Shame is a major symptom of complex PTSD. For me it's the biggest.
Do I love myself? Do I have confidence in myself? Am I at peace with myself? Do I feel secure in my connections to others and in my self-relationship? Do I not care what others think of me? Do I not feel ashamed of the many ways in which I fall short of society's standards (e.g. physical appearance)?
Nope. Nope. Nope. 🤷
Sometimes I try and I'm really good at working around this in many ways, but at my core, I feel wounded, insecure, unlovable, lacking worth etc. It's not something amenable to reason or simply "choosing" to see otherwise. It's deep within me.
The life that's led me here and the experiences that traumatized me forcibly imprinted those messages within me, and then further reinforced them again and again in multiple ways and layers that I'm not going to itemize here. The message that I lacked worth was not only repeatedly imprinted on me in ways that were both highly specific as well as general, but also in ways that involved coercion and trauma to seal them in extra forcefully.
The very essence of my traumas for me is the way they kept reinforcing that message: I'm not valuable. I don't count. I don't count to other people. I don't count to the universe. I don't publicly share the things that happened to imprint this conclusion on me (I've rarely even shared them privately) but I maintain that it's not even irrational for me to feel impelled towards that conclusion as a result.
My feelings of shame are deep AF. The only way I will every fully uproot them is to completely excavate and heal my trauma in all its layers which quite frankly is unlikely to happen anytime soon if ever. Nor am I willing to wait for it before I can be permitted to be a full member of society.
In complicated ways that I won't share here, my personal shame helped me survive from a very early date. It's not ideal but it's what I had. I was ready to give up and die, but the sense that I wasn't important, that I had to keep going for some purpose beyond myself was the soil from which I was able to keep growing when otherwise my sense of (lacking) self-worth would have led me to surrender.
And no it's not enough to simply recognize it as an adaptation that's outlived its purpose and cast it aside. There's something existentially real and valuable in how I moved forward that I'm not prepared to surrender for platitudes and affirmations. There's a real complex, painful and difficult problem that needs to be substantively addressed for me rather than set magically simplistically aside.
That said, I'm also a person who has been surrounded by other people's trauma since forever. And I've seen how people externalized their shame in a way that damaged other people. Whose self-blame caused them to also shame and blame others to whom similar things happened.
So I made a vow early on not to do that: which I've consciously managed for as long as I can remember. All my shame and self-blame will be directed only at myself. I can't eradicate it. That's not possible and insisting that I do so will cause even greater damage. But I also won't conceive of it in any way that leads me to be less compassionate towards others. So I funnel it all towards myself. Not ideal. Not pleasant. But I choose it given the unpalatable options that have been available to me.
So why don't I count? Why am I inherently terrible? It can't be because of qualities I share with others. It can't be because of particular features of my experiences (that others may experience too). It has to simply be because there is something inarticulably wrong about me. The beauty is it means my own shame doesn't lead me to shame others, but it also means I don't gain an illusion of control. I can't distance myself from it. It follows me no matter what I do. I could cure the deadliest diseases. I could be kind and loving to all around me. And it would still be there. Something inexorably wrong with me just for being me.
So when I feel that my real-world flaws are fatal, but other people with those same characteristics are beautiful and worthy of care, why is that? Why do I feel shame for something I don't think should be imposed as a source of shame in others? Because I'm already so lacking worth to begin with. I can't afford to have flaws. My only hope is to be "perfect" to have any chance of others overlooking all the innate badness in me.
Because I have to be perfect to make up for being me. And even if I'm perfect, it still won't be good enough and I'll be forever terrified, but it's the best that I can do.
Yet of course the inner pervasive sense of badness doesn't limit itself to generalities. It seeps out and makes me feel shame in very particular ways all over the place. It makes me feel susceptible to self-hatred from all kinds of causes, including those that had previously been weaponized against me, and are frequently weaponized against people like me by society.
Shame about our bodies. Shame about our trauma. Shame about not being productive enough. Shame about being needy. Shame about being damaged. Shame about taking up social space. Shame about so many things.
And maybe worst of all for me shame about my shame.
"Be confident." "Be positive." "Don't succumb to diet-culture-related shame." "Don't let what others think about you affect you." ("or else you have less worth" (implicit message) "Love yourself or you won't be worthy of love:" a message I unpacked and rejected here).
I know my shame is "wrong" not because I know I don't deserve it, but because I feel deep care for others who share those attributes and experiences. I know those other people who share those attributes and experiences don't deserve it. I know the only one who deserves it (for reasons I don't claim to understand) is me.
My shame is decidedly asymmetrical.
I would never judge someone else for the attributes that often give rise to shame in me. I know my shame is mine.
I can't wave a magic wand and cast off my sense of shame. But the most "healing" thing I can do is also to try not to feel compelled to carry extra shame for my shame. My self-audit of my shame to ensure I don't extend it to others has led me to this conclusion: one of the most exclusionary forces is the double-victimization of people who've been forced to experience shame in the first place. First we suffer the initial damage that makes deep-rooted shame and/or self-hatred unavoidable for some of us. And then, perhaps worst of all, from the people who supposedly "help" and "care" we get an even heavier dose of shame about our shame. "You are wrong and bad to internalize those messages that have been forcibly and repeatedly imprinted on you--to not rise above them."
And my self-audit leads me to reject that as a valid source of shame too. I can't simply decide not to carry it. It hurts me. But I reject it, the same way I reject the validity of the other sources of shame, even though I can't let it go in myself.
Dear everyone who tells people that they "shouldn't" feel shame, that they "must" learn to love themselves, in a tone that in any way suggests that they are somehow "bad," "deficient" and "less valuable" if they care about the messages that have been weaponized against them (about self-image, etc.), I reject your message too (at least that aspect of it).
I reject that shame. It's the closest I can come to moving towards "healing" right now by rejecting the extra layers that the "positivity police" heap on me and others like me.
I don't share my personal experiences here, but if I did I would challenge others to tell me how it shouldn't affect me deeply. How I should just magically not care about my negative body image when my body-image and insecurities about it were weaponized against me in ways that affected my brain and body on a level that goes beyond my ability to just magically wave away. Maybe some people can overcome it, but not all of us can readily do so, and I reject the blame for that (even though I still carry it). I won't endorse shaming as the proper response to that.
It's one of the most toxic damaging bases of exclusion in my view: "we don't exclude you because of x, y, z: we exclude you because you let those things affect you. Therefore, we're the real heroes for rejecting x, y, z, and you're the bad one for internalizing it." It's an immense privilege to think it can be that simple. A privilege I don't have the benefit of getting to share.
Nope. Nope. Nope. If you can't care about people in all their confusing asymmetrical wounded-ness with compassion for the paradoxical shame they can't help but carry, there's no moral superiority there. And that's a hill I'm prepared to die on.
As long as we aren't extending our shame to others (which can take work for which I'm prepared to accept responsibility), we deserve compassion and understanding. Not more exclusion and scorn. Until we allow a safe space for that complicated shame to be allowed to exist without judgment, "healing" will never be safe for some of us (at least not for me).
As always, please note that I am a lawyer, not a mental health professional of any kind. I have no expertise in trauma or mental health. Also, please note that any opinions and views expressed in this blog are solely my own and are not intended to represent the views or opinions of my employer in any way.
