Self-Compassion, Narcissism and Empathy

Greetings, readers.

It has been a long time since I blogged. Partly due to good old-fashioned laziness. But largely because this is called ‘Feeling Good’ and lately, I haven’t been. Nothing I've had on my mind lately seemed like it fit the general theme I’d set up in the initial post. Mostly because I had a really great thing with someone amazing and I let it dissolve due to indecision and inaction. I’ve been doing the regret dance quite a bit lately.

Regret, sure. And plenty of self-loathing. I’ve been careful in my life not to blame others for what happens to me. I’ve taken it all on as personal responsibility. Which is something I highly recommend. Responsibility is not a burden, but a grace that you grant yourself which puts you in the driver’s seat of your life.

Where I’ve been tripped up is that I’ve been conflating responsibility with blame. It is important to distinguish between those two ideas. Blaming myself created an image of myself as an enemy. Someone loathsome who kept messing up all the things I cared about. For most of my life I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on regular sessions of self-loathing. I’d been dissatisfied with how my life was shaping up, seen myself as the cause of it and focussing my sadness into hatred for the cause of my problems.

It’s understandable that we sometimes do this, but it is also extremely disabling for obvious reasons. When you see yourself as an enemy, you are always obstructed, your enemy and saboteur is there with you, every second of your life.

In this blog and in the way I speak in general I have been doggedly pursuing happiness, productivity, health, vitality, creativity and feeling good, damn it! The paradox is that all this striving has come from disatisfaction with who I currently am. I've been trying to be happy in spite of myself.

Self-love is the surest, most direct way to set in motion all of these things I've wanted. In realising this I am  getting to the real heart of the matter. 

I have titled this blog Self-Compassion because Self-Love can more easily be confused with Narcissism, which I also want to speak about.

Hyper-vigilance in controlling how one's image is presented is a symptom of narcissism.

I don’t think Narcissism and Self-Love are the same thing at all. I believe I’ve been very narcissistic in my life in that I’ve been obsessed with my own image and hyper-sensitive to criticism and rejection. From what I’ve read on theories of narcissism (yes, wikipedia, don’t be a snob, wikipedia is cool J ) it starts when someone feels they are flawed in a way that makes them fundamentally unacceptable to others. When a really large group of older kids at my primary school started bullying me when I started at primary and kept doing so until they left for high school, I was sure it was because there was something wrong with me. Since then I’ve tried to control how others view me, frightened that if I slipped up people would see the un-loveable truth of who I really was.

The truth of my unworthiness had been such a huge influence on my thought-process that almost everything I would see or do would confirm it. Hearing about the success of others would often hurt, because I was so self-focussed; someone who wasn’t me was doing well, this was more evidence that being me was a shitty idea!

Even positive things like the large number of friends I now have, would reinforce my self-loathing. I’ve worked hard in my life to hide pieces of myself and create a palatable identity to present to others, which meant that all my successes and new friends and social victories were just more proof that really, deep down, my true self was a terrible person and all my work to hide that self had been justified.

Narcissists can’t stand criticism, not because the truth of their awesomeness is so apparent, but because their self-hatred is so strong and immoveable that acceptance from others is all they feel they have. Narcissists are often perfectionists because they are unable to forgive themselves for failure, even unavoidable failure, like failing to be perfect. (At least, this is how I have experienced it. This is all based on my experience and reflection, not controlled psychological study.)

The point of looking at narcissism here is just to show that it is a very different thing to self-love, so we don’t have to feel as though we are narcissistic or vain when we practice self-love or self-compassion. On the contrary, loving and accepting yourself gives you the freedom to express yourself; which allows you to interact with the world and love and appreciate *others*.

This picture is here to break up the text into digestible chunks and give your eyes nice change of pace. It also reflects well my feelings on hot dogs.

             So, hopefully I have convinced you that self-love/self-compassion is a Good Thing. Any tips, then, on how to go about loving ourselves? I’m no expert but, hey, how about we all speak nicely to ourselves?

We all talk to ourselves in our heads all day, every day. Sometimes we say things like “Get out of bed you lazy asshole, go for a run right now, I guess you probably won’t because you’ve proven time and time again how slovenly and pathetic you can be!”

But is that how we’d speak to an innocent and cute, little kid we wanted to encourage to go running because we want the best for them? No way! We’d remind them nicely of how they wanted to keep their fitness up, and understand their tiredness and not-wanting-to, and reassure them that it’ll be fun once they get started, and that we’ll love them whether they go running or not. We might even be a little firm with them now and then, but we’d temper this Tough Love with plenty of kindness and softness, too.

