a memory of an event where he was taking  my side and comforting me after an incident where I was beaten up. The next day he ‘threw me under the bus’ so to speak, and ‘betrayed’ me by siding with bullies and by telling them how I cried and acted like a ‘sissy’. I was about 10 years old in this incidence, and I integrated it  into my personality as “I can’t and I won’t trust people” and “people are not trustworthy”. Obviously there has been many other such events in my life, where I’ve gone in to the same line of thinking – in this ignoring all the times it did NOT happen = which is a form of confirmation bias – meaning the tendency to look for evidence that  confirms preexisting expectations or beliefs and ignore everything that ‘threatens’ these beliefs. So this incidence was one of the primers for  my tendency to not trust people, and to actually avoid people altogether, and thus the anxiety that I experience in social context. So what I, as my dream – or "P" as a representation of myself – was telling myself was to reconcile / forgive myself and let go of this and other similar memories of betrayal, as it’s having a detrimental effect on me and the life I’m living. Now, let's align and correct the points that the dream showed me with the help of self-forgiveness.

Self-Forgiveness

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to trap myself in and hold on to the memory of being ‘betrayed’ by P

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to integrate this memory as a part of ‘who I am’

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to automatically react with and go into the emotional experience of feeling betrayed by P when I realized that he sided with the bullies and started calling me names

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be on guard against people around me waiting for them to betray me because I have accepted and allowed myself to trap myself within the memory of P siding with the bullies and calling me names

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be controlled and directed by memories, instead of directing myself here in full awareness within seeing what produces the best outcome in any given situation

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to memories of being betrayed and rejected

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to engage in and believe in the subtle image that pops up when processing this memory: that of a man being stabbed in the back

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to still to this day hold on to a grudge towards P because of his actions, in order to uphold and justify my accepted and allowed personality construct/design

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame P, this incident and similar incidents for my experienced anxiety in social situations

When and as I see myself going into the imagination dimension where I project myself into the past, seeing myself being betrayed – I stop – I breathe – seeing and realizing that I am perpetuating the character and self-definition of myself as “the betrayed” and “suspicious”, “cautious” and “wary”, and thus unnecessarily enslaving myself according to past events that are not present in the physical reality, and accepting and allowing this character to compromise and “color” all of my behavior – such as withdrawing from the world, thus I direct myself back here and act/express within stability and within the consideration of what is actually best for me/others in the given situation = fully realizing that I alone am responsible for upholding and maintaining this character

I see and realize that I have been holding on to the “the betrayed” , “suspicious”, “cautious” and “wary”” character just in order to validate my personality, and to experience “congruence” between believed self and experience, within believing myself through years of training and telling myself that “I am” this character, and if I wouldn’t be this “character” I would somehow not be “me” — I see and realize that this is ridiculous and that I’m participating in self-enslavement instead taking the opportunity to direct and move myself within breath according to what is here within the principle of what is best for all

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to draw general conclusions about myself and others based on a few situations, and within this ignore all the times that the exact opposite has happened, just to confirm my own belief and idea of myself

When and as I see myself going into generalizations about humanity or taking things personally within saying to myself “typically me”, I stop myself – I breathe – taking into consideration everything that speaks against this generalization, as well as realizing that this that I define as “typical” is just a bundle of programs and ideas that I give my power and authority away to instead of directing myself within and as the physical here

When and as I see myself going into thoughts and beliefs that people are going to betray me – I stop – I slow down – I breathe – seeing and realizing that this belief is trapping me in a constant state of worry, which affects how I behave around those people I am on guard against, and I realize that I’m within placing such a value outside of myself I have in fact betrayed myself

When and as I see myself going into the experience of feeling betrayed – I stop – I breathe – seeing and realizing that the only real betrayal is the self-betrayal of me participating in the energetic experience of feeling betrayed because I have made myself dependent on the approval of others, I see and realize that the only real alliance that is possible is with this one and singular physical reality and that the only betrayal possible is self-betrayal and me not acting within the principle of what is best for all

For your daily dose of psychology related articles on Steemit check out @aleksandraz

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I'm so pleased to see this article, as this is exactly what I wanted to achieve by building psychology community. This is the start! Thank you for mentioning an article by @cristi, it's really great job!
It's becoming a tradition, I suppose... Today I'm including your article in my TOP5 Lucky Find Psychology articles once again. :)
Proud to see good quality content on psychology topic here, and truly appreciate your way of promoting good articles of others.

Thank you Aleksandra! I also hope it will encourage others to write about self-help and psychology, and dare to open up and share self-realizations they've made on their journey in life.

Wow. This is a really powerful post. I had an experience like that as a child too, that I recognize as playing a major role in my shyness as an adult. I acted inappropriately one day, and all of my friends deserted me and would not speak to me for an school entire year. I have revisited the memory a few times and forgiven myself for not being able to behave better at the time, and my friends for having no way of understanding the pain that motivated what I did. But I think the forgiveness you give yourself here is much more complete and powerful. Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm going to save this post to re-read several times. I'm all teary eyed now, but in a good way. :-)

Thank you for sharing! Your self-honesty is most appreciated. I'm really happy to hear that the post assisted you <3

Very powerful and brave! Such an open post. I am also working thorough similar things from the past. We have the capacity to change any reaction within us, it just takes courage and faith. Thank you for this post.

And here is the post where I am featuring you article! Keep the great work going!
https://steemit.com/psychology/@aleksandraz/daily-psychology-it-s-a-lucky-find-3-today-s-top-5#comments

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