How can you, unpick you – that is your fundamentals, what has made you you for so long?
I always think of myself as sentimental layers of life experiences built up over years, and compacted together to form layers which represent my whole being, a person; for the moment, a ‘final product’.
If there is something amiss, somewhere deep down in all that sediment layering then how can that be sifted through? How do we locate successfully that one ‘bad seed’ upsetting the equilibrium of our being, creating disharmony?
There are certain things which effect me and impact on my life; these I feel are embedded reactions to something long gone or long ago learnt. These embedded ‘flaws’ or ‘bad’ reactions, ‘faulty’ coping mechanisms or whatever else are more difficult to locate in my life layering than something recently learnt, experienced and assimilated into myself.
In fact, pin pointing the specific incident that triggered these flawed behaviours, faulty coping mechanisms or bad reactions which currently effect me, is the hardest thing to do! Perhaps the reason for this is because they are anchored to my childhood, before I was fully cognisant?
If something impacts upon us before we are fully self aware, how can we then unpick these flaws in ourselves? How do we begin to find the thread to unravel, and unpick ourselves, thus solving these issues we have? How can a root be found without knowing first where to look for it?
Isn’t what we have automatically assimilated into our fundamental core person, the most difficult to then rectify if there are problems with this assimilation?
Perhaps then it is time to move on from even trying to unpick ourselves. Is it ever worth spending time feeling that we should be more than we are? Is it worth considering that one moment, long ago in our past, may have diverted us from becoming a different person – one perhaps more ’rounded’ and grounded?
I have begun to think not.
Some things have no rhyme or reason, they just are. The best method of healing, for me, is to just accept my ‘warts and all’, and embrace who I am – faulty or otherwise! Unpicking myself, unraveling my threads would, I feel, create more problems than it would solve. I may be flawed, faulty and even bad on occasions, but then that is me, the only me I know – so who is anyone else to contest that?
None of us are perfect, but those little imperfections make us all perfect just the way we are.
Who would we be without our little flaws – would we be better people or would we be worse? Who can really ever know for certain.
The Savvy Senorita 
I think for me is that if there are things I don’t like about myself, I can change. We are not fixed personas set into stone. At anytime any age we can modify who we are. To be honest, I don’t know if there is some root cause to some of my behaviours I don’t like. I definitely have tried to dig deep but I am coming up with a whole lot of nothin’ I don’t know if it finding it would help heal me in some way or not. But I also agree we should accept ourselves and not beat ourselves up for when we make mistakes.
Here here! I agree with our ability to change, I was just wondering if we can successfully or long term change without the root cause?! Just a theory!! I think we all struggle with some stuff, and don’t know why or how it all begun. Yet, I am feeling more in the mind of just being me, and not bitching about myself so much!!!!
The fact that we have flaws makes us human. All any of us can hope for is friends that will be honest with us, ignore the little things and teach us nuggets of information we can use on another day. Did that make sense? My garden whipped my butt today and my mind is too tired to think. Good article, enjoyed it much.
Hi Barbara, that is very kind of you, thank you! Yes, you make complete sense and I agree with you!! I am what I am – to quote Gloria Gaynor!
Wow. Deep thoughts! Well, I try not to spend too much time navel gazing, because I just get depressed. All I can do is try not to annoy too many people! 🙂
Hi, yes I try not to too much – as it can unravel a whole heap of trouble!!!
Maybe you don’t have a “fundamental core person” or essence. Maybe you are just made up of a series of experiences such that you are a new person every minute of the day. Imagine you are an alcoholic and you tell your partner that you want him to keep the key to the drinks cupboard because you know that later in the day you will be begging him to give you the key. You tell him that when this happens you will lie and cheat and use every ploy to make him give you the key but he is not to do so because the ‘real’ you wants to be free from the evil of drink. Later on that day you tell your partner that you didn’t mean what you said earlier and have changed your mind about the key and want it back. Should your partner give you the key and why? Which is the real you?
Interesting. I think we do change with new experiences and so on, but something are a constant and with us because of the past. If a person knows the cause of their ‘troubles’ they can alter the consequence. If they don’t, because somewhere too deep the reason for the behaviour is buried; can they deal with the compulsion (an addiction for example) could bring? If the real them has been masked so long by this addiction – could they find the path back to rectify this behaviour if they didn’t know how they got on to it in the first place? Is their real self suppressed or perhaps that is their true self. How can they know if that action (addiction) is masking their life or themselves? How can they change this without knowing why and where it begun. If you cannot trace a clear path back to one point, incident or event that begun this behaviour etc, then it becomes a case of groping around in the dark for possible answers, to then relocate your self before that behaviour etc. set in, and altered who you were. Addiction can be cured, but only if the reason behind becoming an addict is found; if this occurred at a young age then finding a reason could be more difficult. The longer anyone engages in addiction, the more it consumes them – finding the ‘real’ them is what will eventually overcome the addiction (if the person is aware of what point in their life they left behind their real self). Otherwise, maybe such issues will always haunt them, and keep them away from being a person without addiction.
Well, that’s what headshrinks are for. I’ve never been to one in my adult life, though. I have found, however, that I can modify my reactions to specific situations short-term, through meditation. It doesn’t change who I am fundamentally, only on the top layer. Well, if I go by your analogy, another layer will cover the one I have modified and render it harder to access, or even inaccessible after more layers have accumulated again, making the change a fundamental one over time, which is partially true, I guess. I have also gone through major changes recently, getting a job, greatly reducing my alcohol consumption. I wouldn’t have lasted a day with my old attitude, but it’s been 6 weeks now.
Let me congratulate you on the major changes, that deserves credit, as it isn’t always easy to make a change so profound. Great news for you!! I think we can make changes, but wonder if we ever truly find the root of the causes behind the behaviour or attitude that was deemed to be messing with our lives. Some roots yes, they have direct links to events and so on, but others can be buried too deeply in the layering of sediment we accumulate as we live. Change therefore can become tricky, as knowing a cause of a behaviour, and so on, makes ridding ourselves of it all the ‘easier’. I feel otherwise it can always haunt us. Well, that is my theory anyway!!!
Well, it’s not like I’ve got everything figured out, if that is even possible. The technique probably also needs lots of adapting for different people, and I only learned it because I was forced into learning a similar technique, let’s call it somatic transformation, turning pain into anger, and using pain to suppress anger; I used to have terrible anger management issues, and it also came in handy during the worst cases of my medical condition
No, we cannot figure everything out. It does seem though that you have made good progress to helping yourself live your life though. I wonder, suppressing pain, it is an interesting concept not often used as an aid to ‘heal’. I do think it can work though. Some things cannot be changed, the past will always be the past, and what was done cannot always be rectified. Accepting that, and allowing ourselves to just be at peace with it can allow us to move on, and live. Rather than opting to perhaps dwell or dredge up all that which cannot be erased.
welcome back 🙂 I’m reading your post after long time. Good to see you again.
Thank you 🙂