Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
When it's SHAME
Hopalong:
What I admire about you, Tupp, and you, Amber, and you, Lighter, and you, CB, SO VERY MUCH is that despite the need to sink deep within to do all that very deep inner healing and growing and processing....all of you still:
GET
THINGS
DONE.
This is my hook. By that I mean a huge carcass hook in a butchery.
It's just hell to get myself into motivation and motion.
And yet all of you, with just as much or much more trauma healing than I've needed to do, still:
GET
THINGS
DONE.
I carry tremendous shame over the disorder and inefficiency and procrastination and sloth that I fight against (or more likely, don't) every single day. It plays absolute hell with my self-esteem.
I'm great with self-love and compassion for the inner child in theory and especially for others. And in rare moments, for myself. But I know I'm missing some basic transition to adulting with ease. Just the simplest decisions about what is the right thing to do with my time. I am honestly battling shame over my various paralyses almost every day. I make the tiniest step and Alert the Media! Pathetic.
Today, not so bad. Why? I'm going to outdoor-visit with an anxious friend who's got a birthday and feels very sad at her family's distance. I feel confident and focused because I KNOW I can offer her empathy and listening and compassion that will make her feel better. I do it with her all the time and it feels good. She's a gem.
But why can't I do that effectively with myself, no matter how often I preach it? I am a failure in that regard. To get myself off the starting line. It's misery. Shame.
This has brought tears but I think I'm gettin' naked.
love
Hops
Twoapenny:
Oh, Hops, that makes me so sad to read that you feel like that. Shame is difficult to deal with, I think because it's an irrational emotion. And by that I mean, you have nothing to feel shame about and I expect you know that in your mind. The things you're good at more than compensate for the things that you're not (or that you feel that you're not). I think some of it is expectation (I should be able to do this. I ought to be able to do this). I know when those nubs are working inside you it's very difficult to overcome them - you can tell yourself a million times you shouldn't feel the way you do but your feelings don't listen. I don't know if getting to the nub of the shame would help (EMDR? It helped me a lot. Not sure that you can do it over Zoom but I would have thought 8 feet apart might work?). With me a lot of what I get done is because I have to - I can ignore dinner for myself but not for my son, you know? It's hard when you don't have that need in someone else to motivate you to get on with things. But I really wish you weren't feeling shame over the things you can't do when there is so much that you can, and that you do so beautifully, every day. I know it's a bit soppy but I often find myself thinking "what would Hops say" when I'm pondering stuff and it's like I can hear your voice - even though we've never spoken. You've done more for me then my mum ever did, just by being there and being so honest and earnest. Such unwavering support, so constant. Argh! I don't have a practical or useful suggestion to get past the shame but I really wish it would go so you could give yourself the same empathy that you give to so many other people because you really, truly deserve that xx
lighter:
Aw, ((Hops)).
I'm sorry you're suffering.
I've been hypercritical of myself, as a matter of habit.... and it really was painful.
The truth is, it pops up daily, but I get better at ignoring it. Today, in fact, I smiled at it, winked and went back to what I was doing. No hard feelings.
I didn't turn it off, like a switch when I first became aware of it. I had to hire my T, or guru if you prefer, and have her point me at the lessons, and walk me through, bc of how judgmental and shut down..... I simply didn't have the ability to SEE what I needed to see... do what I needed to do..... mostly notice what I was doing, along with access to what I COULD be doing instead.
Shifting into calmer head space, consistently, but never perfectly, is a process and the most important rule for doing it is embracing unmittigated self compassion with nonjudgmental awareness of what's going on around and inside of us. That, for me, was a lot to process all on it's own.
There are things waiting to be noticed.... if one manages to stop being critical, judgmental..... holding a yard stick up to oneself, IME. Little packages of information waiting to be unwrapped and revealed, IME.
