My Shame

I feel shame.   

Shame is different than guilt.   Guilt is when you do something and,  afterwards,  you regret having done it.    When we apologize for what we've done and try to atone for it,  we then can alleviate the guilt.   It's possible that it can go away.

Shame is different.   Shame is when you feel bad about yourself because there is some basic flaw in who you are.   Within the framework of shame,  there is nothing you can do to alleviate it.   It is intrinsic.   Some churches do the world a monumental injustice and call this shame "original sin".   They try to tie our shame to some kind of spiritual "truth."   That way,   it's much easier to control us.

My shame is not far under the surface,  though I hide it quite well (at least I think I do).  Underneath my sense of well being and positive spin on life,   I feel,  well,  bad about who I am.    At some level I think I am unlovable,  even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.   When I receive love from others there is part of me that says "yeah--they're doing that now….just wait until they learn who I REALLY am".   

I have to admit that my wife loves me so well and so,  shall I say it,   sincerely,   that this voice has lost a good deal of its teeth.   And,  nevertheless,   there it is.     It is more buried than it used to be.   It flashes those teeth from time to time.

So where does my shame come from?   Here's my understanding:

When I was a kid,   I had a number of experiences,  both chronic and traumatic,   that told me,   "I am not a worthwhile person".   

When I was between the ages of birth and four life was fairly un-bumpy.   On the other hand,  my dad was a severe alcoholic,  my mom had untreated bipolar and they both,  as reported by mom,  were having affairs.   So,  perhaps "un-bumpy" is relative.

During that time both parents gave me attention and love,  in spite of the fact that they were fairly consumed by their own personal issues.   They loved me,  but they probably only had a limited amount of attention they could give to their active and rambunctious youngster. Their attention was probably pretty spacey (mom) and pickled (dad).

My bonding with both of them was likely pretty tenuous due to the realities of their mental health.

My wobbly bonding with my parents probably is near the root of my shame.   Then,  other stuff came along to add to the shame.

My parents divorced when I was four.   My dad,  whom I longed deeply to bond with,  I now only saw sporadically.   My mom was under a great deal more stress and was not fun to be around.   The attention I had received from my parents was,  at age five,  a tiny fraction of what is was before they split.    My experience was that I became much less important to each of them.   They just did not have the time for me beyond providing me with the basics.

When I was six,   I was molested by my fifteen year-old female babysitter over several months.   And my dad exited my life.   He shot himself when I was fourteen.   Between the time I last saw my dad and when he died,  eight years passed.   To say he was in sporadic contact with me during those eight years would be generous.

My mom is a good person;   she means well and she tries.   But her deep narcissism meant that she was not aware of pretty much any of my emotional needs.   She raced around and tried to do things that a "good mother" does,  but she never listened to me.   Instead,  she talked.  She had a low-level to medium-level mania going for much of my growing up years,  as well as a few nervous breakdowns.

Neglect,  sexual abuse,  abandonment.   These were some of my most formative experiences;   they told me who I was in the world and what I meant to the people I was closest to.   This was definitely not the whole story of my life.   But it is,  most likely,  the story of my shame.

It's no wonder I feel shame.   It's logical.   Anyone with childhood experiences like these would have to deal with shame.

Next post:  What to do about it?

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Dissociation

From the ACA ((Adult Children of Alcoholics and Disfunctional Families) Big Red Book,  p 344:

"What is Dissociation?

Dissociation is a survival tool from childhood.   Adult children can dissociate from themselves in a variety of ways that can be difficult to recognize until we get help.  In addition to drugs,  work,  sex or food,  we dissociate in other ways that can include:  compulsive cleaning,  compulsive exercising,  obsessive reading,  fantasizing about sex or romance,  telephone sex,  pornography,  compulsive masturbation,  workaholism,  or harmful thrill seeking.   There is also compulsive spending and cluttering.   Dissociation responds well to honesty about our behavior and a willingness to do program work."

So,   I dissociate ALL the time.   I have done this for as long as I can remember. How do I dissociate?  Let me count the ways….

