Shame Binds or/and a Cliffside Dance Party

February 25, 2008 at 4:02 am | In change, coping strategies, eeabee, fear, needs, psychology, shame, trauma, vortex, work, writing | 2 Comments
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by eeabee

I’m reading John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame that Binds You, and I see that he says: “To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed” (32).

Oh dear.

This does seem a bit of an awkward way to go through life, a bit inconvenient.

And so it is. I find things like this helpful though, not to weigh myself down with the enormity of an issue like this to be point of being immobilized, matted down, stuck to the floor, but because it makes me realize how huge of a deal it is to be able to move at all. This could become overly self-congratulatory, and probably already has, but there may be worse things. Clearly I like (and fear, but also like) attention, or I wouldn’t be writing here, so there’s no sense it denying it, not really. Even less so, if I admit that my job involves me having regular almost captive audiences, which I do admit, because it does.

Equally distressing are these quotes: “As each new shaming experience takes place, a new verbal imprint and visual image form a scene that becomes attached to the existing ones to form collages of shaming memories” (32); “As the years go on, very little is needed to trigger these collages of shame memories.  A word, a similar facial expression or a scene can set it off.  Sometimes an external stimulus is not even necessary” (33).  A whole big webby network in which a disturbance (or not even) in one spot triggers the whole thing to go haywire. And so it does. Not always–not like it used to. And I was just about to write that with this collage/network thing, the situation is as likely to worsen over time as it is to get better, and I’ve experienced some of that, some of it lately. But I’ve experienced the opposite too. It has taken great labor to get this far, which, if you haven’t gathered this already, is a bit sad considering how much room there is for improvement, but it’s more dazzling to think about where I came from. End-stage addiction, for one thing. And I do mean end stage. Which is where I now live, poised delicately above the brink I was just about to plummet from. See, I’ve been starting to think that a little melodrama–or a lot, it’s not really something that works in subtle accents–has some things to be said for it. It’s not actually that I’m exaggerating, but my prose is a bit purple at times, juicy-like, a bit oversaturated. Overdecorated with swooning-couches. But it’s such pleasure to overdo a bit like this, and it lets me play with something I certainly wouldn’t be able to wrestle down without getting myself killed in the process. But dancing with my awareness of where and how I live–on this edge of disaster, having stepped a few feet back, but I don’t think it’s possible to get far–that lightens the feeling of living here. It reminds me there is pleasure and lightness even here. Or shall I say (Oh I shall, I shall. . .) “especially here.” “Especially here” it is then, because while it sometimes seems intolerable and too scary here, sometimes it seems just as right to wonder what could possibly be more surprising and exciting?

And there’s never a problem with boredom.

The self in its unity and boundedness and other fanciful myths

February 17, 2008 at 7:50 pm | In body/mind, change, coping strategies, eeabee, pain, parts of the self, psychology | 1 Comment
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By eeabee

It’s funny. We think our selves are so discrete–so clearly demarcated–such unities–such knowable things. Such myths. We are such myths. Not that I mean we aren’t valuable–I do not reject the value of myths. Far from it. Quite the opposite. That’s sort of the trouble. Myths mean; myths move; myths make. Mmm. It also isn’t that to claim that it would be bad (or good, for that matter), if are selves were always these things we say they are. Maybe they are sometimes, but I think not always, if at all.

The edges of a self are not always so fortress-strong. This means that a self cannot keep all invasions out, nor need it remain untouched. A self cannot enforce its own self-determination, its inalienable rights, which are clearly all too alienable. A self may announce its boundaries, but may not be recognized as sovereign by others–or by elements within–ones that are treasonous, traitorous, sly (I do like me some extended metaphors; in fact, it is becoming a sort of compulsive practice to begin one and keep on keepin’ on with it). A self may not know it can announce boundaries, that it can claim anything at all, or even that it can speak.

I say this to myself and whoever else will tolerate such didacticism: Do not ask why this self doesn’t just take some responsibility; do not say to this self “get a grip” or “grow up.” Only wonder why it does not speak for itself; only trace the reason; only listen for ways in which it almost speaks; only ease the pain of its wounds. Do not say, “when are those wounds going to be healed”; only look for ways to help to heal them. I say this to myself as much as any. I do not always meet these obligations, but I am learning to take notice, and I know that when I mention my shortfall I am accepting that these obligations are mine (as they are everyone’s), and this is something to do not with shame but with pride. Because obligations only belong to human beings who count and who matter, and so are the signs of a real existence, a real life, a fully human life. And because some obligations are a privilege to meet.

There is something to be said from starting from a sense of one’s own unreality, one’s feeling of not being part of the world of real people. Because things that might seem tiresome and onerous to others can seem like homecoming. I don’t mean that this is anything desirable or redeeming. Not feeling real or a full part of the human family isn’t redeemable or okay or tolerable. But it happens. And it has to be lived with (or not, but then that’s a different discussion, or rather, the end of discussions). So I say this in the service of my pollyannaish perverse mode, wherein I take awful realities and find them cheery in a grotesque sort of way, the mode that lets me live.

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