How do you protect yourself?

Simple question pietro_21 on a complex topic.

As you highlight avoidance is best however a hermit like existence is not a practical solution.

Violent self-defence MAY have some legitimacy however for obvious social reasons is non-sustainable both for individuals and society.  As a bit of a disclaimer here for my background I trained for many years in martial arts including being awarded 2 black belts.

So then the issue of defending ones well being from a more complex level than that of physical harm from the obvious forms of attack.

I can give my perspective upon this that I think the answer may be in exploring further too.

Seeking support from others to defend one's own well-being is an important key.

This was something of a seed-change for me to acknowledge as implicit in understanding of my own vulnerability.

Support from others I was very fortunate to have, developing this to be less necessary took a lot of tenacity and energy to do - especially since it takes time to discern who and/or what and/or when works in this respect.

I would say that before I could defend my well-being I also had to gather insight into what well-being might actually be for me - especially since I was coming from a strong sense of "unwellness" that I had lived with for many years

To get to this point required developing skills of analysing my own body for signs of health beyond those of "normal" physical health into gaining "interoception" of correlates with mental states that my body gives insight into.  This then developed into the capacity of increased self-monitoring and self regulation.

I guess what I am saying is that we need help to identify what it is we are missing and from lived experiences work towards strategies that we self generate to be "new" people.

For me it was recognising how my posture, how I breathed etc and from this how such physical frameworks correlated with my mental framework too.

This is the domain of linking the body with the mind and the emotions (and dare one say it the spirit too).  There are many therapies that explore this.  They aren't easy but by my evidence they can be learned.

I believe this helps defend well-being by establishing what it was in us that is resonant with a sense of health and personal values.

I find people who I have known who studied martial arts have a lot of discipline when it comes to emotional control. 
my issue may be forgetting the practical element and looking for a quick fix, even though I follow routines it is my own dissatisfaction at the results, or others behaviours that leads me to states like this.

You are right pietro_21 however I have learned the hard way that emotional control and emotional insight are different issues.

I suppressed insight into my own emotional landscape in order to enable me to navigate life - maybe by necesity to the demands i felt I had to meet.  Probably because I didn't have "emotional intelligence" for myself and others.  Eventually this came back to bite me when I realised that I didn't know how I felt unless it was metaphorically hitting me over the head with a gold plated brick!

So I would maybe highlight discriminating emotional control from emotional intelligence and understanding how they intersect in my reply to you.  This I think makes for a healthier life.

Coincidentally I spent a lot of time today reflecting on why I "beat myself up" about how I deal with the world and to some extent blame myself for my inability to navigate life more successfully.

Yes a practical approach that is "grounded" in understanding how one's body feels and how this relates to one's emotional and behavioural context is what I do to "defend myself".

Also as someone wiser than me once put it "doing the same thing and expecting different results is..." Oh yes I've been there myself!

I reckon you get it :-)

best wishes

You are right pietro_21 however I have learned the hard way that emotional control and emotional insight are different issues.

I suppressed insight into my own emotional landscape in order to enable me to navigate life - maybe by necesity to the demands i felt I had to meet.  Probably because I didn't have "emotional intelligence" for myself and others.  Eventually this came back to bite me when I realised that I didn't know how I felt unless it was metaphorically hitting me over the head with a gold plated brick!

So I would maybe highlight discriminating emotional control from emotional intelligence and understanding how they intersect in my reply to you.  This I think makes for a healthier life.

Coincidentally I spent a lot of time today reflecting on why I "beat myself up" about how I deal with the world and to some extent blame myself for my inability to navigate life more successfully.

Yes a practical approach that is "grounded" in understanding how one's body feels and how this relates to one's emotional and behavioural context is what I do to "defend myself".

Also as someone wiser than me once put it "doing the same thing and expecting different results is..." Oh yes I've been there myself!

I reckon you get it :-)

best wishes

I get what you mean about wanting to have your own voice that comes from other things pietro_21 

I have come to see (hehe or be happily self deluded) that to have my own voice that comes from other things I get one if it comes from another place inside me.

I think that this is that sense of being a different person that you allude to.

I concur completely that the experiences that you and I and I suspect millions of others too have of being let down by a system that fails people, lack of support,encouragement so that one feels invisible and excluded.  Yes there are barriers.

The challenge is to seek support and when appropriate accept it.

The challenge is to engage with the system and make it work better for both for oneself and for others.

The challenge is to engage with opportunities for self activity and self expression.

To make oneself visible and to challenge for opportunities which arise.

Yep its hard and I absolutely acknowledge the temptation to give up - and yet each time there's something that I need/want to live for, and so on we go....  

If life was a computer game say, one would start by small wins over small challenges.  Gradually as skill and confidence developed greater challenges etc etc. 

Of course computer games are often "fun" and given all the *** out there it can be that one loses sight of that in life.

Find some small wins and build from there.  Organise for a better future with others.

I think maybe doing this and looking for the fun in life can also be an important part of defending oneself.

Yes I agree Phased, it's a kind of masking when you intentional enforce this on emotions in situations. I have learned this the hard way extreme detachment and tackling socialising from different angles, I learned that my own context of understanding myself is also relative to the people I'm with and different to every person I meet. This might sound obvious but it was a revelation compared to some of the things I believe and this is it because largely most things are based on belief.

How long you can sustain or tolerate a particular belief, which is why it helps when you have a practice, that way you are always discovering and relecting on different aspects of yourself and your experience (and neither are everything or the whole answer). But the questions thrwon up are sometimes really beautiful. 

So I think what I want is to only have my own voice, but a voice comes from other things. When I was first diagnosed I wrote down my thoughts on difrent days, some of it reads like the voice of a different person then. Not that long ago;

Most of all..

I feel

Let down

By a system which fails people

By a lack of support or not being encouraged through activity and expression

Being made to feel invisible all day everyday. Excluded from opportunities. 

I have observed people who face real barriers, people whose experiences of education or work are deliberately made more arduous.