EvolutionHealth.care

Home
Members List
Member View
Posts created by Pete

Advanced Search Form

Members List
Moderation Team
Member View
Posts created by Pete

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Stress Relievers, Part II

Dangerous animals? I am intrigued. The most dangerous animals around my way are the occasional fox or bad-tempered cat.

Goofy, you make me envious. You seem so balanced and outward-looking all the time.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Inspirational quote

Glad you liked the Beckett quote.

It's hard to recommend, but my favourite Beckett works are his trilogy of novels - 'Molloy', 'Malone Dies' and 'The Unnamable'. Also his short novel 'Ill Seen, Ill Said'. And the plays 'Waiting for Godot', 'Endgame', 'Krapp's Last Tape', though the plays are much better seen than read.

I think a good place to start is one of his early novellas - 'First Love', 'The End', 'The Expelled', 'The Calmative'. They are more conventional than some of his later work and give a good taste of his style and themes. They were the first Beckett I read.

My motivational video in my blog here is a reading from 'Molloy' that hits my spot.

I think he's a 'love or hate' kind of writer - my partner thinks he's boring and depressing, whereas I love his black - very black - humour and obsessive existential musings.

I liked the Marcel Duchamp. Are you interested in Dada and Surrealism?

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Inspirational quote

Sally:

Yes! Your quote from Rollo May absolutely hits the nail on the head.

I am in total agreement with your view of art - thank you for articulating it so well. One term you use I'm not familiar with - asemic writing (see, I'm not as catholic or cultured as I like to make out!). Can you explain what that is?

I dislike trite quotes for similar reasons to yours.They make me think of the self-help books written by parasitic charlatans which proliferate in bookstores and of the so-called motivational slogans that get displayed in workplaces.

One thing my depression does seem to have done for me is to increase my ability to be affected by artistic expression, along with my need to be so affected. Though I do feel like a vampire sometimes - feeding vicariously, taking energy, from the ideas and expression of others and giving nothing back. I just wish that the depression had also had a positive effect on the quality of my own writing, but it hasn't : my reduced ability to concentrate and apply myself and my hyper levels of self-criticism mean that all I can write these days is fragments.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Inspirational quote

Sally,

I checked out some asemic writing on the New Post-Literate blog. It's very interesting. I like the way it plays tricks with our expectations - we expect writing to represent semantic and phonetic content, and when it doesn't ..... I find some of the work to be a species of visual music - wordless chants, scat singing, strange laments in alien tongues. So I find myself quite fascinated - it's like abstract art given an extra layer, an extra fizz, by the presence of pseudo-script. Also, by bypassing implicit meaning, it alerted me to the visual beauty of writing itself. Thanks indeed for pointing me at this art form, of which I was totally unaware. I shall surely look deeper.

Ah, my fragments of writing. As you suggested, I do keep all my writing except when I have an orgy of futility and burn (well, delete, but the intent is the same) large amounts of it. I've always wanted to write a novel, but lack the application and consistency of style to do that, so I always end up with sort-of poems, though I don't consider myself a poet. More like short prose pieces in a poetic form, if that makes sense. I am always stealing from myself, making new combinations of words and ideas from what I have written, searching for the right combination of meaning, lack of meaning, cadence and visual appearance on the page. I hope above all that what I write is distinctly and honestly me, regardless of anyone else's opinion.

I have no ambitions as regards publication, because ultimately much of it is worthless and meaningless to anyone except me. Case in point - there's a piece I just posted in my blog here called 'Ornithology'. My psychotherapist, a little while ago, expressed interest in seeing some of my writing as she had noticed that in our sessions it was the only thing that seemed to raise my enthusiasm. So I emailed her a couple of poems which were fairly straightforward and conventional for me, and I sent her 'Ornithology'.

Now, I wrote that piece very painstakingly. Went over every word, every sentence, polished the structure ... really finished it and felt quite, quite proud of it. When I next saw my therapist, she was very positive about my writing, said she found the poems moving and affecting but, she said, she couldn't make head nor tail of 'Ornithology'. Just couldn't find the sense, couldn't find a way in to it. At first I was angry and a bit crushed. Then I felt disgusted with myself as I realised I had shown her my work for the sole purpose of impressing, eliciting admiration. And I felt cheap and petty. Came to the conclusion I was better off just writing for me, then I can be as abstruse as I like, because I can follow the thoughts, understand all the references, and what I write can only evoke for me what it is intended to evoke.

And now I'm being pretentious all over this forum. My apologies. Shut up, Pete.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Relationship

Goofy,

This is awesome!

