The Wonderful Joys Of Shame

[goingonhope]

Experiencing Shame! - Shame From Any And Every Part And Word!

Does anyone have any experience they'd like to share, comments or is in a similar destructive choke-hold from shame?

If so and you'd like to share, please do so, as mine just isn't freakin worth mentioning, especially when I am presently severely self-critical and judging my every word and sentence as something I ought to be ashamed of. Just to plain real, vulnerable and threatening for me now and simply adds additional fear, self-disgust and emotional pain.

So anyone out there experiencing severe shame as it relates to depression and suicidal fantasy?

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

I don't have a lot of time so short answer is yes!

My T calls them shame attacks and I have them about everything.

So I relate and get it. You are not alone!

 

[Red Feather]

I just wrote about it in my journal. I am terribly ashamed of my voice. It is so high and if I am not well, I can barely speak. It is so constricted and tense. People around me tense up when they hear me. And they immediately figure out that something is wrong with me. :bag:

 

[mamachick]

Adults use to say to kids regularly-"shame on you". What the H does that mean?
Did they need to tell us that they were cursing us with shame?

As I peeled back the layers of unreasonable guilt, I found the shame that binds me. When you already have it, others will try to keep you where you are, as a person with shame will be easy to manage, to tame, to control.

 

[goingonhope]

Habituated and manipulative bullying can result in overwhelming fear, confusion, shame, depression and a desire to kill oneself.

The degree of difficulty in controlling another, will encourage and motivate another's manipulative efforts and its extent. Thereafter, relentless efforts and deranged success in bullying invites serious depression and with such, ...an imposed destructive structure, where suicide looks like a freeing, amazing route and escape out. Such a longing, fantasy and corrosive fear based imagination strengthens into one's desire to commit suicide. A craving even urges becomes the haunt.

Too often where there is shame controlling, there may not only have been such a gross imbalance and lack of exchanged power, but such may be present still and expressed, in and through fear/hate, intimidations, threat and while being carried out in cruelties. Therefore such an offending and re-offending dynamic with all is force and resulting losses surrounds and suffocates the spiritual and emotional/mental health of all participants and any witnesses.

So just as fear begets fear and unregulated criticism begets its same, ...likewise with hate too often at the creation of additional hate, and on and on, etc., etc with a whole list of things. Bullies certainly help create bullies who may bully and then beget bullying. Etc. Etc. ......And,

You'all got me thinking tonight in spite of and through a great deal of personal and emotional pain and grief.


:eek:..:yuck:..:arghh;..:wtf:..:cry:..:nailbiting:..:mad:..:cry:..:blackeye:..:sick:..:confused:..:grumpy:..:notworthy:..:cautious:..:depressed:..:bag:

 

[mamachick]

Even when I post here, I often think that maybe it is off topic, not enough, inadequate, and that leaves me with shame.

I feel like I have been shamed to death. Its absolutely contagious and a cycle most hard to interrupt, let alone break. I feel like since having ptsd, it has penetrated every cell of my body til it hurts. I also think that it is the culprit in many medical conditions.

 

[Shellbell]

I have so much shame and guilt I wouldn't know where to start.

 

[Philippa]

My most recent shaming attack was about a year ago, when my brother took it upon himself to shame me for stuff that I did to my mother 8 years prior, which he just felt like bringing up to be mean, along with other bad things I did as a child...as he seems to have this idea that I think he is bad, which is really just his own projections of feeling that he is bad. The comical thing is that his behavior IS bad, and he seems to think it's ok to be the way he is.

He made a deliberate attempt to pass off his own shame and guilt onto me, and although I told him that I wasn't going to be the scapegoat for this family's dysfunction anymore, my body counselor said that she detected that I had taken on his shame, when I had a session with her a few months later, and managed to release it.

He always apologizes later, but that doesn't stop him from escalating the behavior the next time I see him...and I seem to always go back for another serving of shit sandwich, for some reason?

 

[maddog]

I truly believe that shame is one of the deepest, most dabilitating and long-term damaging belief systems that a person can hold onto, and yes, I do call it a belief system, rather than an emotional or thought pattern, because it runs deeper and more permanent than any emotional state and at its worst can almost feel like part of one's entire self concept. That's often how I feel, and it's so hard to budge because it can't be disproven with examples of behaviour or other tangible "things" in reality, because shame isn't about behaviour, it's about who you are, or rather, who you believe yourself to be.

To believe that one is inherently defective, flawed, valueless, worthless, inadequate and in any other way wrong, is what I believe shame to be. I don't know how to cure it, it remains one of my greatest ongoing limitations of healing, and while I know that positive and affirming people, experiences and their desired effect on my self concept are some of the key ingredients, I often wonder if even these things are enough to touch the root of that shame.

A sad, painful, yet very relevant discussion, it's sad that so many of us can relate to it.

Maddog

 

[mamachick]

Oh Phillippa, I know that one. Im 53 and have sisters that tell me what I did when I was 5 repeatedly.

I do not know how to overcome either. I was once free of my childhood shame, or it held little meaning in my life. I think that I had overcome it. Then one thing after another happened. Little by little, the shame sunk in, worse than any childhood shame. I can still turn my sisters off. I do feel like I was not suppose to be. Like a mistake. I refused to believe this until an assault in 2008. Now Im a believer. Im broken.

 

[lighteningdarkness]

anyone out there experiencing severe shame as it relates to depression and suicidal fantasy?

God yes. In respect of the trauma incident - making him, not being able to stop him, not being in control, 'enjoying it'. It mainly manifests itself as intense self loathing, which is what drives the suicidal longing.

Which, in itself drives more shame.

More generally, nothing I do ever being good enough, having failed so badly, not to be able to do my job, not being able to beat this quicker, being so weak as to have PTSD, needing help and desperately trying to make sure no-one knows. And my T who I respect knowing all of this.

 

[Philippa]

I do feel like I was not suppose to be. Like a mistake. I refused to believe this until an assault in 2008. Now Im a believer. Im broken.

Gosh, I'm really sorry to hear that brat17.

It wears us down eventually it seems.

I woke up this morning feeling shame, and had to write down that it was my parents who destroyed this relationship with me...as much as they would have me take the blame for it, being open and honest about abuse ISN'T destructive to a relationship.

It 'should' be a healthy thing in any relationship...but when they are abusers and don't want to admit to it, they can twist anything around so it looks like I'm the one to blame, to take the focus off their own bad behavior.

I wanted it to not be there so much, this morning, but I couldn't not acknowledge that it was the first thing I felt when I woke up.

I feel terrible for hurting them by leaving, but I don't know what else to do when they won't respect my boundaries or continue to emotionally invalidate and negate me, despite me telling them repeatedly that it is abusive and how I feel.

They just laugh and think I'm a joke. Some "family" eh.