Resource The origin (and solution) for internalized, deep shame

[whatevs]

1. Why the thread

I want this thread to be about the origin of OUR self-loathing and internalized shame, and possible solutions. I hope other people join. This helps the forum with their token recovery section, and it helps us that can't/don't want to kill ourselves right now but feel like our life is unlivable as it stands.

2. Why a suicide forum for this, wrong location.

No, it is a good location IMO, and here's why. I have noticed a large quantity of people that have the kind of deep shame and feelings of inferiority that I have here. Other mental health based places would be a possible good fit, but here the demographics are guaranteed.

3. Why is this so important to me (and likely for you)

I have noticed that I:

• Feel strangely ashamed and evitative when I meet someone from my past (and partially someone from my present) when I am out and about.
• Feel soothed when I can speak plainly about my miserable life and I am not "shut down" by normies, i.e. people that enjoy life. Using self-deprecating tone, or just stating the obvious: that I am unhappy and a pool devil.
• Feel that my observations or interventions have an annoying or insecure quality to them in recordings, videos, etc when there are other participants (like everyone feels more secure and is more "human", a la Osamu Dazai).

What this means:

• My subconscious assumes that people despise me or find me comical, especially when there has been time to ruminate on "everything you did wrong"
• My mind is pathologically "comfortable" collecting bad memories and using them to justify why I have to see myself as a cursed loser. I have caught it doing that several times, and minimizing good memories.
• It is definitely me first and foremost who sabotages and hates himself, and to be fair I have noticed this does make other people see you as fair game and attack you more, but the origin of the problem is mostly me. Many other people with huge disadvantages seem to cope better with life because they don't have shame about who they are, they can stand tall.

4. Origins

My leading theory on the origin of my chronic internal shame and feelings of inferiority is sexual abuse and the reaction from my family to it. When I was a small kid my favorite cousin sexually abused me at least 2 times, and terrorized me deeply once with lethal danger (he held me by the ankles from enough height to kill me and I cried in panic). These are the instances of abuse I remember, nobody can know what hides in the subconscious. I know I remembered the abuse when I was 17 years old, which means it was traumatically buried for about 10 years (maybe more).

I loved and admired my cousin, that made the betrayal much worse. My family wanted to cover it up and minimize the abuse despite me being fodder for shrinks and psychologists since a tender age and a very troubled youth that had even been held by the police once and almost got kicked out of a country for stealing. So long story short, only through the support of my sister and against the resistance of my family I accrued enough bravery to finally meet my abuser when I was in my 20s and discuss the abuse. He denied it, making catharsis impossible, but apologized for what in his memories where just childish games.

Sadly, I only gained a speck of self esteem with this. My suspicion is that my chronic fatigue, a number of physical and psychological blockages for socioemotional fulfillment and sexual dysfunction is what is now preventing healing from trauma and feeling no shame being me or in my past.

5. Solutions

• Acquire preferably real life friends that prove that you are worthy (real talk, we don't really get self esteem from ourselves, we are social animals)
• Acquire a mate that does something similar or adds to your friends
• Acquire a work position where people externalize that you are useful or competent
• Investigate your trauma, there must be a technique to make sure all buried memories can be exposed and healed. What made me remember when I was 17? Activating that would be useful.
• Use spiritual enlightenment as a bypass whereby you skip the need for social and sexual fulfillment and you check out early

6. Progress (or lack thereof) with the solutions

• I have acquired a few sorta friends, the most intense are online, real life find the difficulty that I am normally fatigued and I don't drive, hard to meet and do shit together
• Work in progress, might succeed
• With chronic fatigue this might be impossible and the opposite is common, people notice that you are slow and always complaining, you'll get your feelings of inferiority fostered, not ameliorated
• Work in progress, nothing found yet
• Has worked enough to prevent suicide or uncontrollable insanity but is obviously not completely achieved as I seem to covet having a good life still and be succesful in the material realm AKA Hell.

 

[timf]

There are things people should feel ashamed for having done like criminals or those who abuse others.

