I Betrayed My True Self...
By Homura
Goobie is a neurosurgeon and former avid gamer who quit his job to hike and make YouTube videos. In this video, he talks about reflecting on himself, honesty, and forgiveness.
Video: "I Betrayed My True Self In A Way That Hurt Me So Bad I Could Not Forgive Myself For Twenty-Two Years"
“Because I didn’t trust myself, I had a hard time trusting other people. That would lead to suspicion, sometimes paranoia… it would lead to me not being open with other people.”
“These decisions kept going back and forth. I used to do that about almost everything, where, even if my wife would say ‘Hey, do you want to eat some of this?’ and I would say ‘No… Ah, Maybe. Nah, not really… actually I do want a little bit.’
So, I would vacillate between these two decisions for a week… I could not make a decision. But that’s because I could not trust myself anymore, because I betrayed myself very deeply at 18 years old. I knew in my heart what I needed to do, but I chose to ignore it, and I went down a path that I don’t think I was really supposed to go down.”
“My dad was a doctor too, so granted there was some pressure to make the same choice. But choosing that path and betraying my true feelings was a decision that I ultimately made myself.”
“My feelings kept coming back, so I tried to drown them. I tried to drown them in a few things… money, traveling, video games, alcohol… but it didn’t make up for my betrayal and lack of trust in myself, and loving myself. I knew things were wrong, but I refused to go and examine them and fix whatever problem it was in my heart.”
“One of the things I used to numb myself was video games. I played this first-person shooter called PUBG. I had a squad of friends that I would play with. I played the heck out of that game… I racked up maybe 18, 19,000 hours. When I played that game, I couldn’t think about anything else. It just takes all your mind’s attention, so I couldn’t think about all the other problems I had.
About a year ago, I stopped playing because I realized that I was running away from myself… I didn’t want to run away from myself anymore. So I told my friends, thank you for all the great times of playing together, that I was really gonna miss all of them. I was really sad, and they were sad too, but I had to leave, because it was preventing me from learning to love myself and trust myself.”
“I was telling these patients how they could stay healthy in the long term, but maybe 1 out of 20 would actually listen. They didn’t come to me to learn to change their lifestyle, they came for surgery. I was telling my patients, ‘Hey, these things actually work, I’ve seen that in my patients and in myself. You have the power to help your body heal, if you do these relatively simple things.’ But no would would listen. And I really think that was a reflection of me not listening to myself. I was not listening to myself about how to heal.”
“The mind is a funny thing. It is very good at sealing away harmful memories, or memories that don’t feel good. I’ve never seen a therapist but I probably should have at some point. Seeing a professional that can help you examine these painful memories would be very helpful... I just kind of raw-dogged it myself, with my wife’s help. She kept saying, ‘Hey, you need to look under the hood’. Consciously and subconsciously, I was resisting it.”
“There’s a Hawaiian prayer called Ho’oponopono. It goes:
“I’m sorry, please forgive me. Thank you, and I love you.”
That prayer is about restoring harmony and balance. You can say it to someone else that you hurt, but there is a variation that you can say to yourself, which is: “I’m sorry, please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you, and I love you.” That variation is possible because you are saying sorry to yourself. You are the one who did the hurting, and you are the one that got hurt. You can say sorry to yourself, “please forgive me”, and you can also say “I forgive you”.