Stop trying to fix me – by Jeff Foster

Yay! Finished my meditation pillow. It’s has a core of wool, made from stacked circles cut out of a blanket and it has a cotton outside. It took me the whole afternoon because I opted for the easy method of closing it while not realising that would make stuffing it 10 times harder and more time consuming. I guess this is as much of a what you call that word, well lets try ‘comparable parable’ to my life. I lack focus. It was an interesting trip to see where my mind and body take me if I do not take heed; everywhere.

Happy that I quit though, now I can work on it. On my meditation pillow :-). Hope to find you happy that you quit too. 🙂

I found this below text from Jeff Foster online. I think it really nicely verbs what I have to learn to do different and how I experience, well mostly experienced a lot of ‘help’ in this world during my teenages; a carry over of anxiety instead of help. Still, well anyhow; I had difficulty reading this, thought he had SPECIFICALLY! written this for me. Well, maybe…. Would that be narcisism or paranoia? 😀

xx, Feeling

STOP TRYING TO FIX ME. LOVE ME INSTEAD.

“Please, don’t try to fix me. I am not broken. I have not asked for your solutions.

When you try to fix me, you unintentionally activate deep feelings of unworthiness, shame, failure, even suicidal self-doubt within me. I can’t help it. I feel like I have to change to please you, transform myself just to take away your anxiety, mend myself to end your resistance to the way I am. And I know I can’t do that, not on your urgent timeline anyway. You put me in an impossible bind. I feel so powerless.

I know your intentions are loving! I know you really want to help. You want to serve. You want to take away people’s pain when you see it. You want to uplift, awaken, caretake, educate, inspire. You truly believe that you are a positive, compassionate, unselfish, nice, good, kind, pure, spiritual person.

But I want you to know, honestly, friend, I feel like a steaming pile of shit when you try to ‘love’ me in this old way. It doesn’t feel loving to me at all. Quite the opposite. It feels like you’re trying to relieve your own tension by controlling me. Under the guise of you being ‘kind’ and ‘helpful’ and ‘spiritual’, I feel suffocated, smothered, rejected, shamed, and completely unloved. I feel abandoned in your love! Do you get that? I feel like you don’t actually care about ME, even though on the surface it sure looks like you care! But deep down it feels like you are holding an image of how I should be. Your image. Not mine!

It looks like your love but it feels like your violence. Do you understand?

Yet as soon as you stop trying to ‘help’ me, you are of the greatest help to me! I stop trying to change to please you! I feel safe, respected, seen, honoured for what I am. I can fall back into my own power. I can trust myself again, the way you are trusting me. I can relax deeply.

Without your pressure, your demand for me to abandon myself and be different, healed, transformed, enlightened, awakened, mended, ‘better’, I can better see myself. I can discover my own inner resources. I can touch my own powerful presence. I feel safe enough to allow and express my true feelings, thoughts, desires, hold my own perceptions. I no longer feel smothered, a victim, a little child to your expert adult. The courageous adult in me rises. I breathe more deeply. I feel my feet on the ground. Loving attention drenches my experience, even the uncomfortable parts. My senses feel less dull. Healing energies emerge from deep within. I feel light, free, liberated from your fear. I feel respected, not shamed. Seen, not compared to an image.

You help me so much when you stop trying to help me, friend! I need my own answers, my own truth, not yours. I want a friend, present and real, not an expert or a saviour.

And do you see, when you are trying to save me, you are actually abandoning yourself? You are running from your own discomfort, your own unlived potential, and focussing on mine? I become your ultimate distraction. I don’t want to be that for you anymore.

Let’s break this cycle together! Let’s stop trying to fix or save each other. Let’s love each other instead. Bow to each other. Bless each other. Hold each other. As we are. As we actually, actually, actually are.”

– Jeff Foster