There is shame we can feel for things we have done in the past because we were young, ignorant, drunk, or simply self-focused.

There is shame people can feel for being poor or unsuccessful. This is similar to the shame teenagers can feel for having to appear in public with their family.

There is shame we can feel for having been duped, exploited, or victimized.

Shame and guilt can be useful if it can motivate us to stop doing something wrong. However, shame and guilt can be unhealthy if they begin to assume a larger role in our life than they should.

One generally does not mention past abuse as it is something so far outside the experience of others that it can creep them out. Many combat veterans understand the difficulty in trying to talk with other who have not had similar experiences.

One can look at abuse like a car accident. A survivor can have little or severe lasting damage but will have to make the best of it they can. Sex abuse is a little different in that a victim can have additional shame if they experienced some physical pleasure as if it were their fault. This is similar to someone who was kidnapped and had a hole drilled in their head and a wire inserted so that the pleasure center of the brain was electrically stimulated. This does not mean that the person secretly wanted to be kidnapped.

 

[whatevs]

Lmao, you literally asked ChatGPT for a response to the thread, didn't you?

 

[Cathy Ames]

This helps the forum with their token recovery section

I like your thread, but this right here ^ made me LOL.

Something I've heard at least a couple of times (or read in more than one place) is that shame and guilt activate the brain's reward centers, and thus these feelings can be "addictive." I think this might contribute to their being so difficult to get rid of.

 

[Pluto]

I don't have anything particularly useful to say except that I relate to the dilemma.

Normally I explain the syndrome to people as a kind of internal resolution of cognitive dissonance. It creates a visceral self-image of unworthiness/inferiority in order to resolve confusion over why abuse happened. Saying 'I am unlovable' may not have a foundation in reason, but does theoretically explain away abuse. It also sets up more abuse by establishing a deeply-rooted identity based upon unworthiness.

Authentic spirituality is a wholly subtractive process - deconditioning, unlearning, unknowing and ultimately surrendering to death. It is not merely another strategy to make our personal selves happier, but a willingness to reveal our true nature of infinite mystery beyond that familiar, inherently problematic self. For obvious reasons, this would work best if there is no competing agenda. An analogy might be sleeping and trying to awaken from a bad dream; the process inevitably necessitates genuine openness to a higher reality and a willingness to surrender the entire dream world, all of its contents/characters and ultimately the very 'self' appearing at the centre of it.

A practical contribution of contemporary nondual teachers like Angelo Dilullo is viewing emotion work, be it conventional therapies, Byron Katie-style work or techniques such as so-called trauma release exercises (TREs), as a part of the process of spiritual awakening. This contrasts to the traditional mentality of dismissing personal problems as unreal. Some progress can be made via self-help, while other aspects may be so hidden or subconscious (regardless of intellectual understanding) that one will be stuck without guidance.

Another modern teacher, Shar Jason, once argued that being suicidal actually helped her go through the awakening process which is otherwise often hindered by deeply-held fears of loss or death; others argue that suicidality and the potential destabilisation of spiritual work can be an incendiary cocktail; Lisa Cairns reported having some young men misinterpret her earlier teachings (along the lines of 'there is no point to anything') to rationalise completing suicides. She subsequently modified her teaching style to be less direct.

 

[Deo volente]

Something I've heard at least a couple of times (or read in more than one place) is that shame and guilt activate the brain's reward centers, and thus these feelings can be "addictive." I think this might contribute to their being so difficult to get rid of.

This reminds me of something I recently read on some horrible blog about how negative self image is a defense against the discomfort of change to one's self-concept. Self-hatred paradoxically becomes an egoic bulwark against critical reflection on who you are or how you want to be. That view makes a lot of sense to me personally and also ties into experience with the addictive nature of physical self-harming behaviors as basically a physical instantiation of that psychic cycle.

I want this thread to be about the origin of OUR self-loathing and internalized shame, and possible solutions.

