buying secrets? It's in this topic so obvious triggers!!!

[Dee]

Forgive me, it's my birthday and I have celebrated a little too much.  Rather, I drank to forget a little too much.  Not so much I am sick, but enough where I don't care.  We don't post much in here.  Is it because it is such a big secret we can't talk about it?  Am I really alone here?  It is the secret I carried for years and could never tell.  And to this day I can't tell much or even speak of a single detail.  I don't want anyone to know. because I know they will never look at me the same.  I don't want pity, I don't want them to know, I want to be like everyone else.  I don't want them to know what a shameful person I am.  The things I did, I couldn't say no or protect myself.  I just stayed still, as still as I could.

On my birthday, I thought about my dad, it sucks.  I thought about how he would buy me anything I dreamed up.  Sometimes I asked for things I didn't care about, but other kids did, so I thought I should too.  He didn't buy my secrecy, he threatened me for that.  Until I thought I would die anyway.  I think he bought his guilt.  He must of right, because he couldn't of loved me.  I wanted his love so much.  I wanted a touch, any touch.  Then I got what I wanted, and I didn't want it anymore.  Why is it this is my birthday and THIS is what is on my mind??  I want to have good memories of happy birthdays.  I remember gifts, with all the price tags left on so I knew how much he spent.  I remember my birthday evening, with a special present that I hated.  Okay, bad night, sorry, but I'm still posting because I am so tired of not saying what I am thinking, of not talking about it.  I HATE SECRETS!!!!

[radical]

I don't see you any differently.
It wasn't your fault.  None of it. You haven't been tainted by another's abuse.  None of us have been.  It doesn't belong to you.
I wish you healing, and many happy birthdays and peace and joy in the memories you make in the future.  You deserve to be happy.  You are a good, courageous, person, worthy of love, dignity, kindness and joy.

Happy future birthdays!

[Three Roses]

You are not a shameful person! The shame is not on you, it is on the person who caused harm, and betrayed a child's trust and innocence.

Like radical, I do not see you any differently. "You are a good, courageous, person, worthy of love, dignity, kindness and joy. Happy future birthdays!"

[Dee]

Thank you for the kind replies.  I have been in therapy a year and when I read what I wrote, I thought, I have a lot of work to do.  To be honest we really have not touched much on this yet.  We have worked on finding hobbies, establishing boundaries, and navigating relationships.  I think I have needed to be more stable and I might just be there.  I think we are about to start the hard work.  I want to and I dread it too.  I still have a secret on the tip of my tongue.

To be honest I read the cartoon, I liked it, and I thought that applies to other people, not me.  Right now I cannot see how I will ever not feel guilt or shame.  When I had my assessment done, there was a question about my dad.  Before I knew what happened my head dropped and my eyes hit the floor.  It just washed over me.  I sat like that for some time and wondered how could I ever lift my head again, but somehow I did.  I feel like a deeply flawed person.  I have spent my life trying to be perfect so others won't know the real me.  Monday I'll be back in my therapist office, as I do every week.  I joke with the staff and tell them I am on the frequent flyer program.

[radical]

It's really hard.  I feel as you describe.
Everything is triggered in therapy - I think it needs to be that way.  That's why I wrote what I did about my session about a week or so ago.  I can't - won't let shame rule my life, keep robbing me of my life. 
My last session (this week) didn't go well again.  I felt back at square one with feeling paranoid and not accepted or acceptable.  So I'll go back next week and open myself up and see what happens.  There can be no real acceptance without the risk of rejection, they go together like life and death.  It's not even about trusting my therapist, it's about accepting the fact and being open to the reality, ready to accept the outcome, whatever that is. So, I guess it's about trusting myself.  I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else.  I won't carry on immersed in shame.  I don't deserve it, and even if I'm the only person on earth who ever really does, I'm determined to accept myself.
My last bout of narc abuse changed me.  I think because I was journaling, so I know what I perceived and believed at the time it was happening and I can go back and read it.  Going from seeing it all as my problem, my fault, my shame, and awareness dawning slowly over time.  It wasn't my fault.  I was targetted because I was someone who could be made to believe it was, just like when I was a child.  Not my fault.  It means I will accept the consequences of thinking and behaving differently, whatever they are. 
I admire what you are doing here, Dee.  Your honesty confirms my own decisions about my way forward.

[Dee]

It makes sense to me.

[woodsgnome]

Radical wrote that ..."everything is triggered in therapy. I think it has to be that way." Also..."I fell back at square one with feeling paranoid and not accepted or acceptable...there can be no real acceptance without the risk of rejection, they go together...it's not even about trusting the therapist, it's about accepting the fact and being open...it all comes back to trusting myself."

This seems parallel to my current therapy. I've gone through many therapists, and it's not so much trust with this one, but a 'something' that's breaking down my sense of keeping or masking my secret shames, similar to what Dee says. Indeed, the elements mentioned are all similar--the abuse, the shame, its reinforcement via the 'buying off' of guilt, the awful cycle that weighs us down and bids to break our spirit in the end.

My therapist concurs that, hard as I'm experiencing some of what's come up so far, it's worth it, actually. I've frantically lived with my secret shames that can't truly be shared, openly, with anyone (even previous therapists) but which plays havoc in interpersonal relationships especially, but in other areas too; most areas, actually. The shame ghost is always hovering.

