Alright, so I know that you're all dieing for the inside scoop on mine and Angela's discussion. So, about an hour beforehand, I was extremely nervous. For those of you with public speaking fears, it was kind of like that. I never once reconsidered my decision, and I knew that as soon as I got on the phone the nervousness would go away, but up until then I was pretty dang nervous.
Then Angela finally called, and I answered, and she turned out to be a normal person! I know, big surprise forumites, but she's an actual human being! Anyways, I said hi, and she said hi, and then we got down to business. I didn't do any recording, so my recount will be fragmented, but I'll try to get the important points. First off, we started looking for "I am ____," blank being whatever best fits the core of my flawed belief. Of course, this met with all sorts of resistance. I went through memory after memory, but nothing seemed to fit right. Then the topic came to the fairness of one or another of the things that happened in my childhood, and out came "I can't win." Immediately afterward, we lost our phone connection. The first thing that Angela did after she called back was tell me that she thought I had it, and asked me what I thought "it" was. I had already concluded the same thing during the phone silence, so my "I am" was really more of an "I can", which was more of an "I can't"
. Then we explored how this has been undermining me my whole life, and then the people around me. I must admit, I did resist some during this stage, because it is REALLY hard to admit my connection to other people. I know this is where I need to work, because frankly I didn't break through in that portion. No fault of Angela's, I was just too stubborn and scared to even know that I was resisting. I did find out how this belief made me feel, and how it may make others feel: sad. Sad at my lost potential, at my loss of connection, at my refusal to fully experience basic human emotion.
That's the real important stuff of what we talked about. I'm sure there were some other significant moments (and Angela, if you're reading this, you have full disclosure rights aside from personal contact information), but these are the parts that stand out the most in my mind. Unfortunately I didn't have a massive breakthrough, but I made very significant progress and now know the areas where my focus is most needed. Most of all, I learned that maybe I
can win.