Creating Thick Skin

Are you aware of what you allow into your inner bubble?  Your personal space?  Your heart?  Your reality?

I think I let my personal space bubble get too dirty.

Its stuck in my mind like a popcorn kernel gets stuck in my teeth, You must love yourself before you can love others.  ......Another piece of advice I am still chewing on, after what seems like years is, every thing You need you have within you.  Naturally, seek within before reaching outside yourself.   Are you able to set boundaries easily and keep them in order to achieve your own sense of well being? 

 Yes, this is all happening currently in one blink of a moment as the thoughts rush through my mind,  I rush to get them out here.

My teenage daughter sleeps on the couch after a night of participating in a 30 hour famine at her school to raise money for a water system for an impoverished town in some country that I know I should pay attention too, but haven't a clue of where.  I am bored.  I am so proud of her for participating that I want to keep the house peaceful for her, for a few hours at least.  It is too bloody cold outside to start planting on my balcony.

I am in an edgy mood today. 

 I am clean from dope and sugar for over a week now.  Yay, but not.  Feelings are equal again, no chocolate cake to swing the edgy mood into a moment of bliss.  I am aware of the overall positive difference in my body and mind though.  I am clearer and happier, with expanded focus on where I want to go in this jungle of life.  My body is already feeling a world better, eating clean food is the placebo that helps me feel better about myself.  

I am still however trying to float the romance boat and it still has that huge hole in the bottom of it.  That damn addict in me, lovingly named Lady Vixen,  doesn't want to rest until she succeeds.  I was already told once by one of my failed conquest attempts that this will be the death of me,  I am starting to think he was right.  This is why I ask the question what do you allow in your bubble? 

 I am an avid oracle card reader, when I have questions for my spirit guides I ask them to speak through my cards for clearer messages.  Hoakey or not its my way and it works.  I have many decks to choose from and depending on the type of question I have a related deck to answer it effectively.  In my edgy mood I asked for animal guidance and drew the Amarillo.   This animal represents Boundaries.  Setting up protection around myself and pushing forward letting the hurts bounce off me so that I can move beyond.  Makes sense only after letting that information absorb for a couple days and after writing this post in its entirety yesterday and editing it now.  

I wrote the bulk of this post yesterday before I had an opportunity to go to a potluck dinner that was being hosted by my 12 step fellowship.  I couldn't go.  I wanted to go.  I know my spirit was willing me to go.  Even my daughter wanted to go.  But I just couldn't.  I was not ready to face the people, my friends, that I walked away from months ago.  I didn't want to see my latest failed conquest.  I was not ready for the humility.  I still wanted to play in my anger and feel secluded.  I am still hurt and my bubble of raw feelings is not yet coated in protection yet.

Luckily for me the card went on to further include instructions on how to secure a stronger shield and focus for my over active mind.

 The deeper message is about setting intentions around what I wish to experience in my life.  The instructions I was given, were to draw a circle on a piece of paper.  Inside the circle write what I wish to realize and outside the circle the things I do not wish to experience in my world.   To re-align with a positive force normally I only focus on what I do want to create,  I only wrote the things I don't wish to experience so that I was able to see on paper what I am actually experiencing in the here and now.  Facilitating awareness and therefor acceptance.

A few of the things that I put on the outside of the bubble that I am experiencing right now:  Judgement, hate, dark stories(mine and others), situations and people that put me in my head, fear, arrogance,  victim patterns and the past looping itself in the present.  These are the things that addiction trigger for me, or I am triggered by these things and then I try to get out of the feelings through sugar and dope and the available penis.  I don't know what comes first the chicken or the egg, regardless however, this is where I am at.  Acceptance.

What I put inside my bubble: Love of Self and others, heart experiences, divine plans, Respect, intimacy, emotional connection, acceptance of self and others, refocus the fun in my landscaping job and the passion in my hypnotherapy business, strengthened family relationships, good physical and mental health.  For the inner bubble I drew on experience.  I had all these in balance and abundance last summer.  These are not foreign unreachable concepts for me. The whine for me on this is how the fuck did I lose my footing so much?  I feel like I fell down the entire set of steps.   Acceptance.  Don't get stuck.  Move into action.

