I had a possession experience; one where I reached a point that I am normally not able to pull myself out from- one which would normally lead to a skin-picking ‘lock-down’, or depression, or both. It was triggered by the simple fact that I had a couple of responsibilities that I was required to tend to, and which could have some significant consequences if I didn’t.

I felt it coming and the pull to pick my skin became stronger until I was ‘in the position’ of an skin-picking session, but instead I moved myself to get ready and I left the house. As I was driving I was forgiving the experience out loud and as I began to dig a little deeper it was not coming through clearly. What I was experiencing was a mixture anxiety, fear, and perhaps anger.

In this situation I felt anxiety because I had left the responsibilities to the last minute, and now if anything went wrong I would not have time to fix it. I left it to the last minute because of procrastination due to building the thing up in my mind as an unconquerable task, and became anxious and stresses to the point of stagnation.

I felt anger because I had ‘done it again’ in terms of compromising myself by leaving things to the last minute, thus creating an even bigger deal out of the responsibilities by avoiding them, instead of having simply dealt with them earlier.

I felt fear because I didn’t want others to see that I didn’t get it together, because I have this perception of how others see me that I want to maintain in order to believe it is true, and if anything went wrong with either of these responsibilities, my cover would be blown and I would be exposed as my real truth: that I am still participating in this irresponsible pattern that does not create myself as an individual that can be depended on and trusted.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to leave responsibilities to last minute, in an effort to avoid having to do them, thus creating a compromised situation or myself by not having enough time, creating chaos and uncertainty in my world, and repeating a pattern that creates myself as someone I cannot trust to get things done, or depend on to be able to move myself to take responsibility in my life and world, which builds up inside me and leads me to pick my skin as an escape.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to avoid and procrastinate from taking care of the responsibilities I have committed to, within the hopes that someone else will come along and do it for me, thus giving my power away and sabotaging my self-relationship and the self-trust that I require to build and prove over time, but until that is done, I do not have a foundation to stand on for when I am draw into skin-picking, and so I fall every time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to avoid and procrastinate from taking care of responsibilities that I don’t completely know how to do, and instead of simply beginning to accomplish them by taking the first step, I build them up in my mind and worry about them, and I create ideas that I will not be able to get through them and I will fail, and within my avoidance and procrastination from actually dealing with the responsibility, I hope someone else will do it, or that it will somehow work itself out without my intervention, instead of empowering myself to move through the responsibility step by step- asking for assistance whenever I run into an obstacle I cannot overcome, so that I‘m contributing to building my self-trust and dependability each time I have a responsibility. Wherein each time I have responsibilities to tend to, what I also have is an opportunity to strengthen my self-trust and resolve, by showing myself that I can in fact stick to the commitment, and walk through the responsibility to the best of my ability.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to avoid and procrastinate from taking care of responsibilities, and hoping someone else will do it for me like waiting for a saviour, thus creating a powerlessness and helplessness within and as me, where I think/believe/perceive that I simply can’t do it, and I am unable, and instead of proving to myself that I can in fact do it by actually doing it, I simply believe my thoughts/ideas/perceptions and beliefs, and the energy connected to them, within the logic of, ‘because I think ‘I can’t do it,’ and feel like ‘I can’t do it;’ it must be true,’ instead of using common sense to actually test myself in reality, to see if it is true or not, showing myself that I can save myself. I can pick myself up. I can be there for me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create and manifest powerlessness and helplessness within and as me, through allowing others in my world to ‘do it for me’, or simply not taking responsibility and allowing it to ‘work itself out’, which creates the chaos of anxiety and uncertainty, instead of taking the initiative to do it for myself and prove to myself that I can do it, thus actually creating self-empowerment, instead of creating helplessness and powerlessness through inaction and giving up.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to avoid taking responsibility for myself, and then fear the consequences of not doing so.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to make the decision to not take self-responsibility, and to avoid doing the responsibilities I have to do because I have built them up to be something more than I think I can handle, and then fear the consequences of having done so, because this cycle brings it to point where it is beyond my control, actually creating the negative consequences I was projecting.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to bring tasks/responsibilities to the point where they are beyond my control, wherein, I bring them to the point where I can only barely get them done, but within and through my non-action, I have accepted and allowed the point to grow and fester and become something that I cannot possibly take responsibility for because it becomes ‘too late’, and then I can use the excuse that I ‘couldn’t possible do anything’, ‘it was beyond my control’, it was ‘bigger than me’/’too great for me,’ when in fact

I created the entire situation through my deliberate non-action through self-dis-empowerment and helplessness.

I can recall this pattern from when I was younger, wherein it would manifest as a messy room, not completing my homework and assignments, and not pulling my own weight by doing household chores. Within this, there is quite a simplistic pattern within which I create energy in relation to, for example, responsibilities, where I, in a moment of facing consequence that I know I created, would then REACT to MY OWN consequence, and then use this reaction to justify/validate/excuse skin-picking. So the pattern I am exposing to myself here, is not taking responsibility for obligations, then accumulating reactions towards not doing it/postponing/procrastinating (wherein I would feel bad/irritable/uncomfortable/down on myself/low self-esteem/worthless etc….), and from this building up all these reactions into an Energy (like the ‘white noise’ as a constant background anxiety), and then to a point where I use that energy to pick, thus in essence, using this pattern as a deliberate way to deliberately create energy for picking.

The SOLUTION to this would be to, instead of waiting for responsibilities, to DO them, and not build up the energy in reaction to obligation, but to get things done- really walk step-by-step and breath by breath, because I see that if I miss a step/miss a moment- my mind so easily goes into that reaction. In this way, I can ensure that I don’t deliberately use obligations/responsibilities to react to them and NOT do them then lea myself into the temptation of skin-picking. The choice is consequences or solution: doing the responsibility and EXPANDING me, or not doing them and building energy and leading myself to picking my skin/OCD/depression.