Eff off Facebook

Ugh.  Now here on day six of my mindset reset with Mel Robbins and this is the day she’s going after my morning.

I’ve always worn the badge of just not being a morning person.  I’m grumpy, I snooze, I’m late…this has just always been who I am.

She wants me to take my phone out of the bedroom because of Facebook?  She doesn’t realize that I’ve already been converted.  I read her book, I’ve been subscribed to her emails for over a year.  I am a 5-4-3-2-1, book thumping, productivity freak because of Mel Robbins and I LOVE it.

Her point about not having the phone in the bedroom is because most people find the temptation to look at the phone too much and stay up way too late on things like Facebook.

I don’t Facebook.   I don’t Facebook mainly because of fomo, if I’m honest–it gives me anxiety.  Facebook makes it appear that everyone I know is out there living a far better life than I am.  In reality four of my 1000 friends posted photos of their recent vacations, fifteen of my friends commented on other friends vacay pics which caused them to pop up on my feed, and before I know it I’m anxious and depressed and I feel like a super huge failure because I’m the only one not doing and going and getting awesome things—and that’s how I feel before you factor in the fact that Facebook almost single handedly is responsible for the current idiot in office.

I was dating a member of Donald Trump’s base when that election was going on.  Racist, sexist, ageist –you name it–if it was different from him and his redneck friends–he hated it.

I remember the vulgar Hillary posts he’d like and share.  I was so offended and flabbergasted at how these assholes could possibly stand behind this clearly delusional and dangerous idiot so vehemently.  Why couldn’t I understand how everyone I was surrounded by was enamored with Donald Trump?

That’s easy.  I do not Facebook.

I did not get brainwashed because I do not Facebook.

Why don’t I Facebook?  I hate the sheep mentality.  I don’t like the weirdo stalker factor and also I have to tell you that if you think stalkers are the only people checking you out that you don’t want to be checking you out–you’re dead wrong.  The IRS checks you out as well.  I know this from the current IRS hell my ex husband has me suspended in.

They’re looking at those braggy vacation posts, the ‘look at my new car’ posts, and all those shopping pics as well.  That’s an honest to God true story straight from a first hand party to it.

Does having nothing to do with Facebook kinda make me feel like a hermit?  Yes.

Will I cave about it after the whole Russia thing?  No.

Maybe i’m socially withdrawn, maybe I’m just someone who’s had it with the stupidity of the masses but either way in my book Facebook is to blame for the current presidential nightmare.  Oh, and remember that war room they promised to put together in order to satiate the mob (and congressional leaders)  baying for their blood?  Dismantled.  Just in time for Russia’s new and improved plan complete with a much bigger budget to buy or keep themselves an American President.

We are truly letting the monkeys run the zoo.

Our only defense is to stand up for America and kick facebook to the curb for good so that our decisions are our own and not those of outside forces trying to take us down from the inside.

Hope you kick it to the curb too.  I’m 2 years free as I write this and I have to tell you there are things that have really changed in my life for the better because I gave it up.

I don’t check my phone a million times a day.  I talk to people face to face.  I will not touch my phone when I’m talking to a real person.   I have more free time at night.  I don’t care one little bit about what anyone thinks about what I think or do or feel or say or look like or how I live.   I feel happier with my life.  I have more than some and less than others but exactly as much as I need right now and that’s ok where I used to feel inadequate, under achieving, like something was wrong with me because I didn’t buy 2 new cars like my friends x, and mad at my boyfriend because my friend y’s boyfriend bought her jewelry and jealous because so and so is in Tahiti while I’m stuck behind this desk.

I like my farmhouse.  I love that I have eight chickens.  I like that we eat food from the greenhouse I built, I love that I work four minutes from home and that I can pick up and leave anytime I want if my kids need me.  Sure there are things that I’d like to continue to work on but giving up Facebook has done nothing but make things better.

 

xoxo,

Juls

 

 

How to make it better from here.

I’m limping along behind the pack in doing Mel Robbin’s mindset reset.  I’m on day four which should have been done on January 4th, but hey, I’m doing it.  Better late than never…pretty much the tattoo I should get as it’s the theme of my life.

Today’s message was about limiting beliefs.  Mel Robbins asks that you comment on her videos and to me it’s so validating to see that I’m not alone!  One commenter asked where Mel thought that our limiting beliefs came from and her answer was sent from God himself I am sure.

Mel Robbin’s response to that question was something I have always been told was a cop out to even think, I’ve had therapists tell me that the answer to this question wasn’t the obvious answer no matter how much I felt like it was where the source of my mean inner voice came from…it was deeper but according to Mel?  Our limiting beliefs come from our parents.  Just like I’ve always known.  Fuck the therapists.  Reading that answer was like watching a home run ball hit right out of the park and catching it in my bare hand.

