Thanks, Jim. You are fortunate that you don’t have a negative thought stream running in the background. Many do and, if not recognized and managed, can be quite debilitating. Using myself as an example, I was completely unaware that internal dialogue (of any type) could affect practical personal quality of life. My (psychologist) wife suspected I might have something like that going on (as does she) and suggested I take a quick internal peek. Sure enough, the constant “you’re an idiot, stop being so stupid/judgemental/shallow, this good thing is sure to end, I’m going to be found out as a fraud (and much worse)” dialogue was so prevalent that I did not even recognize it was there. It was quite shocking, actually and exactly opposite of the practical realities of my life and the lessons learned from my faith-based world view. The reason I mention this here is twofold: 1) as evidenced by a few people here saying this is their norm as well, it is not rare and understanding that can help us navigate this world full of people and 2) again, using myself as an example, it’s helped me change the way I interact with people, especially those that are clearly struggling with anger/frustration/agitation. Some people are just jerks. Most are just reacting to an unobserved internal mechanism. And, I can choose to pour gas on that fire or water on that fire. And, that awareness helps me to pour water more often than not.
I am more than amazed to read this and had no idea folks think these types of destructive things about themselves. I hope eventually you and my other friends can get to a place where these thoughts are gone forever.
I for one appreciated your post and will check out the podcast. While I can keep my anxiety and self-doubt at bay for the most part, there are times when I’m awake at 2am dwelling on that dumb thing I did in high school over 20 years ago, or beating myself up for not trying harder in college, or regretting a particular parenting decision when my kids were younger.
I don’t beat myself up for slacking off in school, or really regret too many decision, but I have several regularly recurring dreams. One is where I find hidden rooms in my house, which is said to represent potential new opportunities in your life. The other is where I’m back at school and I suddenly realize I have a final exam, and not only do I not know the material, I don’t even remember what classroom or time the exam is. This is said to represent my feelings of unpreparedness in my life. I’m sure those two are related, though neither have anything to do with baseball, cigars, or rum. So I kind of ignore them.
I had the second one about forgetting/not knowing tests and/or scholastic requirements, but I was never unprepared so it must have meant something else for me. I have not had a variation of that dream in a long time; it was never what I would call recurring, but I had it more than once.
My version of this is for some reason I need to go back to college, but rather than being unprepared for an exam or not knowing the subject, I show up without having secured a place to live.
I’ve also had what I call the “Billy Madison” dream, where someone recognizes a terrible mistake and I didn’t have enough credits to graduate high school or whatever, and I have to go back and finish. I’m sure there is some sort of “regression in life” meaning, but I’m not sure. I could ask my psychologist mother in law, but I try to avoid those types of conversations with her, as I don’t want to end up on one of her “paths to wellness” mailing lists.
Her “specialty”, as it were, was in trauma and grief counseling. She has seen and heard things from her days working in CPS that are beyond horrifying. She is an incredibly caring person, and I admire her greatly for it. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
This is interesting. I now work with someone that pretty much daily will call herself stupid, out loud. I have, on more than one occasion, told her to stop because people are mean enough we don’t need to treat ourself that way.
And I understand what you described. I have to brag on my current employer, he has truly made me feel like a leader in the office. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything different than what I’ve previously done in jobs, but he sees and says how it is different. Having good people around you can be amazing. So, Chuck, no need to twist nuts or anything.
My probably typical dream after law school was forgetting/coming late to a final exam. A variation quite a few years down the road was I was in my last year of some program, not necessarily law, and I stopped going to class in required courses and had no clue about the material. This was so foreign to my actual behavior in school I have no idea what it meant.
My dreams usually involve some combination of myself, dinosaurs, Martians, cowboys, the girls from ZZ Tops’ “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” video, surfboards, escapees from an insane asylum and cross-country road rallies.