Re: New here-

[Guest guest]

You cannot write, or exorcise 'too much' of these persistent

demons/the memories that defy logic.

***Maybe that explains why I get so illogical about it. I have read

about the " BP zone " Is there a " Flea zone " or something? Someplace

you shift into that logic just doesn't work anymore? It is different

than just feeling upset. All cognition gets twisted, tangled, and

looped.

We (me) write our hearts out here...pages and pages of stuffed pain

getting out, denied for so many years.

*****and that is a big chunk

In writing, sharing, and reading others experiences so similar to

mine I feel validated.

****I still don't even know WHY that is SO important - but it is So

important to me right now. Maybe it always was - and I just didn't

know it.

Alienation is par for the course, I think. But recognizing

alienation for what it really is helps me sloth off a lot of the

guilt/shame I feel

****I haven't seemed to be able to do anything with the shame yet

except feel it. And I hate how it feels. It pisses people off too. i

don't quite understand that - except they don't want you to feel

ashamed and don't think you should. I hate being shamed for my shame

too! I hate that a lot. Then it almost seems like those mirrors where

you just keep seeing into another and another and another... it just

feels like shame upon shame upon shame. God! I hate being ashamed of

my shame!

My self esteem is too fragile, my defenses too shaky - I can't

possibly have any sort of relationship with the people

*** Right now - this statement just about says it for me - people..

period.

who refuse to be truthful about what happened, refuse to believe what

they already know, who ridicule and admonish me for being hurt

*** the ridicule and admonish me for being hurt part. I hate that

too!! WHAT makes people do that? Ridicule and admonish for being

HURT! Like that is going to make you stop hurting... because you

shouldn't? Because you are not supposed to? Because it bothers them?

Sometimes - if all you really have is your pain it doesn't seem fair

that people try to take that away too! And tell you you can't have

that either?

> For many years I wrestled with the feeling that it must surely be

ME who is defective/flawed/mentally ill...

****I'm still there - in fact I am more there than I used to be right

now.

I am just now beginning to understand what actually happened to me,

why I was the 'bad child'

***I have little understanding of this yet. I still don't understand

my mother's statement " You were a good child up until you were six. "

I guess that is one of those echos. Maybe I record the things that

don't make sense. Maybe it wasn't even true. Maybe that is why I

can't figure it out. It just seems more true because she put an age

on it - like it was a fact. So I think - six? why six?

For some reason the whole post gave me goosebumps and made me cry..

so i just thought responding might help.

Free

[Guest guest]

Here's an article on shame that Edith posted previously,

<<

" Toxic Shame "

An excerpt from Bradshaw's book, HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU

Toxic shame, the shame that binds you, is experienced as the all

pervasive sense that I am flawed and defective as a human being. Toxic

shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits, it is a state of

being, a core identity. Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness,

a sense of failing and falling short as a human being. Toxic shame is a

rupture of the self with the self.

It is like internal bleeding. Exposure to oneself lies at the heart of

toxic shame. A shame based person will guard against exposing his inner

self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing

himself to himself.

Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the

believed failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an

object that can't be trusted, one exeriences oneself as untrustworthy.

Toxic shame is experienced as inner torment, a sickness of the soul. If

I'm an object that can't be trusted, then I'm not in me. Toxic shame is

paradoxical and self-generating. There is shame about shame. People will

readily admit guilt, hurt or fear before they will admit shame. Toxic

shame is the feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense. A

shame-based person is haunted by a sense of absence and emptiness...

SHAME AS AN IDENTITY--INTERNALIZATION OF SHAME

Any human emotion can become internalized. When internalized, an emotion

stops functioning in the manner of an emotion and becomes a

characterological style. You probably know of someone who could be

labeled 'an angry person', or someone you'd call a 'sad sack'. In both

cases the emotion has become the core of the person's character, her

identity. The person doesn't have anger or melancholy, she is angry and

melancholy.

In the case of shame, internalization involves at least three processes:

1) Identification with unreliable and shame based models;

2) The trauma of abandonment, and the binding of feelings, needs and

drives with shame; and

3) The interconnection of memory imprints which forms collages of

shame.

Internalization is a gradual process and happens over a period of time.

Every human being has to contend with certain aspects of this process.