The origins of my own experience of this are still under assembly. My current understanding is that, while I did not undergo explicit abuse, the conditions of my childhood were sufficient that a positive self image was not able to be constructed so my fledgling ego resorted to self-hate in order to process the conditions of abject isolation and barrenness in which I found myself;

a kind of internal resolution of cognitive dissonance. It creates a visceral self-image of unworthiness/inferiority in order to resolve confusion over why abuse happened.

much in this model, only substituting abuse for why I felt emotionally abandoned. Parent's divorced when I was little (5yo) and the family became bizarrely political. No safe person to be open with. Relationships were mediated by considerations of loyalty to one parent or the other. I, being so young at the time, could not navigate this with the savvy of my older siblings and so naturally completely imploded my relationship to my father out of devotion to my mother (who was completely poisonous when it came to him). This alienated me from everybody except her whose love, it did not take too many years for me to understand, was conditioned almost entirely on my dysfunctional relationships to everybody else.

For solutions -

1.) Write out your story to foster awareness of your history and the consequent patterns that have emerged. This can also be useful if you want to achieve a positive future goal by helping to construct clarifying narratives about who/what you are to disrupt such patterns.

2.) Alternatively, try to just let go of everything and see what happens.

Solution Progress -

1.) A continuous process that I am making consistent progress on. I literally failed a class in high school where the final paper was to detail your personal process of socialization because I simply did not have the awareness to write more than one page of dogshit. Now, I think I have a decent grasp on things. Progress on leveraging that knowledge toward the end of pattern disruption has been less forthcoming though...

2.) This might seem in conflict with solution 1 but I do not think it is. I have tried to cease identification with the animal that is me but I still find myself attached. A lifelong project no doubt.

 

[Cathy Ames]

Oh my goodness. This is seeming like an impossible amount of work. I wish I had started on it much sooner than this, before I was so exhausted and defeated and low-functioning.

 

[whatevs]

It is Cathy. We are in a terminal state, revival is a lot of work. Dying is also a lot of work IMO. We are fucked either way, so better accept it and get to work, lol. Existence is Hell, there's no easy way out IMO. I believe when you kill yourself without the proper preparation your suffering doesn't end.

I'm more on the side of preparing for death and then suicide than revival so I can integrate in the fucking planetary asylum, hahaha.

 

[parader]

i'm not sure what i can do about my internalized deep shame and guilt because only recently i think i started noticing where it even came from
my mom had a mindset of "be grateful, don't ever complain, don't even cry, you're privileged, everyone wants the life you have, you must be grateful and humbled by it" which she enforced on me since i was very little
i guess that's the source of my shame and guilt, because if i truly believe (like i did for the most part of the years) that the environment and circumstances i was in were always perfect, then everything that went wrong with it must be my fault and i'm the only one to blame
and i don't know what to do with that, i can barely remember the bad or good things i went through, i somehow just gaslighted myself to believe that my life was really perfect
only very recently i could remember some shitty things i went through when i was very young and i cried so so much, i don't even know how i could forget those things
my life was far from perfect
if anyone could help me with any suggestions on how to deal with it i appreciate it

 

[Stylite]

Very interesting thread and thoughts. I'd like to share some of my own on the topic:

Think about what shame and guilt is made up of.

Let's start with shame. Shame is commonly defined as "a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior." What this means is plainly that shame deals with social rejection. Humans are social creatures. Despite the moronic ideas floating around with such books as "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" and ancient sheep-herding ideologies pushed by authoritarian rulers such as Stoicism, the onus of feeling shame is not wholly on the receiver of the humiliation. It's important to recognize that this is not a one-way street. You don't get to pick and choose whether or not social rejection and humiliation affects you, because it will.

