Dear Jim/Jamie:
Thank you for your kind words, I appreciate them/ you.

Having had loving parents and a stable environment… is lovely, wonderful. I assume you would have turned to your parents for any other issue- and you have? But this issue, because of the cultural/ societal blatant rejection and ridicule of gender issues, was too big of an issue in your mind, too much to imagine it could be accepted even by your loving parents…? I can see how harmful societal rejection can be even when you have loving, supportive parents. Writing this right now, I am thinking about being more tolerant than I am…

Yes, shame is shame is shame. It is everywhere. Shame is the same. More about the book: it says that we become less surprised by the feelings that arise within us. That is very much so. In the past I was hijacked again and again by what I called then (a Buddhist term) “Monkey Mind” which is also known as the Default Mode Thinking brain, I think, or close to that- the structures and connections in our brain that are used when not engaged in an attention grabbing task. It would take me where it wanted to take me (usually it was the Inner Critic/ the Freudan Superego) and I was its victim. Through mindfulness I am experiencing a reduction in mental hijacking incidents (I am less surprised). Mindfulness is about developing a friendly RELATIONSHIP with our thinking and feeling and acting instead of being a stranger to oneself. It reads: “Pain is like an angry bull: When it’s confined to a tight stall, it will be wild and try to escape. When it’s in a wide-open field, it will calm down. Mindfulness makes emotional space for pain.”

Same with shame, shame IS pain. So mindfulness is about letting the shame run in a wide open field instead of in a tight stall.

This is what I read from the book today, thank you for the reminder (of the book).

Please do post more, anytime.
anita