Out of the fifteen dissociation "avenues" listed above,  I can personally relate to about ten.    Anyway,  well above half of them I have experienced at one time or another.      The most common is my just getting spacey and not being fully present with myself or anyone I'm with.    I "check out".   Where do I go when I dissociate?   

On page 87 of the Big Red Book,  the ACA authors describe dissociation as a child repressing their true feelings in order to survive in the face of abuse, neglect or other traumas.   They further describe three distinct methods of dissociation.   

1)  The person represses,  projects or rationalizes the feelings which are causing him/her pain.

2)  The person uses a substance (such as alcohol,  sugar,  nicotine, caffeine)   to alter the painful feelings.

3)  The person uses negative excitement to keep him/herself unaware of deeper fear.   By focusing our attention on phobias,  obsessions,  dreams and taboos,  and compulsively tensing in response to these fears,  we force the body to build a protective physical armor and to produce adrenaline,  endorphins,  and melatonin to chemically block the perception of pain.

"All three forms forms of dissociation keep us imprisoned in a narrow and familiar range of behavior,  never reaching the extremes of panicked exhaustion or of collapse into suicidal despair"  (BRB,  p 88).

I believe that I,  and all people,  are spiritual beings.   I believe that my spiritual nature joined with my earthly form which comes through my parents' biological lineage.   In an ideal setting of childhood,   the spiritual nature of a person can join with the material in a lawful and harmonious way.   What happens is an integration of spirit and material which leads someone to have ideas,  feelings and behaviors which are closely aligned with their highest ideals for themselves.   

For those of us who got kicked around a bit,  we have more work to do.    We have to identify,  to whatever extent we can,  with our higher self,  and try to gradually empower our higher self to be increasingly in control of our thoughts,  feelings and behavior.

So the answer to the question,  "Where do I go when I dissociate?"  probably goes something like this:   As a child I wanted to flee the circumstances which were around me.   But where does a child flee to?   Where was I to go? 

I think that my spiritual nature,  what ACA calls the "inner child" tried to flee out of of my body.   When I was being molested,  when my dad abandoned me,  when my mom was chronically unaware of my needs,  my inner child,  (sometimes acutely,  sometimes gradually),  separated from my every-day consciousness.   While I was going about my business of being a kid,  part of my consciousness was often hovering over my body,   not wanting to "integrate" with my material form because it seemed too damn dangerous.   And because my inner child was "out of the building",  there could be "other stuff" that was more than happy to come in.   The "other stuff" includes the ten out of fifteen of the behaviors listed above.

It is a quantum level easier to "integrate" when one is a kid.   The recovery of the human species can be achieved only by doing a better job of raising children.   I firmly believe that.   But,  we can still recover as adults even when the road behind has been rocky.   It is  a lot harder.    But what's the alternative? For me,  the alternative to recovery is years of confusion and misery.

No thanks.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

I Know What Bipolar Feels Like

I do not have bipolar.   But I am pretty sure I know what it feels like.   

My mom has bipolar.    She began taking lithium for it when I was fifteen and she went to the local mental illness hospital,  in a psychotic state.   After several years of lithium she went off of it and soon became psychotic again.   About ten years ago she started taking Lamictal,  which has led to her having the most stable mood, and life,  that I have seen in my forty two years.  

During my entire childhood,  up to the time I was fifteen,   she had bipolar,  though it was neither diagnosed nor treated.

Having a parent with bipolar means that I have modeled behavior at a very basic level which comes out of her illness.   A number of times in my life I have acted as if I had bipolar.     My behavior has,  at times,  appeared as an echo of mental illness.   We all act like our parents/parental figures to some degree.   I am no different.

My talking about this subject is helpful because it is one I fear.   Given my parents' mental health issues,  (dad suffered from severe alcoholism and depression)  I naturally have feared contracting mental illness myself.    Statistics I found in NAMI say that someone like me (two parents with MI) is more likely than not to develop mental illness.   I did not read that until I was in my late thirties,  past the average time of onset for bipolar.   If I had come to that statistic it in my early twenties it probably would have freaked me out BIG-TIME.

