Wake up! It’s time—it’s time for your skin picking marathon!
Wake up! Your skin is calling you to wake up!
That dream you were having will have to pause for now, Okay?!
I know this may be an inconvenience, but your hands have been scratching your skin while you’ve been asleep and they’ve been calling for your attention.
Your job is to focus on this okay? We need you to keep scratching and picking your skin, it’s for your own relief, will you do that already?
As my hands moved on their own, scratching the various parts of my body, I was slowly waking up to my subconscious episode.
Another ongoing battle that I have to be woken up to. As my body is moving on its own I can feel the autonomous skin peeling and scratching of my body without my conscious awareness.
While I’m slowly gaining consciousness of my body, I remember what’s going on.
I realize I’ve been here before many times and remind myself that I know what this is about.
There it is again, that need to scratch, peel and inflict pain on myself, I know that tempting feeling. I remember this craving desire to pry and pick at my body, I know what my mind wants.
That daily wound-nursing that comes with self-mutilation.
My mind wants the satisfaction of nursing it’s own inflicted wounds, peeling and picking scabs to always be in a cycle of wound nursing and wound infliction.
A cycle of constant and repetitious pain, discomfort and false-relief.
The circumstance this time, was that my body was already scratching itself before I had a mindful choice in the decision to act.
It’s easy to give into the temptation to go along with something when the momentum is already there.
At this point, I’m already losing the battle over my mind, and my body keeps backing on the momentum of the itch.
Not a problem. All I have to do is remember two things:
- What is this for?
- What am I feeling?
I know this is to keep me in a cycle of passive suffering.
And second, I know that my subconscious itching wants me to feel upset.
Good. Now we’re on the right track.
All you need to do now is to remember the feeling of conscious agency.
The feeling of the weight of decision and the free will to choose.
I can now choose whether I want to be a passive observer, or I can choose to take this opportunity to practice mindfulness; be an active agent over my thoughts and remove any attributed importance and meaning to my pain.
By doing so, I can free myself from the need, desire and temptation to itch my body.
I know I am free, because the pain I’ve been inflicting on myself cannot make me upset or do me harm.
It’s my interpretation and thoughts that matter most of all.
The interpretation I made was that this wake up call to itch myself was an opportunity to practice mindful agency, and to remember that I have a choice in the reaction of my circumstance.
Because this pain that I have inflicted upon myself is no longer viewed as pain.
It’s a reference point, a navigation device to locate where I have attributed excess tension and therefore the need for attention.
Wherever there’s tension, needs attention.
That tension is the gift that needs to be opened up.
It’s the feeling that which is the vehicle back to re-membering.
Remembering the reason for the tension, the reason for the upset, which was to reinforce separation and victimization.
Once detachment of the pain has been made it allows for free space to choose whether the tension, discomfort and pain is truly pain.
The very pain that woke me up was the very pain that opened me up to my gift. The gift of pure potential; pure potential which is similar to the feeling of unconditional love.
This unconditional love is the un-judgemental attitude to have compassion for yourself and the circumstance, without giving into the temptation to act on desire. It’s the feeling of contentment without needing or wanting.
That feeling that constantly has to be reminded is something truly empowering; when the compassion for yourself is so pure that the need to desire is dissolved, because you would rather accept the pain of not relieving yourself from the itch, and forgive yourself for forgetting that you are not a victim.
And that pain that comes from unconditional love is so freeing because that weight of expecting punishment and shame for slipping up is dissolved and absorbed into the feeling of love.
Because self-harm is a cry for love, that infliction of pain is a need for attention and love from the Self.
That scratching and picking wants to invoke and bring out an emotion out of me. It wants me to feel frustrated and annoyed so that I inflict more harm on myself and more punishment.
Because it knows if I become reactive I will be more likely to put myself in the same box it has put itself in. The box of separation and victimization.
But in truth, the self-mutilation is an attempt to receive love. Because its acts of harm on the body is evidence that it doesn’t believe that it is loved, which is not true. The mind that believes that it is not loved will harm itself, inflict pain, expect punishment and be cruel as a means to keep itself (the ego) disempowered and have an excuse to be irresponsible.
Let’s ask the question: What’s the need for tension and the need for self harm”
The purpose is to trigger a reaction, because it is easier to act when stress is perceived.
A person is more likely to do something when they are stressed, frustrated and that something is self-destructive outlets.
The ego is trying to bring an emotion of frustration out of you in the expectation that you will use that to fuel negative outlets as the excuse for “relief”.
But what reason would there be for the need of “relief”. Life isn’t a prison sentence, so what reason is there to need relief?
The ego has a tactical way of making the mind believe that it’s life is something to get over with and wait out like a prison sentence, and that false reality is what sustains the lack of agency and spiritual empowerment.
The “false-relief” I mentioned before. How this skin picking phenomenon is an attempt to relieve the mind of its suffering.