My suggestion is that we forgive ourselves for all our mistakes. Everyone deserves to be loved and understood and forgiven. Even you. So, go ahead. Just saying to yourself “I forgive you for X” now and then could start to have a very real effect.

While we’re at it, let’s all stop arguing with people when they try to complement us, hey? You beautiful little winners.

Look up ‘The Benjamin Franklin Effect’ if you’re interested in fun little psychological insights. Basically, it is the idea that often it isn't that we do nice things for people we are fond of- rather we find ourselves fond of the people for whom we do nice things. So, do nice things for yourself, speak nicely to yourself, reassure and understand and be compassionate to yourself and that ought to give you a sense of Self-Love.

Being constantly accompanied by an ally, rather than an enemy is practical, logical and more pleasant. Even if the thing you want most in life is to be unselfish and to love others, being accompanied by an ally has got to be preferential to being obstructed by a negative self-view.

It’s just good policy.

Depression Sucks and Life is Stupid.

Being depressed really does suck. Ask anyone who’s been depressed and they’ll back me up on that. Sometimes, all I really want to do is express that I’m upset. I want to mope around and whinge about why I’m unlucky, why I’m detestable, how much I regret my past and dread my future. I want to write some awful angsty poetry. I want to make a facebook status update that says “Depression sucks and life is stupid.”

But, usually, I don’t.

I don’t because I find whinging, moaning, and unconstructive negative facebook status updates to be really annoying. The point of this week’s entry, then, is that I have been quite repressed about my own negative feelings. But I stand by what I’ve said about whinging: if all you ever do is whinge and moan, you’re probably an insufferable prick. Considering how very lucky we are just by virtue or living in New Zealand (well, I suppose you could be reading this from a number of places, but I’m going to assume from your internet connection and your knowledge of my existence that you live in the developed world, at least) complaining all the time comes off as short-sighted, spoiled, ignorant and spiteful. Expressing yourself is great; being hypocritical and narrow-minded is not.

However, we all get down from time to time. I have developed something of a reputation for being super-upbeat, positive and extroverted- but there is more to it than that . The reason I say a lot of positive things isn’t because I never have a negative thought. I say a lot of positive things because I don’t want to be lazy. Being negative and cynical is easy, we are genetically predisposed to notice negative things because being aware of danger is a great survival mechanism. But thinking only of survival is dull and unimaginative. There is so much more that we can do than simply survive. I think negative thoughts, sure, but what I say is a creation and I want to create something greater than just “getting by”.

It takes three positive experiences to balance one negative one. I have heard of this ratio being as high as 7 : 1

So, I have put some good habits into place. Speaking positively. Being supportive. Being complementary. Accepting complements. Celebrating everyday miracles. Finding the good in a situation that is not always immediately apparent. Having faith*. The problem in all this is that I mistakenly thought I had to take negative emotions out of the picture all together. Maybe doing so helped me, at first, to get all this positivity rolling, but now I see that I’ve been hiding a large part of myself from everyone.

Here it is, then. I get depressed. I get deeply depressed at times. I have some huge perspective on it though, because no matter how badly things get now-a-days, they never dip so low as they were in my teenage years. But still, I sometimes suffer from a terrible self-image, deep regret and incessant worrying.

In my low self-image, I see myself as lazy and selfish and just not very cool. I imagine that people dislike me if they show the slightest lack of enthusiasm at my presence and I imagine that it really matters what everyone thinks. Everyone must like me.

Regret is horrible and unproductive, yet I get caught up in it at times. Why didn’t I treat that girl better? Why have I messed up so much?

Look at this wistful baby

The worst is the worrying and anxiety, I think. There is a whole spectrum of that, to where it’s so subtle I don’t even realise I’m getting into a bad mood and it just throws me off course with the everyday things I am doing, or when it gets really bad and I feel like I don’t know how to do anything right, that I might not amount to much or that I have serious social problems that will prevent me from being happy and fulfilled.

I’m seriously not trying to beg for sympathy here. I don’t know exactly what my goal is except to not be repressed about all of this. It exists. The bad times happen and they suck and there’s no point in lying about it. I have been repressing them, yet I am committed to being expressive and honest in my life. I still find it extremely useful to work through problems** by using positive language. I still find it useful to keep myself positive by being active and energetic. Those things aren’t going to go away. But this repression is no longer working for me. The more you try to squash feelings the more they fester and grow inside of you.

I know most of us feel this way at times and talking about it is healthy if you can do it constructively. Talking about it lets it out of you where it can evaporate in the air around you.

 It’s still a good idea to be wise with your speech while talking about it.

