My issues with shame and fear

The part in bold, I feel you 100%. Logically, I know I am not terrible, nobody-person, but somewhere deep inside I DO feel that.

Also, I almost wish (not really, and i promise i am not trying to minizimize/diminish anybody's experience) that I could point to some terrible traumatic event from my childhood, where I could go "Ahhh, that fucking sucks that happened to me, and I get why I act/feel the way I do." Except I don't have that to point to, so I am stuck feeling guilty about feeling bad.

 

Hi I am hsp too -
I am learning now what helps me and also learning to accept myself a little more
Elaine Aron has a website that u may like to look at and a good book also

 

I had some experience something along those lines... several years before I was finally diagnosed with autism in my mid-40s, someone I knew from a support group meeting said I seemed to have many of the traits of a sexual abuse survivor. This was also when I was still deeply closeted, but conflicted enough that I sure wasn't at peace inside regarding sex. So I chose to start seeing a therapist who specialized in sexual abuse survivors. I made the mistake of telling my family that I was doing this, and God knows what they thought I was thinking. The therapy led nowhere (except that the therapist was very happy with a new car which I had helped pay for). I finally discontinued seeing her.

That was 20+ years ago, and the picture is somewhat more clear to me now... and I'm about to start seeing a specialist in addition to my regular therapist, and finally take a good look at sex-in-general. This will involve looking at some of my greatest fears, sense of failure, confusion... you name it. But it's time, because if nothing changes nothing changes, and I really want some more inner peace and inner-and-outer expression of who I really am, even though I'm not real sure what will come out or how...

 

I can relate so much TeaTree. All my life I've also felt like I am flawed. A non-human, non-person. Fear of ridicule, of being shamed. Some of it has to do with being a highly sensitive person. But the reason for my being flawed? What is it that's wrong with me, then? What is it that people must never find out about me? I never could answer that. It's just this thing. This sensation.

I've just had this sense that I need to work very hard to pass as a real person. Because inherently I don't know how to do the correct thing, I'm so flawed I don't know how to be a real person.

One thing I want to say: please don't think that most other people went through hard times as kids but somehow magically managed to get over it. We all compensate for the hardships we've been through in complex ways. The issues we deal with just don't usually show on the surface.

I understand your urge to lose control!

You seem to have great intuition. Please follow it. As you are changing right now, you'll likely shift in and out of versions of your old self and the self that is up ahead. It's not too late for anything. The person you were or half-are, or rather the patterns that don't serve you anymore will continue to kick in, and whatever mindset you end up in will feel like the most real thing in the world - in that particular moment. But nothing is static or constant, and you have many selves within you, some of which you will be leaving behind, and some new selves that are now opening up to you.

confused04 (and others too - so cool to read everyone's input!), there's a book called "There Is Nothing Wrong With You" written by zen teacher Cheri Huber. The subtitle is "Going Beyond Self-Hate". Her theory is that the bitterness and pain and worry that we all feel, whether we project it onto others or blame ourselves, stems from self-dissatisfaction. Blaming and criticizing ourselves, and trying to alter ourselves is something we learn. It's part of social conditioning for everyone. I highly recommend this book.

This is the thing. There's been the trauma of simply growing up, for all of us, even in the best families and circumstances. We've all been taught how we should be, how to modify and regulate ourselves, often through shaming ourselves ("I must NEVER do that!!") so that we can be a "good" person, acting and thinking like "good" people are supposed to. We all have our own individual idea of what a "good" person is, and we all work so hard not to be "bad", not to think "bad" thoughts or have "bad" emotions. The book can give some insight to that process.

Exactly! :icon_bigg

Great thread!

Cheers for the international highly sensitive lesbian tribe :icon_bigg

 

Yes! I don't feel like a "real" adult. My therapist has asked me what does a "real" adult look like to me, and I say I don't really know, as I hold down a steady job, live alone and can pay my bills, and have a cat...so its not like I am living at home with the parents. Yet, I still feel stuck in some weird teenager-land on the inside.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I'll look into it. I love hearing other people's perspectives on this, and it does help me to hear i am not hte only one who feels these things.

 

I decided to look up "adolescent" in an online dictionary, and what came back was "in the process of developing from a child into an adult." As a kid I thought of adults as finished products, "all grown up". Given the choice, I'd much rather be unfinished and still growing for as long as I live, never completely understanding others, myself or life itself. That way, any given day offers the chance to learn more, grow more, heal more... well, you get the idea :icon_bigg

 

Sorry to go back into a thread thats now a few weeks old but I was browsing through and doing some reading and came across this. Confused04, totally hear you. This resonated with me strongly- like I keep waiting for someone to come and take over my life, to make the decisions for me. Like I'm playing grown ups. I don't know the solution or whether you ever feel like you 'grow up' but I wanted to say you're not the only one! :lol:

 

Well, that is helpful! I keep bringing this up to my therapist, and she keeps trying to normalize it. She says that it is ok to feel fear, and that not everyone has to have the same cookie-cutter life in order to feel successfull. I see what she is trying to say, and maybe I am not getting my point across clearly enough, but I don't want to be ruled by my fears, and I can't see any way not to. She did say that I am not paralyzed, because I can hold down a job despite my anxieties that one day I will walk in and just can't handle it anymore. I do go to therapy each week, so I am trying. I just don't hold much hope that things will be different, to which she says that we need to take it one day at a time and not think about my entire future in every moment, which apparently depression likes to do.