Thought Experiment for healing

[Gaining Strength]

Some kind of a breakthrough - re: humiliation v. shame.  I don't know yet but I have seen that there is some kind of a difference and that I am dealling with humiliation.

I also just got that both of my parents passed on their shame about money onto me and I took it.  It is surprising to me that I have just figured that out.  Money and finances has been such a huge part of my whole life, my whole disfunction.  My complete paralysis is centered around the hub of my parents projection of shame about money onto me and my inability to earn money contrasted with the vast comfort concerning finances which they have and their reluctance or refusal to help - even though their money was given them by their parents - not earned!

I have just the first image of somepart of a block.  I'm trying to work it out.  It is as though the shame is generalized - touches everything, humiliation touches doing anything well or aiming for something good.  It definitely comes from my father.  It definitely is a double bind - shame if you don't achieve, humiliation if you do.

More than once I have written about discovering that working on a task that is shame oriented actually produces more shame.  Today I had this sense that there is some difference between the shame e.g. of a dirty kitchen and the humiliation of cleaning up.  It is definitely difficult to pick apart and even more difficult to get past.  

My father both demanded excellence and glared daggers if I attempted to excell.  He would figuratively pull the rug out from underneath me if I tried to do the things necessary to excell.  

When I married my first husband, I thought I had gotten away from the shame and humiliation but it actually continued.  My first husband was part of the social group I enjoyed being with but he was extremely overweight and had never had a girlfriend before.  I felt at that time that the only chance I had was to go for someone who didn't have many options.  As it turned out - it was a terrible choice.  He was angry and bitter and he took it out on me.  I was angry and resentful and took it out on him.  BUT there was one difference - I did care about supporting and encouraging him.  He was very resentful of everything I tried to do and he absolutely refused to help me accomplish anything - professionally, socially, or with family.  When I would ask him for something he would say, "I'm not going to do that because you asked."  When we finally went to see a therapist and I brought this up she asked me, "Well couldn't you tease him into doing it?"  We both knew she would be no help.  Once I was invited to a very nice dinner with a small prestigious organization when we were living in DC.  I was invited b/c my gandfather was a donor.  The dinner was at a very fine club and the attendees were all much older and very accomplished.  Rather than carrying on a conversation with the others at our table my husband got up and went to watch basketball with the waiters at the bar.  It was humiliating.  Looking back I realize that the whole situation was uncomfortable for him but at the time it felt like he was sabotaging me.

Second marriage - a few months in I won an award as volunteer of the year in a city organization.  It was a big deal and I received a very nice plaque.  When I showed it to my new husband his response was, "What did you do to deserve that?"  The week before he died my picture was going to be in the newspaper for the work I was doing in the inner city.  Our baby was in the picture too because he always went to work with me.  It was the morning of July 4th and my picture was in an annual section called Local Heros.  That morning I said I wanted to go get a newspaper and he went ballistic about how self-serving I was.  (He wouldn't allow me to get the paper at home b/c he got it at work - never mind that I didn't.)  He was livid about MY picture being in the newspaper and that our son was in there as well didn't mitigate his anger in any way.

I know these things have taken a toll on me.  There is really a kind of a block when it comes to breaking through.  The price for accomplishment has repeatedly been humiliation.  At those times in my life I had something of a support group.  I didn't feel isolated, I felt connected.  Now I am not connected and have no social group so the fear factor is even greater.

I hope that  exposing some of these memories and unearthing the dynamic will help break this strong hold and release me to move forward.  I have so much to offer.  I always have but I have been emotionally hog tied.  

I have already made tremendous progress.  I have broken the stranglehold of resentment and that was huge.  I was completely unaware of my sense of resentment and of the poisonous effect it had on me socially and in other ways with all human relations.  So I have made that break through.  This is the last and the biggest.  