You, as well as I, are a social creature that requires social connection to survive in a primal basis. There's commonly this idea that stems from these terrible ideologies like Stoicism that strength is in conquering your reaction to events- that you cannot control events, but you can control your reaction to them. That's stupid. We cannot control the subconscious. We can influence the subconscious gut-reaction to an insult or betrayal, we can try to tame our feelings, but we will never fully control them. Trying to do so will just lead to you blaming yourself and feeling guilty that you even feel shame. How ironic, right? "I shouldn't have let that affect me. How silly of me, I'm not a disciplined stoic!" that sort of nonsense is really common in circles that think that way.

Now, onto guilt. Guilt is commonly defined as "the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime." But what is a crime? What is an offense? Those are all social concepts that vary based on the environment. Manshu Detachment 731 committed many things that were not crimes by the Manchurian governance at the time, but I'm sure we'd all agree they were heinous crimes now. So, when does one feel guilt? It's when you commit something you genuinely and truly believe is an offense or a crime. It doesn't have to actually be a commonly accepted offense, only you have to feel it to have it. But don't get trapped here, because yes- while you are the source of guilt, you are not alone in this.

Does a building stand on its own without hundreds of bricks, planks, and nails to hold it? Is the whole of Leonardo da Vinci's work something created in a vacuum, without the teachings of what came before? Does a surgeon know all his craft spontaneously on his own? No, you learn things from others and from your environment. You learn how to feel guilt, from when you are shamed for it. Let's look at the other side: does someone develop confidence in their skills and appearance alone? No, not at all. You're told you're handsome or pretty, you're told you're skilled. If you're a football player, you start to develop true confidence in your skills after winning against others. Not by dribbling a ball alone in a cave where nobody is a witness to it. Affirmation, compliments, results- that's what gives someone confidence. If you believe in your ability without any of that... then that's not confidence. That's delusion. The very same delusion that drives people to think they're more qualified than doctors, historians, and experts at any such field.

The very same principle goes for guilt. You feel guilty at things you are shamed for, or things that are socially, commonly shamed. The same principle goes for a lack of confidence. If you fail repeatedly, you will lose confidence. It's important to understand this because this is normal; nobody is a defect for feeling shame and guilt, if anything, that's proof you're a proper human being and not a psychopath.

Therefore, the first thing I do when examining deeply internalized shame and guilt, is that I look into the causes of it right from the start. Because this stuff all compounds onto itself to make a bigger whole. A single brick is just a brick. Five bricks is just a bundle of bricks. Twenty bricks is a larger bundle of bricks. Eighty bricks might make a small wall. It's a concept in a philosophical method of analysis called "dialectics"- the law of transformation of quantity into quality: with any quantitative increase, after a certain threshold is reached and passed, there will be a transformation- a change- in quality. I try to think about the little things that lead up before certain thresholds, and not try to examine the happenings after a certain threshold beforehand. Though, of course, you should examine it all to obtain a full understanding.

 

[milkandcoffee]

I've got wild, deep shame from emotional neglect and abuse as a kid. This is the way I was spoken to, spoken about, and taught to think about myself. I'm inherently broken, I'm doing it wrong, and everything is my fault.

Here's a primer on toxic shame, for anyone who might want to read it: Healthline Article

 

[whatevs]

I'm gonna float another idea. For me, incredibly pestilent armpits, smelly feet and lots of dry dandruff helped to cement the chronic inferiority and shame. I propose physical defects such as these (including uglyness or excessive weight) can be either the origin or a compounding issue for the problem.

I solved the armpit problem recently, thank Satan. I've always been sorta good looking. Than you, Saturn, for your generous gifts. Thank you for keeping the shitshow going to feed that strange machine up in the "Moon" or race of metaphysical aliens that run the simulation. (Remember, just floating ideas!).

We definitely live in a simulation of sorts, though. The moon landing is fake as fuck and the pandemic was a creepy social engineering charade. Strange world.

 

[Cathy Ames]

I propose physical defects such as these (including uglyness or excessive weight) can be either the origin or a compounding issue for the problem.

I totally agree. And other sorts of defects as well.

I believe when you kill yourself without the proper preparation your suffering doesn't end.

I'm more on the side of preparing for death and then suicide than revival so I can integrate in the fucking planetary asylum, hahaha.