Internalization takes place when all three processes are consistently

reinforced. "

IDENTIFICATION WITH SHAME BASED MODELS

Identification is one of our normal human processes. We always have the

need to identify. Identification gives one a sense of security. By

belonging to something larger than ourselves, we feel security and

protection of the larger reality.

The need to identify with someone, to feel a part of something, to

belong somewhere, is one of our most basic needs. With the exception of

self-preservation, no other striving is as compelling as this need,

which begins with our caregivers or significant others and extends to

family, peer group, culture, nation and world. It is seen in lesser

forms in our allegiance to a political party or our rooting for a sports

team. This need to belong explains the loyal and often fanatic adherence

people display to a group...their group.

When children have shame based parents, they identify with them. This is

the first step in the child's internalizing shame.

ABANDONMENT: THE LEGACY OF BROKEN MUTUALITY

Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise

term to describe how one loses one's authentic self and ceases to exist

psychologically. Children cannot know who they are without reflective

mirrors. Mirroring is done by one's primary caretakers and is crucial in

the first years of life. Abandonment includes the loss of mirroring.

Parents who are shut down emotionally (all shame based parents) cannot

mirror and affirm their child's emotions.

Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended

on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we

had no way of knowing who we were. Mirroring remains important all our

lives. Think of the frustrating experience which most of us have had, of

talking to someone who is not looking at us. While you are speaking,

they are fidgeting around or reading something. Our identity demands a

significant other whose eyes see us pretty much as we see ourselves.

In fact, son defines identity as interpersonal. He writes: 'The

sense of ego identity is the accrued confidence that the inner sameness

and continuity...are matched by the sameness and continuity of one's

meaning for others.'

(From -- " Childhood and Society " )

Besides lack of mirroring, abandonment includes the following:

- Neglect of developmental dependency needs

- Abuse of any kind

- Enmeshment into the covert or overt needs of the parents or

the family system needs "

FEELING NEED AND DRIVE SHAME BINDS

The shame binding of feelings, needs and natural instinctual drives, is

a key factor in changing healthy shame into toxic shame. To be

*shame-bound* means that whenever you feel any feeling, and need or any

drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life

is grounded in your feelings, your needs and your drives. When these are

bound by shame, you are shamed to the core.

THE INTERCONNECTION OF MEMORY IMPRINTS WHICH FORM COLLAGES OF SHAME

As shaming experiences accrue and are defended against, the images

created by those experiences are recorded in a person's memory bank.

Because the victim has no time or support to grieve the pain of the

broken mutuality, his emotions are repressed and the grief is

unresolved. The verbal (auditory) imprints remain in the memory as do

the visual images of the shaming scenes. As each new shaming experience

takes place, a new verbal imprint and visual image attach to the already

existing ones forming collages of shaming memories.

Children also record their parent's actions at their worst. When Mom and

Dad, stepparent or whoever the caretaker, are most out of control, they

are the most threatening to the child's survival. The child's survival

alarm registers these behaviors the most deeply. Any subsequent shame

experience which even vaguely resembles that past trauma can easily

trigger the words and scenes of said trauma. What are then recorded are

the new experience and the old. Over time an accumulation of shame

scenes are attached together. Each new scene potentiates the old, sort

of like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting larger and larger as it

picks up snow.

As the years go on, very little is needed to trigger these collages of

shame memories. A word, a similar facial expression or scene can set it

off. Sometimes an external stimulus is not even necessary. Just going

back to an old memory can trigger an enormously painful experience.

Shame as an emotion has now become frozen and embedded into the core of

the person's identity. Shame is deeply internalized.

SHAME AS SELF-ALIENATION AND ISOLATION

When one suffers from alienation, it means that one experiences parts of

one's self as alien to one's self.

For example, if you were never allowed to express anger in your family,

your anger becomes an alienated part of yourself. You experience toxic

shame when you feel angry. This part of you must be disowned or severed.

There is no way to get rid of your emotional power of anger. Anger is

the self-preserving and self-protecting energy. Without this energy you

become a doormat and a people-pleaser. As your feelings, needs and

drives are bound by toxic shame, more and more of you is alienated.

Finally, when shame has been completely internalized, nothing about you

is okay. You feel flawed and inferior; you have a sense of being a

failure. There is no way you can share your inner self because you are

an object of contempt to yourself. When you are contemptible to

yourself, you are no longer in you. To feel shame is to feel seen in an

exposed and diminished way. When you're an object to yourself, you turn

your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of

behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It

generates a tormenting self-consciousness which Kaufman describes as,

'creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self.' This

paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawl, passivity and inaction.