This is where the question of self love pops up and when to share that and when it flips over to seeking it outside yourself to bring it back inside.  Knowing how it feels to tap that self love.  To feel like everything you need is within you and every experience you have is just a gift because what you feel inside is ten times greater then the hug you receive from the outside.  The power in the hug comes from the over flowing love you have for that person, the hug is the outlet you choose to express whats inside of you.  I know what it's like to feel complete peace in the face of someones judgment upon me, because my self love was strong enough for me to understand it's just an opinion they hold and I love them for having the courage to express it.  Thats what it means to find what you need from within.  To have full self love and not need to seek any sort of verification outside of yourself.  Fully self supporting.

I flipped out somewhere and now I am suspicious of the hug because I feel angry and edgy.  I am not tolerant of the advice of others because my insecurities and lack of self love have me questioning their motives.  I am clinging to incorrect people and situations right now because they are most comfortable to me.  Knowing that this state is not 'right', I push everyone away from me that can help me and are good for me. b I don't want to infect anyone or feel any more worse then I do.  I don't trust.  Reaching out becomes to hard and the isolation that an addict thrives in takes over. 

 I just want to question when and why I seek the power outside myself that I know I have within me.  Why is it that I turn the tables and begin seeking the romantic love to fill the void that I have already begun to fill with my own self love?  When do I turn from acceptance to judgement?  I want to say that its in the meditation and prayers or lack of them, but it's not, I never stop with those practices until the very end...and to be totally honest its when I smoke up that I am catapulted back into the spiritual experience I need to turn things around.... healthy or not it is what it is for me.

Denial is what just popped up in my cards as to the answer to why I am back at step One.  Not just denial that I have self care issues and addiction issues, but also denial of simple little things that add up and create a big thing.  Speaking my truth is the little denial that has lead to all the rest.  I still struggle hard with speaking about what I am feeling or thinking in the moment.  I will let a persistent nagging feeling that needs to be expressed with someone slide under the carpet of my mind where it molds and begins to stink.

.........These are resentments, I am now beginning to understand.  Little hurts that my non existent protective shield let in.  I have been told that I am too sensitive, I never understood that when it was spoken to me.  I think I am getting it now.......

After a few of these moldy unspoken words are pushed underneath my mind I begin to get a little toxic.  This is where I believe my self love and respect begin to slip out the back door.  If I am not going to love myself enough to speak up for my feelings when they are hurt, even just mildly, or if something is on my mind that I know needs to be said but worry about how the other person will respond,  how can I be showing myself respect?  If a friend came to me for advice that concerned putting her self care first I would be very vocal and encouraging to say what needs to be said or done in order to maintain her peace.

Why then is my peace less important?  Because.... I don't know how to set boundaries and keep them.  I also need to thicken my skin a bit.  Maybe some hurts are not mine to bear, learning to let them roll off my Amarillo shell may just be the simplest lesson here.  

It is when these hurts are left to fester that my mind begins to align with them and I slowly begin to buy into the hurt and things flip the other way.  Oh!!!   Wait.  The lights are flashing in my mind.  Awareness dawning.  The understanding of how important it is to first have the protective skin to deflect hurts that are not really directed at me but may have skimmed me anyways and to know how to voice the ones that do penetrate.  Speaking up about what hurts is the way to stop it before it festers.  

LoL.  Bing!  Bing! bing!  By George, I think she is got it!!

Man it takes me awhile to spin around in circles before I get dizzy enough for my mind to be able to accept a new understanding.  Okay so here is to thickening up my skin a bit and learning to speak my truth to keep my peace.  Man just writing that brings me anxiety at the challenges I am about to face in order to toughen up.  Goddess go easy on me, let me reaps the rewards instantly!