I know exactly what you mean. Exactly. And congratulations for both figuring it out much earlier than I did--but moreso, to have the tremendous courage needed to admit to something which has an even greater stigma, I think, than trauma--the allure of "victimhood"
Who would want to admit to that, after all? Only someone who honestly wants to get well, that's who! So that's the GOOD NEWS...if you REALLY were not ready to grow, to get well and improve--you would NOT be willing to admit to having a problem with being attached to staying where you are...because THEN you would be forced to change that, and move beyond it. Even if you began to get some inkling that this was a factor for you...if you TRULY weren't ready to get better, you wouldn't admit to it. Because in admitting to it, you've removed it as a possible sanctuary in which to hide. Make sense? So GOOD SIGN! Definite progress! It may seem paradoxical...but I honestly believe that it's true. So take heart!
And the quality most necessary to future growth is an talent for insight. Without it, after all, you aren't even aware of a need to change, would you?
So two positive scores in your favor already! Given these two things, especially--you stand a great shot at moving beyond where you are, up and out of it. With work. It's not easy, but you've done the hardest part already.
And you should be reassured with regard to your therapist's "firing" you--as exactly what you've described is the number one reason that therapists fire any client---why try to help someone who's identity is invested in not being helped? So at least you know that it wasn't some personal foible, unique to you, and so infinitely intolerable and outrageous..in fact, it's very commonly seen among clients/patients presenting for therapy.
I'm actually in the middle of a book about exactly this phenomenon--the working title of which is, currently, "Addicted to Shame".
This is a passage I recently mailed to a friend, about just what you're referring to. Hope you might find it applicable and helpful.
"I'm in the process of writing a book called “Addicted to Shame”... it's based around the idea that we become addicted to the rush of shame we feel when we condemn ourselves—that this intensity is not only addictive, but useful, in that it works as a "denial booster" drowning out real feelings, which are even more threatening in that we aren't in control of them (while we are in control of our “shame-fix”), and as they're familiar—representing what we've known from an early period in our lives, and so have become comfortable with, even in our misery (ie, it may be soft and warm, but it's still sh*t).And as perverse as it at first sounds...We are actually doing it in a misguided, attempt to feel good, instead—as bizarre as that sounds, at first.
Many trauma survivors have been habituated to shame, as a "defeated acceptance of our unworthiness", as representing the desired goal of our abuser(s)...and so therefore, what would gain us some form of approval by someone the abuser(s)..who had become in essence “God”, in the sense of having complete control over our lives.
So we redefined getting the abuser(s) approval by the act of “caving”--collapsing finally and accepting our powerlessness and hopelessness--as being “good"... if only unconsciously. It's what the one in charge wanted to see,finally, in order to relent/or show some satisfaction, after all.
So the abuse survivor is unconsciously programmed by this violence, as we are programmed naturally as human beings to incorporate reactions associated with violence or the threat of violence into our deepest consciousness, as an evolved means to ensure safety when next a similar threat appears in the wild—so that we react instinctively, reflexively to it in ways which have been successful in the past.
And showing a “break-down” of shame, of hopelessness in defeat, has been what has caused our "attacker" to relent in his/her abuse. We've no less than redefined this as "success" therefore—unconsciously. It successfully ended the attack, after all, didn't it? So we reflexively repeat this behavior, this habit which has been programmed into our pattern of insinct, of reactions---having been programmed into our subconciousness, as being associated, in fact, with success.
So we then begin to pursue it--instinctively and unconsciously--as well, getting the same associated sense of “goodness”, of success, out of it, as was bestowed upon us by the abuser(s), when they watched in satisfied approval as we finally crumbled. Then walked away in triumph—ending the act of attack. And Successfully ensuring safety from it.
Or, instead, of actual physical attacker(s), in attempts to please the “biggest parent” of all--God...if we felt we were responsible for something atrocious at some point, especially during youth. Then our self-shaming, the self-infliction of misery, was a matter of penance--after all, proof that we were not in fact evil, but good instead, by feeling appropriately 'all broken up over it', in shame. “Good people don't feel terrible for what they've done, do they? So if I feel terrible, I must be good, after all”. Yet again, an attempt at achieving a sense of "goodness" associated with success--by making ourselves feel bad. A habit of coping skills developed early on.
But in either instance, we're actually only “indulging”, when we engage in it.
And that's hard to accept—it's intended as righteousness, after all, often cast by "users" in terms of “being an adult and facing facts”, or “realistically accepting my limitations”, or “just being a realist, and not getting my hopes up" or simply as "feeling as bad as I should, as someone intrinsically and demonstrably worthless".Another attempt to feel good, by "doing your duty", in making ourselves feel "appropriately bad".
