Let's make a checkpoint, a summary of the progress I made since December 2016.
I have learned that:
  • I am a classical codependent and this causes so much stress in my life, prevents me from knowing who I am and what I want; I have been always struggling with the feeling of having no direction in my life, well this is not a surprise if the direction is heavily influenced by anyone I meet. All of it has been so automatic that it was not obvious at the beginning, luckily the symptoms were so clear that they left no doubt, so I kept on digging.
  • I suffer from CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) symptoms. All the weird things about me that I had no clue where they were coming from are symptoms of CPTSD (I wish someone told me this earlier): frequently spacing out, repetitively withdrawing my focus in certain situations, feeling extremely triggered when it comes to some subjects and therefore avoiding them all together (which is embarrassing), not remembering faces, names, dates, meetings (which is also embarrassing), disturbed time and space perception; the CPTSD has been mainly created in childhood but new abusive relationships create new traumas very easily.
  • I have a very skewed picture of men, it's ultimately connected with their aggression, impulsivity and selfishness. I am attracted only to this. I seem not to be able to see anything else than those 3 characteristics in men in general, therefore men who are not like that I find extremely boring and asexual.
  • I am probably living a very different life than a healthy person. All those perception filters and triggers make my regular mental state similar to a state of permanent intoxication (maybe that's why weed has usually no effect on me). It requires a lot of energy to still function normally despite of that. I am not living a real life. I was completely not aware of it. In fact I do not enjoy my life, which is no wonder to me now.
I have understood that:
  • I didn't have a childhood. I was not aware that my mother telling me how lucky I was to actually have a childhood, as well as having photos of happy family now says nothing about me having had a childhood. Maybe I didn't have an alcoholic father, maybe we had enough money, enough food, I had clothes and a walkman, but I was never allowed to be a child. I was not allowed to play. I was not allowed to be careless. The expectations were the only thing that existed, some of them really ridiculous (at the age of 5: being "like a mother" to my sister, counselling my mother in her marital problems, managing my father's anger outbursts, being a boy because my father wanted a son, being a servant to my parents).
  • I am probably not exceptional. I don't have to be exceptional. It's my fucking choice how much I try to perform at my best, "exceptional" is not a definition my parents gave me once and for my whole life. I'm actually sick and tired of having to be exceptional.
I started doing the following:
  • I got more in touch with my inner always present feelings. I realise that the parts of me which I held accountable for my misery and not being normal enough are probably exactly what is real me. The negative feelings of shame are only my learned reactions to the real me (i.e. the reactions of my parents), it's not what this real me is.
  • Thanks to Vipassana and some further conscious effort I started noticing and paying more attention to my body sensations, which appear as emotional responses to my thoughts or external events. I'm still learning the patterns, but I can tell that it's a rich source of information. There's also strong asymmetry in sides of the body. There's also one permanent unpleasant sensation which I think must be connected to a major problem of mine. It gets very intensified when I interact with men who I am either dating or who are in any way members of the family.