The mind has been conditioned to seek and find relief in self-mutilation.
How does the mind consider this to be relief?
How does the mind consider self destruction as relief?
There’s an excitement and a kind of thrill that happens when I pick at my skin. It’s that unrelenting temptation and desire that comes with self harm.
Anytime there is tension there is always a subconscious habit to touch the skin and especially peel it.
There’s some kind of quality of relief that gets stimulated in those moments of tension.
Ultimately, it’s a form of dissociation.
The moment you succumb to the need to pick and “relieve” yourself you are dissociating from your mental state.
Dissociation is an adaptive habit to relieve oneself of their stress or mental state.
In the case of when I’m sleeping, I’m not merely as interested in the neurological system or the nerves that get activated that prompt me to scratch my skin.
What I am interested in is the decision to scratch and simply the reaction itself.
I’m drawn towards the psychology and reactivity of the mind when confronted with a wave of itchiness, discomfort or stress.
I want to understand the mind and its subconscious intentions for skin picking and scratching.
From what I’ve come to understand, when it comes to the circumstance at night, and my skin is already subconsciously moving on its own, scratching itself. I know that by the time I wake up, I will be more likely to back on the momentum my subconscious was already building on and so when I’m awake I will be even more willing to scratch myself more vigorously, and then it will be game over.
However, that’s not what happened this time. This time I was able to recognize the pattern which made me more compelled not to succumb to the temptation.
but the process there, that’s the substance that I want to extrapolate.
Deconstructing the process of mindfulness, pattern recognition and momentum in order for that habit to be programmed and react to the situation with greater dexterity.
Essentially, I want my comfort zone to be inner peace which entails zero self-mutilation through self-hacking.
To conceptualize the nighttime skin picking marathon, it’s basically an energy harvest. It’s the only time of the day that has the most potential for self-harm and succumbed temptation. I’m more sleepy which means I’m more likely to be more reactive and defensive about my sleep and therefore frustrated as a result.
To get a glimpse of my thought process and feeling when I resisted the temptation to scratch my skin, I first recognized the pattern. The pattern of giving my energy away to the sustained existence of the skin problem and ultimately the ego trap.
The ego depends on the energy I give it in order to fuel the destructive habits, the victimization and separation and in that moment I was aware and so actively chose not to touch my skin which gets easier with practice.
Although the ego can seem cruel, self-destructive and evil, it’s not actually the enemy.
What could possibly be innocent about inflicting a sensory overload at night, that would then lose sleep and force me to scratch all the areas of my body in order to get relief? How could that come from an innocent intention?
Let’s say I was to re-enter that situation; it’s nighttime and I am suddenly woken up by an overloaded sense of itchiness and I am immediately compelled to cave into my skin.
What if in that moment instead of giving into the temptation, I simply felt the pain in it’s entirety without the need to touch the skin?
In truth, I know that the pain is not suffering, because of course I can use that pain as fuel, as motivation, inspiration and an opportunity to experience the pure potential of the moment.
To know the outcome, is to see the journey.
In the former reaction I would’ve made; to pick at the skin, it would have lead to more self-mutilation and destructive habits.
In the latter reaction I used the pain as an opportunity to fuel procreativity as a chance to be one with my true self, which is pure potential and unconditional love.
Whatever pain I feel in the moment is not the issue, its my reaction to it and emotionally driven actions that lead to even further pain and sickness.
Because the sickness is not the pain, its the negative reaction to that pain.
The reason it seems as though the ego is the enemy, because the negative habits are viewed in the lens of hate and identified as undesirable features.
However, the ego is driven by it’s beliefs and will therefore be in constant search for confirmation and validation of that. The belief that it is worthless and is responsible for others suffering.
It’s tempting to raise a fist at the ego, but that won’t do any justice.
Because what it wants is the same as what the true self is; pure potential and unconditional love. It just doesn’t want to believe that it is worthy, because it’s justifications would be nullified. Then there would be no reason to fight, battle and struggle and that is exactly what the ego depends on.
The perceived acts of destruction are cries for love, they’ve just been given the wrong interpretation, and therefore the ego is validated and stuck in its own box.
It wants to believe the suffering its inflicted is further reasons how it is worthless, undeserving and helpless.
However, it simply isn’t aware of the utility of the pain; how it can drive one into liberation.
In truth, the mind believed it was so incredibly worthless it drove itself into immense suffering by its own imagination, and the pain that came with that was a means to recognize the strength of that belief which cause immense suffering.
Knowing that a core belief could cause that much problems, is fascinating once the realization of its fallacy is known and we know that default core belief is not true because it was created by the ego.
To be driven into borderline insanity because of a negative core belief can be incredibly freeing, when you know that the pain served you as a means to make you stronger and a recognition for how far the ego is willing to go for it’s salvation.
The fact that it’s willing to go to the very ends in order to be saved is profoundly beautiful in my eyes.