How would it work, though? Reincarnating to suffer again but differently (or even the same way)? Or suffering in a "hell"/purgatory type place.

If it is the first, I keep thinking there could be a real advantage to upsetting the board and starting over fresh. And the sooner the better.

 

[Stylite]

I'm gonna float another idea. For me, incredibly pestilent armpits, smelly feet and lots of dry dandruff helped to cement the chronic inferiority and shame. I propose physical defects such as these (including uglyness or excessive weight) can be either the origin or a compounding issue for the problem.

I solved the armpit problem recently, thank Satan. I've always been sorta good looking. Than you, Saturn, for your generous gifts. Thank you for keeping the shitshow going to feed that strange machine up in the "Moon" or race of metaphysical aliens that run the simulation. (Remember, just floating ideas!).

We definitely live in a simulation of sorts, though. The moon landing is fake as fuck and the pandemic was a creepy social engineering charade. Strange world.

I don't agree with your political views. Regardless, for dry dandruff, is your hair curly by any chance? If it is, you might need to use some product specifically made for curly hair.
Curly or not, though, I'd recommend following these steps when showering:

1. Use a co-wash, not a shampoo, to rinse and wash your hair.
2. Apply a conditioner and massage your head, then let it sit there for roughly 5 minutes. Wash your body while you wait.
3. Rinse your head, getting rid of the conditioner, and then after you step out of the shower, apply a leave-in conditioner while your hair's still slightly wet.

If your hair ever feels dry throughout the day or a bit stiff, spray your head with some water (cold preferably), and then massage in a bit of leave-in conditioner.
I used to have really dry dandruff for almost all my life, and this almost immediately solved it in less than a month. It'll take a bit of time to fix it, though, as your scalp will adjust.
You can find anything you want in this world, a solution to the feet, armpits, dandruff, etc. But you need to look.

Cheers.

 

[whatevs]

I don't agree with your political views. Regardless, for dry dandruff, is your hair curly by any chance? If it is, you might need to use some product specifically made for curly hair.
Curly or not, though, I'd recommend following these steps when showering:

1. Use a co-wash, not a shampoo, to rinse and wash your hair.
2. Apply a conditioner and massage your head, then let it sit there for roughly 5 minutes. Wash your body while you wait.
3. Rinse your head, getting rid of the conditioner, and then after you step out of the shower, apply a leave-in conditioner while your hair's still slightly wet.

If your hair ever feels dry throughout the day or a bit stiff, spray your head with some water (cold preferably), and then massage in a bit of leave-in conditioner.
I used to have really dry dandruff for almost all my life, and this almost immediately solved it in less than a month. It'll take a bit of time to fix it, though, as your scalp will adjust.
You can find anything you want in this world, a solution to the feet, armpits, dandruff, etc. But you need to look.

Cheers.

Was your scalp also itchy? If you didn't suffer from that, our issues are be different.

I also don't agree with your take on Stoicism. Stoicism is pretty cool, as Schopenahauer noted it is familial with rejection of this world, a stepping stone. It questions the value of pleasure and success if suffering is so strong and so easily manifested.

And you are wrong, not everyone that looks will find a solution and not everyone that hasn't found a solution hasn't looked.

 

[Stylite]

Was your scalp also itchy? If you didn't suffer from that, our issues are be different.

I also don't agree with your take on Stoicism. Stoicism is pretty cool, as Schopenahauer noted it is familial with rejection of this world, a stepping stone. It questions the value of pleasure and success if suffering is so strong and so easily manifested.

Yes, it was also itchy.

I am skeptical of Stoicism because the primary authors were an emperor, a millionaire, and a former slaver that was handsomely rewarded by the senate for promoting Stoicism. It's got some good to it, yes, but trying to endure without acknowledging that the outside world has a significant impact on you is one of the many things I have a problem with on it. There is good in suffering, you can learn from it, but you shouldn't necessarily have to endure it without aspirations to change what causes the suffering.