Post-Traumatic Growth Journal

[Marcine]

Sidebar-  Papa Coco, I deeply relate with your words and experience of "Imprisoning myself behind bars that aren't locked from the outside."
Sometimes I feel that there aren't even bars or a wall, it's an open space that I don't believe I am worthy to cross. Freedom on the other side. The cage is a figment.

[sanmagic7]

SO, i think toxic shame is so  . ..  toxic that it needs to be whittled away slowly, one chip at a time.  hopefully, if we can recognize that one of those chips is gone, we can celebrate that and know we're truly undoing the invisible cage that keeps us stuck as who we aren't.  small steps my friend.  but i think recognizing it for what it is can be considered a pretty big step nonetheless.

Marcine's post reminded me of something i read a long time ago.  an experiment using fish and an aquarium with a piece of glass separating the two sides.  on one side was a predator fish, on the other side were minnows, its favorite food.  time and again, the predator fish tried to get at the minnows, only to be stopped by the barrier it couldn't really see.  time and again, time after time, until it stopped ramming its nose into the glass.

then, the glass partition was lifted, and the minnows were free to swim everywhere in the tank, all around the predator fish.  by this time, however, the pred. was already convinced that those minnows were out of reach, and eventually died of starvation.

it seems we've had similar experiences.  repeatedly not allowed to be who we are, we believe such a thing is out of reach, even after the people who did that to us are no longer in our lives.  the cage is indeed a figment, but we've been groomed so well to believe it's always real that we stop, believing that's our only option forever.  somehow, some way, we've got to find out how to know it's a figment now, and keep ourselves nourished, going against everything we've been taught.  a huge task, indeed.  little by little, tho . . .