Self-Doubt, a Trick of Your Gremlin
I live with a man who is unconsciously rooted in patriarchy. I have chosen to live with this man over and over again, most recently after moving out for 4 months.
I am aware that I can’t change him. For years I mistakenly believed I could change him. After that I hoped that he would want to change himself. In the meantime, I do not want to change him.
How did this evolution happen in me ?
I learned something about self-doubts. They gnaw at the world tree when I’m not awake.
Yesterday early in the morning, I experienced a wonderful summary : My husband parks the car in an almost empty public parking lot, where the very narrow parking bays are marked with yellow stripes. He’s standing askance with a tire glove on the right yellow stripe. Our car is supposed to be there all day because of a boat trip. It is weekend. The parking lot will be full. While he’s still behind the wheel, I instruct him to position the car so that other cars can park.
When that’s done, he gets out of the car full of anger: “The day starts badly. You decide what I have to do. You always do. You never let go. You don’t learn. You are in a bad mood. Change your mood. If this continues, then … .” The litany doesn’t want to end. I’m flabbergasted.
When something like this happens, my current behavior (= my experiment) is : I look him in the eye, I stay calm, I listen to everything, I keep my heart open.
When he’s done, he breaks eye contact. At that moment, thoughts come up in me : “What should I learn from the situation ? Why does this keep happening ? I don’t know how to deal with it. I’ve tried so many things. Why doesn’t that change ? What am I doing wrong ?”
This morning I realize : when I do this, I have self-doubt.
Self-doubt is my error : I don’t need to doubt myself, my action, in this case the parking instruction. It happened, awake, in total innocence and in conscious awareness. There’s nothing “wrong” with my act of making him stay within the parking lanes in an empty parking lot.
There’s nothing wrong with my husband’s freaking out, either. He expresses his box’s and his Gremlin’s fear of being a “nobody”. Box and Gremlin feel threatened in their existence. My husband isn’t interested in working on himself. That’s why box and Gremlin dissatisfaction comes out accordingly to his education and culture. He’s a male child of 20th-century western culture and millennia-old patriarchy: that “allows” him to yell at me.
Of course, my box and my Gremlin believe it’s totally wrong that my husband is freaking out. I’m interested in working on myself. My box and my Gremlin therefore think of themselves as something better, more “evolved” and fervently want my husband to “recognize” that he’s going to snap “first”, that he’s going to snap for “no reason at all”, that personal growth work is somthing “good” to do. This is my Gremlin that ensures his survival.
My current experiment of relating by keeping my eyes, ears and heart open lead me to the uprising thoughts in me, self-doubt. This is my Gremlin’s more subtle way of caring for his own survival : he whispers that I need to find something I’m doing wrong, that I need to realize where I need to improve. This is one and the same thing applied to me.
In reality there is nothing to do : I gave parking instructions. My husband was angry. He has expressed the fear of his box and his Gremlin. After that, my box’s and my Gremlin’s fear showed up in the form of self-doubt. It was all a space to express fear. The wave came, the wave went.
My true Self is completely uninvolved in this matter. I’ve believed my self-doubt thousands upon thousands of times. When I do this, I attach my “I” in the wrong place, in my box, in my Gremlin, or in child or parent ego state. My Being is not there, not even in the adult ego state. When I anchor my sense of self in the uninvolved part, beyond all ego states, I create a healing space where fear is allowed to express itself like the wind that comes and goes.
Self-doubts are self-delusion because they still believe in an “I”. They say I don’t believe that I am o.k. the way I was born. That can only be false. Otherwise, how I could ever love a tree that grew crooked ? Nature is Nature. She is perfect. I’m fundamentally ok the way I am. Self-doubts are nothing but illusion. I can just let them go, smile at them when they appear.
Giving up self-doubt allows me to be spontaneously in the Being. Without self-doubt, I am able to see through the other’s box that I mistakenly took for his identity. That also put an end to my doubts about my husband. My Being and his Being are one. Both of our boxes temporarily serve to express old pain. I am spaceholder for the self-expression of my pain. And because in this life I chose to do personal work, I am also spaceholder for my husband’s expressions of pain. He’s not interested in doing personal work, which is totally fine. It’s a choice he made. That’s why he is my perfect teacher.
I like to add one more thing : in the moments in which his and my expression of pain happens, I seek out the gaps between the moments, the “nothingness” in these gaps. For this I have to make my Here and Now very small, less than 3 seconds !
