Dear iamone:

I re-read what you shared back in July 2021, and in this thread, Oct 2022, including a reply you submitted to another member back in April 2014. This will be a long post. I hope you have the patience to read it:

“I have lived and continue to live a shame-based life. Everything I do is an effort to get rid of the shame… grew up in the Mormon church… I did feel a very strong faith in God from a young age, and I truly believed he loved me and that I was special. At the same time, I was reminded continually that our family was broken  (the family is the primary focus of the church)“-

– as I understand it, the origin of your shame has a lot to do with the Mormon Church People in your early life (I’ll refer to them as MCP) looking down at your family for being what they considered to be a broken family. From an early age, you needed to believe that you were special enough, talented and gifted enough to make the MCP value your family. In your child’s mind, that would take GREAT talent and GREAT professional prestige and material success. Being anything less than perfect, performing less than perfectly was not acceptable, it was not part of the plan. For a child, it is easy to imagine great perfect success. Perfect success became your life mission.

“One thing that always brings me down is a sense that I have failed in life. I really feel that I have. I was one of those gifted children, and I thought I would achieve so much! But here I am having so little“- when you say that you failed in life, I think that it means that you failed your life mission. Although you’ve been far removed from the MCP for many years, the mission remained to achieve great perfect success through great talents gifts, failure was not an option. As you went about life as an adult, your performance was not as great as you imagined it would be (it is so easy to imagine but very difficult to make perfection happen). Every failure added to your sense of shame. When your efforts to achieve moderate success failed as well.. that further added to your sense of shame.

“It’s as if I’m saying, ‘I’m not going to be happy unless I have a perfect life, and I am pretty upset that perfect life hasn’t been presented to me yet!” Hahaha – but seriously, that is sort of the attitude underlying all my disappointment“- I think that the evolution of what you mean by “perfect life” has been from a life valued and respected, even admired by the MCP=> the feeling of being valued, respected and admired. What remained the same is that inadequacies and failures were not an option in your mind. In your child’s mind and onward, it would take one perfectly performing i-am-one to fulfill her life mission.

“It’s when we start thinking we have to live up to some imagined competition that we get into trouble. If you are living a lie, you need to own up to it and speak your truth“- you believed that you were perfect and superior because you believed that this is what it will take to accomplish your life mission. I think that the lie you’ve been living, the conflict within you, is that on one hand you believed that you were perfect and superior (because you needed to believe this so to fulfill your ambitious life mission), but on the other hand, evidence contradicted this belief.

The answers in your recent post read to me like answers that the college student/ Academic  Iamone (I’ll refer to this version of yourself as AI) would hand in to be graded in college. Excellent answers (A+), if I may say so, but far removed from what I imagine the petulant, yet precious young girl would answer (I’ll refer to this version of yourself as PG ). In the following, I’ll quote AI’s answer in italicized print and PG’s answers (the way I “hear” her answers)  in boldfaced print:

Before I proceed please don’t negatively judge PG, she is a young child and her words and emotions come from an innocent, loving place. She is a good girl with a mission that is too great and too ambitious for a child.

1) I asked: “would you like to define ‘perfect life'”? AI: “Perfect life: You are at peace with who you are as a person“. PG: perfect life is when everyone knows how special and talented I am!

AI: “you have at least one deep, meaningful relationship where you can be your full, true self“, PG: Everyone knows how special and talented I am!!!

AI:  “you have a job in which you are able to use your best talents and which you find interesting and rewarding both intrinsically and extrinsically (pay); you have a healthy body; you are able to experience the beauty of the world on a regular basis“, PG: I will have a job that will show the world that I am very talented and they will all know that I am very talented and special and the best there is and they will finally respect me and my family!

2) I asked: “would you like to define ‘crappy life'”? AI: “Crappy life: You don’t like yourself; you have no real, fulfilling relationships; you are stuck in a job which you hate and which you feel doesn’t utilize your richest talents; you don’t have enough money to support a half-way decent life style; your body doesn’t work correctly (this alone does not make a crappy life); you live in a place that is not beautiful“. PG: Crappy life is when they (the MCP) don’t like us, when they look down at us because our family is broken.

3) I asked: “who are you and who gave you gifts?”? AI: “I am: a personality that was created as a result of chance and my genetic background. I am unique and beautiful, as is every creature born into the world. I will find the most happiness by discovering my own unique gifts, developing them, and finding a way to share them with the world. Gifts are provided at birth to everyone. But nature can make the living of this life difficult. There are threats and pitfalls all around us. So we have to develop strength and wisdom in order to protect ourselves and our gifts and survive in this brutal although beautiful world“.

PG: I am special but they don’t know it yet! I am superior! God knows it.. but the MCP don’t know it yet.. They will find out soon and when they do, they’ll respect and I will be very happy and my world will be beautiful!

Any of this resonates with you?

anita