There have been a number of times in my life when I have acted in a way that,  looking back,  seems pretty manic.     One example was leading friends on a day-hike in bear country.   It was exciting,   but reckless.  It was a stupid thing to do.   No one was injured in any way,   but we were probably just lucky.

Another example was when I graduated from my teaching program.   There was a celebration that involved students doing skits.   I got pretty manic.    As I think about my role there I regret how manic I was during that time.   

I feel bad about those events today because I wasn't the person I wanted to be in those situations.   In one,  I was actually putting friends in potential danger in order to get a thrill.  And in the other,   I did not connect deeply with people as we closed our experience together,  because I was "out of myself".   

I also feel bad because it draws my judgement into question at times.   If I had bad judgement then,  does that suggest anything about my judgement today?   Can I trust myself?   Can I trust my thoughts?   The stability of my consciousness?   

During those times I felt euphoria and like everything was in grand alignment.  To a degree I felt superhuman or that I was a deeply important individual.     This feeling lasted for a week or so and then subsided.    When I look back on those moments I realize that my judgement was flawed and that I made bad decisions while in that state.     I feel regret around these events.   I see myself as having behaved foolishly.

There are other examples of times when I became somewhat manic in relation to some aspect of my life.   Over the past 15 years my wife has pointed out some of them and helped me to adjust my behavior.

Normally,  I would say that I am fairly mistrustful of extremes.   I strive to be calm at all times,  as a basic personality trait.    There is some "chop" under the surface but my exterior is usually pretty calm and together.   My family,  because they see me up close,  know that I am not as calm as I try to appear to the world.

It is likely that I have a deep-seated fear of extremes and that my personality is very level because of that.   "Don't get too happy;   don't get too sad.   Stay right in the middle and hold that ground."   Those words basically describe how my personality was formed.   You could say that,  to some degree,   my personality developed as a sort of mood stabilizer.     My M.O. as a kid was to keep mom stable.   All hands went on deck for that purpose.

Of course,  now that I am processing my pain I am finding that I'm not as calm as I have previously thought.   Maybe my personality will be different after I've come through this process of transforming my traumas.   I'll have wait and see what comes out on the other side.

It doesn't freak me out to try and be objective about my personality because I know that,  essentially,  I am not my personality.   My personality is the expression through which I meet the world.  I believe my true nature is spiritual,  and not of this world,  as is everyone's.

I think that my talking about this subject may make "bipolar-like moments" less likely to happen in the future.   My repression of the previous experiences of such moments created a "fear pocket",  a little "don't look in there" closet.   And my lower self just loves to take the keys to those cars and take them out for a spin.   If my higher self shines the light on the issues then my lower self does not have anything to grab hold of.   It's those little secret,  shameful places that the lower self looks for and takes advantage of.

What's amazing is that when I do shine the light on the "dark, scary places" I find that,  rather than finding something awful and ugly,  hideous to look at;   I actually find something akin to "nothing" there.   That is to say,   the lower self somehow gets me to believe in the profound ugliness of my secret;   when in fact it dissipates as soon as I shine the light of day on it.   All it is is a foothold for the lower self.   Nothing more than that.   And by shining the light on it I dissolve the foothold. The lower self has to go find something else to latch on to.   If I keep shining the light as a practice,  there are gradually fewer and fewer footholds for the lower self,  and its power over my thoughts,  feelings and behavior gets more and more attenuated.

As the lower ego becomes weaker,   my higher self naturally wants to fill the space.    Or perhaps it is the other way around:   my higher self stepping forward takes the space,  and leaves less space for the lower ego.   Inside of me there is a fearful place  that keeps me from being my true radiant self.   But if I keep this practice going,  shining the light into my pockets of shame,  I will gradually become a different person.   

A different person who reflects more and more the light that I am,   truly.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Fingernails

I have a few nervous habits that have been part of my expression ever since I can remember.   There are other mini-tics I have had in the past and which,  for some reason,  have gone out of rotation.    My perception is that I do not present as an overly nervous person.    But I guess the truth is that I hide my nervous habits pretty well.   I am sure my wife sees them all pretty clearly,  and she is kind enough to not point them out too often.

