Shame

These quotes changed my life today:

Children will invest as much energy as is needed to ensure the preservation of family harmony, even if it means sacrificing themselves to do so by developing psychological disorders.   -- Joel Covitz

When a child is born to shame-based parents, the deck is stacked from the beginning.  The job of parents is to model.  Modeling includes how to be a man or woman; how to relate intimately to another person; how to acknowledge and express emotions; how to fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional and intellectual boundaries; how to communicate; how to copy and survive life's unending problems; how to be self-disciplines; and how to love oneself and another.  Shame-based parents cannot do any of these.  They simply don't know how.  -- John Bradshaw

Shame-based families operate according to the laws of social systems.  When a social system is dysfunctional, it is rigid and closed.  All the individuals in that family are enmeshed in a kind of trancelike frozenness.  They take care of the system's need for balance, rather than their own needs for growth.  -- John Bradshaw

I'm being very serious, they absolutely changed my life.  I have known for years that I was emotionally immature in so many ways and that my life was on hold.  I wasn't having successful relationships on any front.  I wasn't having the success I wanted or making the progress I wanted.  Having been a sexaholic most of my life, I figured the problem was mine.  I wasn't good enough in any way and so didn't deserve growth or success. 

This morning, after a grueling therapy session, my therapist recommended I pick up a copy of "Healing the Shame That Binds You" by John Bradshaw.  I haven't been able to put it down.  It is like reading an auto-biography of my life. 

For years, I have been saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with me.  From the introduction of the book:  "A person with internalized shame believes he is inherently flawed, inferior and defective." 

My entire life until now has been ruled by the sense of shame I have inside me.  I'm ashamed of me, of being alive, of making mistakes, of not handling everything well, of everything.  And I have internalized that to believe "I AM a mistake - everything I do is flawed and defective". (page 21). 

But I won't let this hold me captive forever.  I'm only 50 or so pages in, but am already feeling hopeful.