Shame and vulnerability, trust and connections...

I want to try and write a bit about counseling before the morrow because surely my waters will be troubled even more in the next appointment.  To do so, I wanted to capture a few things I've been pondering:





I started here, in learning about shame.  I have watched this several times and taken notes.  There are many things I want to say about this, but the first thought, or rather the strongest thought came at the end, when Dr. Brown said that the three things that cause shame to grow exponentially are: secrecy, silence, and judgment.

I wanted to scream.   I still do!  I want to scream then what hope is there for me?  Because child abuse is born in secrecy.  You are coached and taught to keep the secret.  Keeping the secret mean silence.  Even if no coaching exists, you learn not to speak about things that others don't want to hear.  You look at what your life is like and those around you and you keep silent.  Too much doesn't make sense.  Besides, children are hardwired to believe adults are right, even when they are being harmed by those very people.  And then, when you do speak, there is judgement.

That is one of my deepest wounds.  I spoke and I was told to keep silent for the betterment of the church, to not hurt the church, to not hurt Jesus.  Silence to protect family, church, school, jobs and to not be condemned for causing the worlds of other people to fall apart ... not that it is your fault.  Judgment for no longer being a virgin.  Judgment for struggling.  Judgment for what you did to cope, to survive.  Judgment for weaknesses.  For doubts.  For fears.  For tears.  For shame.  For hating the body that God created.

I heard those words at the end of the talk and really forgot all else that came before.  So, I had to listen again and again and again to even begin to grasp the depth of what she points out about shame vs. guilt.

Shame is I am bad.
Guilt is I did bad.

Shame is I'm sorry I am a mistake.
Guilt is I'm sorry I made a mistake.

I am a mistake.  What do I do with that?






In her talk, Dr. Brown states that the antidote to shame is empathy.  This is an animated short video (yes, I still loathe animation) that defines empathy and contrasts it with sympathy in a very practical way.

The second talk by Dr. Brown that I am pondering is The Anatomy of Trust.  I cannot figure out how to embed this video and I also have yet to decide how much I wish to try and write about it.  In short, while I have a better understanding of why it is difficult to trust other people, I also realized, sadly, that the lack of trust is two-way.  I do not have people in my life who trust me, who have a trusting relationship with me.

At the risk of preventing you from actually watching the video, I dare to write the outline of her anatomy of trust:  B.R.A.V.I.N.G.  Braving connection.  The pieces that make up trust are Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-Judgment, and Generosity.  It is easy, I think, to assume you know those words, but I found her talk informative as to what they mean with regard to trust.

Take non-judgment, for example.  That means I can fall apart, be in struggle, and ask for help without being judged by you and you can fall apart, be in struggle,  and ask for help and not be judged by me.  But also it means that asking for help is reciprocal.  If one is always the helper, then there is not a trusting relationship.  Also, as in my case, if you despise (or have any kind of self-judgment) your own need for help, you cannot truly be non-judgmental toward another.

It occurred to me that, aside from the friendship I write of below, and a brief one whilst I was working in the affordable housing industry, I have not been viewed as trustworthy and I believe that lies with me, with that which I lack.

I had a friend for 22 years.  Then, just as she was discovering one of her long-term friends was actually the love of her life, my life started to crumble.  She married.  We lost touch.  And despite now three years of calling her and trying very hard to have a relationship with her again we are practical strangers.  Watching this video for the umpteenth time this afternoon, I realized the difference in our relationship.  She no longer trusts me.

What do you mean, Myrtle? She no longer is vulnerable with me.  Vulnerability is a one-way street between us.  Our is not a trusting relationship.  I inherently recognized the lack and have been trying to forge a path back to where I carried her heart, but there is no going back.  When I was getting ready to have the pacemaker surgery, which was not a guarantee of surviving, probable but not a guarantee, I wrote letters to say thanks to those who have been kind and merciful to me.  I tried calling this friend three times, but had no return call.  I think, in me, something broke.  Three years of trying was enough.  Now that I understand better what I was missing, I still yearn for the friendship we had.  But I also recognize that she built a different life for herself that no longer has space for me.

In the relationships I have now, I am the one who is vulnerable.  I am the one who seeks help.  I am the one who is, basically, desperate for connection.  But that word comes a bit later.  In short, there is truly only a one-way street.  I an befriended in merciful and even profound ways, but I do not experience the intimacy of trusting relationships.




And so I wend to this fourth video on vulnerability.  From here, it is hard to speak, hard to write.  For what I realized brought me back to the trouble with bonding and to a great ... absence ... in my life.

Dr. Brown's research is on shame and vulnerability.  Her research on trust, obviously, arose from her work on vulnerability.  Her research on vulnerability arose from her research on shame.  And it is in the former, briefly addressed in this TED talk, that I realized that a core problem with me is that I do not have connections.

In her words, connection is why we are here, what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.  When talking about shame here, she states that it is a fear of disconnection.  In fact, shame unravels connection.  I am bad.  I am a mistake.  Shame comes down to a sense of worthiness.  People who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they are worthy of love and belonging.

I listen to her words and it hits me, anew, that worthiness is at the heart of all of this.  I did not believe I was worthy of the care I received in the hospital or the effort to switch nurses that night.  But it is more than care.  I do not believe that I am worthy of love or belonging.  The latter is especially deep-rooted because I do not have the kind of connections Dr. Brown is speaking of when she talks about trust and vulnerability.

My strongest connection is with a puppy dog.
What does that say about me?

