Back in the dark ages, when I was in graduate school, my M.O. for writing research papers was to read the source material immediately. I mean, I had it highlighted and notated before most students even thought about looking for source material. Then, I would spend almost the entire time allotted for the paper telling anyone and everyone about what I was learning. That way, when it came time to actually writing the paper, I could knock it out in a few hours, having rehearsed the knowledge for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Even though I have not yet moved to the fifth chapter in the book on shame research (I want help talking though the introduction and first four chapters first), I have been rehearsing the information with others in much the same way I did back when I was a student. Today, I had the chance to do so again.
Someone called me to rehearse an apology. Frankly, I stink at apologies. Primarily because, I think, that when I am in need of apologizing, I am drowning in shame, which means I am drowning in fear of being found flawed and unworthy of acceptance and belonging. I am not thinking cognitively (a bit insensible) and cannot see past the overwhelming emotions. I would very much like, one day, to separate shame and apology, but I don't know how to do that at the moment.
However, listening to the caller, I thought about what I have learned about empathy and about what the other person would like to hear. I know that this isn't about shame, but a key point of education is the notion of transference. The apology I heard was more about the caller, not the one hurting. So, I made some "edits," which shifted the words toward acknowledging the hurt and expressing a desire for the person not to be hurt.
I know the caller called for help and I actually helped, but really I feel like I was the one who was helped. It was instructive for me to stand outside of an apology and think about the reason for the words, the meaning of the words, and the receiving of the words. I think, too, even though I struggle with feeling rather cold and dead inside, it was encouraging to realize that I could at least think empathetically.
I wish I were better at talking about shame, but I have tried. At my appointment this week, I tried to discuss my shame reaction at my last appointment and brought the book with me for a prop. However, the discussion was not really a discussion. In large part, the focus was how my doctor did not mean for me to experience what happened. That she was cutting and pasting from her notes to create my visit summary and did not check her editing job carefully enough. I know what happened was not intentional, but it does not change how I felt and my fear about the label she added to my public medical records. I was disappointed because my doctor was ... distant ... about the matter when she has been extraordinarily personal since the first visit.
In reflection, I wonder if she responded the way she did because she felt shame about what happened. If she hardened herself to hide her own feelings. I don't know. I just know that the exchange was devoid of empathy that I could feel and was primarily asking me to understand how the "mistake" happened. Like the apology that I first heard today, it was more about her than me.
Even though, at the time, I had those thoughts, I could not think about how to voice them. And, more importantly, I didn't feel as if I had the right to voice them. I mean, what did it matter how I felt?
I am hoping to learn how to speak shame, as I continue to learn about shame.
Along the same line is that I have not been posting quotes from the book on Facebook. I got sort of ... timid ... about sharing what I think is important. Not even here. And I have not posted, myself, much about the issues important to me, chiefly sexual abuse.
I have noticed, since I started posting about invisible illness, one of my Facebook friends started posting about another illness. And, I think, posting more about sexual abuse. I guess I am saying that my oft timid postings might have inspired some vulnerable posting elsewhere.
Today, I read this article by a rape survivor on the issue of transgendered folk and bathrooms.
"For me, healing looks like staring at the little girl in a Polaroid photo and validating her need to be seen, heard, and protected instead of hating it. It looks like telling my story, even the parts I can never make pretty, in hopes it will help break the anonymity of survivors and create a sense of responsibility in others to act."
Lost in the argument of open bathrooms is the trauma that millions of Americans have experienced. Millions who have reported and more ... many, many more ... who have remained silent.
Don’t they know that one out of every four little girls will be sexually abused during childhood, and that’s without giving predators free access to them while they shower? Don’t they know that, for women who have experienced sexual trauma, finding the courage to use a locker room at all is a freaking badge of honor? That many of these women view life through a kaleidoscope of shame and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, dissociation, poor body image, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, difficulty with intimacy, and worse?
Why would people knowingly invite further exploitation by creating policies with no safeguards in place to protect them from injury? With zero screening options to ensure that biological males who enter locker rooms actually identify as female, how could a woman be sure the person staring at her wasn’t exploiting her? Why is it okay to make her wonder?
That last question gutted me.
Whole worlds exists in that question.
My life exists there.
It is a good article, very much worth the read.
What interests me is that I have started trying to remember to make public the posts I do about sexual abuse. Today, I discovered that someone I don't know from Adam shared the article! I don't know how she came across it, if it was from one of the two likes (yes, it still hurts me that I don't get lots of "likes" for things that are deeply personal and important to me) of if she just perused my profile somehow. Maybe someone from one of the two dysautonomia groups I am in?? I just don't know. What I do know is she share it with her own appeal to consider safety.
Yes, it warmed the cockles of my heart to see someone share the information, spread the conversation about sexual abuse survivors and the impact of public policy on their lives.
As with NCS, dysautonomia, or chronic illness in general, I am not wanting to be the advocate, to be the educator. That is just more pressure on me. But I do long to speak freely about the things that society seems to prefer to be kept hidden. I want to speak freely and have others take up the discourse. I want speak and be heard. I want to speak and receive back empathy. I want to speak and have those things considered whilst engaging with me.
The invitation to engage as a child had revealed my whole dilemma: I didn’t hate the little girl in the photo. I hated her need. I hated her anonymity. I hated the visible proof that she loved her abuser. I hated that she didn’t know any better, that it took her another ten years to figure out why she still slept with the light on and showered in her underwear and vigilantly lined the crack under the bathroom door with a beach towel and destroyed her teeth with gum she relentlessly chewed as a means of escaping the recollection of his breath on her face. I hated that he fooled her. He fooled everybody. He was really good.
“Wake up!” I wanted to scream at her. “Can’t you see what’s going on? Do something about it!”
I want to share it with my counselor and see if, maybe, we can find a way to talk about the photos of another little girl....
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