I want to talk about shame, and how shame has shaped roughly 17 out of 31 years of my life. I’m writing this because I’ve been holding on to something for a long time, feeling ashamed about it, and didn’t realize I still was (see Shame pt. 2). I understand the effect shame has had over my life and I believe in order to heal and truly let it go I need to be transparent and talk (write) about it.
First, let’s define shame. Some definitions (all from the Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English):
“A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior”
“A loss of respect or esteem; dishonor”
“A person, action or situation that brings a loss of respect or honor”
“cause (someone) to feel ashamed or inadequate by outdoing or surpassing them”
So, to use some of these definitions in place of the word shame: I have been carrying with me some very painful feelings of humiliation and distress, caused by both subliminal and overt messages and circumstance, basically telling me who I am is wrong and undesirable. I felt humiliated and ashamed to be me. For being tall, for being poor, with small eyes and a wide nose like my father and dark brown skin. It felt painful. I felt inadequate for not being loud and entertaining; not being well known and well connected. I felt inadequate for not being the so called black man’s dream, for having no ass, or not showing my ass; for having small breasts and the inability (and later flat out refusal) to stay in the mall and the salon.
Yeah, the frustration and constant reminder of my so called “flaws” replaying over and over again in my mind and not knowing how to turn them off, is enough to make anyone slightly neurotic.
Here is how shame has impacted me:
1) I viewed myself as a burden therefore I did everything I could to stay in the background, as close to invisible as possible. However shame begat shame, as staying in the background meant the shame of not being a popular and outgoing (fun) personality. I tried managing what people thought and felt about me by being sweet, silent, submissive (and adversely, forgettable); the Omega female. Looking back, this was really all an attempt to indirectly minimize my feelings of inferiority (shame).
2) I never learned how to effectively communicate my feelings. I learned to suppress them because I assumed that nobody cared to know. I recall as a teen, when I wanted to talk to my mother about my thoughts and my feelings, I didn’t receive the feedback I longed for that let me know she heard and understood me. My attempts to gain clarity were met with subject changing, passive ignoring, and attention on something else of her interest. This is how I perceived and interpreted our interactions, and I further interpreted them to mean I must not be interesting enough to give attention to (shame). So, again, be quiet. What other people say, think & feel is more interesting and surpasses my own words, thought and feelings. My coping mechanisms became writing and “thinking out loud” when I was alone.
3) I learned to run away when things got too real. Relationships can get messy. If someone did something I didn’t like, I have seethed in self-righteous silence or sabotaged or flat out ended the entire relationship. It was easier than saying “hey, you did/said xyz and it made me feel like this.” Again, I was ashamed of my feelings. I felt hopeless that anything would change. My decision making skills were based upon imagined events that had never even taken place. This is what happens when an overactive creative imagination is used in a negative way.
4) Having to be my own coach and mentor, my own friend, my own therapist because shame imprisoned me from trusting others and reaching out for help because “that’s what ‘weak’ people do and the last thing I want to do is be perceived as weak because that’s what I already think everybody is thinking about me”…feeling weak for needing outside validation. No. What I was really seeking was somebody to tell me I was okay just the way I was. What I was really seeking was for somebody to LISTEN to ME and ask me what I thought and how I felt, without being prompted, and actually care about the answer just as much as I made it my business to care what others thought and felt (reciprocity). But I didn’t know how to communicate that.
I probably could have made this into several posts but my thoughts and urgency to share began to flow faster than I could type. Like the root of a tree that has many branches there will be more to come. And I needed to get this out because I have a CPA exam to finish and a few malnourished business ideas I need to develop, among other goals.
No comments:
Post a Comment