Startling awareness about shame

It is wonderful being seriously older (64), experiencing a string of startling fresh takes on long ago events & issues.  

Been recently thinking a lot about shame.  Realized that I grew up without any awareness of it.  None.  In the same way that a fish isn't aware of water - it's all around him & unless he leaps out of the water into the air & back again, he wouldn't have a clue that it is, let alone how to describe it.  

That was my mega AH HA! the other day - my life was weirdly hallmarked by living in such a pervasive environment of shame, it didn't consciously register.  Yet, like that fish & his water, there it was, all around me.

Looking back over my early years - 7 to 13 - am horrified at things I did that most people would have shrunk away from even contemplating, let alone doing, because it would have made them feel so shamed, even if not found out.  Feeling a sense of shame never occurred to me.  Is it possible to feel shame if you don't have even the teeniest shred of self worth?

It was fascinating, realizing how I grew up in an environment so filled with unspoken shame, it was my background norm.  That die was already cast - imagine how its effect was compounded by the impact of Ian's violent death & my family's inability to articulate their grief around it.

The beyond-belief, debasing things I did were tied to having not a scintilla of respect for my body or my self.  As an adult, that translated into getting interested in guys who had absolutely no interest in me and/or were utter cads.  Until my mid-30s, I was the quintessential cad magnet - if there was one within 5 miles, I'd find him.  

Luckily, I am not a fool.  Got to the point where I realized, "This doesn't work for me.  Lesson learned.  You deserve better."

For me, 1988 was the year the light finally dawned that I deserve better.  Realized that was true about my person & my self.  In February 1989, John & I connected.  Could not have happened the year before - had to have the sense of being worthy of such a fella, which wasn't true until Dec '88, when a friend helped throw the final switch lighting a fact I'd buried long ago - that I had a bedrock, birthright sense of self worth.

It's just so astonishing, looking back at all the years that came before, realizing that I felt no shame over the personally debasing things I did because it so completely surrounded me that it felt normal. I was a little fish swimming in a sea of shame. 

My sense is that Dad was the only one in my family to not have a wretched sense of his self worth.  And I doubt he ever caught onto how poorly my sibs & Mom felt about themselves - my guess he never realized that they fixated on their lack rather than their blessings.  Either that, or he just didn't know what to do about it. 

Looking back, Mom, Peter & Mim seemed shockingly devoid of a sense of a sense of self.  Peter never seemed content with being who he was, longed to be someone, something it was impossible to be.  Mim seemed to reject her self.  Mom called up a counselor when she was 88, when she realized she hadn't a clue about who her self was.  

 

If self respect, self worth & self love start with self, what happens when you don't have a sense of self?  Where Mom disavowed her separate self and Peter & Mim despised their self, at least they each had some sense of it.  I had none.  Beyond bizarre.


What I'm doing with my startling new awareness is reaching out with love & compassion to that little girl, that tween, that young (& not-so-young) adult.  Y'all never felt shame because you lacked the fundamental self-worth needed to BE ashamed.  And that fresh insight is going to be a source of my ponderings for quite an interesting while.