My issues with shame and fear

I feel like what you're going through is very similar to bottling up emotions. Do you have anyone you're close to that you can be yourself with? We all need to let our guards down sometimes, or else we'll go crazy.

I can empathize because I am very much about self-control (especially about the drinking part). I also felt like "bursting" at one point in my life, because no one knew who the hell I really was (hell, I didn't even know). I felt like I was going through some sort of identity crisis.

What I recommend is to find someone you're close to to talk to about this kind of stuff. Hell, go to a therapist, even. You just need to release or you're going to explode. Or even here! Talk about yourself here, or message someone who's willing to listen. Like me

 

Forgive me if this comes across as pedantic, but it's absolutely not the case that you have had these feelings of shame and fear all of your life. Nobody is born with the burden of shame and fear, so it has to come from somewhere. It's really important to understand and accept that as a fact. At some point in your life an event or series of events has shaken your self confidence and self belief and maybe that's what is inside the black box that you talk of. Maybe what you really fear is confronting the issues that have so defeated you.. up until now.

I don't like cutting and pasting lines from an original posting, but I think it's important to do so here:

Are you really all of those things TeaTree? Do you genuinely believe that you are a flawed, stupid, boring, horrible, crazy person who is not good enough?

All of those terms are utterly catastrophic and there is no wonder you see this as a huge problem. In applying all of those labels to yourself you are almost complicit in the sense of defeat. Never underestimate the power of language -- never underestimate how damaging words can be to our emotional wellbeing. The words don't have to come from other people because it's just as damaging if we turn those words against ourselves.

You are also attempting to get into the mind of other people and second guess their thoughts about you and that is never going to work. I'm sure there is a reason for it and based on what you have told us, I'm guessing it's due to some past event or situation (maybe from childhood) that has conditioned you to think and act this way. To say that other people have "managed to get over it" is minimising, or even invalidating your own feelings and you shouldn't do that. This is about you, not about them!

Two words particularly stood out from your posting because you repeated them several times, they are, horrified and terrified. Just consider those words for a moment and think about what they mean. Think about the feelings that accompany those words. It's powerful stuff, isn't it?

Would it be good for you to lose control and expose yourself to ANY reaction? No, probably not, but that's not to say you should ignore your feelings and keep the lid on your black box.

Brene Brown's comments have helped you to open up to us, but I would hope you might take it further and talk to a therapist about all of this. If you are going to open the lid on that box of yours and confront the pain, shame and fear that's inside it, you need to do it with someone who is qualified and well placed to help and support. The process will not be easy, but it sounds like you are mentally ready to move forward now. How would you feel about that?

This has been a super long post, but I think your posting deserved it and I hope it has given you some food for thought. Happy to talk about it some more, if you wish.

 

So what's in the box?

Unless you like hurting people without their consent, what could possibly be so bad?

Try and list it to yourself in five bullet points. (Not to me; from my point of view it's a rhetorical question.) Be concise. Be specific. I bet you'll find it isn't any worse than something I might write down. Or that even the Pope might write down.

 

Tea tree
I can really identify with what i share -
I have lived with shame all my life and it only this year that it is starting to shift -
Do not underestimate the long term effects of child trauma whatever shape that looked like - it's easy to think lots had this and got over it - but the reality is lots of people haven't and what we present as is not ness how we feel - as u so identify with -
Low self worth and esteem have been my core issues also

People pleasing and putting our best front on is indeed exhausting and when bottom is reached with it the only way is up

You sound self aware a good trait to have

Have you thought about using a therapist to explore this stuff ...
In my experience they can be very helpful and healing

Shame in my experience is a lie but process needs to happen to find that out -
My box contained other people's shit which was dumped on me and being something inherently wrong with me -
Who had something wrong with them - um it wasn't me - I was just a nice shy and scared girl
Claiming back power has and is a work in progress -
I have done the front and I have done the hiding - learning the middle ground is much better
Learning how to be real has come after I explored this stuff with a therapist and said I feel
Rotten to the core

Today I don't feel like that - I get some glimpses but I have strategies now and a firm belief that I am a good person and I am enough -
It is ok to be me

Congratulations on your insight and reaching a point where u absolutely want change and to reclaim yourself - now all its about is finding a way you can do it which is kind to you not harsh -
Shame is given to us - we just need to learn how to give it back to its rightful place
Best wishes

 

I can see where you're coming from because for 20 years I put on a false persona. It wasn't my spouse's fault, or my parent's fault or society's fault... but my own. Well, maybe it was society's expectations fault. I denied all the wild and crazy inside me... chalked it up to a few years of being a crazy 18-23 year old, and pushed it all aside. When in reality, (away from my parents, at college, unencumbered by the social mores of a white collar job) that was the only real me that ever existed.

