Humans can merge into groups (fission) and split apart (fusion) into fragments.
Both require significant energy. While gravity is an attractant, others can be repulsive. Bonding can be destructive to the self, and yet once we are in a group long enough, we self-destruct to be free, even destroying ourselves to be a self.
Tag: self-sabotage
- Theme: Self
Human fission/fusion
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Growth
Does your leader want you to fail?
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1–2 minutesIf yes, get out: without that basic level of trust, you will fail, be it sabotage, gossip, or lack of resources. It is too corrosive.
If no, communicate better: lead upwards to ensure your leader’s success, which will translate into your own.
- Theme: Self
Cure for Addiction: Connection
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1–2 minutesTo balance over or under-stimulation, we engage in self-destructive behaviors. To counter self-destructive excess (addiction), we lean into abstinence, a zero-space, white-knuckle state of hard-edge discipline.
This traditional reliance on sheer willpower has been proven to fail repeatedly*. When it is successful in restraint, it produces inflexible fragility when confronting the world or stress.
However, research reveals that animals isolated in cages develop addictions, while those in enriched, communal environments do not.
This suggests that addictions stem not from personal failings but from environments (or groups) that fail to meet our needs for connection. Abstinence from the behavior does not necessarily mean isolation; instead, try fluctuating between solitude and solidarity.
* Breakdown of Will, George Ainslie
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– - Theme: Growth
Constructive / Destructive Paradox
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1–2 minutesFor all of our cleverness and rationality, our ability to build tools, create marvels, and harness the energy of Atoms, we also fall prey to cults and wish death upon ourselves to serve in-group demands.
Despite all of our capabilities and rationality, we can be convinced to suicide ourselves.
Our creative, constructive aspect is more than equaled by our delusional, destructive self. This begs the corollary question of these traits: are they inherently interdependent?
- Theme: Self
making our own hell
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1–2 minutesWe often catastrophize a situation into being. There is no problem, just our feelings, which we elevate into a dramatic reaction.
There is an option to approach your perceived problem constructively, but intense emotion clouds and obscures.
This implies that hell is to be trapped in your feelings, unable to see beyond yourself, merely reacting with more emotion.
- Theme: Self
sabotaging happiness
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1–2 minutesWe frame our happiness with conditions, such as, "if I have this job and these comforts, I can be happy." And yet, once we get them, we find a new required provision to amend the "I will be happy when" clause.
We strike a bargain while altering the terms continuously. This is obviously sabotage.
What we want is not happiness, but a goal to pursue: we want the struggle when we could stop at any time and simply be happy.
- Theme: Self
Creating your own misery to survive
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1–2 minutesYou create most of your own misery.
Through your thoughts and feelings, you develop and then run simulations, which become anxiety-producing ruminations on possible harms. However, “survival” (which is why we undertake misery-making destructive behavior) is about ensuring the next step, not the fourth or fifth possibility.
Staying present deflates enduring into being.
(Staying present means rejecting the past harms from shaping your present reaction while not projecting into the future possible worries.)
While this may not appear as thriving, it actively rejects self-harm until a moment when an opportunity opens from which you can succeed.
- Theme: Self
Inflating into a fuck up
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1–2 minutesWhen I fuck up, it is because I am looking for a conflict, which usually means I am looking for validation.
I feel unsettled for a week, maybe two, and then I force something that is usually unfair.
I like to say I don’t know what I am doing (I was an asshole by accident, immaturely acting out). But I can feel the pressure rising for weeks, pressing me down until I pop.
The goal is to either bleed off the pressure more frequently or address the inadequacies that inflate me.
- Theme: Growth
The Herculean image
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1–2 minutesThe Herculean hero is striving for depth. Constrained by external challenges or internal heroics they are either slaying dragons or destroying themselves.
During times of peace, the hero enacts images of salvation or expiation.
If the image is read shallowly, the hero must conquer the motif repeatedly (continually becoming) leading to self-destruction.
However, if the hero can embody the image with depth, that is to remain within the image rather than use it as instruction, the fantasy image can save rather than destroy.
from James Hillman
- Theme: Self
stop hitting yourself
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1–2 minutesIt has been said repeatedly: we treat others better than ourselves.
We abuse ourselves with impunity. Our treatment of ourselves stems from a “feeling”, and it is as unjust to feel it as it is to do it to another person.
The problem is, it is not a “feeling”: it is a layer of programming triggering a deep emotion.
Once you get distance from or dissolve your programming, you find your true emotions towards yourself mirror you react to others and the world.