Shame, Shame, Shame, Part 1
I am not in my body
It is filled instead with fear
And voices, many voices
They are angry with me
And I don’t know why
They are angry about that too
“Stupid girl,” they say,
“How could you not know?”
My body is big – very big
It is like a costume I wear
So people won’t see how small I feel
So people won’t see my fear
Or maybe that’s why
I’m not really sure
It doesn’t work, of course
And now the voices scold about that too
“Stupid, ugly, fat girl,” they say,
Have you no shame?
Ironic they should ask that
Since it seems I am made of shame
Shame and fat and fear and nothing else
~ Katherine E. Rabenau
There is shame afoot in my world right now. It has been running amok these past few weeks. In my second article for this column ( http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/agor... ) I wrote about role that shame plays in imprisoning those of us who struggle with agoraphobia..
It seems that it is time to revisit that topic. I have done a lot of healing over the years. I am better able to recognize my self-hate, my shame, for what it is. I am usually able recognize the toxicity of my thinking. That said, the tendency to respond out of this toxicity remains strong. When the drains in the house I’m living in clog, my first thought is that I have somehow done something wrong or that I will “get in trouble” with the landlord. I worry that the UPS man will be mad at ME because it has snowed. I worry that the people at the post office hate me because I don’t pick up my mail every day. They have shown no sign of hating me but still I worry. I worry that my dead mother, watching from heaven, is suffering over my poor housekeeping. If people don’t write to me, I assume that I must have offended them. When they do write, I assume that I will disappoint in my response. I am better than I used to be. I am no longer this way all the time. But I am still this way much too often. It does not take much to trigger an attack. Anything from a kind word that I hear as criticism to a clogged drain to a broken car and a snow storm. Toxic shame is like a recurrent infection that lives in my blood. It is always there waiting.
One of my friends is renting a house here and there’s a major leak in the roof. She came out of a childhood far more painful than mine. She has done a lot of therapy. She is one of the most intelligent and talented people I have ever met, but she is convinced with some part of herself that she is to blame for the leaking roof. Forget that it is an old house with 5 feet of snow on the roof. She is terrified that the landlord will be angry with her and blame her. She blames herself. When you know a bit about her childhood, the root of this response becomes clear. It makes sense.
Latest Articles