Now it's all coming out, along with the might-be-gay thing, all the things I pushed down for so long are coming out. So I guess What I'm Trying To Say is that I hope you make an effort, either with Therapy or without, to reconnect to yourself. Your feelings and emotions.

Because I denied feelings and emotions as pointless, now they are all coming out at once. Please be kind and patient with yourself. You are a great person and I feel very similar to you and stevefs because of your stories.

You are good enough. And you may now have to completely change to be happy, I don't know, but you will probably have to change something, because you are saying what has been happening isn't working.

Identifying the black box and being conscious of it is a great first step, and it's where I am too.

 

TeaTree, I can absolutely relate to this. I felt free to be myself until I thought I might be gay when I was about 9 or so, and I knew I was different and that things weren't the same for me as they were for other people, and so I felt like I had to hide that part away. Only it wasn't JUST that part of myself; I had to hide a bunch of other parts of myself away. Anything that would make me stand out, mark me as different. I started building up secrecy and shame, hiding things even from myself.

The first step is not to burst that box open and let the whole world see it: it's to open it yourself and peek inside. If you can start examining the contents yourself, then you can start revealing what's in there piece by piece. But you yourself have to know what's in that dark space in order to be free.

Internalized homophobia/heteronormativity can make us feel great shame about who we are in our nature; as Patrick pointed out, these feelings did not come from within but were forced upon us by society. To not blame yourself is a really good first step.

 

TeaTree, I've mentioned before how similar our situations seem to be.
I too have an issue with not wanting to lose control. To the extent that I have never been drunk. Being drunk would mean being out of control.
When I'm a full member I will pm you more, if you want. It's far too personal to post on here.
But, please. Know that losing control voluntarily is by far the better option. Don't go through the hell I did because of fear.
You are an amazing woman. You really are. Let yourself be that amazing person. Lose just a little bit of that control. You need to.
Let yourself be you.

 

TeaTree,
(&&&)(*hug*)
So much of what you said here resonates with me. I too have felt much if the same shame and hsve censored myself, not jyst about sexuality but about many things.

I agree with whst some others have said about peeking into that black box just a little but at a time, and maybe trying to accept, embrace or let go of some of those things.

You may be surprised when you start to open up the box that some of those things do not hold as much power over you as you expect. It may be more emotional than expected too, so it is good to take it slowly.

Don't forget you always have EC to come for support through all of this,and if you haves trusted fruend to lean on, that can help ease the pain and apprehension too.

 

So. Many. Feelings.

TeaTree, I resonate with much of what you write on this board, and I feel as if I am much farther behind in the process than you. My therapist LOVES Brene Brown, and even gave me her newest book Daring Greatly to read, and I only made it halfway through because I was too depressed to read too much. I did laugh at the first sentence because I agreered vehemently with it. "I looked right at her and said, "I frickin' hate vulnerability."

YES.I hate the word, and I hate what it insinuates, that you have to show someone all your gross parts and hope they accept them. I was just telling my therapist last week how in the movie the Green Mile, the dude at the end while he is dying (sorry if this is s spoiler ) exhales all these black dots(? debris?) from inside him, and that is how I feel my inside is, black.

You describe your shame as a black box, and I can't even wrap my head around mine. Sometimes I think "you have no reason to feel shame about yourself," so then I think I don't have any. But then I spend week after week coming into my therapist's office, about 95% sure I did something wrong during the week and now she hates me and is going to fire me." I also am always convinced my landlady is silently making a case of all the things I do wrong and is just waiting for the day to kick me out and make me homeless, especially because I have a ridiculously awesome deal and wouldn't be able to live in this city if I didn't have it.
I also feel that way sometimes around work, and i've worked at the same place for 11 years. Just the other week the boss was meeting with the lead teachers in the afternoon, and all I could think was "OMG, WHAT DID I DO WRONG?! i am so fired!" which is not the first time I've thought this, and I HAVE been nearly fired because I was so depressed I was showing up late for work.

ANYWAY. I didn't mean to ramble.I told my therapist that I am tired of always waiting for that other shoe to drop. I feel like I am living a half-life. I can pay my bills and feed my cat and hold down a job. That isn't such a small thing I know, which then turns around into guilt for expecting or wanting or hoping for anything else besides that, just the tiny fact that I am miserable.

So I am guessing shame is wrapped up in there somewhere, but I don't know how to untangle it. I also have so much fear it is ridiculous. I still can't really confront or deal with the fact that I may not be straight. I don't really know HOW to figure it out, but I spent about 2 sessions in therapy discussing it, and then went on a downward spiral.