So to begin to see it instead, as “Giving in”, and “getting high” off of that rush...as something to reject and not "give in to"...isn't easy. It seems upside down. We've for so long associated it unconsciously with "feeling good for doing the right thing." So it slips under our radar.
But it's not easy to see getting high on anything as bad, is it? Even end-stage needle junkies and cirrhotic alcoholics continue to associate their chemicals with “good”, and have good associations with these even as they're conscious of being killed by them.
Until we can “flip that switch”, and fight those “urges to use”, whether as a foreign chemical, or as shame--as the enemies they truly are—we are doomed to the prison of addiction, just as any heroin addict or alcoholic—doomed to only react, and be a slave to our habits and sensations which reinforce them.
Just as an urge to drink or shoot up is the enemy—so is the urge to see yourself as “impure”, or “undeserving”, etc etc etc. You're still a prisoner of a habitual, familiar and endlessly repetitive small circles , without a chance to break out of them, and act freely, of your own volition, making conscious choices rather than just giving in to old patterns, automatically, as reflexive reactions.
You're still altering your own natural range of real, and so unpredictable emotions--with a giant sensation drowning all of them out. A sensation which you can control, and so feel safer in, than allowing unpredictable emotions to ebb and flow only naturally, arising as they occur spontaneously. And though your first instinct may tell you, "but shame is a horrible feeling, why would I want to indulge in that?", remember...that it's something with which you've long become familiar, and so comfortable.
Cocaine causes terrible paranoia--not something you'd automatically associate with a "good feeling"...yet people still become addicted to it. Daredevils become addicted to "the rush" of endangering their own lives...even though you wouldn't think of overwhelming fear for your life as something positive.
Because we become addicted to intensity. Any overwhelmingly intense experience. "The Rush", in whatever form. And when we feel overwhelming shame, we do "get a rush" from it. We are overwhelmed by its intensity.
But more--it's an intensity we're familiar with, rather than the unknown of feelings we can't control, and so may which are threatening in their alien nature. It's the "Devil you know" which is always better than the "Devil you don't know". And for someone who's long been oriented towards thinking of the world as a dangerous place...it's natural to assume that the "Devil of pain you know" will be better than the "Devil of pain you don't know". At least in the Devil you know, there is the comfort of the familiar, after all.
But there's more. And it all fits neatly into the trauma survivors M.O., the patterns of reaction established by trauma.
For example--It's only a common need in children--to feel significant. And it's one even more pronounced in a trauma survivor, who's necessarily had his/her value diminished, in the process.But we're only interpreting that need for significance, for specialness, into a representation we're already familiar with and reoriented towards—a sense of unworthiness. Upside down, even in our pursuit of adequacy of "being special somehow"—we get this sense in a trauma-oriented version--of feeling "uniquely inadequate"...and so "special", therefore--that we're so special as to have that unusual quality-of being "uniquely inadequate", our attempts to achieve significance, and so a sense of "adequacy". Upside down, again, in the same way that we've unconsciously associated making ourselves feel bad--shame, unworthiness...in attempt to feel good--the approval of our abuser seeing us crumble in shame, of God smiling down on our penance, of the act "successful" in finally resulting in our abuser's breaking off the abuse, at having achieved his/her goal---just as school yard bullies continue to bully, until they see the look of defeat and misery on their target's face...and so, having "won", move on.
Most grow out of this need for “specialness” in the course of maturation, as a stage to be passed through. But do you know what happens when addicts begin using drugs/alcohol to the point of addiction?
Emotional maturation stops. That's why chemical addiction specialists say that addicts are only as emotionally mature as they were at the time they began to use addictively. Because emotional faculties cease to evolve freely and naturally at that point, when they're drowned out by an overwhelming, artificial sensation. And while the sensation of shame may have been very real, at first--under the attack of the abuser...when we self-inflict it, ourselves, as a habit, regularly...it becomes a version of a drug...superimposed over a real emotional life, and so causing it to grind to a halt, just as with regular use of a chemical, which does the same.
And if your emotional faculties are constantly awash in the intense effects of a self-inflicted sense of shame/unworthiness...they are not evolving and changing freely, either. It is a false, self-imposed and overwhelming sensation which blocks out all others. Just like a foreign chemical which alters feelings. Overriden by this intense, artificial, self-administered experience, emotions are prevented from naturally ebbing and flowing and developing finer degrees of variegation, layers of complexity, over which we then learn to develop greater control and conscious awareness.We remain emotionally stunted because we lack the opportunity to practice with the material, after all.
There is a clinical term for this phenomenon, in more and more regular use: The Adult Child. Initially it was almost exclusively applied to addicts who had become so emotionally stunted through their drug use. But with more and more study, and awareness, it has come to be applied in most cases where the trauma survivor experienced severe trauma, while young--and so has remained emotionally stunted, stuck at that point.