Inspite of all I have written here, I don't really understand why it is so difficult to break through here.  I really want it.  If I am doing something to stand in the way I am not sure.  I can't help but believe that the experience of being humiliated after successes in the past has something to do with it.  I think this may be one of those things that I have to figure out for myself like a chick has to break out of the shell by itself but gosh it sure feels like I need help.  What a contradiction.

[Gaining Strength]

Phoenix - thanks for asking.  I was writing while you posted.  I really like the concept of putting it back where it came from.  I am not sure where I am today - sort of in the midst of the storm.  One year ago I worked hard on this shame and made great progress.  I remember that feelling of accomplishment but today I have no idea what accomplishment that was.  I am definitely in the midst of a huge battle against this bohemoth. 

Thanks for asking and thanks for the clever suggestion. - GS

[Gaining Strength]

What you said about seeing the difference between shame and humiliation clangs big gongs with me. There really IS a difference... and at the moment, I think it's ownership. The shame may belong to someone else - you parents for instance. But, I think we own our humiliation - which is in the realm of what I consider a natural emotional response to being shamed; fairly or unfairly. The two feelings are partners and highly connected - cause & effect.

This really helps.  I think I can separate the two now.  When I feel this full force as I am today it is excruciatingly painful.  But I think that I have worked through enough of it in the past to be able to bear the full brunt of the remaining pain.

I loved my grandparents, even though they did not take the active kind of a role in my life that would have helped tremendously but then they didn't do that with my mother or her sisters and that is definitely part of the problem.  I am turning to my memory of them to get them to help me through this difficult time.  I have found that turning to people in my mind often helps me through difficult situations.  It is a form of visualization.

[Iphi]

I completely understand your pain and experience GS and encourage you to share whatever past memories help - I completely understand those too and have many times experienced saying something that I thought completely minor and inoffensive only to have my dad explode in outrage at my 'selfishness.'    We are definitely working on the exact same issues, I completely recognize what you are grappling with.  It is so heartening to me to know - I'm seriously teary to know others are right in there with me on this stuff - so many years, you know?

Your work on resentment is blowing my mind and is really raising my awareness.  I have much more resentment as a sort of background presence than I was able to acknowledge.  Not sure what to do next.  I see the resentment as a huge obstacle to my freedom.  Like a millstone around my neck.

Definitely understand these issues of performance.  I feel at an almost instinctive level - guess it is gut level - that the effect of the performance mixed message was as if to route me - to train me - to pull the reins and push me left or right like a horse - in the directions my dad wanted me to go.  But the point is not where he wants to go at all (there is no Goal) it is only to always be riding me, in control.  There is no point other than the control.  I'm speaking pure gut/emotion now and with no detachment.  That's my emotional truth I guess.

I don't know about you but what dogs me constantly is that when I speak something like I just did above - the feeling of being ridden - that, even internally, I feel discounted.  And that is because every time I speak like that in my FOO - they refute it completely.  They trivialize, roll their eyes, call me hysterical, dramatic, crazy, emotional, selfish.  They tell me my perspective is way off and wrong.  That I am not seeing what I am seeing and that my feelings are not connected in any way to reality.

So even apart from them, even posting on this board.  Internally - I am feeling their voices.  And I am having a b***h of a time stopping believing in them.  I believed in them for so long.  I trusted those voices even though though they were always telling me how hateful I am, how wrong, how selfish, how blameworthy, inept, clueless, ignorant.  All of this.

So your thoughts, which I encourage you so much to pursue and keep posting, are really hitting home with me.  I hope my sharing doesn't distract but is helpful.

[Gaining Strength]

Two things came to me: 1) from Lupita's post I realized that my parents expected me to excell but when I came close they sabotaged me and I was humiliated and when I tried again even if I had slight success my father in particular would say, "Yeah but last time you really messed up."  No way out.  Humilition if I did and humiliation if I didn't; 2) my images of successful people are of judgemental people.  (I'm not saying it is so, I'm saying the two have been conflated in my psyche.)  I must untwist these two.

