Instinctively. Intrinsically. Ineffably. We long for that which we've never known: connection with our Creator. Such sorrow Adam and Eve must have borne knowing what they lost when that connection was broken in the garden. It was a sorrow God shared with them until their deaths. On down through the millennia, it is a sorrow He bears alone.
In reading the research book on shame, I have begun thinking about connections in various ways. Lying in bed the other night, I began thinking about the connection with God that we all long for, whether we understand that or not. It is a connection that we have never experienced, never known. I marvel at its power. At the hunger in my soul.
Lying in bed, I grabbed my phone and wrote about that. It was one of the few times of late that I was able to write what it was that I wanted to say, that the words came out in a way that I found satisfying.
Someone posted this on Facebook. I saved to my phone and computer because sometimes you just need a smile.
Of course, I have reason to smile every single day. My little Fluffnuter just loves his weighted blanket.
And the comfort of his babies whilst anxiously awaiting me to get off the recumbent bike. He lies atop several and chews on a few and pulls out many, many, many of his babies from their bed for companionship.
This is my copy of Dr. Brown's book on shame research. All my annotated sticky notes sticking out the side.
I read a chapter. Then I read it again to highlight it. Finally, I read it again to add the sticky note annotations.
I think the book is important to me. I think that learning shame resilience is my hope. So, a while ago, I bought a journal after thinking that I wanted to take notes on the book, to approach it more like when I studied back in graduate school. I bought a journal, because I wanted the notes in something that I could keep. And, maybe, do some personal writing in it at the end.
It took me a while to work up the energy and cognitive wherewithal to start taking notes. Slogging through thinking is so very difficult and hurts my heart to know how much that has changed, to see what I have lost. However, taking notes, reading the introduction and the first four chapters again, I noticed more than I had the first three times through. Writing helped me to concentrate.
When I was taking notes, I came across two passages that I realized I wanted to share with the integrative medicine specialist. I realized that I wanted to bring the book to my next appointment. The appointment I have deeply feared since the moment I stumbled my way out of her office in January. I was so very afraid. Actually, I was ashamed and I have learned that I was afraid.
Then, it hit me that I haven't really been ... clear ... about what I thought was important for me to talk about in counseling. I mean, I really want my counselor to tell me what she thinks is important to talk about as she reads the chapter. Take the passage about how the brain stores trauma, all trauma, the same. I had missed that and it helped me to ... I don't know ... maybe ... judge myself less.
So, I went upstairs to my sticky note stash and went through the four versions of GREEN to choose one for a different sort of annotation. At first, I wanted the strongest GREEN, thinking I needed an affirmative visual message for myself. Then, I changed my mind and went for the softest shade because I need much, much, much more gentle in my life still. I went through the notes and the book and added the GREEN stickies to the top of the page, rather than the side.
Today, in counseling, I mentioned what I had done with my counselor and she was willing to start talking about them.
"When I feel shame, I'm taken back to this place of smallness where I lose that sense of context. I'm returned to a small place—I can't see everything else. It is just a small, lonely place." (Brené Brown, I Thought I Was The Only One [But I Wasn't], p. xxii)
A small place. That was/is my first annotation. I couldn't say why, but that phrase resonated with me. In fact, as I was reading the passage to my counselor, it struck me that she used the word "small" in some form three different times in such a short passage. This woman speaking of shame was describing something I did not yet understand, but knew was important to me.
What I needed was what my counselor did: she helped me understand the why of that phrase.
I took micro notes on my sticky note, but I wish I could have captured more of the discussion so that I could remember it later. What I think was most important was her helping me identify what smallness meant to me: 1) being insignificant and 2) being small again, being a child.
When my counselor spoke the word insignificant it resonated with me. She was using several words and that one stood out. Wait, can you say what you said again? It's a good thing she has a better rememberer than I do.
Chapter four is about the second element of shame resilience: critical awareness. In the intro, in what this woman was sharing about when she was in shame, you first read about losing the context of what is happening, of what you are experiencing. Critical awareness is seeking/gaining/learning the context of your shame experience. However, being awash in overwhelming emotions and, especially for me, in the stress mode of fight, flight or freeze, it is difficult to see that you are not alone, that others struggle, and that the shame is coming from outside of you.
That small place for me, being a child again, a bad child, paralyzes me and I want to flee, either physically, mentally, or both. Insignificant. What I want or think or feel doesn't matter. I am brushed aside. Diminished as a thinking person who has value.
A place of smallness.
A place where context is not possible.
A place where hope is absent.
A place where fear reigns.
The words I saw written so ... carelessly ... on my discharge notes after that appointment in January felled me. They frightened me. They shamed me. In one moment all that I have been working toward when I finally managed to call the counseling program to ask for help, to try at healing again, was erased. Wiped out. Became insignificant.
I was gutted.
Another label as equally devastating as sexual abuse victim to the possibility of getting care for my physical body. Having dysautonomia is barrier enough. But to have the label of sexual abuse victim means everything is psychological—even though abuse is not a psychological problem for the survivor—and the physical is ignored. When your physical is caused by wonky nerves ... well, it is a devastating mix that foments many, many, many errant assumptions. SIGH.
I have tried so hard to be more honest here, to be more real about my life. But that label, what the doctor wrote, is still not something that I can see in black and white. That was the first and last time I saw those words.
They felled me.
They seared me.
They shamed me.
I could wish for another supernova before the 22nd. I try to visualize myself walking back into the doctor's office and all I get is the impulse to hide. Overwhelming impulse.
I do plan on going armed with my book and armed with a greater understanding of my place of smallness, of what I feel and think when I am in shame.
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