A friend of mine let me borrow a book to read and I finally started it tonight. I read through 6 chapters and could relate to everything in it. It’s been quite an eye open so far. A lot of it talks about negative thoughts and how Satan wanting this to happen and how we allow him to do this to us. Now, whenever I hear that name, Satan, I cringe. Whenever that little devil was discussed at Bible Study I practically shutdown. It’s so frightening to me. It wasn’t that way tonight for some reason. I read through it and so much made sense; many things fell into place.
My thinking is negative. Not all the time, but when it comes to certain things I allow the negative thoughts to take over. It usually happens when I am afraid to fail at things that are so important to me. Fail on my diet; fail at working out, and failing friendships.
For instance, when it comes to my diet, I always knew that at some point I would screw things up by binging or just flat out cheating. I literally would wait for it to happen, and of course it eventually did happen…although it hasn’t happened in the last 10 weeks J I’m so proud of that!
Another time I see it, and so does my trainer, Brent, is during my workouts. Let’s take running for instance... As soon as I heard that 3 letter word I just gave up, I start thinking I just can’t do it. I failed before he even told us where to run to. He could always see it on my face while he was explaining the workout. He’s told me that I look defeated before the start of the workout.
The other area in my life that I see it in, and this really slapped me in the face tonight, is in my relationships with friends. I cannot believe what I am in the process of doing. I am a mess and although I’m upset from the realization, I am also relieved by it. I have a bad habit of assuming negative things and internalizing as if everything in everyone’s life has to do with me…HA! Far from it. Meaning, if a friend is quiet or having an off day, or if they are moody, whatever the case may be. I automatically think it has to do with me. I will interrogate myself trying to figure out what it was that I did. I then defend myself and try to justify my feelings. Then before I know it, I am feeling negative, paranoid, and whatever else about this person who has done nothing but be a friend…it’s crazy…I hate it. I never associated that as something that Satan was behind…but it makes sense.
I’ve allowed him to destroy relationships that I felt safe and secure in. Apparently that Satan guy feeds off my insecurities, which clearly is my biggest weakness. I allow them to control my life; so does that mean I’m allowing Satan to control part of my life? Yikes!! I don’t know, but I need to change that ASAP! I’m not being fair to myself and I'm not being fair to the people I'm thinking negative of.
Don’t get me wrong, the negative thoughts are not mean thoughts about the person. I surround myself with good people. I don’t have anyone in my life right now whose morals or ethics I question. It’s me sort of preparing myself for the worst because I assume good relationships end, and it is my way of thinking that leads to it.
What makes all this worse is that I am so afraid to discuss what I am feeling directly with the person I am feeling this about (does that make sense?) I’m afraid that if I express how I feel they will become defensive and walk away from me and that will be the end of our friendship. UGH…this makes me want to scream!! I can now understand so much of what I’ve been told in the past from friends who weren’t afraid to talk to or confront me on things. I am realizing, as I type, that when I really want to discuss something with someone or tell them how I feel or let them know that I wasn’t happy about something that happened, I completely SHUTDOWN!!! I can’t do this anymore, it has to stop…I am exhausted from just realizing this…now I understand why I cause people to grow tired at times of me.
Still so much work to be done on me...but I know progress is being made. Time to change the way I think when it comes to things that are important to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment