SHAME

I have always had such deep shame about who I am.  This was cultivated by a mother who was broken and probably also had a great deal of shame.  She had no idea how to raise healthy children with good self esteem.  She always wanted us to excel, excel, excel because she imagined if we didn't, it was a reflection on her and her parenting skills which were abysmal.  

I am finding it hard to write about this because it has always been so private, and I want to keep it that way on some level.  I want to give an example of the great shame I feel, the other night when I told my friends about the character or personality disordered part of me, that in high school I was a liar and a manipulator, I felt uncomfortable. There really was a stunned silence as they all did not know what to say. Later, I was terrified, I mean, terrified.  I didn't think I would be able to sleep and I just kept thinking of how they wouldn't be my friends anymore, they would look at me differently, they would talk behind my back, etc.. I never let people see this negative, dark underbelly of who I am.  This was almost always my reason for lying to people, not telling the truth about who I was or what I thought.   I have such a huge fear of rejection.  

This need to hide who I was started in childhood, I must not be good enough if my mother despises me. I need to find someone else to be.  We were always told to lie to the public about what was going on at home and to break that rule might mean death, literally.  I was embarrassed and humiliated by my mother's behavior in public more than once.  We were never allowed to tell the truth. 

The problem is, even after I freed myself from that toxic environment, the way that I had survived in the world stayed the same for quite some time.  I lied about everything, mostly I was afraid ppl wouldn't "Like" me if I told the truth, and even though there is no rational basis for that, it is the only way I learned to be in the world.  I learned very early on that most of what I did and was, wasn't good enough. I wasn't fast enough, I was lazy, I was a problem. It took therapy to straighten that out.  

These issues haven't come up for me for a very long time, I had put it behind me, I no longer lie or triangulate in relationships, but being with my high school friends and reading this book in which a girl has some of the same thought processes I had and still have, brought it all up again for examination.