Why was I so sure that was where the negativity in my mind comes from? The voice in my mind is that of my mother.

You see when we are small our parents are our whole world.  We study their faces, their sounds, their movements…we have such unconditional and pure love for them.  Babies don’t have jobs, bosses, bills, stress…parents however do.  Over the course of our childhoods inevitably our parents succumb to stressors like money or work or responsibilities and they snap at their children.  It just happens.  As careful as you can be as a parent, at times you just lose it and you say thing either to or in front of your children that you don’t even realize scar them.

The things my mother said to me I hear each and every single day.  A hundred times a day.  Her voice is the voice of criticism in my life and I carry it with me in every single thing I do.

I have always felt like I was so truly terrible and offensive that I was the only person in the world whose parents hated her.

My mother is gone now and she had a hard death so disparaging her for me is tough.

My mom didn’t have the easiest life.  She commuted, she worked for a bank and so I’m sure that there were lots of rules and stress. My dad didn’t always have steady work, it was seasonal and so there were months where her income was the only income I’m sure.

Somewhere along the way, when she would have a stressful day and come to pick up her daughters she began using me as a sort of verbal/mental punching bag.

Over the years I grew some beliefs about myself as to why this was happening.

Here are some of those beliefs…the one’s I’ve discovered so far:

1.  To her there were two kinds of people, good and bad.  I was bad and there was no way I could redeem myself at any point ever.  Just bad.  I actually remember her saying this to me on several occasions.  She also used this same euphemism with law abiding people.  You either were law abiding or you were not.  At the time, I had gotten a speeding ticket and as I was in high school and didn’t have a job I didn’t really know what to do about it.  Approaching my harsh hateful mother about the ticket was worse than hell so I just didn’t.  Well, the ticket came in the mail at some point and this was when her bad vs. good euphemism adopted a new version to law abiding vs. criminal.  As a adult I realize that there are plenty of times that I’m both.  That we are all fucking both.  Not wearing your seat belt is a crime and yet many people do that.  In fact I just saw a judge in our town not wearing his seat belt.  In her eyes does that mean that he is in fact not law abiding but a criminal instead.  Yes.   The saddest thing about this stupid fucking mindset is that while she was doing this, she had my sister at her feet as if she were a mother wolf training her young to devour prey.  My sister to this day sees everything in this light and it’s horrifying to think that my nieces and nephew have to grow up in this environment as well.  I can’t seem to escape the abuse because my sister perpetuates it.  I am either right or wrong.  I am allowed no grace according to her.
2. I’m not good enough.  For anyone.  Anywhere.  At any time.
3. That I’m a burden and no one really will ever want me around.  She actually screamed this at me when I was leaving to go to college.  “I’m so glad you’re not my burden to deal with anymore”.  Really.
4. That my depending on anyone for anything is undeserved and out of the question.  I am completely undeserving of love and care.  This is what a child who grows up without compassion feels.  When asked if I could borrow money when my husband left and I was dumped with a home, bills, and an empty bank account…she said in a nasty tone that she was so sick of bailing me out.  She’d never bailed me out.  She’d always turned her back on me spouting some bullshit about how I’d feel so much better if I did it on my own.  I did watch as she bailed my sister out time and time again.  I watched her pay the bills and let her live for free in a home they owned for five years.  My sister currently lives for next to free in a home my parents own while I pay a mortgage.
5. That I am not deserving of any good things.  I am not worthy of a college education.  I am not worth putting braces on, I am not worth any kind of attention or affection.
6. I am so stupid that I deserve to die, that I should literally kill myself because I am that much of a horrible monster
7. That everyone hates me.  Literally to my mother and my sister…everyone hates me.  They have both said this to me on several occasions.  Does everyone really hate me?  Or is it perhaps that I come from a long line of narcissistic twats that shouldn’t be allowed around people?  The latter for sure.  I could maybe see if I’d murdered an innocent person, if I’d had an affair that ruined lives but they’d throw this one out there for just about anything.  You took my earring backs?  EVERYONE  hates you.  You came into my room, EVERYONE hates you.  You got a bad grade?  EVERYONE hates you.  You’d think after hearing this one in so many stupid situations that I’d just laugh at them.  Instead I ingrained this.  Everyone hates me in my mind.  There is a special place in hell for people that say things like this.  This one statement caused me to almost kill myself.  This statement causes the other person to envision a reality in which people are flagging down the abuser to tell them how hated the victim is.  And that’s exactly what it is.  It’s abuse.  Using this phrase makes you an abuser and the person you say it to a victim.
8.  That there is just something irrevocably and unforgivingly wrong with me.  Nothing I do is ok and any reasoning I have behind doing anything that I actually do is a cop out?  This one is infuriating.  It makes me feel lucky that my mom is no longer here because I think I’d most like to confront her about this one and I honestly don’t think she would have been capable of wrapping her head around what this did to me.  If she were still here this is what I’d say to her in this moment.  I had adhd bitch.  Maybe if you’d paid attention to me a teensy little bit you’d have seen this.  Maybe instead of yelling and hitting and locking me outside if you’d have gotten me some fucking help my life would have turned out differently.  Maybe if instead of barring all that you’d have just extended basic human kindness so that I felt like I mattered to anyone at all I would have had some self worth.  I’m glad my sister turned out so well for you.  I am glad that you got to help ‘bail me out’ once before you died so you knew what that felt like.

