“What is wrong with me?”, is a question I get quite often.
Honestly,,, nothing. In truth you are fine. There really is nothing wrong with you. That’s my perspective with everyone I talk to. And I talk to a lot of people because I do this professionally. The next question is:
“But I don’t feel fine. Why do I feel so lousy, (angry, sad, unhappy, jealous, insecure, anxiety, etc)?”
Because the emotions you feel are being created as responses to beliefs you have. Your beliefs are negative, fearful, anxiety ridden, and your emotions respond accordingly. Your emotions are responding perfectly to what is going on in your mind. The problem is that you are having negative and fearful thoughts running through your mind,,, and you are believing in them. How you feel emotionally is just a natural response to the beliefs you have. The important thing to understand is that YOU are not the problem. There is nothing wrong with you, it’s what is going on in your mind that is the problem. Your mind has thoughts and beliefs that are false and fear based. You are not those thoughts and beliefs. As a matter of fact,,, you aren’t even the one thinking them. Your mind is tossing them about your imagination all by itself.
In my approach I make a distinction between YOU, and your mind which is made up of your thoughts and beliefs. YOU are fine, but your mind is filled with false and fear based beliefs. You could call these false beliefs your ego.
Some people will then ask, “But why am I thinking all these negative thoughts. And this is my point,,, YOU are not the one thinking those negative thoughts. Your mind is thinking them all on it’s own and taking you for a ride much like a daydream, or even a night time dream. Sometimes those daydreams turn into very focused horrific scenarios and can seem very real. Your emotional body can’t tell the difference between reality, and what you believe is reality so it reacts according to those dreams in your mind.
Your physiology and physical body can react as well. Your adrenaline will kick in when there is a fearful thought, as well as other fight or flight responses. You then might have the physical responses of those chemicals in your system as well as tightness in your muscles, shifts in your digestion, accelerated heart beat, on top of your emotional responses. Your specific reaction will depend on how fearful the thought is, how strongly you believe it, and how much awareness you have.
I have made a free audio podcast, “What is a belief?” and how it affects our mind and emotions that explains this in more detail.
Are you saying this is all in my head?
No. Some of your emotions might be from very real life experiences. Some of our emotions can be from real life events while some emotions are in response to what our mind projects. Suppose you are in the midst of a divorce. Your spouse is splitting up with you and now you are only seeing your children half time.
Those things are real and you are going to go through some emotional cycles as things change. Those are not part of what your mind is projecting and dreaming. Those are the facts. But the facts probably aren’t causing you as much unhappiness as the dreamed up scenarios your mind is spinning. Those might be how you have failed as a father, as a husband, that your life is ruined, that your kids lives are ruined, that they will be broken the rest of their life. Those are dreams you are having in your mind. They are imagined projections about how the rest of your life will turn out, or how your children’s lives will turn out. They are generally fearful, unhappy, and only exist as movies in your imagination; or what I call dreams in your mind. You might also call them thoughts or beliefs.
The distinction that is important to make here is between the facts, and what your mind projects onto the facts. Some of your emotions are a response to real life events. But many of your emotions, are from things you imagine. To have the clarity to perceive the difference between reality, and projections of the mind is what I call awareness. Awareness is critical to changing how you feel emotionally.
With awareness you first become aware of the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and judgments the mind projects all by itself. Then notice how much of your emotions come from your mental projections. These are the emotions that are easiest to change. You will still likely have some emotions stemming from the reality of how your life is changing. These emotions can and will change too with some more attention and practice. It is also much easier to change these emotions once you don’t have the added layer of emotions coming from your negative thoughts and fear based beliefs.
What you discover in this process is that YOU don’t have to change. That’s because you are not the problem. You are fine. The problem is with the negative thoughts and false beliefs in your mind causing all those emotional reactions. When you change the interpretations your mind makes, your emotional state changes. Then you are back on your way to feeling fine again. This is why developing awareness is the key to lasting happiness.
Even the question, “What is wrong with me?” is a combination of thoughts and false beliefs. It is built on the assumed belief that:
a) There is something wrong with me.
b) I don’t know what is wrong so that is another problem of not knowing.
c) I should know what is wrong with me but I don’t so I feel confused because I don’t know something my belief system says I should know.
All of these thoughts have us chasing some phantom idea that there is something wrong with us. Why don’t we find it,,, because there is nothing wrong with us. Yes we feel bad, but that is because we are caught up in these assumed beliefs that there is something wrong. It’s like we got on the wrong line of questioning and it is taking us into a nightmare dream that there are no answers for. It’s equivalent to spending time trying to answer the question, “What is the smell of piano music?” It’s a nonsense question and we would be wasting our time trying to answer it. The same is true for the question, “What is wrong with me?
We are much better served asking questions like:
What do I believe that isn’t true? Is the thought my mind is thinking helpful to making me happy? What assumptions are behind that thought that make it not true? How are those false beliefs affecting me emotionally? What are the steps to changing these beliefs?
Go to the Self Mastery Course for practical steps to finding and changing your false and fear based beliefs. By using the tools you learn in the course you will develop awareness about what is going on in your mind and have the tools to change it.