Posts tagged shame
Demeter
Stuff from me
Guilt
We feel guilt when others have reason to think poorly of us. We are guilty when we harm others, we feel guilty when we recognize that harm. Guilt encourages us to obey the golden rule and act compassionately. Guilt is the emotion that reflects a decrease in our social standing, while shame reflects a decrease in stature.
Definitions
- Feeling badly about your actions.
- Failure to meet another’s standard of behavior.
- Transgressing a moral imperative.
- Having empathy but not acting from empathy.
- Dissatisfaction from our assessment of a decrease in social acceptance or contribution.
- Failing to act on compassion; failing to prevent harm to an unfortunate person.
- Not meeting your responsibility to others.
Self-compassion is one of the hardest parts of mental wellness for many of us, but one of the most important, too. Especially if it’s hard.
“Denial is a helluva drug. And it’s a helluva drug when it’s the first tool you were ever given to deal with mental illness. Simply put: culturally, we just weren’t programmed to deal with this ****. Even though I witnessed it in various family members, I didn’t even know growing up that depression had its own name. Instead it was called “not trying hard enough,” “not working hard enough,” “not achieving enough,” “being lazy,” “lacking decorum,” “lacking pride,” “losing self-control,” “not caring enough about what other people think,” “embarrassing your family,” “selfish,” “rude,” “failure.” All of the language I heard to describe what I would only later understand to be mental illness made it clear you could always “work” your way out of it–alone, naturally, because you didn’t want to bother other people with your problems–and if you couldn’t, well, you had no one but yourself to blame.”
A great article on depression, but also about how stigmas can prevent someone from getting the help they want or need. Click the image to read the full article.
Why should I, or anyone, be ashamed?
FIGHT STIGMA. EDUCATE.
I just wanted to share the new CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) awareness commercial because I think it’s pretty great.
Mental health and humour: I tell people they're my crazy pills
I never really thought of myself as someone who suffered much from stigma surrounding mental illness. I’m open when discussing being diagnosed and living with anxiety and depression. My friends, family and colleagues have also been generally very supportive. I’m very lucky.
Recently, I looked more closely at the language I use when talking about my own mental illness and realised I was stigmatising myself. Far from being put down, abused or humiliated by other people, I was the one who had a problem with my condition.
Filaments: Happy World Mental Health Day from your favorite crazy.Give someone...
Happy World Mental Health Day from your favorite crazy.
Give someone who needs it a hug today.If you think you might need help, get some. The brain is a complicated organ. It’s ok to see a mechanic when it gets out of tune.
Talk to someone you trust today. Or be the someone they trust, and, listen.Call someone out on their bull****. Mental illness is real, and it’s not something you can just stiff-upper-lip your way through.
Whatever you do today, don’t hide. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
There is still hope for you. Yes, you. No, really.
A lot of us with mental illness or addiction are unable to forget or stop worrying about the things we regret. Offhand, I can think of several dozen regrets, personally, without really trying:
- I regret stopping taking that antidepressant my doctor gave me way back when I was 17, and the one I got when I was 19, and the one I got when I was 22…
- I regret stopping my visits with the school counseling center.
- I regret that one time when I screamed “YOU ARE BEING AWFUL TO ME, I HAVE BIPOLAR DISORDER!!!!” at 4am.
- I regret all the times I stopped going to classes but didn’t bother withdrawing, and my resulting GPA.
- I regret getting really angry and moving across country instead of admitting I was scared and didn’t know what to do and really needed help.
- I regret giving into hypomania all those times, and doing all those things I did while I was hypomanic.
- I regret not calling and begging for help from my student counseling office, people at church, my parents, my stepparents, my parents’ friends, my professors, my doctors, etc.
- I regret all that money I spent on those credit cards all those times.
- I regret most of the actual choices I made between the ages of 11 and 28, come to think of it.
- I regret hiding my worries and mistakes and problems from everyone who could have and would have helped me, starting when I was about 5 years old.
- I regret the things I said to my family and friends when I was angry and depressed, or scared and depressed, or confused and depressed.
- I regret saying the things I said to my family and friends when I was hypomanic.
- I regret sleeping away all those years.
- I regret not going to all those classes I didn’t go to, and the resulting GPA.
- I regret putting my pride before my mental health.