My primary nervous habit is that I bite my fingernails.  I am pretty sure that I began biting them when I was about six years old.   It's possible I bit them before six;  I don't remember but I kinda don't think so.    If you've read some of my other blog posts,  you may remember that age six was the time when I endured a number of traumas.   I was molested,  my dad abandoned me,  and my mom went to work full-time and was swallowed up in her work-life.   These events spurred in me a sense of insecurity,  which was compounded by the facts of my life in general when I was a kid.   

When those traumas hit me at age six,  I did not freak out.   I did not scream and cry,  although I am sure I wanted to.    My coping was quiet.  My M.O. became "Do not add any stress to mom".     Rather than let all that pain and suffering come out, I brought it all back into myself.   I ate it.    

The insecurity that arose in me, the nervous energy that was needing to express itself,  came out in biting my fingernails.     Also in wetting the bed, which I did  until I was eleven or so.    And sleepwalking,  which I still do on rare occasion.   

Although I do not currently wet the bed and rarely sleep-walk (my wife is very grateful for this),  thirty-five years later I still bite my fingernails   I have never stopped. Through this nervous habit I am tied to the events of that time of my life.   I try not to pick at them when others are around.    

It's funny,  because biting on my fingernails does not make me feel any more secure.   If anything it makes me feel less secure.   Sometimes I hide my nails from being seen by others.   Hiding my fingernails is kind of like hiding myself from others in general.   I don't want others to see my bitten nails (shameful self) so I hide my nails (self) from them.     

My fingernails are a constant reminder to me of how insecure I am.   How I feel ashamed of who I am.   Don't get me wrong--I think I am a good person and I do like myself.   But there is a voice in me which runs directly counter to my seeing myself in positive terms.

Were I to fully immerse myself in my shame,  I would hear a narrative something like this one:   "I have a great, big,  awful thing about me and that if you somehow catch a glimpse of it you will react to me with horror and disgust."    

My conscious self,  of course,  keeps all that under wraps so that no one would think that I was experiencing such a inner feeling.   It is a message below the surface of my conscious mind.   It is the voice of my lower self,  of my wounded child.   

Having bitten my nails for thirty five years now it is quite the ingrained habit.   I do not remember using a nail clipper to trim my nails EVER in my life.   I am not kidding.

So how do I break this habit?   Do I suddenly feel good enough about myself one day and stop chomping?   My sense is that it will happen in a fashion something like this:   

I will reach into the deep shame I feel about myself and overcome it.    Nothing a few years of ACA meetings and group therapy can't handle.   Then,  I will decide from my inner Self to break the habit.  And because the feelings of shame are no longer (or to a much lesser degree)  pressing in on me,  my decision to break the habit will not be overwhelmed by the disruptive power of my shame.   The work I do on  myself will give me the basis to stop munching the little guys.

Sounds like a good plan,  eh?   I'll let you know how it works.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Thoughts on ACA

I have recently begun attending ACA (Adult Child of Alcoholics) meetings and reading the foundational text,  called the Big Red Book.   As I read this book and hear people's experiences in the meetings,   I am seeing an amazing number of connections.   This material describes my own experience in a very clear,  detailed and profound way.   Who knew?

The official name of the movement is "Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dis-functional Families".   I qualify as an "Adult Child" in the ACA sense relative to both of my parents.   My dad was a severe alcoholic and my mom had untreated bipolar for most of my childhood and teenage years.   

The ACA material often just nails the issues I am trying to bring to light in this blog.   The more I read,   the more I see that this community and body of knowledge stand to be huge helps to me now and in the future.

ACA,  like all 12-step programs,  has a spiritual basis,  a fact which is tremendously appealing to me.   I began actively pursuing a spiritual path in 1994,  when I was twenty five years old.   My spiritual path has steadily developed over the years.   What I have found in the past five years or so,  since I was in my late thirties,   is that my spiritual understandings have come up against my deep and unhealed pain.     I have found myself in crisis in relation to this fact.    

