Shame-Grandiosity-Disrespect-Violence

Every time we turn around these days there is some horrible event or comment in the news or in our world. Whether it is the ways we abuse ourselves inside of our own heads, or how we and the people we associate with are sarcastic or rude or outright mean, or the ways people talk about issues in government, or on the TV, or a young mentally ill man purchasing a gun and shooting people, there seem to be some common variables, some connections.
Over the years I've spent trying to help people feel better about themselves so they can stand up for themselves in relationships and lead joyful lives, I have heard some horror stories and seen some "shameless" behaviors right in my office. Over the years I have tried to understand this better in hopes of helping people make better choices for themselves about their own actions as well as what they will tolerate from others. I read books and watched movies, I took classes and talked to colleagues. I examined my own inner workings and motivations.
I think I have figured a few things out. At least I have found a way to make sense of it for myself and this has helped me guide myself in my relationships and find some way of having peace in my own life fully acknowledging that I cannot fix everyone nor can I stop disrespect, meanness and violence from occurring in the world. But maybe if I can change and help others to change we can get a little bit closer to living in a peaceful world. Maybe if we each work on our own change, each of us will impact others and create a chain effect and positive revolution in the world of relationships.
Over the years I have taken bits and pieces of things and put them together and I share them with my clients in therapy. I am going to attempt to put it all together in this blog and hope it all flows and makes as much sense to you as it does to me. Some people think violence comes from testosterone or is some kind of a rite of passage. I think most violence, disrespect, intolerance, judgmentalism comes from being shame based.
Most of us were raised in shame based families and went to shame based schools and listened to shame based examples on the news, TV, movies and in our communities. Most of us had peer groups who used shame to keep us in line or excluded us to make themselves feel better. We learned to not trust others or ourselves. We learned to fear any imperfection as it might lead ourselves and others to see us as unloveable and worthless.
When we behave badly it is healthy to have some remorse. When we make mistakes it is healthy to recognize it and learn from it. When we go to shame, and I'm talking about TOXIC shame, we have dropped out of a healthy response and into self hatred and feelings of such worthlessness that our self worth can be non existent, we may feel as if we are unloveable pieces of shit.
How did we learn to go there? Feeling that depth of self hatred is an uncomfortable place to be. It is scary. Will I ever be able to get out of this place? Will others notice and shun me, leaving me all alone? Will people laugh at me, make fun of me verifying my worthlessness? Can I survive my life and expose myself anymore? Is it safe? So that leaves us with a few choices: hide out and isolate so that you don't have to worry about others seeing how bad you really are, live in denial and get numb so you don't see or feel badly or you can take that "hot potato" of shame and toss it to someone else. We learn to attack others and put them down in order to deflect our own feelings of shame.
Being grandiose, better than, self righteous always feels better than shame. This is why so many people get so defensive or toss the hot potato of shame by blaming and shaming the other party or rage at others. That is until they realize what they're doing and how it is impacting the people they love or notice how people tend to avoid them.
If you decide you want to live a life in which you stick to your principles of being respectful to yourself and others, you have to conquer your own shame triggers. You have to figure out something else to do with that hot potato than foisting it onto someone else. You have to learn to soothe yourself. You begin to see that by throwing the shame to someone else you are responsible for keeping the world in a vicious circle of anger and hatred and disrespect and violence and self righteousness and intolerance. So what does this have to do with violence? With our current political rhetoric? With a shooter killing innocent people? With bullying amongst children and adults? With why batterers hit people they claim to love? Why is it so hard to admit we are wrong or have made a mistake? I think it has everything to do with it. How do we take these ideas and extrapolate them to figure out what is wreaking havoc in our world?
Religion, politics, sexuality, money, land rights....it doesn't really matter what the conflict is. Why are people so intolerant of other people having different beliefs? Why is it so important to be Number One? If people disagree why do they feel the need to belittle the other person or party or group?
I have thought a lot about why or rather how people are able to hurt, put down and kill others. In order to hurt animals or other humans one has to be in a certain frame of mind, don't they? Even people who wouldn't hurt a fly under normal circumstances can find themselves in such an emotional state that they feel like they can or have the right to hurt someone else. What does it take to get there? Sometimes it's easy to see where someone's shame has gotten triggered. Other times all we see is the grandiosity of the stance. But I have come to believe there is always some shame or fear underneath all aggression and grandiosity. I don't always know what it is but I'd bet it's there somewhere.
In order for any person, or group of people, to feel that they can hurt, maim, enslave or kill others they usually find a way to depersonalize the "other". People who would never murder "one of their own", find it easy to do horrific things to people or animals they can consider an "other". "Other" equals "shameful worthless creature". In finding others we can view that way it enables us to feel "one up", more worthy than they.
I posit, then, that people who want to aggress towards others are, indeed, feeling "less than" themselves and are needing to find someone else to put beneath them to boost their own self esteem.
Politicians, and other greedy people use this to turn people against each other, group against group, race against race, gender against gender. If they get flame the fires of fear, fear of being "less than", they can cause uprisings of group against group, individuals against groups or other individuals. They can get people fighting for the bones while they go on to reap the rewards. We are so busy trying to be "one up", to "save ourselves" that they end up walking away with the prize.
It's time for each of us to search our own souls, to determine how we can be the best person we want to be, to learn how to live with respect. Respect of ourselves first and then of all others. Not just OUR family. Not just OUR group. Everyone. We are all good and deserving of respect.
Let's start now.