 Sarcasm is not constructive vocabehaviour. Saying that you “can’t” or “have to” do something is usually inaccurate and you will find that you actually have a choice in the matter if you are honest with yourself, think about it a bit and own up to your responsibility for your life. How you use words is important as your speech influences your habits which become your life.

When people ask me how I am feeling, I’m going to be honest.

How are you today? Thanks for reading.

*I do not have faith that the bible is the literal truth or that any one particular organised religion is correct. I do not have faith in any particular thing, I just have faith. In goodness, if anything.

** Problems make up most of life. They are a good thing, you can’t have progress without a problem to work on.

Behavioural Addictions

I am going to play Lava Button again. I am not allowed to press delete (though I undoubtedly will once or twice by reflex) and must simply write this blog without over-thinking it. I don’t want to always use this game for my writing because there are definite advantages to being considered and editing a piece of writing, but today I feel like I really want to write a new blog entry, yet I hate everything I write. Not having the option to delete it artificially alleviates me of responsibility and calms me a bit, even if I don’t like what I’ve just written.

It has been three weeks since I last wrote a blog entry. I am committing now to increase my blog-frequency to at least once per week.

I want to write this week about behavioural addiction. It is a really serious problem but I don’t think many people think about it or understand it. Whether it is an addiction to gambling, food, pornography, computers, cutting oneself, video games, the internet, shopping, sex or work- the effects, as I understand them, are twofold.

The first effect is that the individual finds it difficult to stop these behaviours even when there are clear negative side effects to this behaviour. The addicted mind fabricates all sorts reasons and justifications as to why the behaviour should continue and these become just convincing enough when the added incentive of a dopamine spike make indulging once again in the behaviour so alluring.

This looks like a sweet alien valley in space through which one might pilot a heavily-armed fluro spaceship. Pew pew.

The negative side effects can be devastating and wide-ranging. The addictive behaviour can take up huge amounts of time and energy, leaving the addicted individual unable to fulfil many of their other commitments; or finding it increasingly difficult and stressful to do so. This continued inability to do the things important to them can cause guilt, shame, further binges in the addictive behaviour and in other vices on top of this.

Shame *hurts*.

The second (arguably even more insidious) effect is that, in the rewiring of the brain to reinforce this addictive behaviour, other behaviours become less intrinsically fulfilling. Someone who is addicted to gambling, for example, gets a dopamine spike in their brains when they are gambling. They start to get a tolerance to this, meaning they need to gamble more and more often with higher and higher stakes to feel the same rush and excitement. Then, activities that could have been really fun in the past, like playing cards with friends with no kind of gambling attached, become dull and uninteresting in comparison.

The addicted person will *want* to enjoy just hanging out with their friends, but will be saddened to find that doing this is now really unfulfilling and they may not understand why.

Exactly.

I am finding this all kind of arduous to write because I’m avoiding speaking about my own addiction. Addiction is often mixed deeply with guilt and shame and this is the case for me. For this reason, I won’t go into the specifics here, but I have become aware, recently, that I had been indulging in certain behaviours compulsively and that I continue to do so despite the negative side effects on my productivity and my enjoyment of life.

I have identified the addiction after reading about it and reading about others’ experiences with behavioural addiction and I have cut out the behaviour. It has been one week so far.

I feel like perhaps this is part of the reason that I often write a big list of things I want to do and then never get around to doing them. I am legitimately interested in them and I really want to enjoy doing them, but when I have had the spare time to do so I haven’t been able to get into that state of ‘Flow’ (which I blogged about in my last post) because my enjoyment of low-adrenaline activities had been somewhat dampened or numbed by my over-indulgence of the addictive behaviours.

Yeah, well, that was an easy one.

But! Yes! As I continue to abstain from these addictive behaviours my brain will re-rewire itself. The effect the addiction has had on my free time will disappear. Without the addictive behaviours taking up my time and energy I will have more time for the things I am passionate about (composition, singing, writing). Also, the work I need to do to excel in these areas will actually excite me! Previously, I have had to force myself to learn what little I know so far about music theory. I would put off studying theory for longer and longer until the shame and guilt I felt about this would make me willing endure the boredom of reading a theory book. I was always just choosing the lesser of two evils. Reading a theory book will, if I understand what I have read about behavioural addiction correctly, become more exciting and interesting the longer I abstain from stimulating artificial excitement by indulging my addictions.

If the addiction was something like food, I imagine things would become a little trickier. How well would a recovering heroin addict do if they had to have just a little bit of heroin each day in order to survive? With food addiction, one can (obviously) not just cut out food completely, so there needs to be some other kind of management system in place. The website I have been reading suggest Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and I’m sure there are other methods that you will surely find if you have the need for help and the willingness to change.

