compensating

You really never know when something significant will suddenly stop mattering. One realization, piece of data or moment of growth/release and poof - it falls away like a leaf from a tree.

Feeling sober today. A bit like the wind's been knocked out of my sail. It doesn't feel bad, maybe a bit dry and stoic. It occured to me how much humans, myself included, are susceptible to forming compensatory beliefs or behaviors to avoid uncomfortable feelings. This can take nearly all the elaborate forms that make up the majority of activity in modern human societies.

Basically, we've largely been traumatized and conditioned to do a lot of foolish nonsense which we rationalize and come to believe in out of shared fear and denial. This can take any number of forms including pleasing and socially acceptable ones like productivity, cleaning, rituals, working, exercise, volunteering, self improvement, nearly anything at all that isn't strictly necessary or enjoyable for a human to do but which they feel compelled to do anyways - usually to get, avoid or achieve something. Whether it's compulsive/compensatory or not depends on the underlying intention and beliefs but thanks to repression and denial, uncovering the truth of our drivers isn't so simple.

Denial is usually stubbornly operating in (un)consciousness for a reason. Until the underlying feelings/memories/beliefs are brought to the surface and processed/corrected, we're susceptible to a lot of running around and toiling for nothing. It can seem like we're getting somewhere while we're really running in place, wearing out our body/minds busily trying to accomplish something that isn't really the solution/salvation that it seems to be.

Usually, underneath all the variables that the root distortion creates, the source is something like a lack of self-acceptance/worth. The individual doesn't believe that they're fine and worthy just as they are, and the compensatory belief is inserted that they can become acceptable/worthy if they act, accomplish, acquire or avoid x, y or z.

It never really works because it's a delusion, but we're all enmeshed in systems that run on this mentality. They run on our trauma, (self) abuse, self hatred, denial and needless suffering. Pretty much anything we do that isn't strictly necessary and instinctively/naturally enjoyable to psychologically healthy humans, which really isn't much. Because of our unresolved trauma and conditioning, the majority of us are essentially incapable of feeling a sense of inner peace, contentment and joy just from being alive and having what we need, which is often available in overwhelming abundance. We're instead compelled to torture ourselves and each other with unnecessary and unenjoyable activities to compensate for our psychological dis-ease. In a sense, most of us are malfunctioning. Blindly driven by faulty narratives in the mind and uncomfortable feelings in the body.

Nearly every collective comes with its own systems of implicit delusions which all the involved individuals share to some degree. This allows them to connect and keep things moving in certain directions and with certain boundaries, expectations and rewards for the participants. While in those environments certain delusions are strengthened, one of the primary ones tending to be that involvement and contribution is beneficial or necessary. This often isn't really true, though it may feel so in relation to the underlying beliefs of the individuals. This applies to most human systems.

So the question is, what's actually worth doing and what am I just wasting my time and energy on because I've come to believe that I "should" for some reason or other?