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To Break It Off, Or Not To Break It Off

One of the things I hear all of the time from both men and women of all ages is the dilemma of what to do in their relationships when the person they are in love with behaves badly. Bad behaviors take many forms in relationships; from blatant misbehavior like affairs and physical abuse to less easily identifiable misbehaviors of the verbally abusive miscreants who play mind games that wear away at their partners confidence and self esteem.
We teach our young people to be kind and understanding and generous in their relationships. Girls are trained by their families and peers to not be "mean" to others, using fear of being alone the rest of their lives as the leverage to gain their compliance. Boys are trained to be unfazed by the relationality going on around them. Boys and men who don't want to be the stereotypical detached guy, work at being more open and accepting of women's bad behaviors in an effort to be the special man who can meet her needs. When boys and girls don't get their emotional needs met as children they often look to members of the opposite sex to help them feel "complete" and loved. This leaves them vulnerable to "settling" for relationships that don't really give them what they want and deserve. They can get attached too quickly, before they really know the person, and once attached, have trouble leaving when things go south. "But I LOVE him", I hear over and over. "I want to spend my life with this person". In spite of the facts; that their beloved partner is emotionally unavailable, angry all the time, putting them down, fiscally irresponsible, borrowing money and never paying them back, has unexplainable absences, text messages, phone calls, or always busy elsewhere, unable to stand up for their partner, running them into the ground with debt from businesses that never take off, not pulling their weight caring for the children or household, doesn't keep healthy boundaries with extended family members or others who are potential love interests, or is constantly trying to control what they do and who the see, who demand all of their attention or are always busy elsewhere love addicts everywhere hope and fantasize that things will change. The fantasy is that if they can only say the right thing at the right time their lover will see the light and automatically change. If only we love them enough and help heal their emotional wounds they will love us and give us the love we desire. Many people stay stuck in this place for years and years. Their own childhood wounds and past relationship unfinished business makes them vulnerable to putting up with bad behavior and settle for less than they deserve. When I work with people I help them look honestly and without the rose-colored glasses at what they really are experiencing in their relationships. I then offer choices of how to address the problems from just considering options to learning how to maintain healthy boundaries and ask for what they need to actually setting a firm limit and leaving the relationship. Each person gets to choose how much change they want to make and at what point they choose to make the changes. As I look back on my own life I have often asked myself, "if you could go back to talk to yourself as a teenager, what would you tell yourself that would have helped you not make the mistakes you have made in your life?". The answer that I have developed is that I would say, " Do not allow anyone to treat you badly and walk away when they do. And never settle for less than being treated with respect and love."
When I work with teenagers I have focused on this message for the past 5-10 years especially. I have worked with them to find their inner strength and like themselves and not put up with the kind of crap that our young men try to pull. I talk to them about being leaders and helping out all women and men by not putting up with bad behavior. I talk about how lack of tolerance for bad behavior could keep their young men and women from growing up to be adults who behave badly.
So imagine my joy and pride when I spoke recently to a young woman whom I have seen off and on throughout her teen years. She is now a college student who has a wonderful creative spirit. She has great values about relationships that she has learned from her family and our therapy as well as from all the experiences she has opened herself up to in the past four years.
She was very distressed recently when her boyfriend of the past 2-3 years had told her he had " cheated" on her. He had gone to a party, gotten drunk, and gone into a bedroom with another young woman and kissed her. That was the extent of the cheating but she felt strongly that women shouldn't put up with this and had vowed that she would not. She was torn because she loves him and thinks he is a good person and he had told her about it and felt remorseful. He told her he felt horrible and would never do it again.
The problem is, as she discussed it, that he already has a pattern of being kind of "unconscious" and passive about relational boundaries as well as some questionable alcohol use. They had discussed these issues several times and each time he had said he would change. Should she stick it out and help him work on these issues or should she forge forth in her own path which may or may not include him in the future? Ultimately she chose herself and told him she was done. I think that surprised him and I think she even surprised herself. Me? I admire this young woman's integrity and strength and wish I could have been like her when I was young. It would have saved me a lot of pain and thankless efforts in my past relationships. I think we can all take a lesson from her and stick to taking care of ourselves first even if it seems scary at times.