What a healthy relationship you have. I'm happy for you.

Pete

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Inspirational quote

This really has turned into a stimulating thread - so many thanks to Jason for kicking it off.

In the spirit of getting the thread back on track, here's a few more from me:

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me! - Miles Davis

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. - Gautama Buddha

Always be a poet, even in prose. - Charles Baudelaire

Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has. - William S. Burroughs

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. - Kurt Vonnegut

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid. - Frank Zappa

Learn that you are your manifestations: the phenomena and dance of matter , the rainbow body the energy scatter. You are the light and shade and silence and voice, the bitter and sweet and warm and cold. And maybe there is no other inside. Untouched. Unadorned by the laurels of lonely grief. - Me :))

Thank you, Sally - I am incredibly complimented that you took the time to read my piece of writing and, just for the record, your interpretation accords pretty well with my intention when writing. Thank you for taking it seriously.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

What are negative core beliefs?

Here's a selection of mine:

The fact that I am shy makes me inferior to other people / the fact that I am inferior to other people makes me shy
I am ugly
I have no conversational or social skills
I fail to achieve anything I set out to achieve
Most people are inconsiderate and selfish
Most people are stupid, but happy with it
'It's not what you know, it's who you know'
I am by nature dishonest and secretive
I am morally bankrupt
I have no opinions worth hearing
My mind is slow
I am a poor father and worse partner
I do not deserve the love I receive from my family
I am incapable of making friends
I do not need other people intruding in my world

And where did these come from? Lived experience and the knowledge gained from spending my life living inside this head, this brain, this personality..

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

What are negative core beliefs?

I've had some lively discussions with my psychotherapist on the subject of core beliefs. She prefers the term 'unhelpful' to 'negative'. She seems to consider it essential to challenge unhelpful beliefs with logical, rational thought, and works from the assumption that all such beliefs are necessarily mistaken. My contention is that they are not always mistaken, and examining them deeper with logical thought just deepens them, if and when they are true.

I am pretty sure that most, if not all, the 'negative' core beliefs I listed earlier in this thread are actually based in fact. Based on my 49 years' experience of living as me, living in me. Noone can know better than me what goes on inside here, what my morals and values are, what my capabilities are, what I have hoped and failed to achieve.

Maybe I'm just a naturally contrary man, spiky and sensitive and a hard nut to crack. Maybe I'm just a 'bad patient', clinging to the false comfort of familiar thought patterns, unwilling to challenge them because I am scared of the unknown, scared to strike out and try to alter my behaviour.

Maybe I just think too darn much...........

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

What are negative core beliefs?

Question:

In the final end, if my core beliefs about myself and the world are negative/unhelpful does it matter whether or not they are true?

Is the important issue here not the correctness or otherwise of these beliefs (these are generally not factual things that can be empirically tested), but the degree to which they propel me towards healthy or unhealthy mental/emotional states?

Looking at my list of beliefs below , these are clearly not leading me towards happiness, not building self-esteem or confidence. However, for me to successfully challenge them, challenge them deep down so they really change rather than an intellectual or paper exercise, first my behaviour has to change and provide me with evidence. But for my behaviour to be able to change, to find the strength and motivation to act as a real person would, the underlying beliefs must have changed first. Catch-22.

Locked in this cycle formed over 49 years of misguided thinking, passivity and inaction, I just can't see an answer. I am encouraged to love myself for who I am, value myself, celebrate my mistakes as part of life's learning. I just cannot do that because I feel so ashamed of myself, how I have fallen short in every department of life. How does one learn to look past that as if it does not matter?

I'm wandering away from the point here, and how can I expect answers to these things from anyone else? The solutions , if they exist, have to come from within myself.

I haven't used the program on this site at all, even though I'm a regular poster on the forums. Perhaps I'll take a look at the core beliefs section and see if it helps, as I'm clearly in a state of some confusion.

Spiky? Yeah, that's me. Not an easy dude to be around.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 223

Celebrating our Mistakes

Biggest, indeed - dominating, mistake of my life - my life-sharing relationship with my partner (we've been together getting on for thirty years). And the poor woman has no idea I feel this way.

So what's to celebrate about it? I have three sons whom I love. And I've gained some retrospective wisdom : next time I'm 21, I'll remember to endure the loneliness rather than leap into the first relationship that comes along out of desperation. And next time I'm 25 and feel the chains growing heavier and thicker, I'll find the strength to sever them while it is still possible. And when I next find myself 49, I may be happy.

today's top discussions:

This Month’s Leaders:

Most Supportive

Most Active

Most Loved