More work on shame

[Gaining Strength]

I want to share where I am today. 

The feelings of shame are pouring out of me on every thought and sight and experience.  I am using God's love to reject this stuff.  I chose to believe that I am healed and that these "feelings" will diminish and fade away.  Each time I face one of the rushes of smae feelings with this positive affirmation I find that tight chest and slooped shoulders break open and I am restored to comfortable breathing and sitting upright and the parallysis is broken - if only for a moment. 

Then the shame thoughts and feelings rush in again.  It is attached to litterally everything.  The only hope I have is by overcoming it.  Soon I want to work on this board on my attachment or my frozenness by my parents via money.  This issue is THE issue for me but I see that I am not alone.  It is a taboo subject with lots and lots of emotion attached. 

LilyCat's aticle really gets at it without ever mentioning it. 

I want to share what I am going through here because it is here that someone will understand and I need that understanding to propel me forward.  I need the compassion and encouragement that I get here.  That good stuff that should be available in 3d world but is not.  But that article on entitlement helped me understand how I have been stuck trying to get that empathy and falling short and how that cylce actually kept me stuck.

I chose not to enter that cycle any more and don't have to.  I have this board where people can offer me what I need.  And I am very, very thankful.

Peace to all of you and deep, heartfelt thanks to Dr. Grossman and members alike.

Love,
Gaining Strength

You all are my positive parents who mirror back to me the good things which I can then replace the toxic stuff that my birth parents mirrored to me.  So glad to have the good stuff.  So glad to bleed out the toxic stuff.

[Ami]

Dear GS,
 I was feeling the urge to "give up". I see you going forward, against odds, keeping on with faith, as your tool. I can't give up, either.
 Today, getting past my childhood messages seems hard.
  I feel like I will be "here' and no matter how hard I try to climb out, I will still be here.You told me this, today and you were right. How did you know-lol?
  I am going to write a thread and pour my heart out. That usually helps.   
 I am thinking of you and praying for you, always.    Love   Ami

[Gaining Strength]

Whew Bean.  That is alot of stuff.  I am so thankful that you have posted here.  This is an incredibly difficult topic. Difficult to talk about and difficult to experience and very difficult to heal from.

Of all that you wrote I am most drawn to this:

Also, a longing to get in touch with the friends and "fix" whatever it is that has been broken.  Is it just the childhood friendship, now gone and (I fear?) forgotten that I feel ashamed about?  Or is it because I wasn't the ideal friend I should have been?  Or is this merely a transference, of the unresolved feelings of guilt and shame I know i have from being the scapegoated child, the least favorite daughter and sister, the "bossy" oldest girl.  I don't know.

I cannot know answers to your profound and important questions but I can share my own experience.  Most of this shame for me is a (not merely at all) transference of the shame developed when scapegoated.  All of the shame was dumped on me from my mother and my father.  That was alot of shame to carry.  Shame grows and infects everything it touches.  Where memories intersect one memory that contains shame can creep over into the other memory and infect it.  I was shamed for making mistakes and for being excluded so every time I make a mistake and everytime I am left out - shame washes over me like a shower of warm honey - everything I touch becomes stuck with the shame.

My therapist is pushing me to start writing about shame.  I would like to but I don't think I have enough order to it yet.  I sent a PM today saying that I am so tired of thinking/writing about shame.  I am sure everyone it tired of reading about it and yet - that is my battle.  I am winning but I am still battling.  I will not give up.

[Gaining Strength]

Here is some material I found on the internet thanks to Teartracks. 

They are by Donal Nathanson.  This first line is one that I hope I can put to work for myself.  The next paragraphs I think have much to tell us about ourselves.  I see this action at work here on the board.  It helps me understand so much of what is going on. 

Firstly, shame and love are mutually incompatible.


http://www.tomkins.org/pressroom/conversation.aspx
Finally, there are all those moments when by our own hand we can do nothing to increase our own self-esteem, periods in our life when everything that happens serves only to prove that we are inferior. You've had them, I've had them, and they are awful moments. It is at such a time that we act according to the Chinese proverb "He who lands the first blow was the first to run out of arguments." We use Attack Other scripts when we can feel better only by reducing the self-worth of another person, and we accomplish this reduction by put downs, banter, physical abuse, contempt, character assassination, calumny, blackmail, and sexual sadism. Any time we define a shaming remark as an insult or an example of disrespect, and respond by attacking with words or harmful actions, we are involved in an attack other script.
In fact, everything we have earlier called sadistic behavior is only action undertaken to reduce shame---a fact that makes treatment much more approachable. It will, of course, be obvious to this readership that people with attack self and attack other scripts hang together because they need each other;
Even the most cursory study of social and political history must suggest to a psychotherapist that in our civilization, over the past 40-50 years, the dominant, culturally expected, normative response to shame has shifted from Withdrawal and Attack Self to Avoidance and Attack Other. We have gone from a culture of politeness and deference to a culture of narcissism and violence, all of which must be understood as alterations in scripted reactions to shame affect.

