SEPTEMBER
There was a man in my family who carried his shame in a knapsack on his back, a boulder so heavy it created his own personal grim gravity. He was exhausted from having to pretend there was no such weight there. He wanted folk to believe his knapsack contained sandwiches and a thermos and some feathers, rather than the misery monolith it truly was. One day, he decided it was too heavy to carry, so he took it off and emptied it out. Shame. All over the floor, but not on him any more. He put the knapsack back on, empty and light, and he walked forward. Determined never to fill it again …
In my experience, shame is the most emotionally debilitating demon imaginable. It destroys our self-esteem and, all the time, we fake it. We grit our teeth and smile on through. Shame is invisible, but it is a fiercesome powerful ol’ presence. The shame in me recognizes the shame in you, instantly feels ashamed and scoots off to hide from both of us. We fear that our shame is obvious, that we will see it reflected back. We fear it so much that we let it burrow into our hearts like a vile worm. The only way out is to own up to it, confront it and cast it aside. So easily said and THE MOST DIFFICULT THING TO DO. It takes so much courage, in fact, that it’s often preferable to continue on, being eaten.
I have no easy answer to this, but I do know something for sure … get it out of you, because it is toxic, keeps you separate and will hurt you and those you love.
I’ve learnt that it’s possible to encapsulate the shame we store in as few as two sentences. Just as a start. Try it. Go on.
Speak it aloud. Put it in the air.
Then think about who you could speak it aloud TO. Someone safe, who will hear it right.
Just consider it.
Just consider it.
Two sentences and it could, just might be, the start of a new different, less-shame-thank-you way of being. Contempt is a weighty ol’ burden, and it gets heavier the longer you harbour it. So often, the confusion and the feelings of inadequacy are bound up in one type of utterly damning thinking which has ‘I am bad’ at its core, when really ‘I think I have done something bad’ is more accurate. And infinitely more manageable.
Feeling a sense of shame about yourself, to whatever degree, is pretty normal, I reckon, sadly. That’s hard enough to deal with. It’s a big life battle, a part of adulthood.
The more worrying, and for me fairly unforgivable trait, is in those who, commonly as a reaction to their own shame-pain, decide to consciously assign shame to others. When shame is heaped upon you, when it makes no sense to you, when it’s somehow ascribed to you, THAT’S when it becomes a ruddy monster, that’s when it smashes you up. An inexplicable beast, which in your deepest, most difficult, vulnerable place, you somehow believe you DESERVE to be savaged by.
Ummmmmm …? NO!
What you DESERVE,
What all of us DESERVE …
Is to be treated with respect, as equals.
I expect that of others towards me, so in my most serious and difficult moments, I try to remember that I need to treat myself just the same. To do that, I absolutely have to shun any unwarranted shame that’s being donated from dubious quarters. No thanks. Not available for that, got plenty of my own stuff to sort, don’t need extra.
Blimey, it’s ruddy difficult knowing how to be a functioning human, isn’t it?
How do you be a person?
How do you be?
How do you successfully be a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, a daughter, all rolled into one?
I don’t really know, but at least I know I don’t totally know, and I know not to pretend I know when I don’t. HA!
I also know that not everything has a solution, so I shouldn’t always be looking to fix stuff if that is not possible. I can’t change how other people are, or the choices they make or the consequences of those choices: all I can do is witness those things and change the way I deal with them if needs be. I can also admit that I will sometimes get it monumentally wrong, I will doubt myself and I will worry, but, that’s all right.
‘Where doubt is, there truth is – it is her shadow’
Ambrose Bierce
I am the sort of person who likes to tackle things head-on, I like all the cards on the table so that I know exactly what I’m dealing with. This can lead me into trouble and has done before now. I can be a bit of a gun-jumper, a bit impatient with my need to get to the truth, often sooner than some people are prepared to. I know that. My best friend is supremely subtle and goes about her life carefully, sensitively. I admire it, I do … but I just can’t do it. Well, that’s a lie, I don’t WANT to do it, that’s the truth. I want to deal with the difficult stuff, right NOW. To prolong it is agony for me, however prudent it might be.
I hope that I am honest, at least with myself. I don’t feel that I have to spill my guts about everything to everyone, but if I do spill ’em, I’ll be telling the truth. Whatever ‘the truth’ is. I realize it can be different for everyone. I am referring to my own truths, however unpalatable or shameful they may sometimes be.
It’s different if you have blockages that somehow prevent you from getting on with life, especially if you can’t quite identify them. You know the kind of disquiet I mean – it’s there in the pit of your belly when you wake in the night but you’re not exactly sure what it is. A kind of anxiety indigestion. The ghost of an unsettled score you can’t quite grasp. You can’t fathom it: what is nibbling away at your calm?
If you truly don’t know, as opposed to hiding away from it, then you have to get a helping hand to unpick it, from someone who knows what they’re up to.
