Learning more about source of shame

[Gaining Strength]

I had a very long conversation today with my mother's sitter. (My mother was gone.)  We shared about so many things that my mohter has done and about her lieing about insignificant and significant things.  I don't have much time now but I will come back and post in detail, just to exorcise it from my being.

As we talked more and more I saw, clearer and clrearer how I got to this state that I am now crawling out of.  The spite and meanness, the waiting for the other shoe to fall was very real because usually the other shoe fell, right on my head.  The sabotage. 

 Only  this year have I fully  grasped and accepted that my father had sabotaged my financially and careerwise.  I have known that my mother sabotaged me in ways but it is beginning to sink in in a special way now.  She has sabotaged and sabotaged my entire life - to the point that I expect everyone and everything to sabotage me.  Now that is a desparate state.  It is anxiety provoking and it is shaming.  But I am making strides and finding mindsets that are mindsets of courage and belief.  With these mindsets I will overcome the dark, shadowy, shaming other that has plagued me so long.

Small slights have caused me great pain.  No reserve, no strength.  Always expecting people to exclude me, often holding people in a gotcha state because I had always been held in a gotcha state.  Learning to expect good things and to expect God's favor for ME.  Learning to walk in a sense of "love" rather than fear.  The more I work to give it away the more I will receive it.  Much better than walking around expecting someone to S*** on me and ready to pounce in self-protection ro retalitation.

[Ami]

(((((((((GS))))))
Seeing the truth is very,very painful.We have a promise of healing, though, if we will face the really hard things that you are talking about.   Love   Ami

[Hopalong]

to the point that I expect everyone and everything to sabotage me.  Now that is a desperate state.  It is anxiety provoking and it is shaming.

You bet it is.
And it is also irrational. I think of Rational Emotive Therapy, a specific type, that helps you retrain your thought processes...so when you feel that everyone and everything will sabotage you, you will begin to have tools (and support) to challenge that "generalization tape" in your head.

Everyone won't. Everything won't. Some people will -- that's always going to be a risk in life. But being disappointed by someone is far different from being disappointed by life. Given how incredibly you're growing, and the leaps and bounds you're taking in growth and perceptiveness...there's no way you can hold that belief forever. I know you will soon have enough discernment that you'll be able to CHOOSE whom you trust, so being sabotaged feels like less of a threat.

If I'm guessing right, it may be that you fear turning over ALL your trust to one individual...so that betrayal by one, would feel like betrayal by all (or by life itself)? I don't think you will, GS. I think you are racking up wisdom and you just aren't that reckless. Even in a love relationship, or a friendship, we need to love ourselves first, befriend ourselves first, as naturally as breathing (or that's what those who don't have to struggle in Self 101 do, and I swear we can all learn it...)

Because you are you, GS, because you are that brave and that persistent, I would swear on a stack of hymnbooks that you can't stay there. I am convinced, even just from knowing you here, that there is a great capacity for simply joy in you.

Much love to you, GS. Your honesty inspires and amazes me. (And please compost anything that feels off base.)

Hops

[Ami]

Dear Hops and GS,
 I am learning the lesson that I have to love myself first(actually I am re-learning it). I did know it at one time, Then, I lost trust in myself , bought my M's reality that *I* was bad, so she could be "good" and I wouldn't go insane. Long story ,short(LOL)
 I think Hops has the answer for us, GS. We have to love ourselves ,first.
 Sometimes it seems near, sometimes it seems far. Thanks Hops for that insight.   Love   A

[Hopalong]

You wakkum.

H.

[Gaining Strength]

We talked about so much.  

My mother is white, her sitter black.  Oure mayor is black and is a real problem.  He spends money without any forethought.  About 8 years ago when he was mayor of a nearby small town he started an amusement park and gave it a bizarre name.  He got municipalities and the county to agree to pay over $70 million to get it started.  3 years later it went bankrupt and was sold for about $3 million - a huge loss to everyone around.  Next he became a county commissioner and raised taxes and increased debts enormously.  One of the debts he increased was a refinancing of a very expensive bond deal that now has the county on the verge of bankruptcy.  Through this refinancing our debt went from about $200 million to well over $2 billion.  He is being investigated by federal types because meanwhile he was getting wined and dined and had loans payed off by the folks who got rich doing the refinancing while we the tax payers now have a $20,000 debt each for the refinancing.  

OK to my point.  My mother's sitter, Lo, walks in today and my mother says.  Did you go to the mayor's meeting last night? (He had a prayer vigil of sorts.)  "No, I didn't go."  "Well I want to know how he got so many poeple to go.  I know no white folks went."  "Well" said Lo, "Look at this picture on the front page.  This lady is white."  "I can't see.  I don't have my glasses." Lo says, "I don't have my glasses either but I can see her hair and skin color."  "There's no point in arguing," my mother responds.


Lo told me that the other day she made the commnt to my mother that I had emptied her trash.  "No" my mother said, "She did not." "Well," said Lo, "Did you empty it?" "No."  "Neither did I so that means GS did."  "Well she's never done it before and I know she didn't do it this time, blah, blah, blah (other criticisms and fault finding done.)"

I could just go on and on but even on this board where people have experienced the strangest and most unbelievable N behavior, it still doesn't make sense to put on paper.  