Putting these limiting beliefs down here turned out so much uglier than I had hoped.  It’s so ugly that I don’t feel like publishing it but it’s raw and honest and in my opinion those are the things that really matter.

I don’t really feel like I hate my mom.  I want you to know that.

She said something in the beginning of her video this morning and that was that we either evolve our thinking or we repeat patterns.  That’s easy to think about but really hard to implement.

I don’t think my mother set out to hurt me.  I think she did the best she could.

Do I think I’ve done better with my daughter?  No.  I think I’ve done what it takes to get through and I am positive she will have anger for me at the things I missed and got wrong as well.  So what I would say to my mother with this in mind is that I appreciate the things she got right and I am blessed that I was given the opportunity to grow as a person to get past the set of limiting beliefs put in my path.

The mindset reset process has shone a light into a dark void that has been my deepest shame for most of my life.  I have been laid bare on this page and it’s not as terrifying as I thought it would be.  There’s also a lot more of it than I thought there would be.

The next lesson is deliberate thinking and this isn’t a new topic to me.  This is something that takes a lot of time and practice.  I’ve been doing this in some version for years now.  Each time that good old auto pilot kicks on…usually when I’m washing the dishes or the clothes and starts saying that I’m not good enough and that no one loves me and that I deserve terrible things and that I should die…I immediately snap my fingers and out loud say ‘Shut up’.

Yes.  My kids probably think I’m insane.  It’s just the likelihood of them thinking I’m nuts versus the damage that this thinking has done and is doing to me over all this time is just mind boggling so I choose to sound nuts instead in order to stop these negative thoughts.

If I could have back any of the years that I spent hating myself I’d be thrilled.  I can’t.

If I could take back any of the shitty things that I’ve done because I hated myself I would love it.  I can’t.

Even still stopping these destructive thoughts from ruling my mind is nearly impossible, I actively try with each breath.  In order to be better unfortunately it isn’t an instantaneous decision. It’s a decision I have to make a hundred times a day, every day, no matter what i feel like.

There used to be not only whole days, but whole weeks and months when it won.  Now I can usually stop it and if not the next time I do.  There are not whole days anymore, I hope soon I can say there are no longer whole hours.

All that to say that steering your mind away from the negative defaults that were preset in your brain when you were young or from bad relationships is a process.

I read somewhere that it takes seven positives to make up for one negative.  I’ve always been leery of affirmations but I’m revisiting that opinion this week.  I don’t really have a plan on how I can better incorporate them yet.  I’ve always felt really silly speaking super cheesy positive affirmations out loud where others can hear me.  I guess that’s better than the ‘Shut up’ or ‘Stop it’ I’m randomly spouting off out loud now.

Based on my limiting beliefs above I created the following affirmations and in place of the negative thoughts I’d like to try to swap them out.  For example the next time I find myself thinking that I’m so stupid I should kill myself I’ll stop myself and then say, “I blessed with an innovative mind and a driven soul and I can’t wait to share that with others.

So based on the negative limiting beliefs I listed above here are some affirmations that might help me:

1. There is no such thing as an entirely bad or good person, I am the best person I can be each day.
2.  I am perfectly enough for everyone that matters to me.
3. I am able to succeed at whatever I want to do.
4. I am lucky to have as much support as I need.
5. I deserve everything I want and need.
6. I am here because I have gifts that need to be shared and people that need me.
7. The people that belong in my life love me.  All the rest aren’t meant to be in my life.
8. I am thankful for the traits that make me who I am and also that I am capable of improving myself.

I don’t know how to incorporate these just yet.  I don’t see myself necessarily being the kind of person that just says this out loud all the time but if I had them on hand when the voice attacks me maybe I could just replace the bad for the good?

All I can do is try to make each day better.  The more I do that, the further away from bad I get and bad for me was real bad.  I remember bad like the back of my hand and to be honest even long after bad was not the case any longer bad still reigned in my mind.

I’m looking forward to better.  All I can do is to focus on doing better one day at a time.

xoxo,

Juls