Fear of hypocrisy

[trenton]

I notice a common pattern in my behavior and I don't know if this is common or not.  It leads to me not socializing with other people in order to avoid looking like a fool.

An example goes as follows.  When my sister is angry with me I often feel unfairly attacked.  If I think her anger is unjust I notice myself getting angry about the fact that she is angry with me.  When I notice these thoughts I don't express them because I expect the outcome of expressing such thoughts to only make the situation worse.  This leads to me saying nothing or making long pauses in which the messages I try to express are not understood.

Many examples appear in my thoughts when I see a behavior in others I dislike.  I notice my thoughts beginning to mimic some of the behaviors which if I were to express them it would lead to hypocrisy.  An example could be If somebody starts gossiping in order to make me look bad.  My thoughts then make me feel like I'm about to start gossiping about the fact that they were gossiping.  As a result I don't address others when they act unfairly.  This leads to worsened self esteem and isolation.  Maybe it happens because of a tendency to catastrophize about the worst outcome automatically.

Even if I weren't a hypocrite in my thoughts I am still convinced that I would make a situation worse if I expressed that I were unfairly attacked.  This makes me feel trapped and hopeless with the only option being to get as far away from toxic people as possible.  If I end up acting on hypocritical thoughts then that would make everything worse.

[Terell Kirby]

1 hour ago, trenton said:

Even if I weren't a hypocrite in my thoughts I am still convinced that I would make a situation worse if I expressed that I were unfairly attacked.  This makes me feel trapped and hopeless with the only option being to get as far away from toxic people as possible.  If I end up acting on hypocritical thoughts then that would make everything worse.

Seems like you care a little too much what people think. To hell with what other peoples opinion are of you, no one is perfect.

Fear is an illusion.

[Marcel]

@trenton

I used to defend myself all the time in my teens.

I was so insecure that i could not handle any criticism or compliment for that matter.

You cannot imagine how many arguments i started haha

For me it was just a phase in my life.

It eventually just passed naturally.

But maybe you should try to get to the core of this.

No matter how this makes you feel, how you react is ultimately your decision.

So if you do not like your reaction, then slowly replace it with a different one.

Habits need to be consciously replaced by other habbits.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Marcel

[hamedsf]

It's not hypocrisy to practice controlling things over time.

when I say something to my sister, she gets angry and defensive but what I do? I smirk and tell her: calm down girl! but still something inside me tells me to be angry too but I don't listen and take the full control! 

[mandyjw]

You have a very high level of self awareness and insight into the hypocritical nature of thought. A thought exists within duality, and it basically has to ignore or forget itself to exist. This pertains to any thought. "The chair is brown" infers that the chair is not white, orange, gray, etc. The light that makes a "brown" chair possible is colorless and formless itself. To be a color you must absorb all other colors and reject the one you appear as. No light, no specific color. So in a way, all appearance is quite... hypocritical you could say. 

Basically you are seeing one aspect of the nature of thought very clearly, but still misunderstanding the nature of thought and self. That's why you're experiencing such conflict around it and why it feels bad. What you are not seeing is that you are not to blame and not responsible for it because the thought "I" is another thought that excludes itself and isn't true. This is the root thought to question. 

This goes really deep, even though it's a very obvious truth, it's SO obvious, (it's so apparent it is prior to appearance itself) that the appearance of our thoughts cover over it. This video/visual might bring you some insight into how we seek to use thought to escape, how we create and try to escape to other negative emotions in our judgement of anger and blame as being wrong. 

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by mandyjw

[SLuxy]

@mandyjw yo, awesome post!

[Thought Art]

Don't fear hypocrisy, lean into it and observe it. observing it is how you grow and break free

[Nahm]

On 8/30/2021 at 7:40 PM, trenton said:

I often feel unfairly attacked

You’re feeling your thoughts. They’re feeling their thoughts. Allow people the space to express, to let it up & out. It’s not personal or about you… they’re experiencing the discord between their thought and how it feels, finding their way. Just like you do. Just like I do. The key is you must take ownership of your thought, your perspective… that it’s an “attack”. 

