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Shame - the ultimate voicelessness?

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rosencrantz:
I've just 'discovered' shame.

Well, I guess I've been living it for 50 years, but I've only just 'discovered' it.

The second time in my life I entered therapy, my therapist said that I was 'too needy'.  Where did that come from?  Seemed a strange thing to say and not very therapeutic.  But I was still strong and rational.  After months of similar messages that didn't seem to relate to me (but which seemed to relate to some kind of transference) I was in a very bad state and after a year left that relationship with nothing - no job, no career, no friends, no close relationships and nowhere to live.

That's therapy?!

That was projection!!!

That was HIS shame - as a psychiatrist-in-training, just like my mother as a young parent-in-training - and I've only just worked it out!!!  At that age and that stage in my life, I wasn't too needy.  I 'needed' a rational amount of help and support to sort out what was going wrong in my life.  But my mother had made me such a ready vessel for other people's projections!!!

MY shame is different.  My shame is about 'knowing' - with both my mother and my therapist - I knew that there was something wrong and I wsan't supposed to 'know'.  I'm still not supposed to know - but I do, even better than ever before.  And I can't share it without feeling terrible debilitating annihilating shame.

I (rather stupidly?) wrote to the hospital where my mother was being 'assessed' after she made suicidal gestures  (she did that because I said I needed a few days of not calling as I was just not coping very well).  I 'shared' with the staff what I had discovered about narcissism.  I knew that it related to how they were experiencing her (entitlement, grandiosity, superiority, etc etc - she was even getting them all stirred up!!!).  

I was told that it had been 'passed on' to the psychiatric consultant.  There was never any reply.  (Remember that narcissism as a personality disorder doesn't 'exist' where I come from.)  My mother was sent home the next day with anti-depressants.  I haven't picked up the phone to speak to her or to the mental health people since.  I feel angry at being 'let down' but also deathly ashamed for having 'dared'...dared to know 'more than', dared to ...??? (Dared to speak the truth, I say, indignantly, briefly without shame!!)

I probably can't even get near most of the elements of my shame because it is too devastating.  How will I 'live' shame and still function??

And I'm sure that it's their own shame that makes our parents do what they do.  Shame drives me to hide under the table and 'sit on' the truth; my mother uses rage to (a)void it.

Any other thoughts on shame?  Seems to me it's 'hidden' from us - meet shame and you fall into a deep pit before you can get a grip on it...

(In fact, just previewing this post, I am descending the shivery slopes of shame already!!!). I'm going to close my eyes and hit 'submit'!!!

Dr. Richard Grossman:
I'm glad you hit the submit button.   Shame is a familiar adversary of many of the voiceless.  Clearly, shame has a function in the survival of the species:  when we do things that adversely affect others, shame (a form of self punishment derived from voices and actions of parents and significant others) stops us from doing it again.  In our evolutionary days, anyone who took too much of the available resources threatened the existence of the community.  Since too much time and energy are wasted making sure at all times that everyone took just the right amount of those resources, the societies that survived were ones in which most people had an internal sense when others were jeopardized by their actions--hence conscience and shame.  But the shame pathways in our brain can become superhighways if they are triggered again and again--and other competing pathways reflecting a sense of inherent value, esp. to our parents, do not developed.  When we (as young children) see in the faces of our parents continuous anger and frustration in response to our physical and emotional needs, we learn that our very existence deprives others, and we deserve nothing.  This is the root of voicelessness--or as rosencrantz suggests, the ultimate voicelessness.  And we become totally alone in the world.

Rosencrantz, as you know, your therapist was not only ignorant, but damaging.  The last thing the voiceless need is to be shamed.  Of course the voiceless are needy, but that is their healthy side, longing for something they never got and fully deserved--the right to a valued existence.  Thanks again for your courageous post.