It seems to me that ACA is what is coming toward me to show me the way through.   This answer to my question is,  to me,  a sure sign that the universe is always looking to help us towards our highest good.   The only thing that holds us back is our own thinking.   And I,  for one,  am ready to tackle the places where my thinking is holding me back.    Turns out that's not going to be a small task.   

Interestingly,  instead of feeling excited and happy about finding ACA,  right now I am feeling very sad.    I think it's because of the deep,  deep sadness inside of me;   the ACA material I am reading is shining a light on that.   For me to heal myself,  I am going to have to bring my pain,  sadness,  anger,  and all the rest of it to the surface of my consciousness.    I am going to have to look at my own dysfunctional behavior at a new level.    This is going to take work.  And time.   And there will be times when I feel crappy about it all.

But it seems clear to me that ACA offers me a way to work through the issues around my painful upbringing and move forward,  with time,  into being a true adult.    My purpose in writing this blog was not that I could permanently identify myself as an ACMI,  but to find out how I could overcome my experience of being an "Adult Child".

I will keep reading this Big Red Book.   I will keep going to ACA meetings.   I will start working the 12 Steps.  I will start looking for a sponsor.  

 I see where my path is pointing me.   I might as well get going.   

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Adult Children of Alcoholics

I have recently been introduced to the group ACA/ACOA,  Adult Children of Alcoholics.     I have never thought to go to any of the 12 step groups because of two things:  first,   my dad,  an alcoholic,  was out of my life when I was relatively young (age six).   Second,   I have never had any kind of serious substance abuse issue.   I have had brushes with compulsive behavior but not at a level I thought would warrant 12 step involvement. 

My thinking on this matter is changing and ACA seems like it may be the group for me.   

First of all,  ACA is a group for adult children of alcoholics as well as adult children of dysfunctional families.     Apparently,  they have found that many of the principles apply to both groups.   As I read the ACA tome "The Big Red Book" the issues laid out there ring very powerfully for me.   ACA has a foundational statement called "The Laundry List" which speaks to the shared experience of folks like me.    There are fourteen points and I'll list them below:

_____________________________________________________________

The ACA Laundry List

1) We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.

2) We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.

3)  We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.

4)  We either become alcoholics,  marry them or both,  or find another compulsive personality such as workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.

5)  We live life from the viewpoint of victims,  and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.

6)  We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility,  and it is easier to be concerned with others rather than ourselves;  this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults,  etc.

7)  We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.

8)  We become addicted to excitement.

9)  We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue".

10)  We have "stuffed" our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).

11)  We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.

12)  We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in  order not to experience painful abandonment feelings,  which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.

13)  Alcoholism is a family disease;  we became para-alcoholics (co-dependents) and took on the characteristics of the disease even though we did not pick up the drink.

14)  Para-alcoholics (co-dependents) are reactors rather than actors.

_____________________________________________________________

Let's see which ones seem to apply to me.     I will use a scale to rate how much each of the points on the list seem to apply to me.   Terms are "Definitely" (3),  "Yes" (2),  "Sort of" (1)  and "Not so much" (0).   

1)  Definitely

2)  Definitely

3)  Definitely

4)  Yes,  I have dealt with compulsive behaviors in myself.

5)  Definitely,  though my wife has helped me start to find a different way.

6)  Definitely

7)  Definitely

8)  Not so much--though perhaps people who know me would see it differently.

9)  Sort of--this used to be more true for me than it is now.

10)  Definitely

11)  Definitely

12)  Not so much--I have often done the opposite,  which is to neglect relationships,  often because I was afraid of people seeing how shameful I am.

13)  Yes--this is likely true to some degree.  I'll have to research characteristics of alcoholics more to get more clear on this one.

14)   Definitely--I often see myself as being more of a reactor than actor.   I very much want to change this trait of mine.   

My score:   out of 42 possible points (answering "definitely" to all 14) I scored 32.    My score would likely be higher if not for the model my wife has shown me over the past decade.    I have gradually been addressing these issues in my my life but still have much more work to do.    It seems very clear to me that the ACA material could be very helpful to me if I decide to take it up.

What do I have to lose?

