I remember the first time I felt a deep sense of you. I was still living in my parents’ house. Someone was constantly stealing money from everyone in the family, and my parents were sick of it! They decided it was a good idea to bring on board two charlatans to figure out who the thieves were. The charlatans proposed to put a dry corn seed dipped in super-hot chili close to everyone’s eyes. The corn was expected to end up magically in the eyes of the money thieves.

The day the charlatans finally came to our house, my elder cousin and I were wrongfully accused. We ended up with a hot corn seed in our eyes for a time that felt like an eternity. It was certainly not magic. I could feel the corn being put inside my eyes, fast enough to make it look like a magic trick.

The intention was that the pain would be so unbearable that it would make us confess. But that never happened. I thought I would die from an excruciating pain, which was not to pain of being wrongfully accused and tortured simultaneously, but the realization that my parents could let this happen to me and rather believe complete strangers than their own child. Many, many months later, the real stealer was eventually identified. But, to this day, no one has ever apologized to my cousin and me. Instead, we were punished, repeatedly insulted, isolated and treated as amoral people (We will come back to moral judgment later).

It is always confusing when your greatest pain comes from those who have also loved and cared for you the most. In this space of confusion, I felt a deep sense of you, shame, for the first time. Your presence in my life comes with a history of confusion. I used to feel a shift in me when you manifested, but I could not clearly identify you because you were so enmeshed with other complex feelings, like disappointment, outrage, and shock.

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love” Brené Brown

I visited an old friend from my early twenties a few months ago. It has been many years since I didn’t see her, thanks to the covid-19 pandemic. I was expecting and was looking forward to laughter and reminiscence of the good old time when we were carefree, naïve, and had all these dreams in our heads. Instead, I ended up in past dynamics: gossip, morality police and accusations. And then, something strange happened. I witnessed myself crying like a little girl, an ugly cry. All I wanted was to hide or disappear. For the first time, I talked to myself like I would talk to my kids: You are not a bad person. Even good person makes terrible choices. You are not a bad person.

My response was undoubtedly disproportionate compared to what was actually happening. And then it finally hit me, clearly. It was you that I was experiencing. It was you, shame, You again! Now I can finally identify you; I now know you when you sneak in, how you manifest in me. You have been weighing on me too long, making me question my worth and place in this world.

“Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.” Brené Brown

Looking back, I realize that I had internalized that I was inherently the bad person people would say I was. I was convinced at some point that I may have indeed stolen that money but subconsciously couldn’t remember. When I met people, in my mind, the starting point was that they saw me as a bad person, and my job was to prove otherwise. There is a difference between feeling shame and being shamed. Though eventually, if you stay in an environment where you are shamed long enough, you will start hearing the shaming voices as your own.

We, human beings, think we are the strongest-minded creature on earth. If only we knew how vulnerable we are to our environment. We give too much credit to our objectivity when our environment influences us more than our will and personality. In reality, we tend to use social interaction as a mirror to our self-image and use the judgments we receive from others to measure our worth. This is known as the looking-glass self-theory. Expose someone to a negative projection of the self long enough, and you won’t be able to recognize them. Do the same in a positive environment and see them flourish.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are not capable of change” Brené Brown

People have accused me of things. Some things I did, and most I never did. When it happened, my trauma response was to question myself first. Then, I always felt responsible for explaining, arguing, and proving that I was not evil. I helplessly hoped to meet eyes who would believe me and mirror that I was worthy of love and trust because part of me believed I was inherently amoral and, therefore, not deserving of love.

Shame had found a home in me. I have felt its oppressive presence constantly, witnessing her reducing me to a single identity.

“The most boring people and most dangerous people are those self-righteous people who have you believe they have no skeletons in their closets. In fact, they have no closets. They are full of baloney. I think that before you judge anybody, you should look at yourself and have enough courage to admit what you see.” Maya Angelou  

In the name of morality, people get to assign a definitive judgement of who is good and who is bad. This approach to evaluating life is dangerous as morality is subjective. Morality is informed by cultures, religion and personal values, which attach different meanings to our perception of good or bad.

Also, people who make moral judgement will tend to see those falling outside their scope of morality as less deserving of basic human needs and fair treatment. They will justify someone being treated with no dignity, to be punished and to be shamed. But no one pays the price for their mistakes more than the person who made them, so why do we need to judge in the first place? Why the need to shame?

The binary way of thinking, seeing people as either good or you are bad, is what keeps us away from more profound understanding, deeper connection and transformation. Humans are complex and layered creatures. We all make good and bad choices and carry the potential for light and darkness. Give people a chance before you reduce them to a single identity. Give them a chance to figure out themselves.

We cannot grow when we are in shame, and we can’t use shame to change ourselves or others. Brené Brown

The antidote to shame is to be real and honest with yourself, to be authentic. To know yourself. To know yourself so well that you are no longer vulnerable to people’s projection of you.

I have been healing through therapy, introspection and developing self-awareness. I am learning to free myself from the imposed shame that has been my inner narrative.

While doing that, I also notice that I am only triggered and have the potential to exhibit specific types of behaviours only in specific environments and around certain people. Having that awareness has allowed me to know what is me and what does not belong to me, what is environmental, and what is part of my character, value or identity.

My body has also been the most helpful guide. I notice that it can no longer handle specific environments, certain dynamics, and certain persons, especially those who enjoy witnessing the worst part of me emerge. There are certain dynamics and environments that my body now viscerally rejects.

Life experiences have made me aware of most of my shadows, some that I have come to understand, some that I recognize as good messengers, some that I am thankful for, some that I am happy to use when necessary and some that I realize I do love, actually.

I have said this before, and I no longer see the world as black or white because  I have understood that some of my mistakes were necessary. They brought to light some of the most hidden parts of myself that I needed to confront.

In the world of Zoe Saldana, now:

“I know who I am. I love who I am. I like what I do. And I like how I do it. And I like my mistakes, and I like the way I learn, and I like the pace with which I learn from my mistakes. I don’t want to be anybody else but me. And by knowing this, I want to continue figuring out who the fuck I am.”

With love always,

R-D