Take the Power Back

It had been a while for me. Some people say that it's impossible to separate your mind from your self, but I know it is possible to escape from your own self-torment, if only for a little while. I've taken the weekend away from what I knew as my self and, so far, it feels damn good.

By self-torment I mean thinking hopelessly of the future and regretfully of the past.

For example, oh no, I'm never going to have enough money saved for that vacation, or, I always spend too much money. I'm a fool with my money.

These are harsh responses to what you desire. Imagine saying these things to someone you love.

When you think about it, how necessary is beating yourself up? Does it get you what you want sooner? Does it make you feel just to put yourself down? Should we feel terrible for our mistakes and repent until we're blue in the heart?

I beat myself up for my failings even though I know this self-torment gets me nowhere. No matter how hard I will myself to not feel awful for such and such a memory, my mind automatically reacts to an imperfect plan by zapping me with negative emotions.

So I was led to wonder just how deeply rooted by own masochism is. I tried an experiment this weekend. I told myself that I would give myself two days of uninhibited freedom to think about anything that came to mind, rather than forcing myself to plan and organize every detail in the plan. I decided to take it easy, just for one day.

But I found myself feeling guilty for it. It took a total of five minutes before I beat myself up for being lazy and childish. I was about to give up on the experiment and work on my car instead, but something inside told me to give it one more try. I rolled out of bed and climbed upstairs to make myself some coffee. En route, I must've thought about five or six negative things that I should have been doing that day. One of them, the one I wrote down in my scrapbook, was a reminder to call an aunt-in-law that has been nagging me to keep in touch with the family, and that reminder came packaged with negative associations like the memory of missing a family reunion in the late 1980's, and the many times my jokes bombed in the face of family members (they don't get my sense of humour), and the

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