Shame

[Michel]

For four years, I have been forced to live in a 24/7 psychodramatic replication of the prolonged and brutal virtual captivity in which I had been held for more than a decade (the actual brutality beginning when I was 29, but the "relationship" which, unbeknownst to me was intended to lead to my enslavement and torment, beginning when I was 27) . My therapy has been gone about this way because of the depth of my denial about the whole crime, but the psychodrama has been so bizarre and unlikely and hideous and complicated, that enough about it. I mention this much to provide context and add only that every day I have tried desperately to understand what did and has been happening and fought with all my strength and mind for my freedom. I have been continuously morally outraged at this inconceivable violation of my person, appalled at how I am and have been treated, and suffering the most extreme constant pain of the complete social isolation in which I am forced to live.

In the very early hours of this morning, I woke up feeling all of the unbearable pressure that has been on my poor tired mind for so long now. I tried to wake my partner to tell him, feeling like I were dying and trying to save my life ('course I feel like that at lot, but more acutely even than usual). On waking for the day, I felt ashamed. I feel ashamed that I am who others have made me and that my life is still what others say it is. I have constantly felt anger and profound grief (over the loss of 20 years of my life, so far). Now shame too.

My mind is worthless until I am free. There is nothing (I have finally fully accepted) that I can do to free myself. It is wrong that I am held against my will and can be nothing but what I am forced to be. And still, now, I am ashamed of me for being nothing but the object of the actions and decisions of others.

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

I'm so sorry you are in so much pain! Reaching out for help is the path to healing! Don't give up!!

 

[Michel]

Thank you, Angelkeeper J. Since I am in inescapable 24/7 therapy, the idea of "reaching out for help" doesn't apply in any obvious way to my circumstances. I'm getting more help than I can bear and have no choice in the matter.

After writing earlier, I realized I hadn't got what happened to me this morning exactly right. I wasn't feeling ashamed of something. I was just feeling ashamed - no content, just an emotion. I think my brain was finally about to short-circuit last night and my emotions jumped in to save it. What our poor minds cannot bear is to live while not allowed to live as a person. I think that my suddenly feeling an emotion I have no reason to feel was a defense mechanism. The feeling of shame is the feeling of an agent - someone who acts well or badly and is or is not as she wants to be. In the context of complete human captivity (in which the captive lacks all freedom, including the freedom to decide what she will think about), the brain will die without some sort of self-deception. It is very difficult for our cognition to hop straight from believing what is true to believing what it knows to be false. So the defense mechanism is an emotion that provides a feeling inconsistent with helplessness. I suspect that, if I am kept in complete captivity, little by little my cognition will alter my beliefs to better conform to this emotion. Since we cannot tolerate "cognitive dissonance," my mind will make my beliefs conform to the emotion that at least gives me a chance to develop a coherent picture of a human life. I will become delusional.

This is where I was when my repitition-based therapy began - delusional, with reasonably intact self-esteem but an incoherent set of beliefs, many of which were obviously false (regarding facts) and some of which had certainly never been mine before (regarding values).

I, of course, would like this to mean my therapy is about to end. But I have been taught in the course of it that I must never hope. That way devastation lies.

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

(((gentle hugs)))

 

[Michel]

Many thanks.