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Mom Fog

A few weeks ago my mom came to visit on the occasion of my step-daughter's high school graduation.   I knew mom was about to arrive because,  during the week leading up to her being here,   my neck and shoulders began to stiffen up and become sore.

Her visits often have a certain rhythm to them.    I feel tense as she arrives but she is upbeat and so it's all smiles and hugs.   After a day or so she begins to be less upbeat and there is some kind of challenge to work out.   After a few days there is often some kind of a larger challenge,   especially if I try to draw any kind of a boundary with her.   She hates to hear the word "No".   After about three days I am ready for her to leave.   

Mom lives alone.   My family and I,   almost without exception,  are the only ones she has spent more than a few hours in close company with over the past twenty years.   She can be bubbly and charming for very short spans but her mood fairly quickly wears thin.   

During this visit I found myself drifting into what I'll call "Mom Fog".   This is a common pattern of interaction between us;   she talks and talks (and talks)  and I start to fade out.  She's talking about what she's thinking about and has very little interest in what others' views and thoughts might be.   

This stimulates my childhood pattern:   I had very little emotional room to grow as a person.   The space for "me",  where my sense of self could grow,   was very, very small.    The space I was given was her projection and had little or no relation to what I was or was not feeling at any given time.  She had very low empathy toward my inner life so she would just project her own imagination of what she wanted my inner life to be.   Her projection had almost no relation to my actual experience.   My feelings were invisible to her and so,  as this pattern laid in over time,   they became invisible to me.   

My survival mechanism was to support her at all costs.   And so I hid myself.   I never really took hold of my own agenda and, instead,  identified with hers.   Her narcissism blinded her to what was going on.

Mom Fog is the experience of losing my self in the ceaseless ramble of words and thoughts she is always sharing.   I have worked to have a greater sense of self,  but I need to be away from her in order to develop that.   When I am around her I have a split intention:  part of me pushes her away very strongly while another part tries to be friendly and accommodating.    

This split creates the Mom Fog where I feel pulled into a dangerous,  me-effacing vortex that swirls into oblivion.   Oblivion,  in this case,  means living my life in order to serve her agenda--a place where I have no individual will but all of what I have to give is taken by her,  without even saying thanks.

My experience of Mom Fog continues to relate to her narcissism.   Often I feel like I don't really matter to her except in so far as I serve her agenda.  She doesn't see who I am.   She often doesn't say thank you when she's asked me to do something and I do it.   Saying thank you is the most basic level of acknowledging the other person and his role; that he matters.    The fact she often does not say thank you tells me she's still stuck in the same mindset that imprinted on me when I was a kid.

Mom Fog comes when I deny the feelings brought up in me when she starts doing "her thing".   I stuff all of the pain.   I stuff all of my anger.    In me lies fury over all of this.   But  I smile and do my turn as the dutiful son,  without saying anything.   Why?   Perhaps it is because I have to pick my battles.   The period of my step-daughter's graduation was not the time to do major processing with my mom.   We needed to keep our attention focused on what was important and not distract from this important event.

I acknowledge that my mom is not malicious,  she's just clueless.   She wants to do better but she doesn't know where to start.   She's been stuck in these patterns for a very long time.   Her bipolar mixes up with other medical issues to make her perceptions wobbly at times.   I don't think it would be all that fruitful to "have it out" with her around my childhood,  because her memory of those years is spotty.     She has many times shared a "memory" with me which was actually distorted memory fragments from completely different times and contexts.    My mom largely lives in the moment and that's pretty much where you have to meet her.   

Additionally,   my mom could not handle what I really think and feel.   She has lived with her projection of me all these years.     She would likely feel crushed by what my actual experience has been.   She knows I am angry about things but I have shared very little of the content of my angry feelings.   But I do have to acknowledge the feelings myself.   My doing this is an absolute key to my healing.   It's being divorced from my feelings, the legacy of Mom Fog,  that is one of the major challenges I face in life.   

Writing this down was really helpful for me.   I wrote most of it while mom was here;   the process of writing and acknowledging my experience was a major help to me.   I was able to pull out of Mom Fog and be more present for my step-daughter's graduation. 

Thank God for blogs!

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben