Fighting Our Own Demons

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 Growing up, I experienced a fearful voice telling me to leave if I felt a sense of love or affection. This fear led to unreliable and selfish behavior, such as never making plans or leaving events mid-sentence. The fear was that I liked the people I was infatuated with, but the voice told me to look for better options. This inner devil kept pushing me away from intimate relationships, and I spent the next decade acting insane to cope with my feelings.

OUR INSIDE MONSTERS

All of us have demons, or aspects of ourselves that we prefer not to face but that we know are there. These parts of us lead us to act selfishly and irrationally, not out of love for ourselves but rather out of fear for ourselves. However much we try to keep our demons hidden, they always lurk there, boiling to the surface and leaking out from under the mask we put on them. And the more our lives become messed up, the harder we try to keep that lid down. To forget our demons, we get stoned or intoxicated. We use employment or competition as a diversion from our demons.

We behave badly toward others in order to mask our irrational worry that they may do the same to us in the future.

Anything to ward off the devils...

It's likely that you have faced your inner demons at some point; you may have loathed yourself for your foolish actions or resisted feelings of remorse or rage. You've made promises to yourself that you'll put the vodka away at last or that you won't listen to that inner voice.

Laziness is one of the demons I still battle. We're all lazy slobs at least occasionally, but if I'm not careful, my battle with my own "usefulness" in this world frequently descends into a lonely and gloomy place. I have a tendency to be really hard on myself when I put things off. I'm a no good, lazy sack of trash, and I have a tendency to be fairly hard on myself. I assume that everyone is doing well and getting better every day, except for me. After many years, I see now how illogical this notion is. Even still, there's that tiny voice within telling me that since nobody else struggles to stay motivated, I must be a loser of some kind.

Demons begin as self judgments such as "you're dirty, lazy, stupid, unlovable, etc."

Then, we make every effort to disprove that judgment and evade that judgment. Six times, we clean the garage. Our workdays consist of eleven hours. At the neighborhood ice rink, we take home a blue ribbon. I am cool and nice, like I said! Look! Take a look at me! However, this avoidance eventually turns detrimental to oneself. Rather than taking your children home from school, you clean the garage once more. You work so late that on the way home, you nod off. Your lover walks out on you, yelling, "You never wanted me!" due to the fact that you are preoccupied with skating rink blue ribbons. All you wanted was someone to observe your skating!

Even worse, your monster persists despite your best efforts to refute it. The monster of idleness never lets me feel good about myself. One of my wife's demons is the cleaning demon; she can never feel like things are tidy or well-organized enough. Regardless all your efforts, the devil remains unsatisfied. Hence, your only option is to divert your attention from the devil or, worse, give in.

These days, I often find myself in a slump where I play video games for three to four days in a row, detesting the fact that I'm doing it.

Our demons become a form of self-loathing in this way. You feel stuck and helpless. You are unable to prevail. Regardless of your level of success, you are unable to refute the demon. But when you give up and fall short, all you do is validate the devil's claim. All of a sudden, that vodka sounds rather nice.yet there must be a more effective approach to get over this demon.

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