07.10 E&M 45 mins. Arrived at the house and slept for 1½ hours. I updated my appraisal so far and, after lunch, I slept again. I cannot recall being this willing to sleep although I know for a fact I have gone through two or three very tired periods over the last two years. To combat our mutual tiredness Karaj and I went out into the garden and worked on the final raised bed – securing the boarded walls of the bed to the brackets fixed on the inside of the angle-iron uprights.
As we worked we talked about the difference between punishing myself and bashing myself up. There is no difference. Punishment needs to be handed out by external parties for it to be effective. What I do when I learn from my mistakes is not punishing myself – I am owning what I have done and my Parent is simply saying ‘Okay, you’ve messed up, learn from it and get on with life’.
Punishing myself means that I am bashing up my child and this causes me to fall into a circle of sulking and bashing up which my Child and my Negative Controlling Parent will not come out of unless I ‘wake up’ or receive input from external forces. That is what happened to Dev at the weekend and he went so deep into himself that there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not good.