Day 4 - Dermatillomania and Self-Sabotage: Why it happens
9:57 PM
Within this blog, I am continuing from my last blog where I
stated “I will demonstrate how to
investigate, understand and find the source of thoughts, forgive them, and
re-script a new way of being/thinking/doing while incorporating Mr. Schwartz’s
suggestions.” Within
this statement, what I am referring to is the thoughts that cause the internal
energetic environment, or feeling/emotional state that leads to picking. I am
going to look at where the thoughts come from/what leads to them, pulling them
out like strings. I will then forgive
them, which releases and diffuses them and the energy they create within self.
Then I will ‘re-script’ a new way of
being and doing.
In my
previous blog I had documented an example of how I negated a picking session.
To briefly re-cap, I identified a moment where I knew I was setting myself up
to pick my skin, I defined that moment in words and used the tool of
self-forgiveness to ‘diffuse’ my mind. I then made a plan for how my afternoon
would play out upon walking into my empty apartment, and I lived the plan
instead of participating in derma. Please read that blog for context by
clicking Here.
It
was really amazing to walk this solution and have it work, but unfortunately,
it isn’t as simple as finding a single solution and having it work like magic
or like a quick fix. Everything has multi-dimensions and layers that have to be
exposed and walked, and so here I will describe a point of self-sabotage that opened
up the next time I tried to employ the same technique of ‘making a detailed
plan and sticking to it’:
I was
trying to think of a plan for when I would wake up in the morning. I knew I
would have free time so I knew there would be the temptation to pick. I tried
to think of a plan and I became continuously distracted; I felt bored and
frustrated by making a plan. I would go ‘blank’, and then I started really
resisting making a plan, saying to myself, “it’s the weekend, I’ll figure it out
tomorrow, why am I putting myself through this now? “ The feeling I had within
me was a strong defiance and negative emotion towards pushing myself to do what
should be an act of self-support. But it did not feel self-supportive at all. I
felt like I was depriving myself or losing something and there was a strong
presence of fear.
This entire play-out was me using my mind to
sabotage myself within living a solution I had found and proven to myself mere
days prior. I am going to investigate these reactive thoughts by using
self-forgiveness as follows:
(side note: at the end of this
blog I gathered the realizations I revealed within and through the
self-forgiveness process)
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to have an adverse reaction to making myself a plan for the day
so that I can support myself to do something OTHER than pick my skin.
Now to describe the reaction in
words through self-forgiveness:
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to not
want to make a plan for my day because I feel it is ‘boring’ and ‘constrictive’
and it makes me feel ‘trapped’ like ‘I can’t move’ or have ‘no freedom’.
Now to figure out WHY I feel this way:
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to manifest the energetic experiences of ‘boredom’ (which is
generally avoidance), ‘constriction’, ‘trapped’ and ‘loss of freedom’ in
connection to the thought of making a self-supportive plan to help me avoid a
picking session.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to feel ‘constricted’ and ‘trapped’ when and as I would make a
set plan for myself for a period of time because I think/believe/perceive that if
I stick to that plan there will be no time for me to ‘do what I want’.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to
think/believe/perceive that making a plan prevents me from “doing what I want,”
when I can see clearly that “doing what I want” means picking my skin because I
subconsciously want to repeat the pattern and live out the compulsions because
I think I need to satisfy the urge, within this I see, realize and understand
that I subconsciously fear having a plan because I see it as a threat to my
picking sessions, and if I don’t get my picking sessions, I will feel horrible.
Here I have to now recognize the distinction between ‘what I
want’ – which is to stop picking, and ‘what I think I want’ – which is to satisfy the urge to pick my skin by
following through with the compulsion.
Within the following statements I am
using Psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz’s techniques of re-attributing and re-valuing thoughts,
except that I’ve added the dimension of self-responsibility. (For example,
where he would say “this thought is not me, it’s my OCD, I would say “this
thought is my creation, I take self-responsibility to investigate how/why I
created it, I realize it is merely a mind-creation and that it does not support
me in my living, I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed this thought,
and I will no longer accept and allow it to exist within and as me, I commit
myself to…..” and then I will specify the change I intend to live). I'll expand on this in my next blog.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that being free to pick my skin is
the same as being free to ‘do what I want’.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to
think/believe/perceive that I want to
pick my skin, instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that it is the
OCD, the disorder that I have created within and as myself as my mind which
leads me to believe this is what I want
due to myself having used skin picking as a coping mechanism for various
reasons throughout my life.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to not see, realize and understand that what I really want is to live out the self-supportive
plans I make for myself, because they are plans made within self-direction,
meaning plans that I made to
intentionally support myself, benefit myself, and assist myself to walk towards
stopping this disorder and healing.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to feel trapped if I think I won’t have a chance to pick my
skin.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to fear not being able to pick my skin within the
thought/perception/belief that I won’t ever feel better and I will feel
intensely uncomfortable forever if I don’t get to pick.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to think/believe/perceive that the bad feelings will last
forever and that I can’t prevail or wait them out or survive them, and within
this I remind myself that all energy eventually runs out.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to feel an intense fear when I think I’m not going to be able
to pick because I feel like I am losing/denying a piece of myself.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to identify so much with dermatillomania that I have begun to
believe it is part of Who I Am and a part of me that I couldn’t survive
without.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to feel suffocated when I make a plan that doesn’t involve
derma, and within this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to
associate the acquiescence of myself to this disorder to breath itself, as if
without it, I couldn’t breathe.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to associate breathing and freedom to derma instead of seeing,
realizing and understanding that I have it exactly backwards, wherein this
disorder is controlling me, suffocating my natural expression, and it has me
trapped like a prisoner in my own body.
I forgive myself for accepting and
allowing myself to sabotage myself by adversely reacting to making a plan
because in reality I subconsciously want to continue to pick because I have
lead myself to (subconsciously) believe that if I don’t pick I will suffocate and die, within this, I
forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to place this disorder as more
important and more vital than myself and my real life and my real breathing and
Who I Really Am.
So what the this investigation
process reveal? Reality check:
1) That I sabotage myself from
supporting myself to heal because deep down I don’t really want to heal, I don’t
want to let go of derma because I believe so strongly that I need it and that I
would die without it. I have led myself to see and experience it as a coping
mechanism that I cannot cope without, although here I remind myself that I have
never actually tried, and that it might not be as bad/difficult/terrible as I
imagine. Please read a similar blog I wrote on the topic: The Fear of NotHaving OCD.
2) That I had never clearly made
the differentiation between ‘what I want’ and ‘what I think I want’. This point needs to be hammered home because ‘wanting
to pick’ is my default programming that I immediately go to, I trust it and
follow it through despite experiencing the same consequences each time.
3) That I blind myself to the reality
consequences I create for myself when I pick. It’s like I forget each time I
start a picking session, that the consequence of that session will probably
feel just as bad or worse than the feelings I’m escaping through picking.
4) That I feel trapped if I see I’m
not going to be able to pick. When I look at this statement now I see that I am
only trapped to face myself and the feelings/emotions I have created. I will
look into this in blogs to come. Conversely, I feel that if I can get the opportunity
to pick, I feel free and liberated. I have this exactly backwards in my mind.
5) That I irrationally believe
that if I don’t participate in derma I will die, and this deep deep belief
creates an underlying fear that builds up regularly.
I will go up till here for this blog,
and continue with scripting my self-commitments and self-corrective application
in my next blog.
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