Session IV, part one: Shame: Protecting yourself through an all-pervasive sense of basic defectiveness.
Certainly, all the time we are offered numerous, potentially-defeating images and experiences – daily depressing pictures of world-wide devastation, constant opportunities to compare ourselves to the beautiful, rich and famous, plus the exigencies of each day facing life on life’s terms. But even more, what truly exacerbates the effects of these actual experiences is the way so many of us travel through the world: ashamed of who we are, ashamed of what we do, ashamed of how we think, and ashamed of what we feel. This is called being shame-based. We see ourselves as undeserving and unlovable. In the face of this shame we go to great lengths to hide away our true (defective) selves. We mask, isolate, withdraw, get angry, try to control others and situations, judge, compare, swim around in fear, behave compulsively, get depressed, get ill and obsess (to name but a few). Shame, then, is the foundation and inspiration for many other defenses.
To live a primarily shame-free life you will need to: acknowledge your shame, notice how it feels, looks and sounds in you, recognize the other defenses it inspires and trace your shame roots. Drawing this shame map will prepare you for the real adventure, which is: treating yourself (and others) respectfully! It’s a journey we all need to take, not only for ourselves but to gladly improve the world around us.
It was easy to tell how much pain Tommy was in, right from the start. The shame pain surrounded him like bodyguards making certain no one or nothing else could get near. He was deeply depressed and cried easily and often – when he wasn’t furious that is, or when he wasn’t getting drunk.
We began to work on his story. To me, all stories are equally important, for indeed, we need only to briefly focus on content and then we’re able to move to the really vital point – the emotional effect. Emotion is something we all share – something we grapple with, to a greater or lesser extent, no matter how intense the “story” itself. Still, every once in a while someone appears before me with a tale so gripping I’m stopped in my tracks. Tommy’s dark narrative was like that. Here’s but one small piece.
For the first several years of his life Tommy had been wheelchair bound due to an infant-onset illness. In fact, the doctors had been hugely surprised when a few months into his fourth year the boy had begun to walk again. This “miracle” was especially welcome because the boy’s mother had, soon after his birth, left paralyzed Tommy with his dad, saying she could no longer tolerate the man’s abuse. Now, it’s true that Tommy’s dad was a pretty reprehensible fellow – a violent alcoholic with a truly wicked streak. To make matters worse, the stepmother he brought in was just as terrible.
One day, shortly after this miraculous walking had begun, Tommy’s dad ordered his son to go across the street and get him some beer. The tiny boy was, of course, thrilled. Anything to please dad. He’d been schooled in looking both ways and was careful to do so before he crossed, but so excited was he to fulfill his dad’s request that in his haste, he tripped over his own little feet and his shoe came off. Quickly he turned back and stooped to pick it up. Too late did he hear the squeal of the tires as the large car bore down upon his young body. His father, also hearing the braking car, came rapidly over. He looked down upon his frail son who lay unmoving. Then dad spoke gruffly to the stunned, frightened boy, “You stupid little bastard. Can’t you do anything right?!”
This is only one of many horrific tales from Tommy’s life. Tales that led Tommy into an angry, compulsive, self-loathing, childish, shame-based adulthood. As you can imagine overcoming those feelings was an on-going, uphill battle.
Like many, Tommy’s story is not easy to hear or to change. However, no matter what the degree of difficulty, change is possible! It only takes diligence and intention.
Tommy began by revealing the horrible details of his life in a safe setting. He had been using these details as confirmation of his unloveability. Surely his own father wouldn’t have been that mean if the boy had been worthy of something better. Certainly his own mother would have chosen to stay or at least take him with her if he deserved protection. So, he reasoned, HE must be the problem. This thinking filled him to the brim with shame. He was broken, he figured, and could not be fixed.
Somehow, though, having made it through the awful early years, another miracle had happened, which was that a kind, caring (codependent) woman had fallen in love with him and she believed that Tommy was more than the story he told or even the behavior he exhibited.
Of course, before anything else Tommy needed to get sober. But sobriety meant facing the truth of his horrible history head on. What will happen then, we think, when we are face-to-face with the horror! It’s a hard road to travel and the temptation to hold on to a story like this is great – the pain we know being preferable to that which is unknown. So we let ourselves be identified by the dreadful details. Maybe people will pity us. Maybe someone finally will rescue us. If we let go of it we will need to rescue ourselves. That sounds lonely.
Many cannot bring themselves to let go. Fortunately, Tommy did. That’s the thing about a story like this – it gives us (often unrealized) resources to survive. Still, it takes a leap of faith. Tommy took that leap. His courage becomes a standard for us all.
TO MOVE OUT OF SHAME: BROADER COMMUNITY
· Notice the way’s you behave shamefully (to self and towards others)
· Write down all the shame-based thoughts you have (about self and about others)
· Stop saying snide and/or mean things (to self and to others). Note what comes up for you when you stop these things.
To further explore the defense of Shame see Stuck In The Story No More pages 139-145 and The Stuck No More Workbook pages, 23, 104-106 and 152.
