Starting To Understand, a Bit of a Rant

Started by goblinchild, August 02, 2018, 06:54:57 PM

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goblinchild

Hi guys, I had a realization but it's left me confused and wondering where I should go from here. I think I just need a rant.

For years, I've had a problem with understanding how to get past triggers. I feel like no matter what I did, or how much I emotionally processed they just wouldn't go away.

I've mentioned this on the forum before, but I used to experience abuse which revolved around schoolwork. I also had a lot of toxic ideas about work ethic, laziness and failure drilled into my head. I feel like it's made me allergic to responsibility, regardless of how badly I really want to be responsible.  So far, when I've tried to tackle this problem I've been thinking that I'm just afraid of the possibility of actually BEING lazy. I'm afraid that I could put my heart and soul into everything I do and always end up failing and that I'd be foolish in the attempt. I'm afraid that I might just be intrinsically bad at functioning as a human and don't actually possess the ability to survive in life. There's something visceral about even considering both responsibility and failure or inadequacy that's so deeply daunting and unsafe and real.   
I kept thinking that if I just understood how other people understood laziness, work ethic and failure I could sort of re-train myself to think about them in a normal way. But it just didn't click for me no matter how hard I tried to understand, the triggers were still there.

Then, the other day, I had a bit of an epiphany. All this time I was trying to not be all of those things. I was trying to find out what they really meant so I could either prove that I wasn't any of them or learn how to not be. But it's like I'm still running away from something. I still believe that I'm wrong somehow and that maybe the fact that I'm wrong justifies how I was treated, somehow. I had this thought: So what if I am lazy? What if I were to be lazy? What would happen? What if I did that on purpose?

I mean, I have empathy for people who are lazy? And I have a lot of empathy for when others experience failure. I've never thought about it before, and I feel crazy, but I guess I never questioned the connection between people being treated badly and laziness? It's silly? Who would act that way to someone just for that reason? You should be able to be lazy and to fail. You should be able to do those things comfortably. They don't necessarily even mean anything bad about you? Maybe if your laziness caused problems for other people, that would be inconsiderate but it's the being inconsiderate that's the problem not the laziness in and of itself.

But I'm not really sure what all of this means. I haven't like... really emotionally digested all of it. Should I give myself some time to be lazy and see that everything is safe and okay? It makes me question why I have these responsibilities in the first place. Am I really doing schoolwork because that's what I really want? It's caused me a lot of suffering. Why am I really doing it? I want the knowledge but everything else about it makes me feel so anxious. I'm not sure what to do with this realization. Maybe I should just sit with it for a while?