The normal range of our emotional faculties is being drowned out by shame. Then self-re-inflicted out of habit, should we begin to forget the sense of worthlessness momentarily--as it is an evolved reflex unconsciously associated with success, instead. It then becomes our identity, just as the drug addict's drug use becomes his/her own identity, in time. The addict begins to think in terms of “well, who would I be, without the drugs my life now revolves around? I have no idea! Where would I start? What would I do? How would I know how to think of myself?” And the same goes for giving up that shame-fix.Who would you be then? You know who you are when you are worthless. That's an easy, well delineated and predictable road. You have a simple role to play. But what would it mean if you were to drop it, and have to become "real", to figure it out as you go along, and be forced to move forward, rather than being provided with a ready excuse to remain prostrate?
What was even harder for me to accept than seeing this reaction pattern as an addiction...was that this was a form of arrogance, a lack of humility, as well—it is after all, only a different way of saying “I'm so special”...it's just an “I'm so special that I'm uniquely undeserving—everyone else may be deserving ,but not me! Because I'm that special!”. It seems bizarre to recognize it in those terms. But true. It all adds up that way to the subconscious mind. It's not consciously so, of course,
It's not a conscious arrogance, therefore, of course, but that's what it amounts to. And it is not the arrogance of the villain. No, it is instead just the expected arrogance of the child...the Adult Child we remain...having been emotionally stunted in our youth by the shame associated with our trauma, and our habituation towards reinflicting of it upon ourselves, resulting in the "rush" which drowns out and so prevents the growth of the natural emotions beneath.
So how does one "kick" an addiction? The first step is admitting you have the addiction, obviously. Until you see your urges to use as bad, you can't very well combat them, can you?
You begin to define it as foreign, and attack it, as you would an intruder breaking through your window. No less. It is not only "not you"...it is masquerading as a part of you, in order to destroy you, surreptitiously--and as such, to remain indefensible against.
It doesn't belong here, anymore. It belongs to the little girl who thinks she's dirty, and condemned, for being used by someone she trusted, and so has been devalued—and so therefore "deserves to feel just that way". It belongs to the woman refused love and intimacy, and railed against and derided—who was eventually convinced that she had no reason to expect anything better, really—that to hope for more was silly and pointless.
It belongs to that inner child, using it as a fix in hopes of gaining at least that one form of specialness, that one form of approval, that one sense of success...as all others had been removed, as options.
And whenever you feel that “rush” of shame, the hopelessness that goes with it—even though by now it's become a familiar friend, you've built a “tolerance” to it--you recognize it for what it is—the old you, and its addiction—and you refuse it.You refuse to claim it as your own, or any part of you.
It's “what she deserved”, after all—though in her mind, she understood differently, on an intellectual basis...but hope is not intellectual, not a matter of assurance of mathematically calculated probabilities. Hope is a feeling we either commit to, and feed--or give up on, and turn our backs to...and having given up on it so long ago...and having become addicted to feeling the very opposite, it became such an underlying thread of the early development of our self-concepts...that we have continued the practice, just as we all do what we are accustomed to from an early age, and just as all have the instinct to use a controllable, and familiar, intense feeling, to drown out the unpredictable cacaphony of feelings which lies beneath.
If, as it's been said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance", then this goes doubly for any addict--as any one of whom in recovery from addiction will acknowledge. It is only too easy to begin to see the urge to use again as the relief of the familiar, to welcome the rush of intensity drowning out and simplifying a tangle of new, alien emotions, to associate it again with the "good" it has for so many years stood for--rather than the destruction it actually represents. It is, after all, only habit, to give in. To resist means to grow, with all the challenges and opportunities for failure that growth represents, the lack of a ready excuse to avoid doing so, and the unpredictable reality we've so long avoided in a fear of an expected negative outcome in a threatening universe. It means real feelings, and a real identity, after all, without a ready-made blue print of expectations we can fulfill by wrote, in order to stay within the already acceptable lines of a two-dimensional character we've played for so long--confining, but safe, and easy to fulfill. All we have to do is continue to fail, after all, don't we? Who could fail at that?"
I've yet to complete the "treatment outline" portion. But a short version is to simply "practice mindfulness"--to make a point of noticing when they arise, and to externalize them, rather than thinking of them as natural expressions which are a part of you, yourself--step back and notice the sensation, alone, as you would water down your back, or a gust of hot air. And so begin to detach from the.
But until the urge to self-shame is recognized for what it is...the enemy..and resisted.we will remain addicted to it, and in addiction, fail to grow.
