[Michelle11]

Originally Posted by Starman

I felt evil, I felt I was evil; it was not cognitive, it was not a label that I embraced, rather it was a strong feeling that engulfed me. I was filled with rage at the universe, and it had no rhyme or reason. A feeling that I struggled with and I really did not like myself. I had to get to a place where I liked myself, I had to fall in love with myself. Quiet meditation and my spiritual practice helped me to do that. A transformation process of changing my vibration from this icky feeling of self-loathing to a peaceful and loving feeling that permeated by entire being. Surrounding myself with positive, loving, and compassionate people helped. However, for a long time I hid in marijuana and other drugs. Speaking only for myself, that only carried me so far and I had to find a more natural, non-substance induced, way of transforming my vibration. I think the Great Work of Humanity is Self Transformation. Today I am a process in progress and have come a long way from where I was, with greater, more positive, transformations going on within me all the while.

Can I ask you to explain more what you mean by your perception that it wasn’t cognitive? My perception of myself is that I picked up some cognitive misunderstandings from my father criticizing all the time and his use of anger to get his point across as the solution to anything wrong with me. My perception is that is how I developed a poor cognitive perception of myself and thought using anger at myself was how to fix it. Unaddressed it devolved into complete self rejection and a self loathing that labelled me as evil and a danger to society. I had extreme rage inside and felt that is what made me evil and a danger. I had no basis for that actually being true. I have never done any heinous acts or anything so horrible as to be perceived as an evil person but that was my subconscious self view. What made it worse was not having a real clear cut source. There really was no basis for the level of rage inside. It didn’t make sense. Yes, my father was hard on me and looked at the negative side of life more than the positive but I wasn’t abused, I wasn’t treated as though I was evil. So to me I felt that something had to be wrong or faulty with me. It seemed to come out of nowhere. At least initially I mistakenly thought it did.

You had a clearly traumatic experience being in a warzone. As well you had a very misguided country that turned on you because of a lack of perception and group mentality. I think in many ways, we both took what happened to us, how people treated us personal as though what other humans say and do defines our worth. To me that is cognitive in nature because we are using our rational brain to define ourselves in a negative light. It isn’t truth but our brain perceives it as so. A shift in our perceptions of ourselves away from other human’s opinions and from being human in general can help tremendously at healing the need to do ourselves in. So I’d be interested to hear your perspective on why you think it isn’t cognitive. I’m not saying you are wrong. Actually the opposite. I like to hear varying points of view because that is how I learned about myself and see things I wasn’t seeing before.

In the end, I think in my case, I was born a sensitive person, someone prone to stronger than normal emotions. I suspect that my father appearing to be angry a lot made me feel like my life was threatened. Even though I was just being extra sensitive he seemed hostile to my sensitive nature. It caused me to fall into a state of constant anxiety worried about upsetting him. The state of being in constant anxiety molded my brain into a kind of permanent state of flight or flight. Everyone and everything turned into a threat to me. I tried to push through all that fear as best I could and I did ok. But the constant criticism undermined my self confidence and so self doubt and a perception that everything thing I did was wrong caused me to basically want to sit life out. If I can’t get it right it’s best to sit in a corner and try and not be noticed. Trying to suppress my fear and lack of confidence led to depression and wanting to escape life, which as I said, unaddressed eventually built up into out right self rejection and a desire to do myself in. As a young person I did not see the path clearly. I just felt bad and felt I had no reason to feel bad. But there was definitely a dotted line to how I got from feeling homesick as a child to the misunderstanding that I was somehow evil and needed to be destroyed. Ultimately it was my rational brain trying to sort out how to avoid the threats I felt were everywhere. Even though I was never in any physical danger our fight or flight response can get triggered simply from feeling emotional threats. So that is why I see my path as cognitive in nature and not biological or a product of mental illness. I developed mental instability and became disturbed as you said, but because of making assumptions about myself and life that were wrong. Basically disturbed is a very good word to describe how I was handling life. Unhinged and disturbed by it. But I think it all started from cognitive misunderstandings I picked up as a child that got embedded into my subconscious self view and how I perceived the world. But I would love to hear your take on it. Your story seems a lot more riveting than mine.

In any event, one of the reasons I have changed my mind about the idea that if we suicide we have a harder, worse life the next one is because my life by all accounts was pretty normal. No real abuse, just a lack of any positive reinforcement and not being taught good coping skills. As well being mistakenly being led to believe anger was the solution to all problems. My suspicion is that I had rougher lives in the past and could not stop myself from suicide. I had a few dreams that seem to indicate a few much more difficult lives. So to give myself a fighting chance I took on a less traumatizing life. In a sense I was traumatized enough because of my sensitivity to strong emotions. I didn’t need more motivation than a typical authoritarian father who had a loud bark. It was motivation enough to send me into the challenge of surviving myself and coming back from a state of self loathing. I'm glad we are moving past it. I definitely feel lighter than I have for most of my life.