Let Them Feel Shame

For all of my life I have made one massive, massive mistake when it comes to other people. (I’ve actually made countless, but this is one we are going to discuss!)

I learned very early on in life that people react extremely badly to shame and that it is one of the worst feelings a person can experience. This made it a dangerous one to be around. The adults around me when I grew up (including teachers) hated to be embarrassed. To the point that it would tip them into rage and / or cold withdrawal.

Being wrong was a guaranteed precursor to shame - so that became a dangerous sign the atmosphere was about to turn. It also made being wrong another terrible awful thing to avoid at all costs.

So what did that teach me?

It taught me that it was my job to try to protect them from shame and that I should do this with all people to keep myself safe.

That meant getting very creative.

It meant being able to argue that black could indeed be perceived as white if you looked at it in a different way. And it had to be instant. That fraction of a second between a person saying something and others reacting was the only time to ‘save’ them from shame. So quick thinking was an absolute must.

It also meant being silent.

It often meant never talking to others about the insane behaviours and abusive ways of others that I have witnessed throughout my life. I could never share accounts of the abuse directed or witnessed because it was too risky. It was not until things escalated to court case levels and I was forced to speak that some of these truths surfaced.

The signs were always there. All along they were there. A grown man who swears at his mother when she is offering to cook him dinner, for example, is a red flag I would never again ignore.

When I look back on some of the things that I stayed silent over, it now seems insane to me. I remember being late home after drinks with uni friends and entering a house of stony silence. I headed to bed as this was nothing particularly unusual to me. Getting up for water around an hour later I witnessed my then husband in a seething rage, donning disposable gloves and closely inspecting the skirt and underwear I had been wearing that night.

I was so embarrassed for him that I never told anyone about that. I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand the level of shame he would surely feel if people knew about that. Or if they knew he spent our wedding money on weed. Or that he spent our honeymoon completely ignoring me and downing the bottles of wine we had been given.

There are a thousand stories that went untold. And I tried to contain all of this shame within me. Shame that wasn’t mine. Or more accurately, not all mine. If I’m honest with myself, of course I felt shame about how I was being treated. I felt so ashamed that someone would treat me so unkindly.

I believed that if people knew what was happening, not only would they think badly of him - but they would also assume I deserved this treatment. That I must be provoking it in some way. They would think that something is wrong with me.

Looking back I can now see that I was also acting to cover my deepest fear - a fear born in an abusive childhood - the fear I wasn’t lovable. I didn’t want anyone to think that about me because on some deep, deep level, I believed it about myself.

I also know that in my heart of hearts I hoped that my love would be able to restore theirs. That there would come a day when they would stop all of their awful, hurtful, abusive behaviours and be loving. And on that day, did I want others to be judging them for their past mistakes? Of course not.

So it was best just to absorb the violence and hold my silence, whilst proactively working on better understanding them and their behaviour. I could choose how to react -so I began trialling better responses. I began attuning myself so well to them that I could pre-emp sudden shifts in their mood. Soon I saw the patterns unfolding and I sought to disrupt them.

And I just never stopped doing it.

Instead of letting them feel the weight of their shame, I became skilled at absorbing and alchemising it from them. I guess somehow I thought that if they didn’t feel the shame, they could instead just focus all efforts on changing their behaviour.

What I didn’t realise is that I was doing both them and me a great disservice. They needed to feel the shame in order to change the behaviour.

It turns out that all I ever did was enable them to act in increasingly atrocious ways with no consequences.

Just as any bully will do.

I had unconsciously gilded the path for them to walk on undisturbed and unweighted, and they used that stronger position to abuse me in even worse ways.

It never made them better. It made them worse.

Well not anymore.

Never, ever again will I cover up or absorb shame that is not mine.

When people ghost or ignore me, abuse or neglect me - it is NOT because I am not lovable - it is because THEY are not loving.

No longer do I have any misguided understanding or beliefs that how others treat me is a reflection of me or what I deserve. The two often are completely opposing and have nothing to do with each other.

People treat you how they are able to treat you. It is always a reflection of them. Not you. If they love you - it is because they are loving. If they mistreat you - it is because they are in trauma.

Your only job is to drive away from mistreatment, leaving the shame in their laps. It’s not yours - so to take it on is to steal. Don’t steal. It’s not wise.