You are perfectly designed to take pause, and bring yourself to all situations - regardless of what others bring. One big pot luck anarchy. Bring what you like, what you love. Hell, just bring the love. 

[trenton]

@mandyjw I watched the video you sent and found the model useful.  It reminds me of opposite desires which can conflict with each other.  One example is with suicide.  One form of love is to end your suffering and the other form of love is to hesitate to commit suicide.  In a sense neither of them are wrong or evil if they are both love.  This is the desire to live and the desire to die conflicting with each other.  When I realize this I release both desires and I found it very effective.  To moralize against suicide only leads to suppression which does not fully resolve the desire to die.  As a result I had a lot of intense backsliding in the past.  This form of suppression is love just like releasing.

As for the examples in the video, I notice in my experience how people over compensate for one negative emotion.  I saw it in chess club when I was undefeated, won several tournaments, and took home money.  The people in chess club felt inadequate or like they did not stand a chance against me.  I could tell they were covering this up when they came to me and started boasting about how they are going to crush me.  They are feigning overconfidence and it is not hard to see through it.  Again, the way in which people attempt to compensate for their emotions is still a form of love if the person thinks that one emotional experience would be better than the other.

I notice part of the model applying to myself when I see blame and regret.  In a situation involving domestic violence and drug addiction I blamed myself for thinking of killing my step father.  When that made me judge myself harshly, I wanted to blame something external.  This becomes an act of swinging the pendulum and it makes my thinking very inconsistent and sometimes nonsensical.  Now that I understand better ways to approach these emotions, I don't swing the pendulum, instead I meditate and release both desires.

I still don't fully understand the nature of thought and how it becomes hypocritical.  Maybe in order to have these thoughts, the thoughts must pretend to be something they are not?  For example, I feign overconfidence to pretend I am not feeling inadequate.  If I am judgemental of myself, then I pretend not to be judgemental of others and vice versa.  I experienced this one a lot and it never felt right.  Another example is when I have a desire to be separate from others, but also the desire to be part of a group of community.  These conflicting desires lead to further emotional turmoil.  If I release both sides, I end up peaceful, and the thought that I am peaceful pretends I am not unpeaceful.  This creates a sense of uneasiness and inner conflict.  It indicates a desire to not be peaceful conflicting with a desire to be peaceful.  When I noticed all of these examples in myself, I thought that it was all a consequence of self manipulation and that I was hurting myself on purpose.  I felt out of control of the emotional chaos going on in me which eventually lead to suicidal thoughts.  I also thought that This condition was unique to myself and not others.

After sharing some of my experiences with my brother who has suicidal thoughts, he found many of the angles I looked at the issue from helpful.  This helped to ease his emotional problems as well.  In one example, morality is problematic if I must be good but not bad.  This becomes a mask which is inevitably insincere, and in a sense a deception and therefore immoral.  I have many other coping mechanisms others found useful such as acknowledging and accepting destructive, morbid, or sexual curiosity which leads to various fantasies.  By recognizing that there is a part of me that wants to have them, they no longer become something to be afraid of, whereas before it became an inner war.  Am I in the ballpark in terms of this insight?  Is this phenomenon more common than I previously assumed?  I'm any case I don't see a reason to be mad at myself for any of these things or how I reacted to these thoughts on the past.

I also notice that when criticizing others it becomes very tempting to mimic their behavior, possibly because my thoughts are focused on the behavior.  If every thought Is creative, then the logical conclusion is that I will feel an inner war when addressing qualities I don't like in others while denying the part of me that enjoys embodying that behavior.  Perhaps an example would be a victim mindset in which somebody thinks "I was hurt, therefore I am justified in hurting others.". This is arbitrary and nonsensical, but people nevertheless think this way.  For example, a person could be mistreated and decide to not treat others that way because of how it made them feel.  There could be a subtle denial of the unfavorable quality being masked through the "good" actions and this comes from the desire to be separate from what was experienced. In this case the person is acting good but not bad.  This insight seems a little tricky to grasp.  Am I on the right track?