Nic:
Although I'm not an evolutionist, I must agree that shame has shaped much of my existence as well.  Rosencrantz, I was made to feel it as well, always, it has become a way of life.  Your post as well as Dr. Grossman's  hit home hard..because although i've felt ashamed and been made to feel ashamed often by my parents, i've learned to live with it.  Not well mind you, I don't live well with it at all.  It's like a main theme of my existence.  A reflex.
In fact, before I sat and quickly typed this post, I couldn't help but notice that I have many of them here already..I thought and felt shame.  The voice inside me said" there you go again Nic, always something to say, always an opinion, always feedback on something or other..do you really need to answer rosencrantz..her comment got a reply from Dr. Grossman"

You see, the shame cassette, is on all the time..like elevator music..perpetually there.  I can't find the "off" switch.  It sneaks up on me, especially when I speak the truth or think it..or acknowledge it.  You see, I think that having had N parents, where my perceptions were always toyed with ( parents had fun looking at me as a child  in a mean way..IN MY FACE saying OH! Nic...Oh nic.. until I would actually cry..and when I did they hugged me as if the whole thing had been a big joke!  Can you imagine the messages I got from these repeated experiences? )  I was unprofessionally trained at being ashamed, whilst being told to become needy. And so they caught me in their net.  I was shamed publicly, especially at family functions, I was expected to " take it".  I was taught there is a price to pay for everything good that happened to me.  I was never to be proud of myself, or think well of myself at least I should never think more of myself than my parents, individually or collectively, thought about me.

There's Nic with his big overcoat of shame!   There is a great song by Annnie Lennox, Lyrics something like:  Take this overcoat of shame, it never did belong to me.

Shame like guilt " sucks" if you'll permit..it's hard to get rid of.  But validation Rosencrantz, from good friends, wonderful spouses, etc. like you say help.

when I'm subtly attacked by shame and guilt, which is often, I think God has a greater plan for me than my Parents ever did. It helps me.  When it's a " live" attack by my parents and their lawyers for example I feel like running away, hiding in shame, I become paralysed with fear and I want to cry as in the past, and I begin hoping they'll make everything better.  Sometimes if it weren't for my wife who pulls me out of the dirt pool, i think i'd succomb to the pressure.
So , my support system is !. God 2.my wife 3.this board 4.understanding friends .  
And like you Rosencrantz, before I hit the submit button I hear in the background how needy I am, how if I only played the game, gave up my own life and sacrificed it to my parents..life would be soo much simpler.

Bull! I know better now, I'm on the mend.
Thank you for your post.
Nic :wink:

Pat:
Shame, as an overcoat...I love that description because it is so absolutely on the mark.  I'm 51 years old and I still am fueled,each day, by the messages, you're too silly, you'll never be good enough, the things you need and want are always going to inconvenience and deprive others, good things can't happen for you because....and on and on.  I wake up in the morning with a list of all the things that will stop me from moving forward on anything - it's like an automatic recording that activates the very moment I become conscious (or some form of conscious).  About 80% of the time I can use rational thougth, the support and enthusiasm of others and a long list of affirmations (God bless those) to readjust my thinking enough to proceed on into the day.  Then throughout the day these tapes play on - when I am aware that they're playing I can rearrange via rational thought enough to achieve a bit of balance.  The 20% of the time that this does not work I teeter along the edge of an abyss that I experience as a kind of threat of annihilation or maybe death....        

I have a shame button that big enough for almost anyone to access.  The older I get the harder it is to hang on to an optimistic attitude about recovering from this dreadful mental garbage.  I think I'm in the 20% zone today........... : :?

rosencrantz:
Thank you for all the lovely comments.

RG - No-one has said that it was damaging (or ignorant) before - although intellectually I might believe that to be true - you made a difference.  Thank you.

Nic - Aw, 'hugs' old friend.  You are a very kind and generous person - it shows in your posts.  Thank you for contributing.  I'm glad you posted.  Every opinion is valuable - the more the merrier.  Actually, more comments mean less shame!!

'always an opinion' - I feel the same way.  My version : 'I must be like a rash all over this forum'. Groan!  (Where is everybody so I can be me but also become invisible in the crowd?).  Oh yes, shame lurks close by.  

Hi Pat - Good for you for adjusting your thoughts. Through desperation, I decided just to shut out all those messages.  They simply weren't allowed in.  I'd tell them to push off if they got too noisy!!  Maybe, I thought, I'll be living a lie if I don't listen to them, but so what!  I'll live the lie and function!!  

But, of course, I 'honoured' myself far more by ignoring them.

I've come across a saying since then : Change your mind, change your life.  And it's true!!  Choose what you will think and stick a pin in the messages - go on, be brutal!!  :) I could be wrong, but I think WE are just too, too 'nice'!!!

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