It’s amazing how accurately this captures my feelings at my own “internal realignment.”
Basically, the root of my depression went back to my father. Physically and emotionally abusive, distant yet omnipresent, you know the drill. Suddenly, one day, something went click in my head and heart, and I realized his abusive behavior wasn’t my fault. It had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with his own problems and his own hatred of himself. Click.
Of course, like Rue DeDay says, the hard part came next: I had to re-learn how to perceive myself, the world, my family, my father, etc. – I had to modify the way I processed incoming information. Once I had the core realization about disconnecting my self-worth from my father’s abuse, though, things started falling into place like the ball on the roulette wheel.
Specific responses:
What was it that made you realize the importance of loving yourself? Basically, I decided I was tired of being miserable. Really, it started when I had a brush with death at the age of 19. My lung repeatedly collapsed, and I ended up being rushed to the hospital for hours and hours of emergency surgery. Nothing like a near-death experience to eliminate a teenager’s self-centered I’m-indestructible worldview.
Anyway, that started me thinking about how I saw myself, and how I dealt with the world. I then enrolled in arts college for an acting degree, and of course, as an actor, I am my own instrument. My resources are inside myself. If I don’t know myself, I can’t be a flexible, honest actor. I slowly discovered I had problems with joy, with simplicity and stillness, and my exploration of these weaknesses led me directly to the epiphany described at top.
Were you among the fortunate that had stable and rational families to nurture this? Nope. My father, as stated, is a jagoff, though I see him as more pathetic than evil. My brother is royally screwed up, emotionally (also due to the abuse) and physically (because of an extremely bad-luck and rare genetic disease). My mom has problems of her own; part of my epiphany was realizing that I was progressing past her level of emotional maturity. She appreciated my progress, but she couldn’t tell how I was doing it, and she had no idea how to help or support me. As of right now, her behavior is actually fairly self-destructive, and negatively impacts me and my wife. I love them all, but I did this on my own.
Was there an underlying strata of coherence and consistent philosophy that enabled you to be sure of yourself? Yes; it was part of the click described above. It can be summed up as follows: I am entirely responsible for my own emotional state. I have no responsibility for others’ emotional states. I will be good and fair and balanced with other people, but if they choose to be unhappy or angry, it isn’t my problem; I can’t change them or how they feel about the world. Similarly, if they try to make me unhappy or angry, I can choose to reject those attempts. My happiness is my responsibility, and mine alone.
For those of you who came to love yourselves later in life, what precipitated this event? Described above, re my hospital stay, followed by acting training, which led directly to my epiphany regarding the root of my unhappiness. Again: Whether or not my father loved me, or whether or not my father showed his love (or lack) in a positive or negative way, is irrelevant to whether or not I love myself. Once I disconnected his problems from the equation, the other emotional obstacles also fell away, and my path was clear.
Were there drastic measures required to achieve it or was some other internal realignment necessary? Again, I had the advantage of being enrolled in a very focused and demanding acting program. I highly recommend this to everyone, whether or not you’re considering acting as a career. It was the best four years of my life, my artistic aspirations aside. It wasn’t intended as therapy (and in my opinion, people who treat acting as therapy are misguided and self-centered), but in order to be an effective and honest actor, I had to get myself sorted out.
Thank you, Zenster, for starting this conversation.