Turning the shame around is like trying to single-handedly turn a locked steering wheel. Interestingly, that's precisely what happened after one of my recent, very hard therapy sessions--my vehicle's steering wheel was locked and wouldn't budge (it's never done that before). I went for help, but while the clinic receptionist was phoning around to locate assistance, I returned to the vehicle, randomly tried the key again, and while I have no idea why it worked at last but hadn't moments before, the engine started, the steering wheel engaged, and ... well, I took it as a distinct metaphor. My locked-up psyche can be cleared, too. And I don't necessarily know how that will happen, but I'm building a sense that...maybe, just maybe, I can.

Perhaps this is like that popular children's book about 'the little engine that could'. I actually received that book as a 'buy-off' from one of my abusers, probably to assuage their own guilt about what they'd done. Except my take on that story was 'yeah, right; that's for other people, maybe, but never for me'. You see, there's this shame part bringing me to the edge of collapse, again. But slowly, perhaps I'll find the key that this shame will not have the final word on who I am.

Thank you, Dee, for starting this thread. It's given me courage to know there are others struggling with the shame that seems to overtake our lives and literally freeze out one's ability to feel anything but that sense of 'not good enough/damaged goods'. And to know that perhaps there really is an 'engine that can', for us too.

[sanmagic7]

woodsgnome wrote about breaking our spirits, and that resonates completely with me.  my body has broken many times, my emotions as well, and my spirit has been brought to its knees more often than i care to remember.  somehow, though, that spirit keeps churning away, refusing to give all the way in.  i feel like i've been on the edge of insanity a few times, but my spirit caught me, brought me back, albeit on shaky ground for a while, but with work, it's also stabilized.

this stuff is so wearing, so dog-tired wearing to our bones.  i really don't know how i've continued to get back up, except with divine help of some sort.  it certainly wasn't me.  i had nothing left.  but, the shame and the secrets - it's like they tear off little pieces of you continually.  i've heard it said that shame, like mushrooms and other fungus, can only grow in the dark.  that tells me that it's only by bringing them into the light, breaking the bonds of the secrets, that we can ever truly look at these things square in the eye and know that it wasn't us, no matter what we were told, what we were given, what we did.  it was all a matter of survival - physical, mental, emotional, and most importantly, i believe, spiritual survival.

i've only gotten in touch with my shame a few weeks ago.  it was hiding under layers of sadness, keeping my fear company.  my anger was in there as well, 3 musketeers.  sadness seemed like a plausible emotion to feel and display, but the other 3 weren't allowed, or i wouldn't have survived.  now that they have risen up from underground, i am looking at them, acknowledging them, and beginning to know that they have no power over me anymore. (has anyone seen the movie 'labyrinth'?  the heroine tells that to the elf king in the end.  very powerful, very freeing.)

we did what we did, of that there is no doubt.  but, as has been said, the shame lies with the perpetrator for making us feel so worthless, so unclean, and so at fault.  if this had happened to your daughter or son, what would you say to them?  that is what we must begin saying to ourselves, saying it aloud in therapy, standing up and breaking the chain of shame that has been binding us.  i'm only beginning, but i can feel its worth already.

radical, i do believe you are right.  the more we are able to trust ourselves, the easier it is to trust others.  as we grow in self-trust, we begin to realize that we have the power to do what needs to be done for ourselves, and let others have the shame and blame for what they've done to us.  this is an insidious disorder of the emotions, centered around relationships, that wants us to believe it's our fault.  the reality is just the opposite.  i think that when we can look at the disorder for what it is, we can begin to compartmentaiize exactly what goes where, and what belongs to whom. 

what was done to us is not our burden to carry around and attempt to fix.  it is not our shame, not our blame, and not our fault.  the more we are able to bring that shame and blame out into the light, the less power it contains.  we are not flawed, we are wonderful as we are.  we have flaws, as does everyone, but that does not make us flawed.  we make mistakes, but that does not mean we are mistakes.  what our greatest gift and strength is, in my opinion, is that we have the ability to learn - to learn who actually carries what, who it actually belongs to.  secrets only have power as long as they are kept in the dark.  today, i can no longer be bought. 

best to you in your challenges and struggles.  we shall overcome, i am sure of that.  i'm nearly 70, and i'm still fighting to have a happy childhood, happy relationships both with others and myself.  dammit, i won't give up!  i've lived too long the other way.  i deserve some peace.

[Missingmermaid]

Happy belated birthday. I completely understand where you are coming from. Somedays I want to shout everything out loud. When in actually i have never spoken about any of it outloud and only my therapy team even knows. Took me two years and I was about to write bits out in a brain dump. So I write and sometimes don't have to speak at all during sessions. I love writing. However there words that make me feel jinxed so I can't write or think them with a compulsive act following. So my whole life I have guarded and kept eveything burried. Just now force to deal with it as my symptoms are getting out of control. Totally forgot
Where I was going with this. I also have ADHD. Sorry.   

[Dee]

Writing is great.  It is the only way I can say things as well.  I have never wrote during a session.  I have dropped off three letters to date and I let my T read my journal once.  The journal entry was not about abuse, but how I didn't like my meditation coach.   I have been in therapy for a year.  I don't want her to even read anything in front of me.

I do sometimes worry about putting things on paper.  I don't ever put my name on anything I write, but I still worry that someone will see it.  Still, it is the only way I can communicate sometimes.  I have opened my mouth to say something, but I cannot force the words out.  I tried to tell her once how I felt flawed and I had trouble even saying flawed.