As I talked with Dan last week about the importance of talking about any issue that I felt shame over, I realized why it works so well for me. Let me see if I can put it into words.
Any thing that is "not to be talked about" equals shame to me. From time to time I still hear my name stretched out in the surprised whine of my mother's voice when I do something or say something that is "just not done or said." I was taught to handle anything uncomfortable by not discussing it and stuffing it away as if it did not exist. The concept that silence and shame went hand in hand was embedded in my brain in multiple instances I can recall and probably hundreds I do not.
Now when shame surfaces, I find myself wanting to hide it away, but find myself also incapable of doing so any longer. Sooner or later I must take it out and look at it and speak it. In sharing it, I am declaring my struggling belief that it is not shameful. As I speak it, I am defending that child within that was herself hidden in shame and declaring she is not shameful. Finding my voice and my own declaration, I break the binds of the past's power over me. Shame crumbles.
I used to need to talk a lot, and always. I often emotionally exposed myself to others seeking out their approval because the shame inside was so non-approving. I began this blog at a time that I desperately needed to share my story - no longer for any one else's approval but to declare my own approval of who I am and what I have experienced. To hide it equalled shame; to share it means I am free from shame. I needed a place where I could declare what I was determined to deeply believe - that I am not shame-filled and the path I have walked is not reason to feel shame.
As time has passed, I am no longer driven to type and declare. Sometimes I write out of committment and belief that there is purpose in this. Sometimes I don't write at all because I just don't need to. Sometimes I throw out a little fact like my masturbating at a young age to declare one more thing off the taboo list.
If it can be talked about then it is not shameful. If it is shameful you must not talk about it. It was deeply engrained in me and I now use it to find freedom.
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3 comments:
I admire your courage.
Perhaps my own has not withstood the test of time...I have left my church and am only beginning to ponder what that means to me, and not to the person my abuser would have had me be.
But your ability to express your pain, to speak the shame you feel, and to disown it, give me hope for my own journey.
Thank you.
I wrote this months ago:
Thoughts from the Coccoon
What is normal and what is not? Who gets to touch you in a particular way and who does not? Why do I no longer know these things implicitly?
Nothing can reverse the past. But I must find a way to understand what should have happened, to grasp the parts of that relationship that were wrong, that were abusive, that were wrapped in manipulation. I fear father figures - they hurt you, they abuse you, they take out their frustrations on you, brought on by a world that demands that they be strong, self-sufficient, adaptive to whatever comes their way. They are grown men, and grown men need to be satisfied sexually as well as emotionally - so they hound you, they woo you and convince you that they are there to protect you, they butter you up and make you feel like a woman, empowered by this man’s admiration of your physical beauty, and then they make their move. Suddenly your self esteem in on the floor and you’re telling yourself that this is not happening — they are father figures, they protect you. Eventually you must split yourself in two to deal with the predation that has not ceased, so you can protect the earlier, hopeful, image of the man. Slowly that man becomes swallowed up by this dangerous figure, and your only thread of sanity in this situation lies in your clinging to the earlier image of that human being — the man you thought you knew, whom you admired and you even had feelings for, whom you wanted to be close to, and be recognized by through your development as a minister. The man that you must sacrifice in order to save yourself from this life-threatening presence that wishes to take your health, your will, your very self-worth. You let him go, but not without seeing the hurt in that man’s eyes as your hopeful image of him is forgotten; you confront that shadow again and again as you attempt to free yourself forever of this predator. But you catch yourself hoping, wishing, you could run into him again so you could have a glimpse of who he was; you walk by his house and your heart pounds, because you are in danger, and yet you are wishing things were different; you grieve the end of the friendship as if you had killed the man yourself, and you carry the shame resulting from others’ bewilderment and shock at news of your story. You are a wreck, and you develop an intense fear of that man. The dichotomy of who he was terrifies you more than ever even though he’s gone; reality sets in, and with it comes a delayed consciousness, and overwhelming feelings of powerlessness and despair that you’d never felt before. Feelings that you blocked for his sake, to protect who you wanted him to be, who you hoped he wanted himself to be, the qualities that drew you in, that caused you to admire him, care for him. They take over your life and you think you are losing your mind; the man slips backwards and you are left with the ashes of yourself. They seem to overwhelm you more than the abuse now, because you feel ruined, devastated, totally disconnected from who you were before, and you can’t remember what it feels like to be ‘normal’. You obsess over keeping your self from overwhelming situations, you sleep more, eat less, and hide your face when it becomes too ashen. Your body tells you that it is in pain and that throws you even more off-center; you beg and plead that someone come and take you out of your misery, and you even consider doing it yourself. And all along, you are still a student, still a housemate, a Catholic, a woman, but nothing holds you fix. You feel set loose, separated from everyone and everything around you, but every day you get up, you go to school, and you come home. You are exhausted and want to give up, but the stimuli doesn’t stop. What you don’t know is that that stimuli is saving your life.
You grow more accustomed to the attacks of nausea, panic and anxiety, you learn to control them and to see them as temporary, rather than as overwhelming. Things become clearer as your mind takes hold of other things and you become distracted by other people. Yet deep down certain things resonate — you are afraid of being hurt; you are afraid of somehow hurting others, of the dark seed that you fear was left in you by that man’s abuse, and must be expelled; you don’t want others to see your pain; you are screaming for them to acknowledge it.
As time passes people work with the expectation that you are better now, and that things can be seen with less of a critical eye. You struggle for justice even though you are aware you were dis-associating as the events were happening, even though your memory has faded and the smells and sounds of those times have disappeared. You continue to assert that you have been hurt, even though you are feeling better, but aware that time has moved much slower for you, that choices, certain lifepaths, have been significantly altered as a result of these events. You are not as sure of yourself now, in other ways you are so much stronger. You rely on the support of many to help you as they did in your earlier stages of healing, and those people unearth the hidden feelings of guilt and shame that you hold, and re-iterate your goodness. They help you find ways to acknowledge how unbalanced the relationship, how much power you did not have in the choices that were made, how many of them were made for you, long before you could realize this.
You search for meaningful work now, for longer-lasting friendships, for a way to cement your budding self, which in its present stage is forming out of a deep experience. You are a child, you are a teenager, you are an adult, because you are re-forming yourself, and God is renewing your sense of self, your hope in the future. In the background of this room, where you have hidden from the truth, begged even in your denial, faced your fear and ended it, shed your skins through the aftermath, and somehow crawled out of all of it alive, a candle burns your peace into the night air.
Anonymous, I have read over this about 5 times now. Everytime I read it, I see more truth in it. I am awed by your poetic abilities. You are an excellent writer and obviously very much in touch with where you are and hope to be.
It is almost impossible to verbalize the impact such abuse has, but you have nailed it in a way I have never heard.
Thank you for sharing. I know many will read this and be touched.
Di
This is not good to west the money in a wrong matter. This is the responsibility of the parent to tell her about the right way to expend the money.
________________________
smac
Addiction Recovery Michigan
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