Dear flyby:

What stands between a person and awareness of one own life is anxiety. When a person desperately needs to feel love, so to comfort the anxiety (excess, ongoing fear), then a person will make believe anything that remotely resembles an appearance of love, is indeed love and ignore all the evidence otherwise. This unawareness is usually (if not always) not complete so the person is often distressed anyway, maybe a lower grade distress than the distress of overwhelming anxiety.

So when I see another person unaware of their situation, I now understand: it is not a person’s lack of intelligence, it is what we all automatically do: move our awareness away from anxiety, from fear. This is why when dealing with others and with ourselves we have to apply a lot of gentleness and patience.

As to shame and guilt- this is why people mistreat themselves. And often, people with that accusatory, abusive Inner Critic take a break from their own Inner Critic and accuse and abuse others. The abusive Inner Critic who points shame and guilt at oneself has its other side of the coin companion, the abusive Outer Critic, accusing and shaming others.

People who abuse themselves take breaks and abuse others. Then back to abusing themselves, the distress intensifies, the need a relief and the relief is in abusing another. Maybe some people skip all together the Inner Critic cycle and … specialize in the Outer Critic dynamic exclusively.

Shame is very painful. I think it is the most painful emotion while fear is the most powerful. People will endure shame but fear, this is what people will do ANYTHING to avoid.

anita