When I was in my forties, I sought out some help to deal with a nagging, dreadful sadness that was bugging me. After seeing a very clever psychologist for a few months, and talking through some of the inner turbulence I was experiencing, she suggested that I might try a therapy called EMDR. I thought at first she was suggesting drugs of some sort, and that’s not my bag, unless it’s totally unavoidable of course. She quickly explained that it was nothing to do with chemicals. The letters stand for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
I know …
WHAT …?!
She went on to explain that this type of therapy was quite new, but that in her opinion, it was very effective in treating trauma. She said that if something shocking has happened to you, your brain tries to process the shock of it, usually with rapid eye movements while you’re asleep. All humans do this, actually even dogs do it. How phenomenal is that? Well, sometimes your brain fails to sort the shock into its correct drawer in your head, or maybe the shock is so powerful, it resists the unconscious processing, so, instead, you actively do the sorting while you are awake, mimicking the eye movements in your conscious state.
WHAT …?!
She went on to tell me that she suspected she knew from listening to me for weeks where my particular mental hurdles were, and so what would happen was this:
She would sit in front of me, and by following her fingers rhythmically, waving from side to side, my eyes would move just as they needed to. During this, she would be talking me carefully through a particular memory that she knew was difficult for me. A moment that was emotionally charged and particularly disturbing. She would attempt to have me recall it in detail and slowly, working together, she would guide me to a different type of thinking around it, to a better, more positive take on it.
WHAT …?!
She told me straight away that, knowing me, she imagined I might find it all a bit absurd. I might laugh, or scoff at it and even dismiss it completely, and that was natural and OK. It couldn’t hurt me. It was worth trying.
So I did. For ninety minutes or so, I recounted the incident she wanted me to retell. She encouraged me to be brave and forensic with the details of it. All the while, she skilfully nudged me onwards, and she gently moved her fingers in front of me like a metronome. Left, right. Left, right. Once I got past the ridiculous feeling of being hypnotized in some Victorian freak show, I relaxed into it, and before too long my face was wet with tears as I told my upsetting story. Left, right, left, right. As I spoke, I knew the weight of it was gradually lifting, even in that very first session. I was spent at the end of it, completely wrung out. I went home and dreamt vivid dreams, and when I woke up, I swear the edges of that knobbly old sadness were definitely knocked off. I could remember it clearly as before but, unlike before, it didn’t hurt as much. It simply didn’t matter in the same awful way; the power of it was dampened.
I had a couple more sessions of that same treatment, and within a month I was sleeping properly again and the whole damn difficult thing was nicely filed away where it should be. On the back burner, so to speak. Not the front burner, where it was burning me.
I’m told that this type of therapy is most effective with people who have had huge hissing traumas. Folk who’ve been to war, who’ve been raped, who’ve been in car accidents, appalling stuff like that. I can believe it, because it worked so well for me, whose trauma was minor in comparison.
How wonderful is the human mind? How elastic and interesting? Look how it rights itself, given half a chance. It’s miraculous. Whoever invented it should really have a jelly and a badge. Or two jellies, even.
At the centre of the success of that type of treatment is, essentially, trust.
I had to trust her.
I had to trust the process.
I had to trust my brain.
I had to trust myself.
It’s a risk, isn’t it, trusting? A risk we absolutely HAVE to take if we don’t want to end up alone and isolated. A risk we have to take repeatedly, even after our trust is violated. The only way we can guarantee never to be let down is never to trust. No thanks.
Ernest Hemingway said,
‘The best way to find out if you can trust anybody is to trust them.’
Trusting is tricky for a person who likes to be in the driver’s seat, like me. Trust is about being in the passenger’s seat. With the maps and the sweets. It’s about allowing someone else to drive YOUR car. And not just in terms of romantic relationships, but in every truthful, valuable human relationship we make. We trust people all the time.
We trust our friends will keep our secrets.
We trust our wine isn’t watered down.
We trust our dog won’t bite that new puppy down the road (misplaced trust).
We trust our kids will remember the lessons we taught them to keep them safe.
We trust our hearts in each other’s keep.
We trust other drivers to stop at a red light.
We trust our instincts.
We trust that humanity is essentially good.
We trust that our families have our backs.
We trust our pants to stay up.
We trust our comedy partner to remind us of the line when we forget it in front of 4,000 people.
One of the giant rewards for learning, gradually, to trust more and more as you travel through your life, is that more and more, people trust you. In that single privilege, I find huge happiness. The beauty of it, of someone believing you are trustworthy. It’s good, it’s really good. Being a safe place for someone, for anyone, is a proper grown-up responsibility, one to relish.
So, I am stepping forward into September, refusing to let shame be in charge of anything and allowing trust to flourish. My September is shame-less and trust-full.
Owzyours?