By seeing that everything I did was love, I see no reason to be mad at myself for anything.  This includes my desire to be in control which is reinforced by a sense of me doing things and then judging myself for those things.  In this sense the entire act of judging myself was part of a massive deception in which I denied my sense of not being in control our of fear.  This is what the desire to be in control can do to you if I am not the first one to realize this is happening to me.  Because I thought it was unique I thought there was something wrong with me.  Really there is no reason to be mad at myself for anything.

[trenton]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:07 AM, cypres said:

@trenton  What are you calling gossip - are you gossiping the person back or just getting support from someone close to you about the fact you were gossiped about? And are you angry about anger from your sister in itself, or are you angry about unfairness? I only see the first options as hypocrisy.

I would say you are avoiding hypocrisy when you get hurt and react not by lashing out in the same way, but by staying with the reactiveness into a deeper and more sincere layer of the hurt.

Not everyone are safe to express the vulnerability underneath to, instead they see it as an opportunity to get the upper hand while you are exposed, and this is violent behavior. In the short term (an acute situation) I treat it the same way I treat violence; escape them or attack them back. It usually feels bad to me, but I figured out that the point at which it feels good for me to stand up for myself is when I have resolved all my personal motivations involved in the situation, which for me the biggest hurdle has been realizing the limit of possible outcomes (that some situations I can't solve peacefully - all parties have to want to).

Being genuine only seems to work if people aren't too far removed from their own sincerity.

 

I agree with this, the very first step in integrating parts of oneself is accepting their position. It's just like doing diplomacy, dismissing the other person's validity or point of view will lead you to have zero influence over them.

Also, what is the process of "releasing both desires"?

As for your first two paragraphs, you are right I am not really being a hypocrite.  I am describing what my thoughts show me and I don't react by acting on these thoughts.  My avoidance of hypocrisy is part of the situation I am describing.  I didn't actually gossip or yell in retaliation, but it came up in my thoughts.  I have a history of paying my thoughts too much credence.

As for the process of releasing, it is very similar to meditation.  I sit down as strong memories begin to come up.  It can include harsh self judgement which is the flip side of blaming others.  Another example is the desire to live and the desire to die which are in conflict with each other when someone hesitates to commit suicide.  Instead of calling the desire to kill yourself wrong, you welcome any intense feelings which come up and do the same with your desire to live.  As you sit there and allow the emotions and wants to be, you allow them to flow through you while recognizing your rejection of these thoughts and images as well as your attachment.  As you do this your thoughts will be fine to pass by without as much power over you and emotional turmoil as there was before.  This creates a state of inner clarity.   It helps to recognize how your thoughts are a form of love so you don't hate them and fight them.

[Roy]

Of all things to worry about, I wouldn't worry about hypocrisy that much. Everyone in the world is a hypocrite to some degree. I have yet to encounter a single person that isn't a hypocrite to some level.

It seems to be the human condition or something.

Just keep trying to be a better person, if you are a hypocrite sometimes during the journey. Don't stress and consider it a byproduct.

[trenton]

@Roy solid perspective.

I have been reflecting on this and I see that hypocrisy is rarely something serious.  It is usually minor things that we overlook in the heat of the moment.

I think it is more precise to say that I am not really afraid of hypocrisy, but rather I am afraid of the social consequences of hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy itself is really no big deal unless people start using against others in a way that only serves to heat up conflict even more.  It is similar to my fear of sexual fantasies because I am not really afraid of the thoughts themself.  These thoughts don't kill anybody.  The consequences of acting on these thoughts could be terrible.  Acting on crazy thoughts hasn't been a problem for me since I was a young child.

I hope further clarity on what I am really afraid of helps in future responses.  I want to be at ease with myself without the fear of doing something that other people would use against me to hurt me.  The fear doesn't seem rational, maybe I will try to think if I ever did something stupid because of these thoughts.  Whatever the case, it was always out of love and thus not really evil or wrong.