She does things to spite me all of the time.  Lo is simply amazed that a mother would do that to her only daughter.  She gave away a tiller my brother gave me but dropped of at my mother's house.  (That is the way my brother has always done things.  He lives down the street from my mother and 3 or 4 miles from my house so things for me get taken there.  Never mind my truck is not working.)  So I ask her about it and she does not tell the truth. She lies about so much big and small.

Lo is trying to join a rehab health facility so that she and my mother can get therapy/exercise together.  My mother says she has a prescription for therapy from her dr.  but she doesn't know where it is.  (I worked hard for 18 months to get her to get that but we still don't know if she ever got it or not because she will lie about this kind of a thing.)  It becomes next to impossible to get this taken care of because my mother misunderstands and threfore lies.  She must feel so out of control that she puts up barriiers to prevent anyone from learning that she is so incompetent and unknowledgable.  That sounds like N wounding perhaps.

Until last summer both of my brothers thought she had a good grasp on her finances.  She can say thinks well enough to throw up a huge smoke screen.  I figured it out after my aunt died by asking questions and realizing that the answers did not add up.  But she will lie and lie and lie about her finances.  She has plenty of money but won't pay some bills.  She has agreed over and over to move part of her money from one firm to another but she has lied and lied and lied about it.   This is about something that is in her best interest.  No matter.  It is such crazy, crazy, making.


I've been typing away while Hops and Ami posted so this is not in response to either of you.  I haven't read your posts yet.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm wakkum them moles - each shame thought, each gut wrench, each fear of rejection.

Hops you need to give me so more trash to compost because I'm keeping all of that. What planet have I been on.  I must have heard about RET before but i didn't take it in.  That sounds very much like the technique that I learned from Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz in The Mind, the Brain. 

I am definitely learning to redefine and rethink.  What I have not been able to do is to keep my mind in that new place but I am getting better and better at that.  I am almost (very, very close) to the point where I can actually stand up to a shaming thing and use my rethinking to avoid that shame spiral.  That is huge for me.  That will allow me to face these things that have been paralyzing me.  I am very close.

[Gaining Strength]

Here's more:  shame has caused me to "veg out" because any action, all actions heaped more shame on me.  I am learning to recognize when I am vegging out and to shift into "battle" action during those times.  I veg out in many ways: watch TV just to watch TV especially at night, stay in bed in the morning after I have woken up (just vegging waiting for the shame to lift so I can face life), often reading the morning paper, but worst of all in avoidance - avoiding doing the chores that need to be doing which is the biggest problem created by my shame - the non-action.

I think I am getting strong enough to get break that long, long held pattern of inaction, of avoidance.  I am closer so very much closer.

[lighter]

I don't know what to say GS.....

so I'll just give you a hug ((((((())))))) and any strength I can.

Let's hope that demystifying your life helps to dispell the negative/false beliefs that keep tapping you on the shoulder.....

holding your attention from living fully in the moment.

Lighter

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks for that hug. 
Hops tapped into it.  I have found some thought processes that help me hold onto a feeling "outside" of shame and in that feeling I think I will overcome this long term paralysis.  Getting there - always to slow but getting there.

[Ami]

Dear GS
  What you were talking about, having some thought processes to "go in to" makes sense. I can see that I have certain ways of thinking that uplift me. I CAN flip in to them. Thanks so much.  Love  Ami

[Gaining Strength]

Yes.  Those uplifting thought places actually change our brain patterns.  Those places are the healing places and that is what so many are writing about in terms of thoughts change our brains and our lives. 

I believe it.  I have used it and it is changing my life, finally.

[Gaining Strength]

Here's more from that same web site - a perfect description of my mother's behavior:

Finally, for those who can do nothing by their own mind or hand to raise their own self esteem
when shame hits, there is the attack other library of scripts through which they can work to reduce the
self esteem of anyone else who happens to be available. At this pole of the Compass, anything that
brings shame can be defined arbitrarily as insulting disrespect that "must" be handled by compensatory
attack lest the individual suffer further shame. Attack Other behavior includes insults, verbal or physical
attack, bullying of any kind, sexual sadism, or anything that seems to prevent the momentary sense of
inferiority by (for only that moment) feeling bigger and better than the other guy. Sadly, to the extent
that any individual hones the skills associated with Attack Other behavior, severe limitations are placed
on the ability to negotiate, moderate, love, and nurture.

My mother has lived in the "attack others" mode all my life.  Now I know - it is clearly, succinctly written in this simply, short paragraph that people with the attack others behavior  cannot love or nurture.  She can't negotiate.  This last sentence answers the questions that Lo was asking about her - "why does she behave that way?"

[Gaining Strength]

You are perfectly correct PR.  I am definitely working on changing those thought patterns.  Over time I have found that the NEW thought runs stale after a couple of days but I think I am on to something.  Time will tell.  I am using thoughts that I have picked up from people who share my religious convictions - It is a matter of replacing them 24/7.  The old shame patterns are so pervasive but they are not anywhere as powerful as they were even a month ago.  Their frequency has not abated but their power has.  That is a significant step towards obliterating them.

Now I am attacking them with power and frequency. 

Thanks for your comment.  I find that support from people here is such an empowering gift.  I can do this.  I am doing this. 

[Ami]

Dear GS
 The Alice Miller website is so filled with information about just what you are expressing.    Love   Ami