[Michelle11]

Originally Posted by Starman

Michelle11, again I can relate to what you have shared. My experience may have started out as cognitive but nurturing damaging misunderstandings, self-loathing, etc., for me built a presence within myself that matched those perceptions, and for me that presence felt “evil.” Later on I also came to realize that I was a danger to myself and society as well. Today I see some act of violence on the news and I say to myself “there but for the grace of God go I.“ When I say it was not cognitive what I mean is that it took on a life of its own apart from what I think and I looked at it as something other than myself. It was a presence that possessed me, a presence that I had invited in by nurturing cognitive misgivings about myself. A presence that felt “evil.” At that point the word “evil” was more than a label which I held in my head. It was not cognitive.

Ok, I think I get it. That makes sense. The belief that I was really evil was kind of out of left field, yet that is what it felt like. This energy that wanted to consume me that I ran from most of my life was like some presence that was out to get me as if it had a life of its own. Our thoughts turn into energy that envelopes us in a way. Early on during the first couple of years I became outwardly suicidal I tried to do a meditation. I haven’t been very good at them because I was spending too much time in my head instead of just allowing myself to meditate. I’m learning the difference. But I did have one successful meditation. The meditation was a vision of my chest area and there being a large, very dense, very black cloud of dark smoke hovering over my heart. It felt ominous. Then the vision shifted to my bicep and around it was a cloud of green smoke hovering over it. I took the vision to mean that I had some very toxic energy smothering my heart but that I was now strong enough to face it. The negative views of myself had turned into toxic energy that threaten my ability to breath or be alive. We need our heart to pump to live. I spent most of my life running for my life from that toxic energy because it was an energy that wanted to do me in so it took quite a few years to get strong enough in myself to survive facing it or I may have not been able to resist the suicidal urges. Urges that were the result of this toxic energy that had accumulated around my heart. Gives a whole new perspective on the human experience. We are these bodies with brains and organs but we are also energy. Well, not sure where to go with this but you got me thinking and seeing things from a new perspective.

The mental health community places intellectual labels on mental disturbances and people are reduced to a particular label/diagnosis. We are partly to blame because we want to know what it is, what do we call it. Like calling it something will ease its’ effects.

This is true. I have spent my whole life trying to understand. In many ways it does help me to sort things out for myself but I read something by a therapist once who said he often comes across depressed people who don’t know they are depressed and that when they discover they are, they think that the simple knowing they are depressed should solve the depression. It doesn’t work like that but that is how many of us think. That the knowing should heal everything but the knowing, the awareness is simply the first step. We can’t even begin to heal without the knowing or awareness, we do need them first to get the ball rolling so to speak. Maybe that is why we are driven by a need to know and put labels on things.

Later I transferred to the mental health profession and over time found that most mental health professionals had a personal relationship with mental illness, mental disturbances, or some kind of emotional imbalance, either with themselves or a close family member. This is what usually drew them into the mental health profession.

Yes, I had every intention of going into the field of psychology but had a very intense foreboding feeling that if I did it would destroy me. I didn’t understand it at the time but just felt like I had to listen or else. It was actually the point in time where I became reckless because I lost direction and didn’t know who I was or where I was supposed to go. I eventually wound up in a field that felt like home even though I would never have chosen it for myself. That said, I am not even sure the job was important but rather the people it brought me in contact with. My boss turned out to have a very similar approach with people that my father had. Super critical about everything, seeing something wrong with everything and presenting with an angry tone about it all. As I got older, I saw that it wasn’t true anger but as a child it all felt hostile to me and I never confronted it and was drawn to a boss who would continue the pattern.

Well anyway, I do wonder what would have occurred had I gone into psychology. It’s possible I would have failed out of school and that would have been hard because I identified as someone who was everyone’s therapist. Or maybe I would have stayed caught in my comfort zone of being wrapped up in helping others never taking the time to work on myself thus not getting much accomplished this life.. Or maybe I would have opened my wounds before I was strong enough to face them. When my life is over and I get the review I am hoping that I will see what would have become of me because there was a time where I felt like the path I went down that eventually led me to wanting to annihilate myself into oblivion was pretty horrific. I felt destroyed within myself and wondered how anything could have been worse. Ultimately I think the decent back into depression mostly triggered my unhealthy issue with mistakes and doing things wrong. I felt all my life choices were wrong but I am now seeing the path my life took and how it has actually served to bring me to a healing. I use to think my life was supposed to be about reaching some level of occupational success in life. I now see that those paths are merely a means to an end for our soul to work on a lesson or overcome a challenge. Can’t say that is what life is about with absolute certainty or for everyone but seeing how my life unfolded has been interesting to say the least. None of it made any sense for a long time and then it all suddenly rippled into place. All the puzzle pieces began to fit. Quite a ride.

The story you recounted about the hypnosis is very interesting. There are parts to it that defy logic and in my opinion support the case for past lives and us bringing issues with us. My suspicion is that one life simply leads into the other. We pick up where we left off. The trauma from the experience of being shot and dying is having a possible impact on the woman’s current life. Well I guess I should not make that assumption. She very well may be a well grounded balanced person but I have a sense that the idea that I am evil had come from a past life experience. That I made such a horrific mistake in a past life that I saw myself as unredeemable and that not just my human self but my soul in its entirety needed to be destroyed and I ended that life with those intentions. As a result I suspect I spent a bit of time in darkness with the belief that I succeeded until I was finally coaxed out of the state of self induced exile. Well, possibly a far flung attempt by my brain to make sense of something that it couldn’t make sense of. I really don’t see anything that major in my life to attach an evil label on myself. Maybe it is true and maybe it isn’t but I guess the most important thing is that I learn to redefine my view of myself and stop tearing myself apart for being human, flawed and mistaken sometimes. I don’t sense that I still see myself as evil. I know I have no desire to destroy myself but I still struggle to feel ok but I’m working it out. This conversation has been helpful. Hugs.