Allione argues that this has a healing effect-that it represents accepting the worst part of ourselves and developing compassion for ourselves. In her book, Feeding Your Demons, Tsultrim Allione talks about an old Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice where you literally visualize whatever “demon” is haunting you, and then sit down and feed them, the same way you’d feed a guest or a friend at a dinner party. …but there’s got to be a better way to overcome your demons. Yet, when you give up and fail, you just prove the demon right. No matter how much you succeed, you can’t prove the demon wrong. In this way, our demons morph into a kind of self-loathing. These days, I have a tendency to fall into a lull of playing video games for 3-4 days straight-all the while hating the fact that I’m doing it. So the only alternative is to distract yourself from the demon, or worse, to give in.įor me, I spent many years distracting myself with partying. No matter how hard you work, the demon is never satisfied. The cleaning demon, one of my wife’s demons, never lets her feel like everything is clean or organized enough. The laziness demon never stops making me feel lazy. Your obsession with skating rink blue ribbons destroys your relationship with your partner, with them leaving and screaming, “You never wanted me! You just wanted someone to watch you skate!”Īnd worse, no matter how much you prove your demon wrong, it doesn’t go away. You work so long that you fall asleep driving home. You clean the garage again instead of picking your kids up from school. See! I told you I’m cool and likeable! See! Look at me!īut eventually, that avoidance becomes self-destructive. We win a blue ribbon at the local skating rink. Then we try our hardest to avoid that judgment, to prove it wrong. But still, that little voice inside whispers that no one else has a problem staying motivated, therefore I must be some sort of loser.ĭemons start out as a self-judgment: you’re lazy, you’re dirty, you’re stupid, you’re unlovable, etc. I realize now (after many years) how irrational this belief is. My general assumption is that everyone is productive and kicking ass every day… except me. When I procrastinate, I tend to judge myself pretty harshly, telling myself I’m a no good, lazy sack of shit. While we’re all lazy slobs at least some of the time, my struggle with my own “usefulness” in this world often spirals to a dark and lonely place if I’m not careful. One of the demons I still struggle with is laziness. You’ve promised yourself that you’ll stop listening to that little voice inside or that you’ll finally put the vodka away. You have probably done battle with your demons at some point-you’ve fought back the feelings of anger or guilt, you’ve hated yourself for your stupid behavior. We treat others like shit to distort our deep-seated fear that they will eventually treat us like shit. We distract ourselves from our demons with work or competition. We get high or drunk to forget our demons. And the harder we try to hold that lid down, the more fucked up our lives become. We all have demons-parts of ourselves that we don’t like to acknowledge but we see lurking inside us-parts of ourselves that cause us to do irrational and selfish things not out of love for ourselves, but out of fear for ourselves.īut no matter how hard we try to ignore our demons, they’re always there, bubbling up to the surface, seeping out from the lid we try to keep on them. But I wanted to feel intimate and close to people, so I just acted like a crazy person for about ten years, trying to get over myself. It was like this inner demon constantly repelling me from anyone I felt intimate with or close to. That’s what woke that inner voice saying, “Let’s get out of here. Actually, it was the opposite-I did like these people-and that’s what terrified me. It wasn’t that I didn’t like these people. I was the guy who would just walk out in the middle of a concert, a movie, a party, with no explanation and go somewhere else. I was the guy who went on three spectacular dates with a woman and then strangely found an endless litany of excuses to not go on a fourth. I was the guy who said he couldn’t wait to see you and then never showed up. “You’re going to lose your independence.” And suddenly, I’d begin to have irrational ideas about never being able to eat steak again because the girl I liked was vegetarian, or how moving in with some friends meant that I’d be forced to play Scrabble with them every night for the rest of my life.Īs a result, I spent most of my twenties being a terribly unreliable (and often selfish) person. I was starved for attention and affection, but every time I started to receive attention or affection from somebody, that voice would quietly urge me to get away. When I was younger, I used to have this quiet, menacing voice inside me.
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