The severed parts of self are projected in relationships. They are often

the basis of hatred and prejudice. The severed parts of the self may be

experienced as a split personality or even multiple personalities. This

happens often with victims who have been through physical and sexual

violation.

To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of

unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging,

of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation

and isolation is also pervaded by a low grade chronic depression. This

has to do with the sadness of losing one's authentic self. Perhaps the

deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection

of the self by the self.

SHAME AS FALSE SELF

Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic

shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is

accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or

less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a

family hero or a family scapegoat.

As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years

later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses

all awareness of who one really is. It is crucial to see that the false

self may be as polar opposite as a superachieving perfectionist or an

addict in an alley. Both are driven to cover up their deep sense of

self-rupture, the hole in their soul. They may cover up in ways that

look polar opposite, but each is still driven by neurotic shame. In

fact, the most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the

core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the Star and

the Scapegoat, the 'Righteous' and the wretched, the powerful and the

pathetic.

SHAME AS CO-DEPENDENCY

Much has been written about co-dependency. All agree that it is about

the loss of selfhood. Co-dependency is an condition wherein one has no

inner life. Happiness is on the outside. Good feelings and

self-validation lie on the outside. They can never be generated from

within. Pia Mellody's definition of co-dependency is a 'state of

dis-ease whereby the authentic self is unknown or kept hidden, so that a

sense of self...of mattering... of esteem and connectedness to others is

distorted, creating pain and distorted relationships.' There is no

significant difference in that definition and the way I have described

internalized shame. It is my belief that internalized shame is the

essence of co-dependency.

SHAME AS BORDERLINE PERSONALITY

Kaufman sees many of the categories of emotional illness which are

defined as DSM III as rooted in neurotic shame. It seems obvious that

some of these types of disorders are related to symptoms of shame. These

include: dependent personality, clinical depression, schizoid phenomena

and borderline personality. My own belief is that toxic shame is a

unfying concept for what is often a maze of psychological definitions

and distinctions. While I realize that there is clinical and

psychotherapeutic value in the kinds of detailed etiological

distinctions offered by accurate and precise conceptualizing. I also

think some of it is counterproductive. My own study of Masterson's

work on borderline personalities, as well as my experience with watching

his working films, convinces me that there is minimal difference in the

treatment of some toxically shame-based people and his treatment of the

Borderline Personality.

I'm convinced that Masterson's Borderline Personality is a syndrome of

neurotic shame. It is described as follows:

1) Self-Image disturbance

2) Difficulty identifying and expressing one's own individuated

thoughts, wishes and feelings and autonomously regulating

self-esteem

3) Difficulty with self-assertion

(Borderline Adolescent to Functioning Adult: The Test of Time)

SHAME AS HOPELESSNESS--THE SQUIRREL CAGE

Toxic shame has the quality of being irremedial. If I am flawed,

defective and a mistake, then there is nothing that can be done about

me. Such a belief leads to impotence. How can I change who I am? Toxic

shame also has the quality of circularity. Shame begets shame.

FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

Once internalized, toxic shame is functionally autonomous, which means

that it can be triggered internally without any attending stimulus. One

can imagine a situation and feel deep shame. One can be alone and

trigger a shaming spiral through internal self-talk. The more one

experiences shame, the more one is ashamed and the beat goes on.

It is this dead-end quality of shame that makes it so hopeless. The

possibility for repair seems foreclosed if one is essentially flawed as

a human being. Add to that the self-generating quality of shame, and one

can see the devastating, soul-murdering power of neurotic shame.

The reader can begin to see how dramatic it was for me to discover the

dynamics of shame. By being aware of the dynamics of shame, by naming

it, we gain some power over it.

The excruciating loneliness fostered by toxic shame is dehumanizing. As

a person isolates more and more, he loses the benefit of human feedback.

He loses the mirroring eyes of others. son has demonstrated

clearly that identity formation is always a social process. He defines

identity as 'an inner sense of sameness and continuity which is matched

by the mirroring eyes of at least one significant other'. Remember, it

was the contaminated mirroring by our significant relationships that

fostered our toxic shame.

