Do You Suffer From Toxic Shame?

DO YOU SUFFER FROM TOXIC SHAME??

I am writing today because (this toxic shame) has debilitated my life for years... no, not years... decades. This may be you too in other areas, and my heart already goes out to you if that is the case... because I know it is a hidden nightmare that drives a person to feel valueless even while smiling and seeming accomplished in the eyes of others. ?

I am writing because I am tired of the never-ending feeling of worthlessness, incapability, incapacitation, valuelessness, and a sorry excuse for a human being.?

I tried dealing with this by creating book characters who fought their way to wholeness, but that strategy never helped me. ?

Recently I’ve come to realise how this is impacting those closest to me, and how it can potentially drive me to an early, shame-filled grave.?

How did this toxic condition start? I do not exactly know... I can only remember, as a 12- or 13-year-old girl in a place called Kumba, hearing a particular individual talk about me to someone else. (He did not know that I was in the vicinity... hearing him.) Sitting there trying to read & do my constant writing, I heard him expressing how unworthy I was of the opportunities that were coming my way because my mother was Europe-bound. Around the same time another individual, this time someone I thought had my back, regretted aloud that this ‘Barbara’ who had nothing to offer was bound for a life “he”?not her “deserved”.?

I think I began internalising this insistence on my unworthiness – not just because of those two instances, but because even before then, my childhood-self had met with so much denigration and hurtful declarations (even from adult women who wanted to steer me in directions that they hoped would hurt my mother) that I no longer had the innate joy of a child, though everyone thought I was this happy, carefree, tomboy of a little girl.?Indeed, even the fact that I spent most of my ‘girlhood’ days?writing, was for some people something to belittle. ?

I believe I began believing there was something wrong with me even as that little girl.? In fact, by age 14, especially after returning to my country from a brief holiday (to see my mum) in Europe... the sense of being undeserving of any good had become a constant.??

When my first novel came out to critical acclaim, nothing but shame, impostor syndrome and unworthiness clouded my mind. I felt like a fraud, because I did not deserve the praise. That feeling weakened me to such an extent that the books that followed remained locked in my computer. And even writing on a professional level became a nightmare. I did not know what was happening to me, I just knew I was trapped. It was not long before that first book got pulled out of circulation – by me. And with it my entry into a life of seclusion and what I now know to be the inner sanctum of toxic shame. And so, without knowing it, I began sabotaging my life...? only finding real joy whenever I climbed on stage to sing my sorrow or the sorrows of others. But even this music-peace?began making acquaintance with the subtle self-sabotage driven by that insidious sense of failure and unworthiness... For... ?

… how can you deserve anything good, when you are guilty of having been given things in life (especially as a child) that others more deserving and better had not been given? How do you deserve any opportunities when?‘worthless you’ have had to easily travel to other countries while truly deserving people remained locked in cycles of poverty... independently having to fight their way forward? ?

Failing left, right and centre seemed the only real ‘deserve’ on my plate: My just reward as it were... Reward what for? I still don’t fully know. So, not realising it, I was developing the condition called toxic shame –?with its packaging of debilitating guilt, constant regrets, unlovability?and unworthiness to live. Every year was a pain... ‘Why am I still living’ was the question I would ask myself. But I did know why I was living. ?

I knew at the back of my tortured mind why I was still living. I knew it because I had a mother; offspring; sisters, brothers and others who loved me in spite of myself. They were a drag! They would not just let me end it all and free myself of the waking anxiety and stress of everyday living... the strain of constantly feeling ashamed of myself, constantly feeling worthless, constantly carrying the banner failure... Strange enough, you would not call me “depressed”. For some reason I have stayed out of what I believe to be the confines of depression. And that is the other reason I think I am still living.?

?HOPE. ?

In spite of all the intense self-castigating, the toxic pain, the unebbing sense of shame about my life and failures... in spite of all these, I still have had hope. Probably that is the case with someone reading this now: The hope that something will one day happen to give back our sense of worth, our self-love, our self-honour, our self-joy... the hope that?one day we will be deserving of a life worth loving. ?

Why am I posting this write-up now? Because I am trying to heal. Because I know also that this write-up may help, even save, another fellow ‘experiencer’. I write because I am tired of living in this toxic shame, tired of battling with this?insistent feeling of unworthiness, failure, hopelessness, regret, impostor syndrome, and the unsettling sense that I may be squandering the gifts I came on earth with... Squandering them in this dark sense of self.?

Yes, I hope to start fully healing; but not to make this journey only my own. If I can take others along on this journey of healing, I would have started the process of making my life worth its salt. For this reason, I am starting a blog that will map out this healing process. ?

This write up is the first of that blog entries. ?

If you read up to this point, then truly this entry was worth the effort.?

Much love,?

Barbara.?

?Ps?

The blog link will be posted here once it comes up. But for now, I will use this space for subsequent?blog posts.?