- I regret that I changed majors because of temporary symptoms of my illness instead of for a reason like “I don’t want to have that career.”
- I regret attending college when I should have been in an inpatient facility, getting better.
- I regret that one time when I was hypomanic and signed up for 27 credit hours, and the resulting GPA.
- I regret keeping secrets about how my life was at my mom’s house from my dad, and at my dad’s house from my mom, and at BOTH houses from a lot of people who could have helped me and my younger siblings.
- I regret all the times I responded to my own suicidal ideation by withdrawing from the world or looking up ways to kill myself.
- I regret letting my OCD control so much of my life, to the point that it’s darned difficult to go back to being “normal.”
- I regret spending so much time avoiding life, instead of trying to figure out why I wanted to avoid it, and then fixing that “why.”
- I regret ignoring all that advice from well-meaning people who told me I was going to regret all those things I did anyway.
- I regret the times when I haven’t said something I should have to a doctor or therapist.
But there’s still plenty of hope for me, despite all of that.
Every single day I can make choices that affect my course and speed, as it were. Yes, I’m in more rocky, hazardous territory than I want to be, but I have yet to run aground. Yes, the skies are threatening, but my ship has not yet sunk. And it’s not like I know where I would be if those things I regret, had gone differently.
You’re in the same situation. How do we know that? Because you’re still here.
A friend of mine was in an inpatient ward, suffering very, very badly from serious symptoms of her illness. It had been years since she had been in a situation that she felt was really great. It had been a while since ECT had robbed her of her memories from the better part of a decade and her ability to work full-time. Life, by most objective standards, sucked.
But she chose to participate in her treatment anyway. She chose to try another new medication scheme anyway. She chose to tell fellow patients on the ward all about NAMI and peer support groups and how helpful they are. And when she was released, she went back to being an advocate and a peer support person and all of that, because her ship wasn’t sunk yet, and there were still choices to be made.
That’s the hope, and the promise. No matter how badly you’ve screwed things up, no matter how many opportunities you think you’ve lost (or, yes, truly and irrevocably have lost,) there are still choices and options open to you. There are still people willing to help you, things to try, places to go. There is always hope, at least until the moment you die.
At that point, well, let’s just say I’ll leave my opinion out of it for the sake of my diverse audience. :)
I don’t know what the results of my choices will be. I don’t know what course my illness will take. But I know that I still have some choices. They might be big opportunities or small opportunities - choosing to try to make and eat something for lunch, choosing to take a shower, choosing to put my CPAP mask on, choosing to fill my med boxes and set them up where I can find them, choosing to share my story on Tumblr, choosing to go to a peer support meeting, choosing to call a warmline when I’m feeling like I’m in a bad place, choosing to call 911 if I feel like I’m a danger to myself or others, choosing to read a few paragraphs in a book about forgiving myself.
And yeah, I still really, truly, 100% regret the stuff I said I regret. It hurts. I 100% wish I hadn’t made the choices I did, that things hadn’t gone down the way they did. If I had a time machine, I suspect I’d go back in time before I even clearly thought about the ramifications, I regret it all so much.
But I know there’s hope anyway, and that takes the sting out of those regrets in a MAJOR way.
On Being Worthy
When we take it upon ourselves to pass self-judgment and simply declare, “I am not worthy,” we build a barrier to progress and erect blockades that prevent our moving forward. We are not being fair when we judge ourselves. A second and third opinion will always be helpful and proper.
It occurs to me that there are probably hundreds or even thousands who do not understand what worthiness is. Worthiness is a process, and perfection is an eternal trek. We can be worthy to enjoy certain privileges without being perfect.
Perhaps it is reasonable to conclude that personal measurement or judgment oftentimes may be severe and inaccurate. We may get bogged down as we try to understand and define worthiness. All of us are particularly aware of our shortcomings and weaknesses. Therefore, it is easy for us to feel that we are unworthy of blessings we desire and that we are not as worthy to hold an office or calling as someone next door.
When we dwell on our own weaknesses, it is easy to dwell on the feelings that we are unworthy. Somehow we need to bridge the gap between continually striving to improve and yet not feeling defeated when our actions aren’t perfect all the time. We need to remove unworthy from our vocabulary and replace it with hope and work. This we can do if we turn to quieter, deeper, surer guidelines—the words of our prophets and leaders, past and present.