There is also coming to me as I type a sense of being left out.  That thing that happens in N families that I expanded in my mind to the world at large of being set up to be humiliated.  Not being included but being publicly humiliated for not being included so that they could then look at my reaction and say, "see, that's what we have to put up with."

I am getting an inkling of what it would mean to simply not go there, no go to the place of humiliation.  If I could get out of it I might be able to prevent myself from going there. 

I believe that I am reliving the humiliation that I could not "feel" when I was a child and now the pain of it all is upon me and is very, very intense.  I "feel" humiliated - over what? Nothing - nothing but the stuff from the past.

[Ami]

Dear GS and Iphi,
I am feeling the same pain of seeing long standing patterns and realizing that *I* am replaying them over and over ,again.
I take the inner pain and try to make the outside world heal it, again and again.
Even if I get the "prefect" outcome, it can't heal it, I don't think.
Look at really successful people who have it all. if they have inner "demons",the success does not help. All the outside things don't touch the pain. At first, it seems to, but it does not last. In the end, it does not work.
 I will write more later. Just got a mental block(lol)                Love    Ami

[Gaining Strength]

Phoenix Rising - this is so helpful.  I was able to do this this afternoon and evening.  It really felt good.  I believe that the more that I have this experience and the more I nurture the experience that it will grow and grow and at some point become the norm.  I am very thankful to have had this experience for an extended period today.  Thanks so much for your input and your encouragement. 

It is so helpful that you and Iphi and Ami and others would take time to share with me and send your encouragement.  It feels so good. Thanks. - Gaining Strength

[Ami]

Dear GS
 I am glad you are feeling a little better.
For me, the Bible study has really put me  in  a new dimesion. I realized that I had been trying to get back" to a time and place when I felt whole. I did not know God then.
 Yesterday, I realized, from doing the Bible study, that I should NOT be looking backward. It was  a happier time, yes, but I did not know God then, so it was not a "better' time.
 That "me" is gone b/c I am with God ,now, and I am a different "me".I should not aspire to be  "less" than I am ,now,which I have been doing.
 I realized last night that Jesus was the answer to all questions, little and big,all fears, all dilemma's, all heartaches, all NM pain and sorrow.
 God's love  simplifes  complex issues.
 I realize that He loves me and who am I to argue(lol)?
 He made me and values me, so who am I to disparage myself?It is an affront to Him for me to hate myself.
The Bible study flipped my mind from many nonessentials to  a few essentials.
 Perfect love(knowing God's love) casts out fear b/c it is higher than any human dilemma, I think.
 It is the  heart knowing that makes the difference.During the last 14 years, I studied the Bible for hours and hours and never really got it ,in the heart. Now, I hardly study and AM getting it in the heart.One drop of it ,in the heart ,is better than an ocean,in the head,I think.
  Thanks for your friendship, GS.   Love you, Ami
 

[Gaining Strength]

Okay, here I go, sticking my neck out, stretching my faith on this one.  I think I have broken through.  Not sure but I am sure that I will so to heck with the doubt.  I have broken through.  I have more work to do but I have broken through.

The work I have done here has had its first evidence of success.  I am able to function without the shame and humiliation.  I am thankful.  I am taking it easy today and not pushing things.  I must strengthen this new found ability to shut down the same and the resulting fear/anxiety.  I am beginning to be able to see that this stuff I've been calling shame is actually a whole bunch of different shame issues all tangled into a great big knotted ball.  This morning (when shame is always the worst for me) I saw plainly for the very first time that there were a bunch of shames.  Some of the come from the complete lack of boundaries that I grew up with. 

My father held me responsible for all manner of things that I could do nothing about.  He held me responsible for other people's and animals' actions.  That has been a terrible, terrible burden believe it or not.  For instance, I have an 18 year old cat with kidney trouble.  That has resulted in some terrible problems with litter box usage - ie he prefers the floor or newspapers or almost anything but the litter box.  Well that is trouble enough but I feel the unbearable shame around it all, responsible for it, humilitated by it and overwhelmed by the added, endless work and impossible upkeep.  For the past 9 months he has been confined during the day to my (albeit large) bathroom.  But I know exactly why I feel shame instead of just burden around this issue.  My father held me responsible for other people's and animals' actions and I have continued to hold that.  Well now I can connect the dots to that too and let it go.