[Leah]

Here is some material I found on the internet thanks to Teartracks. 

They are by Donal Nathanson.  This first line is one that I hope I can put to work for myself.  The next paragraphs I think have much to tell us about ourselves.  I see this action at work here on the board.  It helps me understand so much of what is going on. 

Firstly, shame and love are mutually incompatible.


http://www.tomkins.org/pressroom/conversation.aspx
Finally, there are all those moments when by our own hand we can do nothing to increase our own self-esteem, periods in our life when everything that happens serves only to prove that we are inferior. You've had them, I've had them, and they are awful moments. It is at such a time that we act according to the Chinese proverb "He who lands the first blow was the first to run out of arguments." We use Attack Other scripts when we can feel better only by reducing the self-worth of another person, and we accomplish this reduction by put downs, banter, physical abuse, contempt, character assassination, calumny, blackmail, and sexual sadism. Any time we define a shaming remark as an insult or an example of disrespect, and respond by attacking with words or harmful actions, we are involved in an attack other script.
In fact, everything we have earlier called sadistic behavior is only action undertaken to reduce shame---a fact that makes treatment much more approachable. It will, of course, be obvious to this readership that people with attack self and attack other scripts hang together because they need each other;
Even the most cursory study of social and political history must suggest to a psychotherapist that in our civilization, over the past 40-50 years, the dominant, culturally expected, normative response to shame has shifted from Withdrawal and Attack Self to Avoidance and Attack Other. We have gone from a culture of politeness and deference to a culture of narcissism and violence, all of which must be understood as alterations in scripted reactions to shame affect.

Dear Gaining Strength,

Thank you for sharing this resource, and insightful information, of which, I shall sit awhile, to read and digest, this enlightenment, all of which is new to me, and so therefore, I am grateful.

Love, Leah

[Gaining Strength]

it makes sense to me.  In a brief paragraph it gives a glimpse of what is going on between us on this board.  Our Shame gets triggered and we lash out. 

I have lived a life of lashing out and then I fell into withdrawal.  Today I will begin work on converting my feelings from shame to love.  Just this week a friend told me of a neuroscientist who said the brain cannot process shame and love at the same time and then today I find another Dr. who says that shame and love cannot coexist.  So if I am paralyzed by shame then the answer is to feel and express love.  Having a little child will make it easy to shift into love.  I think of all the shaming I have felt with him but that had nothing to do with him.  I believe that moving into love will help me with a finality of profound healing.

[Leah]

Gaining Strength,

I hear what you are saying, and you express, explain it, so clearly.  The issue of "shame" versus "love" - explains much, indeed.

I see love shining through you, truly, I have seen it, you are close to the finality of healing, is my sincere discernment.

Love, Leah

[Leah]

.
Actually, I have had a "lightbulb" moment.  It truly makes so much sense to me too.  Personally.

As I could not for the life of me understand why I was verbally "attacked" here, for always posting on the board - "with love"

I say "with love" because, that is me, it flows from within, and so, I freely "love" and give "love"

So, therefore, with this enlightenment and awareness, today, I feel immensely liberated, and validated, as this demonstrates and affirms ...

... that I am healed of "shame"

because, I have "love" working, residing, living, within me, and flowing from within -- as that is why I do so freely give "love"

unconditionally!


((((( Gaining Strength ))))  "thank you" so much for sharing this today, I feel truly blessed, and liberated -- from any assumptions,

and or, projections, onto me, from any other person, who is not where I am right now, but, I see no reason why they too cannot

join with me and all others, who are where I am right now.

I am rambling, this I know, purely because of the inner release of pure joy and happiness.

Knowing and understanding - the reason why - with an answer to the puzzle - is truly liberating.

Love to you, and everyone here on board,

Leah x


I feel set free -- to continue expressing my love!

How wonderful is that!

God Bless You (((( all ))))

[Gaining Strength]

when I was reading Dance with Anger earlier I almost posted the stuff about shame there.  I hope OC reads it.  I think it explains so much.  But I know that it depends on the perspective each individual takes.  But we know that Ns are shamed to a poitn that they scapegoat shame onto others.  As a Highly Sensitive person I took it on.  But i'm not alone and I think many of us here took on alot of shame and spew it out on others.