In Part 4 I began talking about the Self-Image as a moving picture we develop of ourselves in terms of Social Worth. I think I explained we base this moving picture on our own observations of overall physical vibrational tone (our emotions); which itself is a product of how we are reacting to both our past and current social environments.
The part of our brain which does the observing, the Prefrontal Cortex, is not itself emotional – it acts as co-ordinator of all our sensory information. It also performs the role of signal interpreter acting then as direction finder/goal setter.
Put simply it’s your ‘Control’ mechanism – but it can easily make mistakes. In the case of those of us who have emotional disorders it has made the mistake of misinterpreting the signals and making the wrong decisions in what they’re telling us because there are other beliefs we have emotionally attached to.
The Biggest Decisions You’ll Ever Make
The most fundamental decisions you can start making are your social environment decisions. You need to be willing to emotionally detach, partially detach, and re-attach, on the basis of which social connections cause you pain and which bring you and others mutual benefit. Unless you are willing to do this you cannot achieve full emotional healing – ever - because you are not allowing you to be YOU. This is a life-long process.
Of course I’m not talking here in terms of where the people you associate with are physically located – I’m talking about the types of people you associate with.
Your Self-Image is almost entirely based on the evidence you get from social acceptance/rejection feedback and so to manage your self-image effectively, both for your and everyone else’s benefit, you have to give yourself permission to leave, alter or explore alternative social connections when you’re in social pain. You have to do a little accepting and rejecting of your own. You not only have to do unto others as they do unto you – you have to do it at the earliest opportunity before they’ve even get to fully do it to you.
This is where intuition comes in. Sometimes we can be over-intuitive; we can run from things before we’ve even had a proper look and got the facts. That’s not my personal experience, however – 9 times out of 10 my intuition was spot on.
I became seriously ill with multiple emotional disorders because I refused to leave an environment toxic to my emotional well-being for 13 years – my intuition was screaming at me through my emotions and I ignored it. It took another 15 years, after I’d left the physical environment, before I finally detached from the people concerned. I remained attached for as long as I did because I believed it was the ‘right thing to do’ and then detached fully when it became obvious it was no longer the right thing to do. It became ‘obvious’ purely on the basis of unrelenting social rejection and my wish to develop a positive self-image.
Over the years I have learned to listen to my intuition rather than my ‘right thing to do’ thinking patterns and found myself getting happier and happier despite believing I ‘shouldn’t be really’ as a result.
Indirect Control
The Objective Mind – the mind full of models of ‘how things work’ – is the mind best suited to planning your social environments because your Subjective Mind makes decisions on the basis of old emotional attachments. However, your Objective Mind needs to search the Subjective regarding such things as experiences you enjoyed and felt you grew as a result of; these are the places you need to go to more often in the future if you want to develop a long-term Positive Self-Image. Your hobbies; your strengths; moments when others complimented you on a skill you weren’t aware of.
You have to manufacture a future for yourself that’s going to lead to ever-increasing stimulation of the positive social kind. Put yourself in social environments that will guarantee a Positive Self-Image.
I’m going to have to stop writing now as I want to work on a book but below I’m going to leave you with three mindmaps to look at:
- a model of how the Self-Image develops
- Your Self-Image Enemies
- Your Self-Image Friends.
There’s a lot of information in these diagrams – if you want to ask a questions/discuss/comment please leave a comment in the comment box below!
Double clicking on any of these images will open them in a new window.
HOW THE SELF IMAGE DEVELOPS: (start at the little red arrow and follow the cycle from left to right)
The differences between a controlled and an uncontrolled self-image:
Your Self-Image Enemies:
Defeated by using your Self-Image Friends!:
Carl
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