If you are young and adults are hurting you or at best not protecting you, it is difficult to learn trust and in a family with alcohol and anger and all sorts of issues, it is difficult to make connections.   It is my sorrow that I have no real connection to either of my siblings, as both of my parents lack(ed) trusting connections to their siblings.  B.R.A.V.I.N.G. was not a part of our family.

The reality is that I do not belong to anyone or anywhere.  I have no real place in the world, which makes living with chronic illness even more lonely than it inherently is.  And the rub is that I have no clue how to make connections.

In her talk on vulnerability, Dr. Brown quotes Maya Angelou:  "I don't trust people who say they don't love themselves but say 'I love you'."  It is based on an African proverb:  Be wary of the naked man offering you a shirt.  I think it is easy to be dismissive of Angelou's quote because so much has been hyped and distorted when it comes to the concept of self-love.  But, to me, the proverb speaks for itself!

I do not speak the words "I love you" unless pressed to do so because I do not feel or see love in me.  So, I had a bit of relief there, but I absolutely get the absurdity of my nakedness and holding out a shirt to Becky or Mary.  It is not just that I don't trust myself or even love myself.  I do not believe I am worthy of any of those things.  That is the core, really, of my problem with Jesus dying on the cross for me.  Gosh, I want to believe the for me part.  I believe the world part.  But not the former.  I cannot in any way, shape, or form believe that He would look at me with anything other than the revulsion I hold toward myself.

I think that is, in large part, to the rejection I faced in church and in dating Christian males when the truth about my "state of being" came out.  Not being a virgin, even though I had absolutely no choice in the matter, made me not of marriageable material.  Several guys I dated broke off the relationship with me because I was not marriageable material.  But even those guys, as others, treated me differently.  Because I had "experience" I was pressured to be far more physical than I ever wanted to be in those relationships.  As I learned at an early age, even with those guys, I shut up, was still, and waited until it was over.  To give a specific example, none of them ever kissed me without the use of a forceful tongue.  I never got to experience a soft, gentle kiss.  Physicality was never really about me, what I wanted or what I needed.

It is devastating to be pondering the things coming up in counseling.  I mean, it is good, in a way, to have pieces of the puzzle that make sense, that fit me, but they are devastating, ugly pieces to me.

I have been thinking a lot about how, when Becky visited in August, I wanted her to brush my hair.  She said she would, but never did.  I wanted the same when she came for the surgery.  Again, it did not happen.  The little girl in me was craving comfort.  And it has occurred to me that the one comfort that I received as a child was when I was a teenager, no longer really a child.  My grandmother, an angry violent drunk, was sweet and caring when sober.  Given that she was a social drinker, in my teenage years, after my grandfather was dead and whenever my uncle was not visiting, I experienced the sober, sweet, and caring woman.

In fact, nearly every day after school whilst in high school, or at least as much as possible, I spent time with her.  She would drive to my high school (really dangerous as that point, if I think about it), I would get behind the wheel and we would either go to Taco Bell or we would go to her house.  If we went to her house, I would usually end up sitting in her lap as she brushed my hair.

Really, that makes two things make sense.  I have been asking and asking and asking for someone to go out to eat with me, to have a meal out together.  And I have yearn with a longer that truly is deeper than words for someone to brush my hair.

Last week, my counselor said that she would like to set a goal for her to hug me, for me to be okay with that, in six months time.  Frankly, that is no where near enough time in my opinion.  But I do not what her to hug me.  I barely want Becky or Mary to do so, although every once in a while, I think about Mary giving me a hug ... what that might be like.

The most ... embarrassing ... thing that came up last week was that I let slip that I absolutely adore how Mary says my name.  In fact, sometimes I call her just so I can hear it.  My counselor pushed and pushed and pushed me to put words to how it makes me feel.  I am still in shock at what eventually came out of my mouth:  It makes me feel love.

But what do I know of love, I protested LOUDLY after that admission.
Loudly and dismissive of what I had just spoken.

I think a sixth month goal could be her brushing my hair, since she believes that whilst we are getting to that hurt little girl getting there is not the point.  Comforting her is.  Only, well, I do not like the idea of a counselor brushing my hair.  Or hugging me.  SIGH.

Mostly, all of this leaves me with little hope.  A whole lot more answers and a greater understanding of myself, but little hope.

It also leaves me with this overwhelming desire to get off Facebook again, even though it is really my only connection to the world.  I mean, take the post I wrote the other day about hearing the doctor and her nurse acknowledge that dysautonomia changes you.  I wrote about change and pretending.  I stood naked before my small circle of friend and in a forum that is built around comment, there was none.  Barely there was any acknowledgement ("likes") of what I said.  It hurt, deeply, to have written my heart and have it (what I felt) ignored.  It reinforced how I do not feel as if I belong anywhere, am a part of anything, not even an online ... group.

Ah, but Myrtle, Facebook is intended to be a platform for vulnerability.
SIGH.
If not there, then where? asks the hermit.

Certainly not in church.  I learned that lesson, thoroughly ... painfully.  Odd though, the most intimate and vulnerable book of the Bible is the Psalter.  Talk about B.R.A.V.I.N.G.!  Psalm after psalm either claims or cries out for the building blocks of trust from God.  Emotions about.  Doubt exists.  Fear overwhelms.  Longing abounds.  Connection with God.  The ultimate meaning behind our existence.

Gosh, I am almost dreading what might come up tomorrow.  I am not ready to learn more things about myself just yet....