Dreaming the future
There is some exciting activity - dreaming. Dreaming of who you want to become, what you want from your work, partner, life. Dreams inspire, they give us hope and make our belief in good things stronger. Yet there is a thing - a villian of dreams and this is delusion.
When I was even younger than I'm now I used to live in future. I spent hours dreaming and planning what my life will be in the next years. I played movies of future events and future dialogues in my head thinking what I'll do in this or that situation. Not actualy thinking - playing the small comedies and tragedies in my mind. And when one day I woke up looked around and saw nothing of what I've dreamt of I was.. disappointed. My daydreams used to be so realistic and so were my plans that I couldn't believe they are not supposed to come true. And moreover what I did to make them come true actualy turned out into a disaster of my whole life. I got angry. Angry at my friends, I blamed everyone for my faults, everyone who I thought deceived me or didn't care enough of me. Finally I got angry at myself. That I was so stupid to believe in obvious lies, that I didn't make enough effords to achieve what I wanted, that I overdid some things.
The solution came shortly after I took pills to end the nightmare I placed myself in. To skip some time I sat to play one of my favorite computer games.. and it turned out to be much more exciting then death! Sounds ludicruous I know. Yet I'm here and I write these things so maybe it wasn't that stupid after all.
The lesson I took at that time was that dreaming is ok. Dreams add some spice into our life so to say. Delusions are another thing. Delusions is when you start living your dreams which leads to disappointement and pain in reality.
Recollecting the past
Sweet sweet memories of good things and wonderful people and important events... it is so nice to recollect them, to scroll the pages of a photoalbum or a scrap book or to watch home videos. Just don't forget that you can add even more impressions into your personal account. Even right now.
The dark side is bad memories.
This month I have finally solved one of the things that used to drive me crazy for almost half a year - internal dialogues, memories from the past that literally haunted me. Many times a day I caught myself playing some bad moments from my past in my mind over and over again. I changed some events, phrases, details making the events go in various scenarious. I told 'people' different things to 'change' the past to make things go in a different way. But I couldn't really change the past. I knew that but voices in my head kept playing nonetheless. I started thinking about something but in the end I found myself dreaming some awful moments from the past. These dreams exhausted me emotionaly and by the end of the day I was tired, annoyed and irritable. And the worst thing I couldn't stop it.
As undersood the fact that I cannot stop it with my will I made the first step which led to Soultion. I spoke to my husband and told him about all the things that disturbed me. I told him about the dialogues in my head and bad memories and felt easirer. Much easier. The dialogues stopped for about a week which was enough to make my mind.
Living here and now
You see the thoughts about both future and the past are just the different sides of the same coin. These are attempts to escape reality. Unfortunately they change nothing. The cure - 4 steps.
1. First of all speak your problems out. No matter if you share them with your best friend or a complete stranger. Find courage to accept the fact that you have a problem. Telling someone about it is not about complaining it is about telling yourself that you know your problem and not afraid to speak about it and relief your mind from being the only one who knows it.
2. Every time you catch yourself being overwhelmed with disturbing thoughts - don't stop it. Continue thinking about what you thought or dreamed about to the ending. This is again to show yourself that you're not afraid of such thoughts, that you don't run away from them.
3. Take some time to analyze the disturbing thoughts. They don't come from nowhere. Ask yourself why do you want to think about it again and again? Is there something left unsolved? Is there anything you can do about the situation that haunts you? And if so - do it! If there is nothing you can do now but could do when the event took place and you feel guilty about it - don't. Live here and now.
4. Actually tell yourself this phrase every time some bad thoughts approach you. Here and now. It helps. "Here and now I go up the street". "Here and now I make cookies". Think about what's going on here and now, what people surround you, what things are there, weather, sounds. You'll be surprised how many things are left unnoticed when you're occupied with some memories of the past. How many wonderful things are around you just now when you're dreaming about future!
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