Dear Sadlyconfused:

You are very welcome. When I read this sentence “This all feels a bit like peeling away the layers of an onion“, and before I read the rest of your post, I had to tell you that this is what my last and best quality therapist (2011-13) used to say in regard to what therapy is about (except that he didn’t say “a bit”). I forgot that he said this, and remembered only when you brought up the same imagery. It took me back a decade.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t dream of shaming a child“- you can’t imagine choosing to shame a child, but shaming oneself is not a choice, not as long as it continues to be automatic, a business as usual, sort of thing… a habit.

“My shame reaction and over-responsibility are trauma based and not in keeping with the facts of the situation“- the trauma based emotional reactions are mental-emotional habits. These habits do not consider current situations if they are different from past, trauma-based situations. These habits persist simply because they exist.

Newton’s first law of motion, paraphrased: a body remains at rest, or in motion (at a constant speed in a straight line), unless acted upon by a force. Newton’s first law expresses the principle of inertia: the tendency to remain unchanged. Same that applies to physics also applies to our thoughts, emotions and behaviors: unless a force interrupts our habitual thinking, feeling and behaving, these remain unchanged.

“I’m trying to be a bit more balanced about it rather than blaming myself entirely…  I’m trying to be a bit more sympathetic towards myself in scenarios such as that as I have a tendency to take far too much responsibility“-

– blaming yourself entirely and taking far too much responsibility are your mental habits. The forces acting on these habits (the forces you choose to make use of)  are balanced thinking and sympathy toward yourself.

“I love that you handed the shame back to your mother and were able to place it back exactly where it belonged!“- thank you. The visualization is a force acting on my mental habits. I am visualizing this again, right now: I placed the package of shame at her feet, I see her face looking down at the package, it is not blaming or hateful (I did not plan to visualize this part). She is looking down at the package. I don’t want her to look at me.. but here, she just looked at me and her hate returned. I can’t change her, can’t change her hate and I don’t want to ever hope for such change because that hope kept me stuck for too long. So, I place the package down, she looks at it with no emotion on her face other than a bit of curiosity. I turn my back to her and to the shame and I walk away in the opposite direction, never to go back:  not to her, not to the shame (the two are the same).

“Over time and with repetition does the message in this visualization become more automatic?“- as you can see right above, the visualization does not remain static, it evolves: the message evolves.

“I’ve been thinking about my core wound a lot and I think it’s very much a childlike ‘I’m bad’ or ‘I’m going to get into trouble‘”- your mental habits were established in a child’s brain, based on the circumstances of there-and-then.

“I assumed I was terribly flawed. Added to that is the secondary shame of having been bullied for my shame reactions by my father, sibling, people at school and a particularly nasty teacher. Then on top of that there’s been my own rejection of myself..“- it’s like a ball of dirt (shame) rolling down a mountain, gathering more and more shame as it rolls down, becoming bigger and bigger.

“Sorry if writing all this out is a lot, I’m having quite a few realisations and lightbulb moments just lately, but don’t want to trauma dump or have anyone feel obliged to respond if any of it’s a bit much!“- you are so considerate, thank you. But no, your sharing has the opposite effect of trauma-dumping (a new term for me): it helps me remove more of that shame-dirt from that ball of dirt: it is as if together, we are pushing that ball up the mountain, and it gets smaller and smaller, thank you!

anita