Learning how to NOT judge myself [i][b]for judging myself[/b][/i] was a tricky sticky business..... I was reassured many times that's the way it goes... it's normal.... Budhhist Monks do it too. T was very helpful, many times in this process, bc left to my own devices..... judging myself always won.
Every time I was reassured..... maybe my grip on my belief I couldn't change..... loosened.
It's like a knot being teased apart..... and you don't notice when it untangles completely, but one day..... you're free and out of it, IME. I think there's a feeling of surprise and maybe shock, when it happens.
Since you're so aware and focused..... It feels like maybe you're at that point where you're knocked back hard by failing to perfectly embrace self compassion. It's like a double whammy and I recognize comparing self to others.
THIS is how it feels to move toward creating new brain pathways.... being kind more often than not with yourself.
To noticing negative judgmental thoughts......
then smirk at them and say......
"Not today..."
leaving them behind, in favor or being present and super kind with yourself, as you would be to Tupp or the friend you're visiting. It's possible.... it's just not something you've practiced before.
It's not a switch.... it's a sequences of choices you make. It's the decision to get very curious, instead of judging ANYTHING going on in your life or your internal world.
Just..... breathe, Hops.
Resist judging, when you can, and think of yourself as you would a cherished friend...... then keep practicing it through the failure and tough spots, bc those are all part of the journey.
And it's OK, Hops.
Even when it's not OK....
it's still OK.
Lighter
sKePTiKal:
OK - I admittedly might be WAY off base here - but:
WHAT IF IT'S NOT YOUR SHAME? That it's not you who deserve shame, but those you've been so compassionate towards all this time... and haven't reciprocated?
IMO, the worst shame to deal with, hasn't been for the things I've really DONE; it's the shame I assumed for others because they didn't have the capability.
I know you to be someone who is determined to keep TRYING in whatever situation you find yourself Hops. Maybe, just maybe, you're assuming responsibility for what isn't yours to own? And that coupled with, in conflict with, the things you want & need to do for yourself is just too much to sort out?
HUGS dear Hopsie... you don't deserve to put yourself through these agonies. I don't think it's yours to deal with. Give it back to those who should own it.
-----------------------
ETA: the judgement that not doing external stuff (like other people) and therefore you've failed, is a subjective opinion. Sometimes people internalize old criticisms into our own self-judgement. And that's what I'm suggesting can be given BACK whence it was first delivered. You may not be able to pinpoint a source; and in that case I simply reject the idea that what is "success" for person A, is the same for people B,C,D etc. We each have the power & freedom to define that however we want to for ourselves.
I can't speak for the other Amazons, but I know I have been in a long space of not "doing" so much outwardly - the work is all internal right now. And that requires long days of "doing" the bare minimum so I can keep my mind and emotions on task. However no matter how much I want to "have things done"... I'm just not in that space right now. It make me feel conflicted and that I'm not even trying; but then I tell myself: tomorrow is soon enough. It did cool off and now it's back to hot & humid again... and I still need to clear out or organize what's going on in my thoughts & feelings. I'm not clear of that work yet. But I'm not beating myself up over it; not shaming myself; (Because I know shame is NOT a motivator for me.)
Hopalong:
(((((Tupp, Lighter, Amber)))))
Thank you all from a very moved and grateful heart.
I think shame (if it persists) is just about the most toxic human emotion,
second maybe to sadism and violence toward the vulnerable.
Having y'all come in so directly and quickly to offer me solace was moving
in the extreme. You got it. And you don't want me to get stuck there.
Even just feeling that support helped lift me out of it. Because I KNOW
it's shit! I don't HAVE to feel shit, even if I'm ADD and lazy and confused
about how to proceed with my "domestic adulting."
You know what I think triggered it?
Knowing the nice housecleaner person was coming for a second time,
and that she'd see how quickly I abandoned the tidiness and order she'd
left me with the last time. How well I messed it up.
Once I read your responses and put two and two together...I'm better.
Way better.
Bless each of you for the effort to ease that painful moment. It worked!
gratefully,
Hops
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