There are better goddamn options than this.

OK. Thanks for reading this. I wasn’t in a very good mood today and had to force myself to write this, so it may come across as quite joyless, but I hope this gets people thinking about whether they have any addictions. If you do, I can just recommend reading about it and reading what others have experienced and how they have got over their addictions and how they have benefited from their abstinence.

It helps to keep a journal about it and talk to close friends about it to get their support.

You can find some information about behavioural addiction here: http://addictions.about.com/od/howaddictionhappens/f/behavioraladd.htm

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist. This is all just what makes sense to me. A lot of it is backed up by scientific articles I’ve read, but within that even a lot of those are controversial. There is controversy of whether or not over-eating can ever be legitimately called an addiction. I think that it can, you may think otherwise. That is fine, I only hope that the way you see things empowers you, builds you up and has you enjoy life, loving yourself and others.

Also Disclaimer: Not all my blog entries will be so dry. Peace out dudes.

Blog Entry 2: Electric Blogaloo (aka Happiness)

Daaaaaangerous grounds here: an entry discussing Happiness. Boy, do people feel strongly about the subject. In pursuing it, do we let it slip past us? John Stuart Mill said:

            “But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."

Quite a foreboding little quote there, John.

Soren Kierkegaard said:

            “Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”

I came across both these quotes on the wikipedia page called ‘The Paradox of Hedonism’. So, it is with the wisdom of these men in mind, that I approach this subject with some trepidation. Clearly, I am fond of happiness and I want plenty of it in my life; I’m not going to try to lie about that, as if that would somehow outwit this little paradox.

But, I do take heed of the points made about the pursuit of happiness. Happiness as an ultimate goal is a little boring anyway. It’s good to want happiness and to think about what that means, but it’s also really good to have some kind of higher purpose in life than simply “pleasure”. By “higher purpose” we need not try to search for the most noble of pursuits, all we really need is an interest, any interest will do. It is my intuition that rather than try to chose a purpose, it would be better to examine our lives and see what we are already interested in and skilled at.

Basically, examine what you are most interested in and skilled at and then seek ever-greater challenges and results in that field. I believe this is the kind of purposeful living that attracts happiness. In psychology, this kind of completely focused motivation is called ‘Flow’ and it’s a concept I find really intriguing.

Stolen from Wikipedia, cool?

‘Flow’ seems to have the same elusive properties that happiness does, as one cannot force a state of Flow, it just happens when we immerse ourselves in tasks that are intrinsically worthwhile.

Almost directly contrary to everything I’ve just said, I have been pursuing and creating more happiness for my life lately. Not by obsessing over the idea of being happy or making that my ultimate goal, but in my declaration that I will have an extraordinary life and will achieve extraordinary results. I find that simply declaring something is a really good first step to realising that thing; my life is following the suit of my declaration.

Let’s be clear, however; I am not a wizard! There was no magic moment where I clicked my fingers and all the puzzle pieces arranged themselves, but I have started a dialogue and I am keeping it alive. There are ups and downs of course, but they don’t mean anything. The downs don’t mean failure, which I guess means that the ups don’t mean success- the success lies in my continued *commitment* to this extraordinary life (and to documenting it with this blog). That I will not give up is the real success.

So then! Let’s step away from this theorising and back into my actual life. Like I just said, the elusive nature of happiness has not stopped me from pursuing and capturing happiness and dressing it up in a little harlequin outfit and commanding it to DANCE! DANCE for my amusement!

I tried to find a good picture to put here. I am sorry.

 But there are side effects to happiness. At its extreme, happiness takes the form of a mania and the typical symptoms are low attention span, compulsiveness, racing thoughts, delusions of grandeur and over-indulgence. Last night I definitely over-indulged (there! My actual life, I promised we’d get there) and decided to drink a large amount of special reserve ginger wine because it was damn delicious and the effects were really pleasant.

I know that drinking too much is not ideal, but that’s where the delusions of grandeur come into the mix as my brain starts having these silly little thoughts like “drinking too much is usually a bad idea- but, man, you’re *special*! Let’s kick this night up a notch and show these mere mortals how a Chris Butler parties!”

Like an excited girl.

 I ended up being so damn content and relaxed that I totally ignored that my bedroom was full of cool and interesting people and I just went to sleep, declaring to protestors that I was embarking on a spiritual experiment to show that anxiety is worthless and even if I do nothing right now everything will be OK.

The upshot of all this is that I drank too much and missed half of the damn party! That’s not ideal to me. I would have liked to have learnt about and connected more with my guests, but that damn pest Happiness got in the way.

