Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Continued healing
Gaining Strength:
I had a dream last night that blew open a whole level
Of healing, revealing such levels Of shame and bringing on more. I under Kabat-Zinn's Loving Kindness meditation as I held the image of the dream and realized some peace. But the dream revealed behavior and attitude from my youth that is in itself shameful. So I again applied Loving Kindness to the meta awareness.
The dream was made of two parts. The second part held the most pain. It was from the time of high school. I was wandering in a high school
Building where I belonged, on an open stairwell. As I continue used descending the steps ended in a well half a floor below the main level. There was as separated half flight up. A flight to no where. A small platform six feet below the floor. I was lost. As I ascended on the other side, I was approached by a pretty blond girl in green. Several high schools had just been combined and students from each wore their school's colors. This girl was coming over to speak, to introduce herself.
In my peripheral vision I could see other students begin to fill the halls dressed in various color uniforms. Several guys approached this sunken well where I was now standing. I spoke to the girl I'm a kind of haughty, sarcastic reply. She was confused but thinking she or I had misunderstood tried again to be friendly. By now, the boys were closer and one sharp witted caustic boy joined in with a barbed put down. I was on a kind of a stage, holding the group's attention and I threw several more barbs at easy targets. Several of the boys joined the mean spirited repartee. Just before a faculty member
Broke it all up and moved us along to our classrooms, I caught a glimpse of the first girl's eye, her head cocked to the right side. She wasn't so much hurt as confused, disappointed, too confident in herself to be hurt.
As soon as I woke up I felt awash in shame. I knew this dream was significant in two parts. That it was revealing a dynamic that took place in my life and that it went to a level of shame that I live with today. What my retro long above
Does not get to is the dominant emotion of the dream. It was an anger that came out in the back and forth between me and several of the boys. An anger I held and played off in a kindred banter vollied back and forth with small digs at some in the little crowd.
But I recognized immediately that as an adolescent, my own shame coupled with a contradictory sense of entitlement, led me to shut the door on many possible friendships out of a sense of --- well, the closest
I can come is inferiority. But it is really out of what my father and my mother would put down or belittle. The verbal
Jousting with he boys which had a tinge of meanness came out of the same space but rather than rejecting was a way of connecting though in a very tenuous and negative way. Both came out of shame and an expectation of rejection coupled
With a longing to belong. And then a new layer of shame would blanket the whole scene afterward. So not only did I get no relief, but the shame just piled up, layer on layer.
This is a dream, not a memory. But it reveals so clearly, the shame I felt, how I rejected people before they could reject me. It also shows me something about my caustic banter that felt supercharged and was fun but had a huge
Cost for me and for others around.
I do feel relief, healing, layers peeling off. It is shameful to see but I am thankful as well because images like this are presented for my to understand and to heal. Though I have no vision for the future. I feel certain that something good will come of it. As I began this process my goal is to move out of "freeze" I did not realize there was so much "relationship" work.
Gaining Strength:
This stuff is pouring out of me, like a septic wound opened to the air. I am so weakened but at the same time aware of a seed of strength waiting to flourish.
Today's dream, I was at a small airfield. The building was for the local pilots, like a small clubhouse. I was there with a friend.and we were straightening up before we left. Someone came in and was speaking to me. When I looked at them I could not see them for the sun shining in my eye. Bu they spoke as though they knew me, referring to an acquaintance. As I went to another room to get her my belongings, I saw behind the door, along the wall a dark animal. I thought it a cat but it was a small, long haired, black dog. When I looked again, it had pooped and then I saw a significant open wound along its ribs. I called for someone to shut the door so we could contain it while we went for help. But when I tried to get help identifying a after hours vet suddenly no one would help. People were present but wouldn't allow me to use their phone, wouldn't help me find help for the dog, wouldn't help me catch it. And I felt a washed with shame, with failure, with rejection. It all poured out on me.
And when I woke, I saw again the source of that shame, that experience of being helpless and rejected. And I saw how that same shaming helplessness has followed me down through the years. And again I applied the words of loving kindness and felt a kernel of relief. In the dream Some young men had laughed at my friends pants. I felt such humiliation even though she didn't. After I embraced loving kindness, the image of the young men came back and I turned to them and told them there was humor in her colorful striped pants but not belittlememt. And the shame melted.
Each day another layer melts away and yet the remainder seems to float up again, like ice in the ocean, presenting the same volume to my eye, making it appear to have not diminished at all even though I am certain that it has. So I process by faith that I am making progress and the bind will surely snap soon enough. Once the bind snaps I will be strong enough to persevere through the daily struggles, strong enough to face these battles without retreat.
I'm not expecting the battles to go away but I am working towards strengthening myself to withstand them rather than be knocked down and debilitated by them. I have no doubt that I have the strength to endure but I have not thought before about having the strength to not be leveled by the battles. I am getting there.
Gaining Strength:
My father shamed me about things beyond my control. I was unaware of this until recent years. It is one of the factors that caused me to be so shamed about things that make no sense. The effect has been catastrophic for me. Now I take it on to retire it bit by bit. It explains why I had to retreat - everything was shaming, things that had nothing to do with me. My radar picked up anyone and everyone's shame and took it on. It feels so painful even to write about it, expose it.
Then to top it off, my voice, my understanding, my recognition of this would be denied, even to this day by anyone in my family. I would be further shamed for understanding it. I'll never forget years ago, decades ago, when my mother went to treatment for alcoholism and my brothers and I went to family therapy a couple of times my oldest brother railed at me for not being forthcoming about my impending divorce. This was in the 80s and the breakup of my marriage was extremely shaming. And there was my brother openly hostile to me about this huge loss and the therapist said not a word. I was aware of what a revelatory moment it was and the therapist was oblivious. I tap into that pain, shame just recalling it. But the shame really does not belong to me.
I have taken on so much that does not belong to me. And now I begin claim what is mine. Slowly but surely.
lighter:
GS:
I think that's a really insightful point about feelings and belief not always being ours, but belonging to someone else.
I bet that feels like a revelation.
Good work.
Lighter
Hopalong:
((((GS))))))))
I think shame is your Big Secret. And, your Key to Healing.
It is wonderful that you are drilling into it. It's huge, beyond huge.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-zesty-self/200905/what-we-get-wrong-about-shame
love,
Hops
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version