OMG, I have a whole long list of things that I have wanted to do for so long and felt overbearing shame about and now I see where that shame came from.  It is so crazy and such a tremendous relief.  I have never been good enough and who could be if they were responsible for anyone else's actions.

Boundary issues have been a HUGE part of my healing.  There were NO boundaries in my household.  I have made ENORMOUS improvement on boundaries but for the first time in years I see that I have more.  I never knew until today that baoundary issues were entangled in this shame mess.  Now I know and this knowledge will be very helpful.

One thing that will DEFINITELY be part of my needed work will be overcoming a particular fear, the fear of shaming.  The reason this is a problem is that as I type here I realize that I would rather type than try out my new found healing/freedom from shame and actually get some work done but I AM AFRAID, afraid that the shame will hit again.  That fear is very dangerous so I am going to work on that first and foremost before I do anything else.

Looking for courage and confidence to move to the next step.  so thankful for the progress, so thankful for this place that has helped me work though this stuff and has taught me so much. Love to all - GS

[Leah]

So glad to know you dear (((( GS )))) and to have had the privilege of witnessing your diligent endeavours, with serenity of transformation.

Please know that you remain in my thoughts and prayers.

Love, Leah

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you so much Leah.  I believe I now have the courage at last to face the difficult financial and legal problems that have been plagueing me and worsening over the past 6 and 1/2 years.  I am ready but not looking forward to it.  Much love, GS

[Ami]

Dear GS,
 I missed that post about your H trying to take away any sense of accomplishment and shame you. WHERE do WE find them(lol)?
 We have to be "ripe for the picking" and THAT is what we are working on(lol)
 GS, I am trying to see to the roots of what you are talking about. Why  do we repeat and keep the same patterns?
 Today, I talked to Ann(1and 1/2 hours). *I* told her  I had to go b/c it was so heavy and I could not do it anymore. I will call her ,tomorrow.
 The reason we stay with hurtful patterns is "strongholds", I think. We have deep spiritual forces that are operating in us . We need to break their power, on a spiritual level, which is different than a "thought" level.
 I told Ann that I wanted to reclaim my life ,from the time my M stole it.Ann told me that my M was trying to make me a mirror image of her. My M hated that *I* was social . She wanted to make me a person who puts her foot in her mouth at every occasion, as she is. She wanted to take away my integrity and make me like she was.
 She wanted to steal any beauty in my life, any love, such as love of animals, people ,friends, etc and make it ugly.
 Ann told me that I had to renounce the beliefs I took from her and then replace them with what God thought of me. We went down the list and renounced each one and replaced it with what God thought of me.
 I do feel a little less oppressed ,now. I feel a little more hopeful.
 Ann never heard(or rarely) of s/one as bad as my M.
 I will write more, GS.
 You WILL prevail. God will not start a good work in you and not bring it to completion(can't remember which verse it is),but you HAVE started and I am believing with you that you will be whole, at the end.       Love    Ami

(((((((((((GS)))))))))

[Gaining Strength]

Ann never heard(or rarely) of s/one as bad as my M.

Wow, that's incredible and it is also affirming.  So glad you have her, so glad she is helping you.  It is very, very important to have people who can guide us through these difficult healing times.

[Ami]

GS
 The fact that Ann saw my M as so bad felt bad, not good. It makes me feel more hopeless to change, rather than affirmed.That is one of my strongholds that I will never be OK b/c she is so bad. I know that I am not alone b/c of the board, though. Thank Goodness!          Love    Ami

[ann3]

GS,
I said this to Amber on her post and I want to say the same to you:  I love the work you're doing.  Keep on keepin on.  You go girl.
ann