In order to be healed we must come out of isolation and hiding. This

means finding a group of significant others that we are willing to

trust. This is tough for shame-based people.

Shame becomes toxic shame because of premature exposure. We are exposed

either unexpectedly or before we are ready to be exposed. We feel

helpless and powerless. No wonder then that we fear the scrutinizing

eyes of others. However the only way out of toxic shame is to embrace

the shame...we must come out of hiding.

>>

Re: New here-

>

>

>

> You cannot write, or exorcise 'too much' of these persistent

> demons/the memories that defy logic.

>

> ***Maybe that explains why I get so illogical about it. I have read

> about the " BP zone " Is there a " Flea zone " or something? Someplace

> you shift into that logic just doesn't work anymore? It is different

> than just feeling upset. All cognition gets twisted, tangled, and

> looped.

>

>

> We (me) write our hearts out here...pages and pages of stuffed pain

> getting out, denied for so many years.

>

> *****and that is a big chunk

>

>

> In writing, sharing, and reading others experiences so similar to

> mine I feel validated.

>

> ****I still don't even know WHY that is SO important - but it is So

> important to me right now. Maybe it always was - and I just didn't

> know it.

>

> Alienation is par for the course, I think. But recognizing

> alienation for what it really is helps me sloth off a lot of the

> guilt/shame I feel

>

> ****I haven't seemed to be able to do anything with the shame yet

> except feel it. And I hate how it feels. It pisses people off too. i

> don't quite understand that - except they don't want you to feel

> ashamed and don't think you should. I hate being shamed for my shame

> too! I hate that a lot. Then it almost seems like those mirrors where

> you just keep seeing into another and another and another... it just

> feels like shame upon shame upon shame. God! I hate being ashamed of

> my shame!

>

>

> My self esteem is too fragile, my defenses too shaky - I can't

> possibly have any sort of relationship with the people

>

> *** Right now - this statement just about says it for me - people..

> period.

>

> who refuse to be truthful about what happened, refuse to believe what

> they already know, who ridicule and admonish me for being hurt

>

>

> *** the ridicule and admonish me for being hurt part. I hate that

> too!! WHAT makes people do that? Ridicule and admonish for being

> HURT! Like that is going to make you stop hurting... because you

> shouldn't? Because you are not supposed to? Because it bothers them?

> Sometimes - if all you really have is your pain it doesn't seem fair

> that people try to take that away too! And tell you you can't have

> that either?

>

>

> > For many years I wrestled with the feeling that it must surely be

> ME who is defective/flawed/mentally ill...

>

> ****I'm still there - in fact I am more there than I used to be right

> now.

>

> I am just now beginning to understand what actually happened to me,

> why I was the 'bad child'

>

> ***I have little understanding of this yet. I still don't understand

> my mother's statement " You were a good child up until you were six. "

> I guess that is one of those echos. Maybe I record the things that

> don't make sense. Maybe it wasn't even true. Maybe that is why I

> can't figure it out. It just seems more true because she put an age

> on it - like it was a fact. So I think - six? why six?

>

>

> For some reason the whole post gave me goosebumps and made me cry..

> so i just thought responding might help.

>

> Free

>

>

>

>

> Send questions and/or concerns to ModOasis-owner

> " Stop Walking on Eggshells, " a primer for non-BPs, can be ordered via

1-888-35-SHELL () and for the table of contents, go to:

> http://www.BPDCentral.com

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

free_spirit_etc wrote:

> ... I still don't understand

> my mother's statement " You were a good child up until you were six. "

> I guess that is one of those echos. Maybe I record the things that

> don't make sense. Maybe it wasn't even true. Maybe that is why I

> can't figure it out. It just seems more true because she put an age

> on it - like it was a fact. So I think - six? why six?

Hi Free,

Hmmm, this might be an important missing piece of the puzzle.

Might it be that your mother's upper *emotional* age was that of

a 6 yo child? Was she an emotional 6 yo child in a full-sized

adult body? When you exceeded her emotional age, that's when we

would expect her to split you " all bad " . Something to think about...

Some KOs on these Oasis lists have had nadas that peaked

*emotionally* as teen-agers and who competed with their

daughters for their boy friends. Mine was at the other end of

the continuum. She was an emotional 2 yo, with all the rights

and privileges that are normally afforded to an adult.

- Edith