I think I post so much because I am still trying to prove to my early caregivers that I am worthy of attention.
Whenever someone raises his hand around me, I cringe because I fear I’m about to get hit. Employers often note I have the personality of a beaten dog. You know how when you adopt a dog who was abused, they are skittish? I’m still like that at age 47.
This section from Daniel Siegel’s book Mindsight is like a stake through my heart (about my first five years in foster care and the shame that has haunted my life since):
Shame is the belief that the self is defective. From the point of view of survival, “I am bad” is a safer perspective than “My parents are unreliable and may abandon me at any time.” It is better for the child to feel defective than to realize that his attachment figures are dangerous, undependable or untrustworthy. The mental mechanism of shame at least preserves for him the illusion of safety and security that is at the core of his sanity.
…Because he hadn’t integrated these reactive states of humiliation and rage into his narrative, he was as helpless in dealing with them as he had been when he was a little boy and his mother entered his room with a grim face and a belt.
The shame-based conviction that we are defective can sabotage us if it remains unconscious. Though it can compel us to succeed, our ancient feelings of being damaged goods are likely to surface at any hint of stress or failure and we may become highly reactive to keep others at a distance. We need to prevent them and ourselves of becoming aware of our shadowy past and hidden truth of our rotten self. The closest others come to our real self, the more vulnerable we feel and the more alarmed we are that the secret truth about our defective nature may be revealed…
He engaged in this conquest-acceptance-repulsion cycle as if his life depended on it. In some ways, his life as a child did depend upon him convincing his parents that he was worthy of their love and attention. This drive to prove the nearly unconvincable remained his familiar place even in adulthood. He’d find the challenging symbol of his mother, his difficult to get girlfriends, and woo them to prove his worth, striving to assuage a feeling of shame of which he was not even aware, but as soon as a woman became affectionate, the game to prove was won and the real danger began. There was nowhere to hide and nothing to do but run or get the woman to leave. The isolation he felt as a child was disastrously recreated as an adult. His alternating states of attraction and repulsion had driven him to a dead end.
