I’ve been thinking a lot about shame.

[Luma1123]

I've been thinking a lot about shame, as a symptom of PTSD. Especially since deciding to read David Baldrick's The Unshaming Way.

I think part of what makes shame so subtly seductive, and such an underlying part of many people's experiences with PTSD, is that shame confers a sense of agency. When trauma is so often born out of situations where we lack the ability to control our own devastating circumstances, shame offers the control we seek—it tells us we were fully capable of transforming the situation, somehow. We just didn't, or wouldn't. Notice I'm not saying "couldn't". Shame isn't so understanding as that. Shame merely points out that it's possible to be in control, and still screw it up anyways. You could have gotten away, gotten out. But you didn't. It must be because you didn't influence the situation, but I know you could have, Shame whispers. And that's how it gets us. It lets us cling to the idea of control, so we don't have to face our own helplessness in the face of circumstances.

I remember, when I was younger, trying to explain to someone why I was so harsh to myself. "If I don't keep myself accountable, who will?" was my defense (made through copious tears and with a shaking, weakened voice, which might have been a clue). But Baldrick says, early on in his book, that shame has been scientifically shown to be an extremely poor motivator and driver of change compared to other emotions. I think shame paralyzes you, keeps you where you're at. There are times where a lack of movement is the only thing you can control, on a subconscious level. I never wanted to feel shame, or deep emotional pain. But I think it satisfied some wounded corner of my brain to think that I had control, that the outcome was truly up to me, and any fault or disappointment experienced was due to my own exercised actions.

I don't know. I feel like I'm close to something here. I like metaphors: surfers don't punch the waves into submission. They manage to balance and ride them instead, with some board-assisted action. The ocean is still fully doing its thing—sometimes calm, sometimes mysterious, sometimes in the middle of a category 5 hurricane. But like... what if we could all learn to surf?