Happiness is a shifting, elusive, dangerous, magical creature and we all have unique and complicated relationships with it.

Perhaps I will let Happiness do its own damn thing and I won’t so much *pursue* it, as smugly benefit from it when it swoops into my life as a result of all the action and adventure I stir up; actually staying awake and having an awesome time for example.

In other news I am pleased to report that I ran through the bush to the turbine, took a charming new friend to see the Hylozoic Series at the City Gallery (which you *must* MUST see before they pack it up on June 3^rd)

and I’ve just started reading a really great book about thinking. Life is ticking along nicely. Thanks for stopping by.

Lava Button

Hello!

I’m going to play a little bit of the ol’ “The Delete Key is Lava” Game. It’s a good game and it suits my purpose of writing something, ‘cos when you play, you write something.

So, what was it I wanted to write again?

Ah yes, Living an Extraordinary Life.

Basically, I feel like making progress in my life, having a quantum leap forward in my productivity, confidence, fulfilment, happiness and connectedness. I want this. So, I am putting this in motion. This, apparently, then- is my manifesto.

The Manifesto of my Extraordinary Life.

I am making my goals and my journey public in the writing of this, because things feel more tangible to me when others are engaged; a personal triumph is much more transformative when it is shared.

I still find it challenging to be honest like this. Writing is a vulnerable art. In music, one can use the standard 4/4, major scale, I IV V, verse-chorus-verse template as a starting point and add weirdness and little flairs here and there and say “now how does that sound?” and lo and behold it sounds like something, and you can show people and see what they think, but the whole act of expression has been filtered through music theory and whatnot and it just isn’t as straightforward as using language directly to *tell people how you feel*.

That may have been stalling, but the rules of The Game state that it stays even if it is tangential to the actual Manifesto. What I was getting at is that honesty is still a challenge for me, and as such, I will not always be honest when I am writing this. HOWEVER, it is my *commitment* that I be honest. I just understand that commitments are rarely, if ever, met to a standard of perfection.

So, I suppose the first order of business in this Manifesto is my ongoing relationship with Honesty. It makes sense for this to be the first item as I am able to work on this quality in the very writing of the Manifesto by paying attention to the truth-value of what I write.

Put simply, I am challenged and excited by truth and honesty and in the keeping of this blog/manifesto/I’m-not-really-sure I will document the progress I make in being honest in my life.

Right, without any further ado, the next item on this list is productivity!

This is also fitting to be a higher-up item on my list because productivity is a damn important aspect of keeping this thing up and running. I am committed to keeping this Blogifesto regularly updated and I am committed to having substantial progress to report on between entries!

I don’t know exactly what to type next but even now I feel the urgency of productivity and am typing before I know exactly what to say! Acting *before* you are ready is, I think, a really important part of getting anything done, ever. If one waits until the moment is perfect, the thing is lost and never done.

In an ideal, abstract, hypothetical version of this blog, I would have plenty of practice in blog-keeping *before* I start the blog, so that I know it will be good. But, in reality, keeping this blog is, itself, the best practice. So, I apologise if this sucks at first. I will get better at this and I suspect I will re-haul things once I reach a certain standard. Then I will give myself a clean slate of sorts so as to entice new readers, starting them with my A-game, rather than having them wade through these earlier, crappier entries.

I digress! Such self-deprecation is not my style! Productivity is another aspect of my journey that I shall document in this here blog-type-thing. Let’s just call a spade a spade, this is a blog. Now we can move on.

Most other things fall neatly under the umbrellas of honesty and productivity, but specificity is not out of place in a life-document, so to name a few other points of interest I will be documenting my progress in:

Writing – This; Plays; Essays.

Composing – I have some compositions that I wish to develop and teach to a band and perform for you.

Singing – I will be singing in this band; and also The Hot Cakes; and also whatever else I can sink my larynx into.

Health! – There is an exclamation mark here because this is another big one. When one wishes to make progress in what they are doing (which is what this whole thing is all about) one should start with a base of good health. Exercise and nutrition gives you what you need to think clearly and access the energy required to Achieve Tasks! I am going to study Health and share what I find out and what I get.

Y’know, I’m going to take a lesson from Productivity here and wrap things up. In conclusion, please join me, if you are so inclined, on my journey. I will attempt to make it entertaining and relatable and relevant for others, exploring the more universal and philosophical ideas that bubble up from the results I set out to achieve.

            (One option you have if you do not feel engaged is to tell me why and I will see if I can make this more conversational or engaging or whatever it is that would make a difference.)

For now, Sayonara. Also, I totally cheated and pressed the delete key a bunch of times, instinctively. But I decided to just get on with it.

Cool, man.