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More on shame, rather long and maybe unfinished

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by LionsAndShadows, Jul 1, 2016.

  1. LionsAndShadows

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    This is rather long and rather personal and not particularly jolly. But like many other posters I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about shame. It feels unfinished and I may follow up with more. But having written it I thought I would post it to see whether you guys jive with what I have written.

    Here goes…

    Shame is one of the five primary human emotions. It is essential because we are pack animals; we rely on each other to survive. We experience the emotion of shame when we are aware that we have done something that alienates us from our pack. Shame is such a painful emotion that it forces us to seek to correct what we have done. Learning to avoid shame teaches us through our early lives to be accepted as part of our pack. Shame thereby helps us survive.

    In order for shame to work our pack – the social group in which we live - needs to set certain conditions on our behaviour. As young children we are constantly taught those conditions and we learn to abide by them very quickly, because shame is so painful, it is an emotion we must act to avoid.

    Many of the conditions society teaches us from the day we are born are related to gender roles. Fundamentally, you are a boy or a girl. Boys wear blue, girls wear pink. Boys play sports, girls play with dolls. Boys don’t cry, girls do that. Boys are physical, girls are emotional. And so it goes on. We are taught and we learn society’s conditions early in life.

    But what if we discover something about ourselves that we cannot change and yet which causes us to feel shame because that something transgresses the conditions we have learned?

    Throughout my childhood I was a boy who loathed sports, cried easily, I was emotionally sensitive, creative and essentially a gentle spirit. No one ever tried to correct these behaviours. Indeed, on the contrary, they were often praised or, at the worst, treated with compassion. But I had learned society’s conditions for being a boy. And by transgressing those conditions, at a subliminal level, I felt shame. And there was nothing I could do to change who I was, what I was like. I had no choice but to try to survive with that deep feeling of painful shame.

    Unable to alleviate the shame caused by transgressing society’s conditions of being a boy I sought the compensation of affirmation by bonding intensely to my mother who loved me unconditionally. When I was sitting on my mother’s lap being gently, lovingly cuddled I felt affirmation and the pain of shame was dulled.

    As we enter adolescence we are driven to rearrange our lives and to find a new pack. We are driven to move from the pack of the family to the pack of our peers – as boys we are starting the process of spreading our seed, we are all moving out into the world. And to achieve this the emotion of shame plays a central role. The rules of the pack become far more draconian. Everything is conditioned – how we talk, how we dress, what music we listen to, what trends we relate to, how we wear our hair, how we interact with each other. In adolescence shame codifies our entire existence.

    And sex plays a central role in this codification – after all we are, as I said, getting ready to spread our seed. So a central codification for boys is that we must be sexually attracted to girls.

    Except, I wasn’t. I was sexually attracted to boys.

    Now is the real crisis. Unlike in childhood, I didn’t want to seek affirmation from my mother’s love. I needed the affirmation of love… from a boy. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t change. Indeed, I didn’t want it to change because I knew, I absolutely knew beyond any doubt that it was from a boy I would find the affirmation of love.

    But my need for affirmative love transgressed the social conditions of my peers and was itself a source of intense shame.

    Now the love I needed equalled shame.

    I was alone and in shame and, unlike when I was a young boy, with no one who could take it away.

    I hid.

    The only antidote we can find when we feel the pain of shame is to hide. That is why we have a website called Empty Closets. The closet is where we seek an antidote to our shame.

    At some point most of us ‘come out’ as gay. And we hope, beyond hope, that coming out will alleviate our shame. But the shame has been there for years and years.

    Its tough.
     
  2. Weston

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    All I can say it that for me, a lifetime of shame dissipated rather quickly after I finally came out at 63. I think I can honestly say I now feel no shame for the fact that I am gay. Last weekend, after I finished marching in our local Pride parade, I stripped off with a friend and frolicked in the fountain at Seattle Center (a Pride tradition). Another friend posted a picture on Facebook (butts only), and the first person to comment wrote "Shameless = Pride," which still strikes me as rather profound.
     
  3. OnTheHighway

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    I appreciate what you have written, it is thoughtful and does a good job to articulate, albeit briefly, the evolution of shame which many of us experience. Recognising that not all paths are equal and we have each developed, seeked refuge from and are healing from it differently; it nonetheless reasonates.

    I have concluded that the best one can do to resolve shame is to recognise it is exists and live their life authentically. I wish it would magically disappear never to be felt again; but I have concluded that shame is held deep, and remnants of shame shall always exist.

    For me, by living authentically, I have cured myself from the effects of shame. But I live with it in my heart knowing it will always be a part of me. And I am OK with that. In an odd way, it sits there as a scar, with the wound fundamentally healed, but representing all that I have been through.
     
    #3 OnTheHighway, Jul 1, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2016
  4. LionsAndShadows

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    Dear OnTheHighWay,

    I feel compelled to thank you for your deeply felt response. And I agree. You have completed what I have written and much more succinctly that I could have done. We simply have to acknowledge what we have experienced, live with it in our hearts and move forward to a brighter tomorrow. It is not easy, but for our own sakes, it has to be.

    Thank you.
     
    #4 LionsAndShadows, Jul 1, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2016
  5. OnTheHighway

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    I have been trying to better define how I feel, express and manage shame, and posts like yours help me do that, and I would imagine others do so as well. So thank you!

    Adding to my last response to you, as time goes by, I seemed to better define for myself the meaning of shame. I feel to be at a stage where I like looking at my scars of shame; not yet at the point to simply ignore them. It's as if I continue to rub my fingers across the scar to feel it and know that it still exists.

    And in an odd way, I seem to find a sense of comfort from the scar. Without recognizing it then, while in the closet, I had live with the cloud of shame; it was a part of whom I had become. The closet I built provided a sense of security. Maybe a false sense of security, but security nonetheless. And shame was everpresent.

    I have made great strides on my journey and even today continue to push myself and make myself vulnerable. Like any other human, I do get anxieties at times and find I pause from forward progress every now and then and emotionally reconnect with shame.

    At times, I uncontrollably experience a full on shame storm, which are becoming farther and fewer between; and, as I have just more recently begun to realize, there are other times when I actually trigger shame on my own as some form of emotional embrace if you will. I guess this embrace is my way of pacifying my own demons from so many years in the closet.

    As I previously articulated, the struggle with shame is ongoing.
     
    #5 OnTheHighway, Jul 4, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2016