Who taught you your shaming ways? Who or what would you need to let go of in order to give up your shame? What do you imagine your life would look like if it were shame free?
Session IV, part two:
Guilt: protecting yourself by thinking you’ve done a bad thing.
Unfortunately, there’s something all too commonly acceptable about guilt. It’s notoriously bandied about in a nearly carefree way - as if everyone “good” needs a fair share of it. It’s even offered as an excuse for disrespecting self, as in: I have to do so and so (even though it’s agonizing) because I’d feel too guilty if I didn’t!
Actually, guilt turns out mostly to be the “doing” defense against Shame. It’s main appeal is that if offers a (false) sense of power - after all, if you’re doing something wrong you can fix it by changing your doing direction. Shame, on the other hand, being a feeling of essential defectiveness, seems more immutable.
Often guilt suggests reasonable boundaries by encouraging us to take the high road. In those instances it is an important ally. But when guilt turns against us, demanding that we neglect our own needs, restrain our (healthy) exuberance, or deny our honest expressions, it becomes a defense that damages.
The day was like any other for eleven-year-old Sam, who dawdled (as usual) on his way home from school, stopping to play look-at-the-dead-squirrel with his buddies. After all, home was never any barrel of laughs anyway, and no one was in any hurry to get there. He was a full block away before he realized that the screaming red engines were racing towards his street. He sped up. Rounding the corner he saw it – saw his home writhing in flame. His feet and his thoughts began running simultaneously. What’s happening…who’s at home…where is everybody…Then he saw him. Eight-year-old Billy. His pain-covered baby brother lay whining on the lawn, black from head to toe, like a barbecued chicken forgotten on the grill.
Sam could hear the yellow-coated firefighters talking about the accident – talking about how the little boy had been playing a game – throwing matched into tubs of water. But one tub had fooled little Billy by being full of turpentine, and when it ignited, the frightened child, thinking he’d get into trouble for playing with matches, strove to put it out by stomping his panicked foot into the spitting flames.
A deep moan began gurgling deep in Sam’s gut. Why did I take so long getting home?! If only I’d been here sooner, maybe I could have saved Billy. What have I done! What have I done!
Predictably, this early scene announced a lifetime of guilt for Sam. Even before this he’d always been the “hero” child of the family– the one trying to save everyone from the daily horrors of his violent, alcoholic household. He never had been able to really save anyone, but he kept trying. In fact, he kept trying all the way into adulthood. All the way through his troubled, worrisome marriage. The marriage he stayed in year after weary year – ignoring and forgoing his passionate nature to be the “good” guy. That didn’t work and he ended up having an affair with an equally passionate woman stuck in her own forlorn marriage.
Sam is out of his dry marriage now…mostly. Of course, he’s still worried about what his estranged wife (and everybody else) will think of him – worries about how they will see him as the one who let them all down – the fallen hero. So it is with (mysterious) reluctance that he drags himself towards his bright, hopeful future. Billy is very much with him still. Billy - and the guilt that Billy symbolizes.
Causing ourselves great (or even minimal) agony in order to “save” another is a wretched way to live life – both for ourselves and for those we are supposedly protecting. Actually, it’s insulting to think that we are completely or even mostly in charge of how affected others will be if we behave in self-respectful ways. These considerate-of-self behaviors are often erroneously thought to be selfish. They are not.
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Guilt is often used as a way to hide out. Throughout much of his marriage Sam got to feel like a “bad guy” - someone deserving of difficulty. After all, he was the fallen hero – he couldn’t save his brother, couldn’t save his mother (from his angry dad), and couldn’t save his marriage. It never really occurred to him that his REAL job was to save himself! Indeed, Sam’s affair (primarily arising out of his fear of confronting the true problems IN the union) lacked true courage. By operating from and through guilt he actually robbed his partner of any possibility (how-so-ever remote) of redeeming the relationship. Guilt is a selfish devil often masquerading as service.
In a perfect world Sam would have investigated his relationship to the hero child much sooner. This would have led him to face the Shame he felt about the early family life he’d experienced. Whether it makes sense or not, we inevitably blame ourselves for our own childhood trauma. It’s only by realizing the truth (of our true position in relationship to the occurrences) that we can move from Shame to forgiveness to appreciation. All that occurs in life has support and teaching for us, but it’s much like the gold hidden in riverbeds - we need to learn how to pan for it first.
· Make a list of the kinds of situations and people that inspire guilt in you.
· Whenever you notice yourself feeling guilty wonder: If I didn’t feel guilty what would I be feeling?
· What do you think will happen if you do or say something that upsets others?
To further explore the defense of Guilt see Stuck In The Story No More pages 212-216, and The Stuck No More Workbook pages 39, 128-129 and 160.
Where did you learn guilt? (If at home, from whom? If through religion, which religion and how did that work?) Who in your family is most guilt-ridden and who is best at encouraging guilt in you? What are you most afraid would happen if you were living a truly guilt-free life?