Irrational Birthday Wishes
I must do well and win the approval of others or else I am no good.
I was approached, blindsided and criticized in my building and told nobody liked me. I feel/felt anxiety, shame, and depression. I was undervalued, dumped and smeared. What stings is I was told I am not liked at the art school. Or yoga school, or the coffee shop. Or the cab company where I used to work.
In each of these places I have spoken up about unhealthy behaviours of mine and worked to change it. These go from smoking drugs and cigarettes to adopting and changing technology that made old ways invalid, to adopting healthier philosophies of life like REBT. In each instance I have been met with a religious fervor, a resistance to change, and a shunning for having adopted new ideas.
Many of these people are dead now from their bad habits, or having spent their life in misery of self created depression, intensely unhappy and bitter blaming others for their misery.
These are very conservative people, this is what they do. Toxic, lonely and illiberal in the extreme.
So, to demand that I must be liked ( especially by disagreeable people) or else I am no good is so irrational as to be insane. They are never going to like me, themselves or anybody. There is no evidence that I am no good.
Other people must do “the right thing” or else they are no good and deserve to be punished.
Similarly they are not all bad, I highly prefer they like me and don’t do their smearing but they don’t have to. My practising non-contact and ignoring them is for my health, I’m not intentionally trying to hurt them. So my values are intact. And they don’t have to stay in the doghouse for being human, and I don’t have to trust them or share intimacy, like anger, either.
Life must be easy, without discomfort or inconvenience.
The discomfort in this case is calling myself invalid based on a condition. This I can change and I am having some success. The issue now seems more to be I must never be anxious or depressed like all people on occasion. I can stand this, it doesn’t stay any more.