What I always wonder is, do people really walk the earth feeling good about themselves deep down? I literally do not understand and feel secretly everyone hates themselves

 

Yep, I relate to all of this so much too.

I started digging into my black box 20 years ago in therapy. (I'm 40 now.) The work has been excruciating. And it feels like it will never be done. And it has been the most worthwhile work of my life. I'm just starting to understand that my sexual orientation was part of that "if anyone ever knew EVERYTHING they would never want to have anything going to do with me". Some of it--like my sexual orientation--even I didn't know on a consious level, but felt shame anyway. For me a lot of it came from traumatic childhood stuff that I didn't EVER talk about until I was in my 20s. And I'll tell you what--not talking does its own kind of damage. So, here's to talking (in some form or another with people who are safe)!

Thank you for this thread! I have therapy tomorrow and have absolutely been dreading it because I'm obsessively thinking about some stuff that I really really really don't want to talk about. This is a nice reminder that it's better to talk.

Also I LOVED this quote:

 

Sorry I didn't read the other people's comments but I think that in that black box is the real authentic you. And I think you're scared because it's something totally unknown to you. It doesn't mean it's horrible or flawed, it's just new and unfamiliar because you're used to show your fake self and even believe it's real. But this fake self is just some kind of a picture, a virtual reality, a projection you've created over the years because you tried to be what people wanted you to be, we all do the same more or less. (*hug*)

 

This may not be other's experience, but a lot of what was in my black box was a whole bunch of junk that didn't actually belong to me that I picked up from others. I suppose some of it was actually my authentic self, but my feeling is that most of it really was never mine to hold on to.

 

I'm also a lesbian and also a highly sensitive person. We exist. And it's OK that we exist. And I totally agree that it is extremely important to the wellbeing of human types to embrace and accept who we are at our core--all of it.

---------- Post added 30th Oct 2015 at 01:37 AM ----------

Ohhhhh and tonight I had a loooong text conversation with another lesbian who us also a highly sensitive person. In fact part of our text conversation was about being highly sensitive people--I've known her for a long time but didn't know that about her and she didnt know that about me. Uh, and actually she also came out a bit later in life--in her 30s I think. There's probably like a whole tribe of us out there.

 

Oh my god, TeaTree. I have so much to say and absolutely no way to say it.

Is this what shame is? Ive always been conoletely guarded, TERRIFIED of losing control. Ive always been suicidal, i guess, maybe not exactly i wont kill myself i have too much responsibility but i just live each day as if its closer to death so i dont have to feel all this anymore. I'd rathernot exist.

All these pieces about myself, have always had their place and they were never, in my mind, related. I knew i was crazy, i knew the real me ws unlikeable, i knew i was probably gay but refused to acknowledge it because of what my life experience was, knew all thesethings but they all had a separate place in my self. Now they are all exploding basically into catostrophic mess and i feel "unfixable" i did not know this was shame, if i had amazing writing skills as you and a knack at expressing myself i could have written your post verbatim. Your thoughts scare me, and make me feel okay all at the same time. To see what i have done to myself written out BY SOMEONE ELSE. Is insane, and also makes me hurt for you cause this sucks.

I dont know what normal is i don't know how its suppose to feel to want life, to have this drive of fulfillment and happiness. I knew i lived in fear, i never associated my problems as shame...just being nuts and worthless...broken. What ia going on??

I echo the comments about therapy. I know i needd it too, still on the waiting list for thr next one i think thr last one did more harm than good. I hope you find a good one.

The box, that box, hiding deep inside, wish i could set it on fire and make all this go away.

Hugs to you x1000

I bet an irl conversation between you and i would be very interesting us trying to figure outthe appropriate response based off the other. Haha.

---------- Post added 30th Oct 2015 at 06:57 AM ----------

Tho we are opposite onthe sensitivtyside, ive never been. As a child i was toldi wascold, heartless, etc. I tend to use logic over feelings. But my feelings tend to be huge i can feel for things people situations so greatly i feel to adj unhealthy point. But i tend too use my brain over my feelings. Ive always associated sensitive with being easily upset or overly emotional. I'm neither of those, really. Well until recently ours always been a running joke in our marriage that my husband was the girl in the relationship. Recently it kind of flipped before all this came out he said i started acting like a girl and it was weird (some gender stereotyping for you). which is also odd considering i feel inore closely identifywith men. Ive always had a really hard time understanding women or identifying with them. Which is also why i thought i couldn't be lesbian and also went a long period of time saying i didnt hang around females cause i hated them LOL.

 

Yesssss! x a million!