The Shadow of Shame
Shame is a big inhibitor to receiving love. I believe it is the core thing that stops us creating and relating. The opposite of shame is self worth. The belief that you are worthy of receiving love, taking up space in the world and bringing your creations forth. Once you discover the root of your shame you have the key to unlocking love and receive joy.
One of the most sticky phrases that my animus embedded in my brain was that I was selfish. This was told to me externally by my father and my ex but also became an internal narrative and an unconscious saboteur in my life. I grew to believe that following my own dreams and desires was a selfish act and it became a great source of shame and guilt. But as I buried those feelings and learned to overcompensate as the “helpful and kind girl”, guilt grew into a fear that my life would be lost in service to men. I craved independence but felt guilty for my selfishness. I was scared of having my needs over-powered by others so reacted with hyper independence and looking after number 1. It was very confusing.
I grew up believing my father was deeply selfish and would put his desires above my own. From what was watched on television to the activities we did on holiday. The explicit ways he would steal our belongings because he felt like he was more deserving to the more implicit ways we as a whole family tried to make sure that his desires were considered foremost in any decision making. He was a wild, independent and free spirit if ever there was one and yet completely floored by how he fell for my mum. The love he felt for her and his children was something otherworldly and moved him to tears towards the end of his life when he became more sensitive. I wonder if his longing to be of service to that love became confused by the burden of the role he felt he needed to play as husband, father and provider. It can be just as hard to feel needed as it is to feel unneeded.
My father grew up as a certain generation in central Scotland to parents who didn’t understand how to recognise his radical and artistic tendencies. He was therefore never gifted the same opportunity to explore self expression, emotional regulation and communication as I was as a child. When faced with the emotional overwhelm of life as a father, husband, provider and a sensitive artistic soul trapped in a material body, his response was to either to emotionally withdraw or volcanically erupt. When I was aged between 2-6 these emotional needs were huge as our family faced the death of my new born brother, uncle and grandmother. At this time I also struggled to navigate the universal trauma of the eldest child being de-throwned from the centre of the universe. I blamed him for being angry and making us tread on eggshells to keep his emotional needs in check. Or for not being a source of comfort when I was sad. But it must have been very hard for him to stay present. He just didn’t know how and I felt that wound deeply.
So this was the simple equation that my anxious child-mind created: emotional needs = anger or withdraw of love and connection. Having needs became a source of deep fear so I learned to repress them. On one hand I was told off for being a selfish or unkind person. On the other I was celebrated for my independence and given love and attention when I could do it all by myself. Selfishness became a source of great shame that must be avoided at all costs if I want to receive love and attention.
I was unaware of this dynamic when I met my ex. I found it amusing when on our very first date he took me for a kebab and a pint of ale at a local “old men’s” bar. He “joked” that he needed to test me to make sure that I wouldn’t interfere with his life. How profoundly insightful and honest humour can be sometimes. Several years later, after graduating from university, I began to feel depressed and trapped as I was struggling to find a job that I felt moved by. After a lot of fruitless searching for desirable jobs in Edinburgh I was offered two opportunities in London at two of the most revered graduate schemes in the country. I knew I needed to take this opportunity to feel like I was alive and empowered but I immediately fell into a narrative of fear that this move would not be supported. I shared the offer with great hesitation and was met with fury. I once again heard the inner voice that told me I had been profoundly selfish by putting myself first and not considering the relationship. There was some truth in this, I did feel the need to protect my own needs ahead of the relationship in that moment - my growth was also ultimately what was needed for the relationship to thrive. But I was not able to vocalise these fears and/or he was not able to hear them. I thought it would lead to rejection and I could not face the loss of this attachment. Instead I slayed and buried my animus and spent the next decade overcompensating for my shame of selfishness by increasingly focusing my actions on building the life that would support him and our future together. Then growing increasingly angry and frustrated as the life within me was suppressed.
The irony is that underneath my perceived service and martyrdom, I wasn't able to hold space for my partner's needs. The fear of mine not being met was too strong to really listen to others with openness, confidence and generosity. And he could feel it. He felt an inadequacy of love because deep down I had killed the connection by not sharing my vulnerabilities and fears. This is how our shadows behave. The shame and the repressed beliefs about ourselves hide in the unconscious then leak out in imbalanced ways without our conscious awareness. We must bring the vulnerability of our shame to the surface to be met and welcomed so that it doesn’t lash out like an injured creature cornered in the dark.
Ultimately, I believe in the power of relationship and community. I also believe that this is intertwined with a healthy expression of independence and self care. But the shadow of an unhealthily expressed sense of independence can often be selfishness. If we cannot find ways to express our independence and autonomy in healthy ways they leak out in unhealthy ways which can be control, anger, bitterness or manipulation. Acts of service that come from a position of lack, fear or feeling unloved can become warped to satisfy the self. It is a wound that you can see in many tyrannical leaders, corrupt politicians or psychopathic CEO’s. But it exists in all of us and the only way past it is through it. To face the shadows, you have to trust that you have the autonomy and freedom to fulfill your soul's desires.
Before becoming a mother we must heal our inner child. We must reparent ourselves by giving ourselves the things we longed for as a child. In childhood development they say that a child's ability to believe they have freedom to have choice and control over their actions, is mostly fully developed by age three. I was a confident and ferociously independent child with a good grasp of how to ask for what I wanted or go after it myself. But I was so sensitive to the emotions of the loved ones around me it was often hard to know what my own feelings were. I found myself in my 30s trying to recalibrate what it means to be independent and trust I could have a voice while being in relationship with others. I needed to experience selfishness in a healthy way so that I was able to be intimate and honest without fear of rejection and so that I could hold space for someone else in a generous yet boundaried way.
As trees grow taller, they develop something called heart wood. A dense core that gives it the strength and stability to move upwards into the world and support every growing numbers of branches, that go on to play host for all sorts of wild visitors to make home in. Being self centred is not the same as selfish. To be self-centred is not to see the world revolving around you but to move into the world from a place of feeling solid and centred in yourself, so that you don’t have over dependence and insecurity on the state of the environment or people around you. Being self centred gives you the strength to support others. To move from maiden into the creative force of the mother, we must heal the animus by reclaiming our agency and feeling strength in the core of our being.
